Stride: Discourse and Race in Baltimore
A Baltimore Program called Stride, nestled within the Center for Urban Families, seeks to support urban communities around employment and parenthood, predominantly fathers and ex-prisoners. I’ll be using Foucault and Racial Formation Theory as a lens to determine how power is at work within this program and at large, as well as their boundaries these theories may have. Understanding Programs like Stride and their effects on communities of color, primarily communities who are targeted and subject to the carceral state, is significant in determining how power works through them as well as to what extent these effects can affect communities- be it positively or negatively. The Stride program thus, through …show more content…
Omi and Winant place their Theorization of Racial Formation as a categorical factor that is not only unstable but also an ongoing political project. For them a ‘war of position’ then is how the unfolding race relations today implicitly affect power as it is hidden in a supposedly ‘post-racial’ or ‘colorblind’ society. They note that there are often inconsistencies and contradictions in how, when, and where racial categorization is …show more content…
Both Foucault and Racial Formation seek to reveal the ways that the changing and unnoticed narratives and factors leave room for a larger reproduction of current society, therefore not supporting these men in larger ways. I’m wondering what other information might be needed to get a clearer scope of their daily practices in the Stride program and how it might validate these men and their agency in some ways. However with my current knowledge, it was not apparent that the program truly supported any agency and collective capacities to build power and create change- beyond the scope of these programs, and perhaps these organizations aren’t allowed to engage politically as some non-governmental organizations are mandated so. Perhaps, organizations like this truly only seek to empower and reproduce people according to their current social stratifications, all though this seems unlikely explicitly, it seems to be occurring
A Baltimore Program called Stride, nestled within the Center for Urban Families, seeks to support urban communities around employment and parenthood, predominantly fathers and ex-prisoners. I’ll be using Foucault and Racial Formation Theory as a lens to determine how power is at work within this program and at large, as well as their boundaries these theories may have. Understanding Programs like Stride and their effects on communities of color, primarily communities who are targeted and subject to the carceral state, is significant in determining how power works through them as well as to what extent these effects can affect communities- be it positively or negatively. The Stride program thus, through …show more content…
Omi and Winant place their Theorization of Racial Formation as a categorical factor that is not only unstable but also an ongoing political project. For them a ‘war of position’ then is how the unfolding race relations today implicitly affect power as it is hidden in a supposedly ‘post-racial’ or ‘colorblind’ society. They note that there are often inconsistencies and contradictions in how, when, and where racial categorization is …show more content…
Both Foucault and Racial Formation seek to reveal the ways that the changing and unnoticed narratives and factors leave room for a larger reproduction of current society, therefore not supporting these men in larger ways. I’m wondering what other information might be needed to get a clearer scope of their daily practices in the Stride program and how it might validate these men and their agency in some ways. However with my current knowledge, it was not apparent that the program truly supported any agency and collective capacities to build power and create change- beyond the scope of these programs, and perhaps these organizations aren’t allowed to engage politically as some non-governmental organizations are mandated so. Perhaps, organizations like this truly only seek to empower and reproduce people according to their current social stratifications, all though this seems unlikely explicitly, it seems to be occurring