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A review by xosmartwomen
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah Pager
5.0
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration can likely be summed up in one sentence in the conclusory chapter.
For blacks, everyday life achievements take longer, require more effort, and impose greater financial and psychic costs.
What makes this book work is that the author, a white woman teaching at Princeton, gets it. I wish it were the same for many others of my generation. I was in a hotel in San Francisco during February. I was thrilled with the wal to wall coverage on African Americans, until DH pointed out that it was Black History Month. My dreams of having cable that addressed real issues, dried up on the vine. But one positive is viewing an interview segment with Pager, a woman who gets 'it.'
The only other author who appears to understand the true cost of race is Thomas Shapiro. In Pagers book, she discusses a study of the effect of incarceration on entry level employment, using four testers, white men with and without criminal records and black men with an without criminal records. Not surprisingly, the black men without felony drug convictions have a lower callback rate than white men with such convictions. The other, far more startling revelation in this book, and one that has make me reconsider the rise of the black middle class started with this quote:
While the free-market capitalism of America is often touted as the source of its low unemployment rates compared to those of Western Europe, this research suggests that the differential is largely a function of penal intervention.
It was a moment where I really had to sit back and think about the 'statistics' touted by our media and government. I'd already expressed skepticism because our DOL unemployment statistics don't include those who've dropped out of the job market, or are underemployed. But this emphasizes, for me, the vast unemployment in this country. All that to say, this is a book one should read to add the effect of our country's 'war on crime,' to our issues, especially those concerning race, before performing any baseline sociological analysis.
For blacks, everyday life achievements take longer, require more effort, and impose greater financial and psychic costs.
What makes this book work is that the author, a white woman teaching at Princeton, gets it. I wish it were the same for many others of my generation. I was in a hotel in San Francisco during February. I was thrilled with the wal to wall coverage on African Americans, until DH pointed out that it was Black History Month. My dreams of having cable that addressed real issues, dried up on the vine. But one positive is viewing an interview segment with Pager, a woman who gets 'it.'
The only other author who appears to understand the true cost of race is Thomas Shapiro. In Pagers book, she discusses a study of the effect of incarceration on entry level employment, using four testers, white men with and without criminal records and black men with an without criminal records. Not surprisingly, the black men without felony drug convictions have a lower callback rate than white men with such convictions. The other, far more startling revelation in this book, and one that has make me reconsider the rise of the black middle class started with this quote:
While the free-market capitalism of America is often touted as the source of its low unemployment rates compared to those of Western Europe, this research suggests that the differential is largely a function of penal intervention.
It was a moment where I really had to sit back and think about the 'statistics' touted by our media and government. I'd already expressed skepticism because our DOL unemployment statistics don't include those who've dropped out of the job market, or are underemployed. But this emphasizes, for me, the vast unemployment in this country. All that to say, this is a book one should read to add the effect of our country's 'war on crime,' to our issues, especially those concerning race, before performing any baseline sociological analysis.