Institutional Inequality: The Connection Between Stigma, Racial Identity, and the Socially
The notion of stigma has significantly influenced the social construction of racial identity that emanates from a racial hierarchy that promotes disparity within institutions such as public health and mass incarceration. In Stigma: Note on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), sociologist Erving Goffman defines stigma and explains how stigmatization leads to the fear of being discredited. Natalia Molina, author of Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879 – 1939, describes how the public health system in Los Angeles was a key site of racialization for the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants which lead to laws that sought …show more content…
Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879 – 1939 (2006), Molina goes beyond the black and white dichotomy to assess the process by which the public health system in Los Angeles developed into a site of racialization for Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants. According to Molina, during Los Angeles’ formative period public health officials emphasized the need to improve sanitary conditions by eliminating “all forms of disease and any manner of disorder,” which were principally attributed to minority communities (p. 1). Public health officials quickly became the gate-keepers that used the pretense of enforcing health and hygiene norms to enforce their laws that in essence were standards for “Americanness” …show more content…
Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow (2010), states that mass incarceration in the U.S. “is a comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow” (p. 4). She declares that mass incarceration is a caste system that purports a racial caste (also known as hierarchy) in which “a stigmatized racial group is locked into an inferior position by law and custom” (p. 12). From a historical context, mass incarceration is a racial project that has evolved from slavery and Jim Crow laws maintaining its vitality by associating the “criminal” label with a colored face, primarily pertaining to African Americans. Although at face value the 13th Amendment was considered a legal triumph because it abolished slavery, it allowed slavery as a form of punishment for a crime; therefore, it was the precursor to mass incarceration (pg. 31). While slavery and Jim Crow laws were inherently illegal, in order to maintain the status quo of white dominance, whites capitalized on this loophole under the rhetoric of “law and order.” Such a rhetoric was utilized by politicians such as Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy to appeal southern working class whites with racial fears (p. 44). Presidential administrations that followed Nixon’s further contributed to higher rates of incarceration for African Americans with policies such as Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive and Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill (p. 77).
The notion of stigma has significantly influenced the social construction of racial identity that emanates from a racial hierarchy that promotes disparity within institutions such as public health and mass incarceration. In Stigma: Note on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), sociologist Erving Goffman defines stigma and explains how stigmatization leads to the fear of being discredited. Natalia Molina, author of Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879 – 1939, describes how the public health system in Los Angeles was a key site of racialization for the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants which lead to laws that sought …show more content…
Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879 – 1939 (2006), Molina goes beyond the black and white dichotomy to assess the process by which the public health system in Los Angeles developed into a site of racialization for Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants. According to Molina, during Los Angeles’ formative period public health officials emphasized the need to improve sanitary conditions by eliminating “all forms of disease and any manner of disorder,” which were principally attributed to minority communities (p. 1). Public health officials quickly became the gate-keepers that used the pretense of enforcing health and hygiene norms to enforce their laws that in essence were standards for “Americanness” …show more content…
Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow (2010), states that mass incarceration in the U.S. “is a comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow” (p. 4). She declares that mass incarceration is a caste system that purports a racial caste (also known as hierarchy) in which “a stigmatized racial group is locked into an inferior position by law and custom” (p. 12). From a historical context, mass incarceration is a racial project that has evolved from slavery and Jim Crow laws maintaining its vitality by associating the “criminal” label with a colored face, primarily pertaining to African Americans. Although at face value the 13th Amendment was considered a legal triumph because it abolished slavery, it allowed slavery as a form of punishment for a crime; therefore, it was the precursor to mass incarceration (pg. 31). While slavery and Jim Crow laws were inherently illegal, in order to maintain the status quo of white dominance, whites capitalized on this loophole under the rhetoric of “law and order.” Such a rhetoric was utilized by politicians such as Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy to appeal southern working class whites with racial fears (p. 44). Presidential administrations that followed Nixon’s further contributed to higher rates of incarceration for African Americans with policies such as Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive and Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill (p. 77).