Mass Incarceration as Modern Slavery: Perpetuating the Social Death of Black Women

In contradiction to “colorblind” narratives that dominate discussions of race in American society today, the prison industrial complex (Davis) demonstrates the fact that, despite the abolishment of slavery, many of our institutions still function to control Black bodies and Black labor. The Thirteenth Amendment allowed prisons to re-impose what can fairly be described as slave labor; the prison industrial complex offers social control while using Black bodies for profit. Though mass incarceration is thought of as predominantly impacting Black men, Black women are uniquely affected in several ways. In line with Orlando Patterson’s conceptualization of Black social death, Black women’s experiences within the prison industrial complex appear to parallel aspects of Black women’s experiences under slavery.

Social death in the context of slavery can be defined as “the alienation or exclusion of the slave from the community at large justified by the general unworthiness of the slave. Social death may be accomplished through law, such as through the lack of legal recognition of a slave’s genealogical relationships, but it may also be accomplished through repetitive practices, rituals, and symbols denoting unworthiness and, ultimately, social banishment” (Armstrong, 5). To impose this social death (and, therefore, ensure society’s recognition of the slave as property), Blacks were taken from their families and communities, and then transplanted into the worlds of their masters. In this platial and social context, enslaved Blacks were dehumanized and stripped of any social identity besides being their masters’ source of labor and profit.

Black women are imprisoned at twice the rate that white women are (Carson, 2014), and the proportion of Black women compared to non-Black women in prison is greater than the proportion of Black men compared to non-Black men in prison (Miller, 119). Between 1986 and 1991, the number of Black women incarcerated for drug offenses specifically increased by 828%, twice that of Black men and triple that of white women (Miller, 113).

The greatest parallels between the experiences of enslaved Black women and incarcerated Black women today lie within their paradoxical identities as marginal persons: they allegedly threaten moral and social order, yet are essential for society’s survival (Patterson, 46). Patterson likened Black slaves to “internal/extrusive” slaves: not outside invaders or defeated enemies, but “insiders who had fallen, who ceased to belong, expelled from…the community because of failure to meet minimum legal and socioeconomic norms of behavior” (39). This description aptly express societal sentiment toward poor Black women: it is believed by many that in a “post-racial” society such as ours, poverty denotes lack of discipline and poor decision-making moreso than it reflects unequal access to opportunity and discriminatory institutions. A poor Black woman who becomes pregnant is seen as failing to meet the socioeconomic norms of behavior warranted by her class, in line with the “welfare queen” stereotype of promiscuity. Stereotypes such as this contribute to the social death of Black women, particularly the social death of poor Black mothers. A Black woman struggling with substance abuse is certainly seen as failing to meet minimum legal norms, as she runs the risk of having children with birth defects or other problems. Of course, it is clear that societal concern is less about the health of Black children and more about the financial burden these children put on society. 80% of incarcerated women are mothers, and 72.3% of them had legal custody of their children (Miller, 127). Yet, rather than funding social programs to help addicted mothers rehabilitate, lawmakers propose population control through sterilization — this not only demonstrates our lack of regard for Black motherhood, Black reproductive freedom, or the integrity of Black families, but also demonstrates our conception of Black children as a social problem that should be resolved through elimination. In the eyes of society, Black children are “helpless, hopeless, potentially violent and ultimately not worthy of being born” (Scully, 64).

Throughout slavery, Blacks were a direct source of labor and profit; upon abolition of slavery, Blacks were no longer directly profitable and society faced the dilemma of not knowing what function they should serve instead. Patterson describes this predicament as an “inalienability problem” — that enslaved people’s transition from possession to personhood was “legally, economically, and conceptually illegible” (Cacho, 7). Currently, American society seems to have re-imagined a new kind of slavery in which disproportionately-Black bodies and labor can be commodified and sold for profit, allowing for continued social death of Black persons, especially Black women, in America.

References

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