Michelle Alexander, born on this day in 1967, is a civil rights advocate and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. In 2010, she published "The New Jim Crow", showing how the drug war helps maintain a white supremacist caste system.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander describes how oppressed minorities are, in the author's own words, "subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were".

Alexander's analysis shows how "people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use" find themselves permanently locked out of mainstream society, also illustrating how the legal system has shut out attempts to combat the drug war's racist implementation.

"The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told."

- Michelle Alexander