Wacquant - From Slavery to Mass Incarceration - Critique and Reflection
From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Necessary Extremes
Of the supplementary readings provided, I found “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” by Loïc Wacquant the most intriguing. This particular article is based on “rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US” and the disproportionate institutions set apart for African Americans in the United States. The volatile beginnings of African Americans presented obvious hardships for future advancement, but Wacquant argues that they still suffer from a form of modern slavery. Wacquant introduces four “peculiar institutions” that are responsible for the “control” of African Americans throughout United States history: chattel slavery, the Jim Crow system, the ghetto, and arguably the dark ghetto and the carceral apparatus. Chattel slavery was the origin of African American existence and the ultimate foundation of racial division. Jim Crow legislation provided “legally enforced discrimination” after the abolition of slavery. The ghetto is the concept of the urbanization of African Americans in Northern industrial areas, creating racially divided metropolitan areas. The final institution, the dark ghetto and carceral apparatus, refers to the “caste” of urban blacks and their mass incarceration epidemic. Chattel slavery in the United States took place from 1619 to 1865. Immediately upon arriving in America, Africans were placed in a lower and inhuman caste in society. As Wacquant states, “[a]n unforeseen by-product of the systematic enslavement and dehumanization of Africans and their descendants on North American soil was the creation of a racial cast line separating what would later become labeled ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’” (2002:45). Also, the concept of “race” was planted in Americans’ heads. The biblical theory that Africans were inferior and worth less than whites – three-fifths of a man, to be precise (Wacquant 45) – provided plantation owners with a source of free, dehumanized laborers. The truth in these statements
Of the supplementary readings provided, I found “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” by Loïc Wacquant the most intriguing. This particular article is based on “rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US” and the disproportionate institutions set apart for African Americans in the United States. The volatile beginnings of African Americans presented obvious hardships for future advancement, but Wacquant argues that they still suffer from a form of modern slavery. Wacquant introduces four “peculiar institutions” that are responsible for the “control” of African Americans throughout United States history: chattel slavery, the Jim Crow system, the ghetto, and arguably the dark ghetto and the carceral apparatus. Chattel slavery was the origin of African American existence and the ultimate foundation of racial division. Jim Crow legislation provided “legally enforced discrimination” after the abolition of slavery. The ghetto is the concept of the urbanization of African Americans in Northern industrial areas, creating racially divided metropolitan areas. The final institution, the dark ghetto and carceral apparatus, refers to the “caste” of urban blacks and their mass incarceration epidemic. Chattel slavery in the United States took place from 1619 to 1865. Immediately upon arriving in America, Africans were placed in a lower and inhuman caste in society. As Wacquant states, “[a]n unforeseen by-product of the systematic enslavement and dehumanization of Africans and their descendants on North American soil was the creation of a racial cast line separating what would later become labeled ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’” (2002:45). Also, the concept of “race” was planted in Americans’ heads. The biblical theory that Africans were inferior and worth less than whites – three-fifths of a man, to be precise (Wacquant 45) – provided plantation owners with a source of free, dehumanized laborers. The truth in these statements