Contesting the Carceral State from the Bottom Up

• In Event: Black Lives, Black Deaths, and Black Protest: Political Scientists Respond (Anew) to a Persistent Challenge: Young Adults Respond: Prison, Policing, and Political Activism

Abstract

Many refer to the prison boom, or racialized mass incarceration, as a war on Black people and Black communities. Yet for all of the political, legal, and social discourse and research on the subject, little work has been done by political scientists to understand the carceral state as a site of political struggle and political socialization among young Black people who come of age inside that system. This paper takes important steps to examine the carceral state not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, as a context of political awakening and political life for millions in the Black community. Specifically, I ask: In the era of mass imprisonment, what role does the carceral continuum play as a context for political socialization among Black youth? How does it shape these young people’s perceptions of themselves as citizens and agents in American society? To answer these questions, I draw on long-term ethnography and sociohistorical evidence. The findings from this ethnographic and sociohistorical research connect the present political and racial dynamics inside America’s punishment system to past historical periods, while putting into sharper focus important continuities of political struggle, political learning, and Black politics that take shape in the deep end of that system.

Author

• David Jonathan Knight, University of Chicago