Summary Of Becky Pettit's Invisible Men

In Invisible Men, Becky Pettit introduces the theory that many Americans are seemingly “invisible” due to the fact that most national surveys, such as the Current Population Survey do not include incarcerated persons which lead to skewed statistics that are misrepresentative of the United States population. Pettit argues that the exclusion of inmates from national surveys creates discrepancies in United States economic, political, and social conditions. Further, Pettit argues that mass incarceration has hidden racial inequalities for many years. Throughout Invisible Men, Pettit develops her argument by presenting numerous examples that show how the rising incarceration rate has lead to the invisibility of African-American men in our current society. The Current Population Survey only accounts for people who reside in households which leaves out a significant portion of the American public. Due to the unprecedented incarcerated population in our country today, these statics representing the American public are not quite correct, especially

Pettit proves her point through easily understandable graphs and tables. She further develops the argument by presenting discrepancies in statistics from different sources, such as high school dropout rate and voting. Most of the data presented aligned well with Pettit’s objectives and supported her theories. Some of the statistics she presented were had to understand, because there was some confusion involving race in the book. Most of the statistics involving race were presented as strictly white or black, and these races were not clearly