Black Incarcerated Males
For the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing a tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and that one out of every four black males will go on prison in there lifetime. Knowing these statistics it put a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family home, the unemployment rate for black male go up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to.
Black men in Jail are having drastic effects upon the black community. The first and arguably most important effect is that it intensifies the problem of single parent households within the black community. When these men are sentenced to prison, they, many times, leave behind a wife/girlfriend and/or children. If they have already have had children, that child must spend multiple years of his/her early life without a primary father figure. In addition, that male's absence is even more prominently felt when the woman has to handle all of the financial responsibilities on her own. This poses even more problems since women are underpaid relative to men in the workforce, childcare costs must be considered, and many of these women do not have the necessary skills to obtain a job, which would pay a living wage, which could support her and the children. Black male incarceration has done much to ensure that black female-headed households are now equal with poverty.
Black male imprisonment also has much to do with rising black male unemployment rates.
As these men re-enter the workforce they now likely have less skills than when they first entered prison. There are few, if any, programs, which train these men to effectively re-enter society. As jobs continue to move out further and further into the suburbs, these males, who are from the inner city, are left with few living wage employment options. The rates that convicts go back to jail are so high not because these men want to return to a life of crime but since few employment options are available, they tend to utilize their limited skills to get the money they need to survive. If more efforts do not make additional training available to these males that are realistically designed to help them obtain a living wage job, the rates that convicts go back to jail and black male unemployment will continue to increase.
To reach maturity it requires loss of innocence. It’s a coming of age experience that changes the outlook on life forever. For example, when Antonio saw Lupito’s death scene he couldn’t believe what had happened, he said “I had started praying to myself from the moment I heard the first shot, and I never stopped praying until I reached home.”(Anaya 23), he was terrified of what he had seen and didn’t know
In the Western world, Butterfly represents a stereotype of the Oriental woman. The stereotype of an obedient, submissive, and domestic Asian woman appeals to Westerners through other media beside the opera; for example, the “mail-order bride trade” catalogues and TV spots. The story of the white devil Pinkerton and a sub-missive Asian girl Cio-Cio-San has become a cultural myth in Western world. In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang parodies and deconstructs this myth. In his play, a French diplomat Rene Gallimard fantasizes that he is Pinkerton and his Chinese lover Song is his Butterfly. However, as Hwang says in the “Afterword” of the play, Gallimard “realizes that it is he who has been But...
When trying to find themselves in society, jobs may be hard to come by. When prisoners find a jobs, they are usually work in jobs that one doesn’t not have to have a high-skill set, such as food service, wholesale, and maintenance and repair. The number one reason why prisoners end up back in jail is not the lack of job opportunities but perceiving that job when returning home. “Service providers and community leaders consider employment to be the primary factor in a successful reentry” (Casey 2). When the lack of job opportunities come prisoners may feel the need to break the law and return to life of crime because they cannot support themselves, so they may turn to selling drugs to make a quick buck. Selling drugs is not an alternative for not being able to find a job, especially when one has just got out of prison because if they get caught they will find themselves back in jail. Recidivism is a topic that I do not believe anyone could solve, it is hard to comprehend why people look back to crime again and again after they get caught the first time. In the article Parole and Prison Reentry in the United States author talks about how when prisoners or released they usually end up failing to finish their release sentence and out of the parolees how many return back to prison when she states, “About half of parolees fail to complete parole successfully and their returns to prison represent about a third of
In the wake of President Obama’s election, the United States seems to be progressing towards a post-racial society. However, the rates of mass incarceration of black males in America deem this to be otherwise. Understanding mass incarceration as a modern racial caste system will reveal the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy America. The history of social control in the United States dates back to the first racial caste systems: slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Although these caste systems were outlawed by the 13th amendment and Civil Rights Act respectively, they are given new life and tailored to the needs of the time.In other words, racial caste in America has not ended but has merely been redesigned in the shape of mass incarceration. Once again, the fact that more than half of the young black men in many large American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system show evidence of a new racial caste system at work. The structure of the criminal justice system brings a disproportionate number of young black males into prisons, relegating them to a permanent second-class status, and ensuring there chances of freedom are slim. Even when minorities are released from prisons, they are discriminated against and most usually end up back in prisons . The role of race in criminal justice system is set up to discriminate, arrest, and imprison a mass number of minority men. From stopping, searching, and arresting, to plea bargaining and sentencing it is apparent that in every phases of the criminal justice system race plays a huge factor. Race and structure of Criminal Justice System, also, inhibit the integration of ex offenders into society and instead of freedom, relea...
American history between 1865 and 1900 is characterized as the Gilded Age. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined this term; it means that this era, from the outside, appeared prosperous, but with a closer look, one could discover the corruption that lay beneath the thin layer of gold. This era was filled with urbanization, industrialization, and immigration; these three things gave the Gilded Age the appearance of being a prosperous time filled with progress. However, the American industrial worker, the bulwark of the age, did not prosper as much as one may have thought. American industrial workers faced extremely difficult lives, working very hard to receive little reward, and it did not take very long before they wanted reform. The industrial workers banded together, forming labor unions, in order to try to negotiate with their employers to have some of their demands met. Labor unions are generally thought of as having positive effects on workers, which certainly was true, but only to an extent. Labor unions also had some very negative effects on workers, specifically when their demands were not met, or when they were seen negatively by the government and the public. Immigration rates during the Gilded Age were extremely high, because the United States had great opportunities, especially in available jobs, which were greatly desirable to foreign people. Immigration generally had negative effects on American industrial workers. With large numbers of immigrants coming from foreign countries, there was a surplus of labor which caused unemployment and wages to remain low. Also, immigration had great effects on labor unions, generally negative as well, which would then in turn negatively affect the workers in that union. Last...
