Michelle Alexander is an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University. Previously, she was a member of the faculty of Stanford Law School, and director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU of Northern California. Her first book is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Before speaking at Zócalo at the Hammer, she told us a bit more about herself.
Q. What is the best gift you have ever received?
A. My engagement ring.
Q. What was the last thing that inspired you?
A. I saw a short interview with Susan Burton, who founded an organization here in Los Angeles called A New Way of Life. She is a former drug addict who has been in prison multiple times due to her drug addiction. After her recovery she decided she wanted to dedicate her life helping other women, so that they wouldn’t have to go through the struggle she went through, particularly the struggle to stay out of prison once you’ve been branded a felon.
Q. What comforts you?
A. Snuggling up with my three kids and reading to them at night.
Q. What is the greatest advice you have ever received?
A. A good friend of mine, Van Jones, recently told me that when my book is released, I’ll receive some praise and some criticism, and there will be many people who don’t like the message. He said to make sure to allow the pain of criticism to burn away everything that’s not about serving the people.
Q. How did you get into trouble as a child?
A. I got into a fair amount of trouble as a child. I experimented with drugs, alcohol, skipped class and was generally wayward for a while. I’m very thankful that I never ran into trouble with the criminal justice system and got branded a felon.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. We have three young children, ages three, five, and seven, so our greatest extravagance is date night.
Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning?
A. Cooking pancakes.
Q. What do you wish you had the nerve to do?
A. Devote myself fully to a writing career.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?
A. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was a while there, particularly when I was in college, that I resisted him and his message, viewing him as too soft. But now that I’ve had the opportunity to read his speeches and not just listen to the soundbites that get recycled, I find him to be the most provocative, radical, deeply spiritual thinker of modern times.
To read about Alexander’s talk, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.