Professor Holder
December 6, 2016
African Studies
Mass Incarceration Many believe that slavery didn’t end in 1865, rather it was reformed. We can look at slavery and how African labor was exploited and the harsh conditions they were under to perform this labor for the white men. After the exploitation of Africans in Slavery there was Segregation, which existed solely to separate races due to nothing more than the color of your skin. Race something that is social constructed and has nothing to back it up, but society has instilled this thought as one being superior due to skin color. After 89 years of segregation we now face the issue of Mass incarceration. The historical aspect of race and the bias views that were instilled in …show more content…
It is just a form of racial profiling because over half the percent of people they stop are African Americans. We are suspected to have some form of a weapon on contraband, or us and if it just happened that someone they stopped and frisked did they would get charged. In these cases whites never seem to cause suspicious among cops. It is easier for police to just be able to go into urban areas and criminalize the people there because it is cheaper for their police force than to go into suburban areas where there can be drugs or contraband inside of there houses and having to look into many of the crimes police would need a search warrant because the crimes in these areas are typically done behind closed doors. Because we look suspicious to a specific police officer they take this as an advantage and use this as a style of policing it gives them to right to just stop and search me as If I was a criminal. We are set up like targets and they are just waiting to get us. With a mass majority of the crimes that people are convicted for are drug related crimes and not violent …show more content…
Though in some places the prisoners are paid for the work they do in prison but in a very low income, in some institutions like Texas they are forced to work if they are able bodies without pay. I relate this to slave ways because the majority of the people in prisons are African Americans and in theses specific prisons like in Texas they are being forced to work and seek no benefit from the work and labor they are doing. Even the workers that are paid are paid in very low wages but they will do this work to generate some sort of income. Many of the companies we use day to day use this prison labor because it is a cheap way at mass production and will end up benefitting their companies economically. Some of the companies that use this type of labor for the production of their products are Wal-Mart, Victoria Secret, Whole Foods and BP. With business benefitting from this labor I don’t think their will be a decrease or reform anytime soon because many of the big companies use this labor and without it there companies wouldn’t be the same especially since were big on