Todd Clear and Dina Rise state in their study that the high incarceration and return rates of specific communities negatively impact the community social network like worsening ties amidst neighbors, reducing income of families, and affecting family formation. Moreover, African- Americans are four times more likely than other Americans to live in poverty (DAvis 1) The Class of Poverty, states that” individuals in high poverty, highly black neighborhoods are the least likely to have access to food pantries, child care, transportation, job training, substance abuse treatment or other, similar social services.” This means that the majority of individuals effected by this are African Americans. People living in high poverty communities are offered less help than low poverty areas that are predominantly white, meaning that the intersection and combined oppression of being both a racial minority and of lower class, leads to a higher probability of falling victim to the industrial prison
When I was introduced to this dichotomy between the two sections, the readings for that week included Donziger’s “Women in the Criminal Justice System.” This article shed more light on why the women in the jail might be hostile toward my classmates by suggesting that a high portion of the women might be incarcerated because of non-violent offenses, and odds are that the majority of them are mothers who have been separated from their children. Donziger states that “78 percent of the women in prison have children”...
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
In the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
The number of convicted African American men far exceed the number of Caucasian men. The ones who are found to be innocent by the court are released without any job training or any idea on how to get back on their own two feet. Once released, they still have a felony on their records which make it nearly impossible to find a job. Moreover, if they have been in prison for a long period of time, they might not understand the little things that differ in everyday life so it could be harder to adjust. Because of this, they might purposely try to come back to prison just for the benefits. To avoid this, training programs need to be situated. The problem is, these programs cost an exorbitant amount of money which is why most of the people don’t get out of
Hwang effectively uses the opera Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini as a framework to mold the main character, Rene Gallimard. Gallimard longs to be like the hero in Madame Butterfly, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, who dominates and possesses a beautiful Asian woman. Within the drama Gallimard concedes that he is not very attractive and that he hasn't always been popular amongst the ladies. Gallimard states "We, who are not handsome, nor brave, nor powerful, yet somehow believe like Pinkerton, that we deserve a Butterfly"(747). Obviously Gallimard is not happy with himself or his life so he goes in search for his Butterfly or more importantly a new identity.
The challenges of children who grow up with parents whom were incarcerated at some point in their childhood can have a major effect on their life. The incarceration of parents can at times begin to affect the child even at birth. Now with prison nurseries the impregnated mother can keep her baby during her time in jail. With the loss of their parent the child can begin to develop behavioral problems with being obedient, temper tantrums, and the loss of simple social skills. Never learning to live in a society they are deprived of a normal social life. “The enormous increase incarceration led to a parallel, but far less documented, increase in the proportion of children who grew up with a parent incarcerated during their childhood” (Johnson 2007). This means the consequences of the children of the incarcerated parents receive no attention from the media, or academic research. The academic research done in this paper is to strengthen the research already worked by many other people. The impact of the parent’s incarceration on these children can at times be both positive and negative. The incarceration of a parent can be the upshot to the change of child’s everyday life, behavioral problems, and depriving them a normal social life.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
But when Song challenges Gallimard in the final scenes of the play, he is removed from their fantasy. Gallimard takes on the role as the submissive oriental woman, because he has become so invested in his fantasy that he is willing to die for it to continue. He explains “I once loved, and was loved, by the Perfect Woman” (Page 66). When Song begins dominating Gallimard he tries to convince her, “You have to do what I say! I’m conjuring you up in my mind!” (Page 58). But, their relationship was merely a fantasy, in which Gallimard was “a man who loved a woman created by a man” (Page 66). Song accurately describes the Western mindset as “Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes” (Page 62) and “The West thinks of itself as masculine- big guns, big industry, big money- so the East is feminine- weak, delicate, poor…” (Page 62). These stereotypes allow each character to attain a certain level of satisfaction. When Song provokes Gallimard into believing everything can continue, Song becomes upset and explains he will “never put on those robes again” (Page 67) and that he will be sorry. Gallimard’s response is indicative of his transformation into Butterfly. He expresses he is “Exactly sorry…as a Butterfly” (Page 67). He reveals he has searched for an alternative ending, but he has “looked in the wrong place” (Page 68). He has a vision of the Orient woman, slender, clothed in kimonos, and most importantly would “die for
The Gulf War Illness is a chronic symptomatic illness that was exposed to U.S. veterans that served in the Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 (Cook, Page 1). The Gulf War was a very short war that had only six weeks of air strike and four days of ground combat. Twenty years after the war, veterans have experienced a lot of health problems. Surprisingly, the GWI was not a result of gas that was released during combat. It came from exposure black smoke that was generated by six hundred oil well fires, chemical nerve agents, Pyridostigmine Bromide Pills and exploded SCUD missiles (Cook, Page 1). Researches have discovered that the GWI symptoms became worse when veterans wore pesticide-treated uniforms and used skin pesticides. Veterans often experienced chronic headaches, widespread pain, memory and concentration problems, persistent fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, skin abnormalities, and mood disturbances (Cook, Page 2). Studies showed that about one fourth of the seven hundred thousand veterans were affected b...