{"id":27652,"date":"2010-10-04T10:06:19","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T15:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=27652"},"modified":"2013-12-02T23:48:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T04:48:22","slug":"the-racialization-of-the-incarceration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/10\/04\/the-racialization-of-the-incarceration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Racialization of Incarceration"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know that U.S. stereotypes associate black people, especially black men, with criminality (for examples, see our posts on who looks suspicious<\/a>, racial profiling<\/a>, and race-sensitive trigger fingers<\/a>).\u00a0 But a new study<\/a> by sociologists Aliya Saperstein and Andrew Penner shows that being convicted of a crime sometimes shifts people’s racial self-perceptions in related directions.\u00a0 Saperstein and Penner compared the self-identification of people in 1979 and 2002.\u00a0 Reflecting the social construction of race, it is typical for there to be some mis-matches between people’s reported race at different times; but the researchers discovered that the experience of being incarcerated shaped if and how one’s racial identification changed.<\/p>\n

The Table below compares the self-reported race in 1979 (far left column) with the self reported race in 2002 (next left column).\u00a0 The third and fourth columns show the reported race of people in 2002 who were not incarcerated and incarcerated, respectively.\u00a0 We see that, among people who were not incarcerated, 5% of the people who identified as “European” in 1979 identified as “Black” or some other race in 2002.\u00a0 Among people who were incarcerated, however, we see a much greater defection from whiteness; only 81% of those who identified as white in 1979 still did so in 2002.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Saperstein and Penner argue that this shows that “…penal institutions play an important role in racializing Americans…”\u00a0 The experience of being incarcerated somehow makes people, even people who feel white, feel somehow less white.<\/p>\n

Via Contexts Discoveries<\/a>. \u00a0For great examples of the social construction of race, start with this simple lesson<\/a>, then see these great posts: black and white twins! wha\u2019!?<\/a>, Obama looks just like<\/em> his white grandfather<\/a>, history and race in the U.S. census<\/a>, claiming whiteness in court<\/a>, judging racial phenotypes in China<\/a>, and figuring out \u201cCreole\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know that U.S. stereotypes associate black people, especially black men, with criminality (for examples, see our posts on who looks suspicious, racial profiling, and race-sensitive trigger fingers).\u00a0 But a new study by sociologists Aliya Saperstein and Andrew Penner shows that being convicted of a crime sometimes shifts people’s racial self-perceptions in related directions.\u00a0 Saperstein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,285,1760,1757,293,37],"class_list":["post-27652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-social-construction","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27652"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59667,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652\/revisions\/59667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}