The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance

by A. Mikulich, L. Cassidy, M. Pfeil

Overview

The Scandal of White Complicity and US Hyper-incarceration is a groundbreaking exploration of the moral role of white people in the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos in the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349433995
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	01/30/2013
Series:	Content and Context in Theological Ethics
Edition description:	1st ed. 2013
Pages:	203
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alex Mikulich is Research Fellow on Race and Poverty at the Jesuit Social Research Institute of Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He is co-editor and contributor to Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence, which was awarded the College Theology Society's 2008 Book of the Year Award. Alex serves the Pax Christi USA Anti-Racism Team, is a leader of Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty in Louisiana, and is immersed in anti-racist research and advocacy in New Orleans and Mississippi.

Laurie Cassidy is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA. She is co-editor and contributor to Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence, which was awarded the College Theology Society's 2008 Book of the Year Award. She has been a spiritual director for over twenty years and is concerned with contemplation as a mystical political practice for personal and social transformation.

Margaret Pfeil is Assistant Professor of Theology and a Fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is a founding member and resident of St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House in South Bend. She organized and served as facilitator for the conference on 'White Privilege: Implications for the Catholic University, the Church, and Theology' held at the University of Notre Dame in March 2006.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Series Editor Preface; Mary Jo Iozzio

Foreword; Sister Helen Prejean

Introduction: The Invisibility of White Complicity in Hyper-incarceration; Laurie Cassidy and Alex Mikulich

Acknowledgments

Part I: STRUCTURE

Chapter 1: Hyper-Incarceration of African Americans and Latinos in Historical Context; Alex Mikulich

Vital Prison Statistics

The Construction of Whiteness in U.S. Law

The Enduring 'Cultural Logic' of Lynching and Three White Myths

The Emergence of the 'New Jim Crow'

The Economic Perversity of 'Fortress America'

Chapter 2: White Complicity in U.S. Hyper-incarceration; Alex Mikulich

White Soul

The Pathology of White Segregation: An Enduring Marker of Race in America

The Historical Structuring of American Segregation

White Habitus and the Four Walls of White Imprisonment

Conclusion

Part II: CULTURE

Chapter 3: The Myth of the Dangerous Black Man; Laurie Cassidy

The Picture in Our Heads

Slaveryand the Myth of the Dangerous Black Man

White Christian Amnesia and Anamnesis

Chapter 4: Hip Hop and the Seditious Reinvention of the Dangerous Black Man; Laurie Cassidy

The Prophetic Voice of Hip Hop

Hip Hop and the Reinvention of Nat Turner

Conclusion

Part III: SPIRITUALITY

Chapter 5: A Spirituality of White Non-violent Resistance to the Reality of Hyper incarceration; Margaret Pfeil

The Beatitudes: A Framework for a Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance

Chapter 6: Contemplative Action: Toward Nonviolent White Resistance to Hyper-

Incarceration; Margaret Pfeil

Making Whiteness Visible: Complicity

Accountability and Awareness

The Circle Process: A Public Space of Accountability

Systemic Change: Facing the Dark Night of Impasse

Conclusion

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book fills a major lacuna in Roman Catholic moral and theological reflection. Through careful social and cultural analysis of US hyper-incarceration of African Americans and Latinos, the authors address the nation's historical and continuing enmeshment in racism with its reproduction of white privilege and cultural power. Crucially, they invite the reader beyond guilt or dismissal or blaming the victim to conversion of mind and heart, to contemplative action rooted in a spirituality that takes social responsibility seriously. Mikulich, Cassidy, and Pfeil challenge us to uncover and face the social consequences of our complicity in social sin." - M. Shawn Copeland, Associate Professor, Systematic Theology, Boston College, USA

"Provocative. Ground-breaking. Courageous. Hopeful. Seldom have Catholic ethicists been so searingly honest about the 'white way of being' and its deep entanglement with social evil. The authors boldly name and brilliantly expose the limits and silences of theological ethics in the face of racial complicity, and yet hopefully illuminate faith-based resources for personal and social transformation. This text is a model of authentic racial solidarity." - Bryan N. Massingale, Professor of Theological Ethics, Department of Theology, Marquette University, USA

"As millions of African American lives are quietly destroyed out of white sight and white mind, we need prophets like Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margeret Pfeil to show us the full meaning of sin in 'Racist America,' and to summon us to conversion." - Jon Nilson, Professor, Department of Theology, Loyola University of Chicago, USA

"This volume exposes the truth about the participation of white cultural imagination in the dynamics of racism, while also offering communal practices of resistance like witness memory and lament in the peacemaking circle. An important intellectual and spiritual resource in the struggle to transform white privilege." - Mary Elizabeth Hobgood, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross, USA

"The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-incarceration represents the cutting edge in theological work on white racism. It takes an unflinching look at white complicity in a criminal justice system that incarcerates young people of color at rates far exceeding those of apartheid South Africa or Stalinist Russia. The book also examines how, as convicted felons, ex-prisoners face a future with severely narrowed economic opportunity and the loss of the fundamental right to vote. Especially insightful is the economic and cultural analysis of how the white music industry subverted the piercing social justice critique frequently heard in early hip hop music. Instead, hip hop was twisted to reflect a commercially successful 'gangsta' image that was just another historical variation on the racist stereotype of hyper-sexual, uncontrollably violent black men. This book offers clear insights into how the belief in shared human dignity, rooted in the creation of every human being as imago dei, requires that white Christians face up to the moral scandal of the hyper-incarceration of African Americans. This book challenges white Christians to oppose hyper-incarceration through a spiritualty and a strategy of non-violent resistance." - Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, Nancy and James Buckman Chair in Applied Ethics, Theology Department, Fordham University, USA

From the Publisher