Brown University professor, economist, and author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, Glenn C. Loury, presents an argument to reevaluate the true reasons behind the epidemic of mass incarceration in the Boston Review Book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values. In addition, scholars Pamela S. Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loic Wacquant, contribute to Loury’s examination of the impact of mass incarceration in the United States. Loury emphasizes the racial inequalities within society, society’s perceptions of race and crime, as well as, race and welfare. Karlan analyzes the role of voter disenfranchisement within black communities and felon disenfranchisement. Wacquant illuminates the vast affect of society’s views of blackness and the effects
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Society’s construction of racial makeup of convicts lies in the aftermath of the illegalization of slavery to the civil rights movement. Deeply ingrained in society is the reckoning of ethno-racial control. To emphasize, “The class gradient of racialized imprisonment was obtained by targeting one particular place: the remnants of the black ghettos.” (Wacquant 62) Wacquant further addresses the synchronizing race as the Black Belt of America, “In the Fordist Age combined four elements—stigma, constraint, spatial confinement, and institutional encasement—to permit the economic exploitation and social ostracization of a population deemed congenitally inferior.” (Wacquant 63) Wacquant firmly initiates the social construction of African-Americans in American society. Wacquant reveres that the elements of oppressing African-American citizens and the root of it being from the dictation of the past, which had previously socially constructed the perceptions of blackness and produced the outcome of ethno-racial control regarding African-American …show more content…
Shelby addresses the importance of penal reform and its relationship to the incarceration of African-Americans. For this reason, “Because of the stigma attached to blackness, the social consequences of this interaction are often contributed solely to individuals values and character. Yet, individuals are forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to have a broader array of good opportunities.” (Shelby 79) Shelby states that the African-American’s socially constructed attachment to blackness and their likeliness of disadvantages of environment and opportunities for success are very much apart of the problem. The constant racial oppression of African-Americans left generations with seemingly insufficient chances of progression in a society that keeps oppressing them. In order to stray away from oppression in the African-American communities, society and political engagement is needed to step up and mend the oppression that they have
Society’s construction of racial makeup of convicts lies in the aftermath of the illegalization of slavery to the civil rights movement. Deeply ingrained in society is the reckoning of ethno-racial control. To emphasize, “The class gradient of racialized imprisonment was obtained by targeting one particular place: the remnants of the black ghettos.” (Wacquant 62) Wacquant further addresses the synchronizing race as the Black Belt of America, “In the Fordist Age combined four elements—stigma, constraint, spatial confinement, and institutional encasement—to permit the economic exploitation and social ostracization of a population deemed congenitally inferior.” (Wacquant 63) Wacquant firmly initiates the social construction of African-Americans in American society. Wacquant reveres that the elements of oppressing African-American citizens and the root of it being from the dictation of the past, which had previously socially constructed the perceptions of blackness and produced the outcome of ethno-racial control regarding African-American …show more content…
Shelby addresses the importance of penal reform and its relationship to the incarceration of African-Americans. For this reason, “Because of the stigma attached to blackness, the social consequences of this interaction are often contributed solely to individuals values and character. Yet, individuals are forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to have a broader array of good opportunities.” (Shelby 79) Shelby states that the African-American’s socially constructed attachment to blackness and their likeliness of disadvantages of environment and opportunities for success are very much apart of the problem. The constant racial oppression of African-Americans left generations with seemingly insufficient chances of progression in a society that keeps oppressing them. In order to stray away from oppression in the African-American communities, society and political engagement is needed to step up and mend the oppression that they have