I found this book to be really eye opening. It's one thing to know the police are militarized, policies that claim to be "color" blind are really used to target black and brown communities over the white communities and the economies built around these private prisons but to hear each policy and how it's used and the legal methods they have chipped away systematically at the protections put in place to fight this kind of abuse is just... I don't have words. Any word I come up with just doesn't seem enough to describe how I feel about it. I will say growing up I was told we must all be color blind but as I got older, I knew that in fact we need to see color and listen to and recognize people's stories because by being color blind we are ignoring their lived experience. But I was also someone who saw the election of Obama as the changing point that while America is/was a racist country that this turning point showed a shift in the culture and how now the real work could be done especially at a policy level to really progress things forward. I see now that was silly to say the least of me to believe because you can change policy, but you can't change people, and it has to on both ends usually at a grassroots level because policy is one thing but it is people who enforce that policy that if left unchanged will twist those policies in a way where they will have racists effects. Then the reason it has to be done on the grassroots level is that these major civil rights organizations are run by lawyers who sometimes rather than just fighting the fight will instead wait for the perfect case or client to really just appeal to white people so that they can then get on board with a moment and feel comfortable. But that is hard to do on so many levels because not only are people complicated and not perfect but with policies in place meant to target the youth that they will rarely be that perfect client so no progress is moved and with the chipping away of laws and protections to be used to prove racism now make it impossible to do so it will also be nearly impossible to have a perfect case. That is not to say we don't need the civil rights organizations/lawyers and policy changes, but it also needs to happen at a grassroots level to change the people as well as they are the ones enforcing those policies. It can seem overwhelming especially when you have whole local economies structured around private prisons that are very motivated around the current system and even want to expand it. It was just a very eye-opening book when you start to put everything together.