U.S. "Democratic" Dispossession: The Disposability of Youth

• In Event: 65.080 - Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: 65.080-7 - Curriculum Standardization, Inequality, and Emerging Currents

Abstract

U.S. society legitimizes an ideology of disposability (Giroux, 2009) of “minority” youth, which uses hidden curriculum to criminalize them through symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1991). Public discourse reflects this accepted culture of violence through a neoliberal narrative, reproducing the disposability of youth. Consequently, a system of legitimated violence for capital production fuels Zero Tolerance policies and the prison-industrial complex. In connection to regime of power and truth (Foucault, 1981), this study compared the cases of Trayvon Martin and Kemar Roselus. Through critical discourse and image analysis, we examined the connection between Trayvon and Kemar’s case, by analyzing the network of public and media responses to these two events that reflects the hegemony of legitimated violence pushed by the neoliberal momentum.

Authors

• Dominique A. Branco, New Bedford Public Schools

• Elizabeth Janson, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth