Black Family In The Age Of Mass Incarceration Analysis

The year is 1965, one year after the Civil Rights act of 1964. The African American civil rights movement is shaking the United States out of its white supremacist comatose that has strategically disregarded and oppressed the rights of an entire race for centuries. No matter your race, color, gender, religious views, or origin, minorities have been granted ‘equal rights’. But what are “equal rights”? Can rights ever be truly equal when one race has kept all others below them for hundreds, if not thousands of years? Why did this movement take place when it did? Why wasn’t it equal to begin with? There are countless questions pertaining to race and inequality, and more particularly, why the black power movement of the 1960s and 70s persists today

The problem is our political structure and the unequal distribution of resources, information, and punishment for crimes. The fact of the matter is that if a white man and a black man commit the exact same crime, it is almost guaranteed that the black man will serve more time in prison. In Coates’ article The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2015), he addresses Moynihan’s claim that “…most Negro youth are in danger of being caught up in the tangle of pathology that affects their world…”. He critiques Moynihan in saying that, despite revealing his subjective opinions about the causes of these “pathologies”, he does not give any concrete solutions. Similar to the modern, enterprising feminist, Sheryl Sandberg, whom declares that women need to strap on their boots and “Lean In “, in order to claim their place in society equal to men, Moynihan placed the responsibility to fix the structural problems of inequality on the victims of oppression rather than addressing the historical significance of the power struggles between the powerful and the

Often, this phrase is shouted from a white person who wants to feel special, too, without taking a second to step back and realize that they were once the only race that did matter, and their ancestors benefited from this, which has brought them up to the top of the anthropological food chain so to speak. They were born special. Of course all lives matter, but that is not the point the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to make. I will use the analogy of the phrase, “Save the Rainforests”. Rainforests are beautiful and full of life with so much that we could learn from. Rainforests are also being destroyed and exploited by people who don’t care enough to make sure we preserve natures beauty. Now anyone could say, “…but ALL forests matter”. Sure, all forests matter, but rainforests need our imminently need our help; they are the voiceless, beautiful entities that aren’t appreciated by the white man that tears them down. African Americans are the rainforests. Just like the precious, beautifully diverse rainforests, the value of black lives has been depreciated since the white people realized they could profit from the oppression of these lives. In the words of Mahatma