Content area
Full Text
Abstract: This paper examines how the United States became the land of the imprisoned, incarcerating more people per capita than any other country. The paper will also scrutinize how the school to prison pipeline is complicit with mass incarceration of minorities. Imprisoning exorbitant amounts of human capital means imprisoning whole communities-particularly communities of color. Implications of this study aspire to inform best teaching practices for curriculum development and classroom management.
Keywords: African American males; mass incarceration; racism; injustice
African American men are being incarcerated at a much higher rate compared to other races and ethnicities. The societal ills that African American men have to endure while growing up, pitted against a backdrop of community hopelessness, educational hardship, emotional upheavals, and mental pain are more than the average child in the United States should have to endure (The Sentencing Project, 2010). How to overcome the dire expected outcome that looms so large over this vulnerable population of people proves fascinating to researchers. Scholarly articles describing the phenomenon of growing up black has been the topic of several peer reviewed articles and books (Kozol, 1991; Du Bois, 1903; Fanon, 1963).
In his 1999 ethnographic depiction of black family life, The Code of the Street, Elijah Anderson described in intimate details the inner workings of the lives of young black men and women who are simply trying to survive life. The people described in his book have had so many setbacks, so many disappointments, so many let downs, and so many community problems which bring home the fact that poverty, rampant unemployment, sub-standard education, inadequate housing, incarceration and myriad other societal ills effects not only the community members but also all of humanity. The prospect of going to jail or prison is as ingrained in the lives of young black men as is the prospect of going on vacation for young wealthy whites.
The educational achievement gap is like quicksand and whole communities are sinking because of the inequities in funding and the threats of legislative educational reductions. Imagine every day and every night, when the news is reported, one sees people one knows from the same ethnic group in adversarial positions with law enforcement and with the justice system. Contrary to that, other images one sees...