February 11, 2015 - 01:03
One of the readings that especially struck me this weak was "Race War: Policing, Incarceration, and the Containment of Black Youth," by Bakari Kitwana because it embodies an intersection of a lot of my studies in health and education. I took Anthropology of AIDS last year, and we often talked about how the "war on drugs" proved to be catastrophic in raising incarceration rates and HIV and AIDS transmission rates within the black community. I was especially struck by the increase of "707 percent" (Kitwana 5268*) within the 10 year period and I can imagine that the rates are only higher now, since that statistic is now twenty years old.
The "War on Drugs" may not have intentionally started out as a full-on assault on black communities (I have my doubts on this though), but as Kitwana writes, it has "materialized into a wave of racial attacks on black communities and long-term detentions unmatched in the modern era" (Kitwana 5414). Put into a context of a race war, the incarcerated peoples, for some activists, become "prisoners of war" (Kitwana 5414). I wonder what black children in urban public schools are, in this context.
While I think Kitawana's piece is powerful, especially in framing the "war on drugs" as just one assult (I also think education, particularly public education is another) in a "race war", it also does not account for the fact that America is not just black and white. Kitwana does mention the Latino/a population in a couple of moments, but does not really talk about Asian American or Native American populations and their role in the "race war". Therefore, while the "race war" framework is certainly powerful and elicits very strong images and emotions, it assumes a rigid dichotomy of race in America and does not leave much room for nuance and complication.
*on Kindle ebook.