Darnell Epps (Cornell Prison Education Program participant and brother of JIE Scholar Darryl Robertson) writes on how lawmakers need to re-industrialize large cities as a response to the loss of race-conscious college admissions for Slate.

I have spent the past six years as a student on two Ivy League campuses, enjoying the serene background of Cornell’s Arts Quad and, nowadays, the Hogwarts-like architecture of Yale Law School. But before that, I served 17 years inside a maximum security prison in upstate New York, where my peers cared little about the prestigious clerkships and white-shoe jobs that occupy the minds of my current classmates. Like me, so many in that institution had been raised in New York City public housing, and fondly recalled those hot summers where “quarter waters” and free lunch programs helped stave off hunger. We reminisced about “skelly,” a favorite Mayor Koch–era pastime, and those citywide “summer youth jobs” that provided money for back-to-school clothes—money we often burned through quickly, as we all seemed to share a taste for Jordans and Marciano GUESS jeans. Poor and brown in a country wealthy and white, we relied on style and fashion to proclaim our dignity…

Read the rest of the article here.