The idea of threatening mothers — and in most cases, because of how the families were set up, it was gonna be mothers, minority black and brown mothers — with jail, under the notion that you ultimately want to help them? I find that chilling. That’s really really chilling. I think it sits in a line with … There’s a whole kind of liberal thinking that tries to use the state, and particularly the punitive aspects of the state, under the notion that it’s actually going to help black people. Whenever people start talking about that, I get worried. I get really, really worried. I think there are profound implications to somebody that would say something like that; that there’s profound implications for laughing about the prospect of threatening people with the police.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates Is an Optimist Now
