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11. U.S. Prison Labor and the Legacy of American Slavery

Author:
Fawn Bolak
Publication Date:
02-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Human Rights Education, University of Denver
Abstract:
Last September, thousands of incarcerated individuals in the United States launched an organized protest on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising, in an effort to protest racial discrimination, excessive force, and demand an end to the current state of legalized slavery within the U.S. prison system. Across the nation, prisoners in state and federal correctional facilities are exploited for their labor in industries related to agriculture, clothing production, machinery, and technology. While prison officials who strike up deals with large corporations like AT&T and Walmart share in the profits of cheap production, the incarcerated laborers themselves make mere cents per hour for full time work. Additionally, those locked up in federal institutions, who are physically capable of full time work, are mandated to do so as prescribed by Title 29 of the Crime Control Act of 1990. Over 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States, making the U.S. the #1 jailer in the world, surpassing Cuba, Russia, and China. Moreover, inmates in the U.S. are disproportionately people of color. According data from the Sentencing Project, black men are incarcerated at a rate 5.1 times the rate of white men, and in 12 states, predominately in the south and east coast, more than 50% of the total state prison population is black. There is a prevailing conservative narrative that asserts that the disproportionate incarceration of black individuals in our criminal justice system is a product of a “culture of violence” centered in “inner cities” and predominately black neighborhoods, rather than a product systemic institutional racism. However, a quick glance at U.S. history indicates that the mass incarceration of black men, current use of exploitative prison labor, and our past economic system built on slavery, is not a mere coincidence.
Topic:
Human Rights, Race, Labor Issues, Prisons/Penal Systems, and Slavery
Political Geography:
United States and North America

12. The Ferguson Conjuncture: Why the Humanities Matter Now

Author:
George Lipsitz
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
The killing of Michael Brown and the callous and cruel responses to it by legally constituted authorities have rightly been perceived as evidence of failures of the criminal justice system and the political system. In addition, the events, actions and ideas emerging from the crucible of conflict in Ferguson also reveal a betrayal of the promise of the humanities to teach discernment, judgment and empathy as tools for envisioning a common and creative human existence.
Topic:
Human Rights, Race, Law Enforcement, Inequality, State Violence, and Protests
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

13. Cross-National Responses to Discrimination: A Q&A with Michèle Lamont

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Racism and discrimination are daily realities for members of marginalized groups. But what does it look like at the ground level, and how do individuals from various groups and countries respond to such experiences? Drawing on more than 400 in-depth interviews with middle class and working class men and women residing in the multi-ethnic suburbs of New York, Rio, and Tel Aviv, and representing five different racial “groups,” a team of sociologists examine how people deal with and make sense of the various forms of exclusion that are ever present in their lives.
Topic:
Race, Women, Discrimination, and Marginalization
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Brazil, South America, and North America

14. Calypso's Cosmopolitan Strategy: Race, Nation, and Global Culture in Postwar Canada

Author:
Michael Eldridge
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
What I mean to do in this essay, then, is trace calypso’s trajectory across the historically porous U.S-Canada border, in order to take fuller measure of its international ambitions in the mid- twentieth century. In the process, I hope to shine a light on West Indian influence over the layout of the Canadian mosaic and the logic of Canadian multiculturalism, well before that word became a catchphrase of government policy and part of the mythology of Canadian identity. But I also want to puzzle out what Canadians’ embrace of calypso during this same period signified. That, more than anything, will help us understand what sort of symbolic work calypso was doing in the True North. Canadians, of course, are famously, chronically anxious to distinguish themselves from Americans, and so I’ll concede from the start that calypso per se may have played a less direct role in calming nerves about race and national identity north of Niagara than it did in the U.S. I want to argue nevertheless that the full story of calypso in Canada still involves considerable tension over those fraught topics. And so the more significant distinction to draw, I think, is that the Canadian jitters sprang from a very different set of demographics, as well as from a rather different relationship to the history of British Empire and Commonwealth, than their American counterparts. Before we evaluate Caresser’s job performance as Canada’s hired projectionist, then, we would do well to review some of the salient facts.
Topic:
Nationalism, Race, Culture, and Multiculturalism
Political Geography:
Canada and North America