Topics in African-American Studies (380-0-20)

Topic

Race, Crime, and Punishment: Prisons, the US-Mexic

Instructors

Nitasha Sharma
847/467-6589
Crowe Hall 1-127

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 3-410: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Is American Justice (color)blind? This interdisciplinary upper-division course examines
the histories, institutions, and policies that shape broad scale systems of racialization,
incarceration, and citizenship. Drawing from legal studies, first-person narratives,
theories of race and other approaches, this class analyzes the ideas and practices that
shape the relationships between individuals, groups, and systems of power. How do
we understand different groups' experiences with crime and punishment? How does
race, citizenship status, and religion affect these relations? We analyze how people
negotiate institutions like the prison and the US-Mexico border, and the relationships
between individual choice and broader structures. By understanding the ways that
three particular groups—African Americans, Mexicans, and Middle Easterners—are
differentially racialized and criminalized, we will address the concept of "blind justice."
Focusing on the institutions or systems of prisons, policing, and detention centers (and
a smaller focus on criminal and immigration law), we see how various "races" actually
share overlapping and linked experiences with surveillance and disciplinary action by
state and non-state forces.

How have certain racial groups been linked with race-specific crimes? How are
particular bodies—not just actions—deemed a crime or "illegal"? What work do these
linkages do, and are they rooted in reality and/or ideology?

Learning Objectives

1) creation of "the illegal": the criminalization of Mexicans and Central Americans
and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border;
2) creation of "the criminal": the historic criminalization of Black people in the US,
from enslavement to Jim Crow to the rise of mass incarceration;
3) creation of "the terrorist": the criminalization and "disappearing" of Arab,
Middle Eastern, and "Muslim looking people" in post-9/11 America.
We will also examine the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II and how
this was informed by how the US contended with Native Americans; the way that
certain ideas of illegality and criminality can be transferred from racial group to racial
group; the impact of theories, personal narratives, and histories upon our
understanding of these processes; and concepts about power and knowledge.

Class Materials (Required)

There will be a course reader

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: PRE-REG: Reserved for Black Studies majors & minors.