Training Them for Prison at An Early Age: A Playground ‘Jail’ for Children Stirs Controversy in NYC

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via AlterNet:



Posted by Chauncey DeVega at 2:42 pm
March 25, 2010

Training Them for Prison at An Early Age: A Playground ‘Jail’ for Children Stirs Controversy in Brooklyn


My grandmother used to say that you can be born in the ghetto, but the ghetto ain’t inside of you.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a talk by Khalil Muhammad author of the book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. The author’s thesis is a powerful one: the same narratives of black criminality; blacks as inherently unfit for full citizenship; and hand wringing over the “ghetto underclass” were part of the public consciousness some 140 years ago following Emancipation and Reconstruction. Ultimately, social scientists have been intimately involved in constructing our understandings of “the ghetto” and those frameworks still dominate our thinking on black poverty and criminality to the present.

Sadly, many of our young people have internalized these norms of black criminality and ghetto pathology. Like you, I can probably highlight the many times I have overheard young men of color bragging about going to to jail, where prison time is a rite of passage and an experience that garners social prestige in their communities.

From Stagolee, to Scarface, to 50 Cent, it is a given that Americans love the bad guy. I will admit that I love watching shows such as Gangland and Kingpin. I am also a many decades long fan of hip hop. But, I worry that many of our young men, while idolizing the “bad guy,” don’t realize that most of the time their “heroes” end up either dead or in jail.

Question: are criminals made or born? What lessons are the children in this community learning about their life chances from this playground–are things so bad that going to prison is just something one normally does as a career path? To visit mom? To see one’s siblings? And why in the name of all things holy did it take 6 years for someone to complain about this “playground?” What does this say about the parents and adults in this community?


http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/03/25/training-them-for-prison-at-an-early-age-a-playground-jail-for-children-stirs-controversy-in-brooklyn/