[lbo-talk] The American Police State

[michael yates]

This is an interesting article about work done by a young sociologist Alice Goffman. Through an intense and dangerous participant/observation in a poor black neighborhood in Philadelphia, she developed insights into the impact of the reality of police state American in such neighborhoods. This might be very useful work in terms of discussions here on the prison system, racism, etc.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-American-Police-State/142965?cid=megamenu

I also think it is interesting how Goffman has avoided publicity and tries to turn the discussion away from herself and toward what is happening to the impoverished black men, their wives, girlfriends, and families she lived among and whose lives she chronicles. What an unusual thing.