"Convict Race": Racialization in the Era of Hyperincarceration

Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imprisoned intellectuals have compelled large activist-scholar audiences, the ones who are not radicalized by their prison experiences are just as important to understand. This essay explores racial identif...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Seigel, Micol (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2012
In: Social justice
Year: 2012, Volume: 39, Issue: 4, Pages: 31-51
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Keywords:
African American prisoners
Anti-racism
Imprisonment
Prisons
Prisons & race relations
Psychology
Racialization
Solidarity
Description
Summary:Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imprisoned intellectuals have compelled large activist-scholar audiences, the ones who are not radicalized by their prison experiences are just as important to understand. This essay explores racial identification among people incarcerated at a medium-security facility in Indiana where the author teaches, noting both reactionary anti-racialism and expressions of commonality with African American history and struggle. The author brings together Foucault, Gramsci, Stuart Hall, theorists of anti-blackness, and abolitionist scholar-activists to analyze this complex white supremacist anti-racialism.