First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles

(Paperback)

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Description

California is a state of immense contradictions. Home to colossal wealth and long portrayed as a bastion of opportunity, it also has one of the largest prison populations in the United States and consistently ranks on the bottom of education indexes. Taking a unique, multifaceted insider s perspective, "First Strike" delves into the root causes ofits ever-expansive prison system and disastrous educational policy.Recentering analysis of Black masculinity beyond public rhetoric, "First Strike" critiques the trope of the school-to-prison pipeline and instead explores the realm of public school as a form of enclosure that has influenced the schooling (and denial of schooling) and imprisonment of Black people in California.

Reviews

"Damien M. Sojoyner fills a significant gap in literature by problematizing the school-to-prison pipeline, offering a more nuanced analytical frame than the one represented in most contemporary popular discourse. First Strike helps us understand what is happening to young people in under-resourced schools and the ways that their experience reflects an eroding commitment to education in favor of punishment."Beth E. Richie, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Sojoyner provides a masterful narrative of Black Los Angeles against the backdrop of mass incarceration and the criminalization of Black children. Scholars and educators should heed Sojoyners call to challenge the school-to-prison discourse to the more historically grounded enclosures."Maisha T. Winn, Chancellors Leadership Professor, University of California, Davis

Author Bio

Damien M. Sojoyneris assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.