Race Gender And Punishment Summary

After reading the book, “Race, Gender, and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terror” by Mary Bosworth and Jeanne Flavin, they discuss what they feel are the four “sociohistorical processes (Bosworth, Flavin: 2)” of social control, these being colonialism, slavery, immigration, and globalization. The authors separate each of these into their own chapter for a certain reason, to show the treatment of colonized people. The book focuses on how “colonialism, like each of the factors that underpin this collection, operates both structurally…and ideologically through culture, and the construction of the imaginary. (Bosworth, Flavin: 3).” Stepping back to the days of slavery, race has been the worldwide pyramid of power, in which white/Caucasian

These shows, such as 2 Broke Girls, Cops, Friends etc. each portrays racism, and classism, we just don’t notice it. The shows Cops have focused its show in lower class areas, never upper class, Friends and other sitcoms always throw in those ‘stereotypical’ jokes that everyone seems to find so funny. These shows prove that we (society) still do not treat everyone equally, and that our justice system continues to use racial profiling and classism as a way of social control. Not only does the book focus on the colonization of blacks, but also of Hispanics and how they are affected. The number of Latinos in our Federal prisons is always going up. Racial profiling is also another way of social control for Latinos, as well as our border patrol system. “Prejudiced assumptions about the nature of Mexicans continue to mar relations between Anglos and Mexican Americans, and have significant implications for how the latter are treated in the criminal justice system (Bosworth and Flavin: 52).” Basically, criminalizing Mexicans is our countries safe way of keeping full social control over them. We either resort to deportation, or taking advantage over