Lori Latrice Martin

Beyond School-to-Prison Pipeline and Toward an Educational and Penal Realism

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the school-to-prison pipeline and the sanitized discourse of “death by education,” called the achievement gap. Additionally, there exists a longstanding discourse surrounding the alleged crisis of educational failure. This article offers no solutions to the crisis and suggests instead that the system is functioning as it was intended—to disenfranchise many (predominately people of color) for the benefit of some (mostly white), based on economic principals of the free market. We begin by tracing the economic interests of prisons and the prison industrial complex, juxtaposing considerations of what we call the “educational reform industrial complex.” With a baseline in the economic interests of school failure and prison proliferation, we draw on the critical race theory concept of racial realism, to work toward a theory of educational and penal realism. Specifically, we outline seven working tenets of educational and penal realism that provide promise in redirecting the discourse about schools and prisons empowering those interested in critically engaging issues of racism that permeate U.S. orientations to education and justice.

Debt to Society: Asset Poverty and Prisoner Reentry

Every year, millions of people exit American jails and prisons and attempt to reintegrate into society. Ex-offenders face many obstacles during the transition. Scholars contend that securing employment is central to a successful transition. A job that allows an ex-offender to earn an income above the poverty line is especially significant, recent studies have shown. Consequently, many prisoner reentry initiatives are focused on expanding employment opportunities for ex-offenders. However, the almost exclusive emphasis on employment as the measurement of economic well-being is short-sighted because it ignores the importance of financial education and asset ownership. Prisoner reentry programs should include an emphasis on financial education in addition to an emphasis on employment as a means of reducing recidivism rates and improving the economic well-being of the ex-offenders and receiving communities. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications.

Mapping the margins and searching for higher ground: examining the marginalisation of black female graduate students at PWIs

ABSTRACT The number of Black females enrolled in colleges and universities has grown in recent years, particularly at predominately white institutions (PWIs). Currently, research on the rise of Black females at PWIs is limited and fails to adequately address the emotional, social, and mental well-being of these students. Recent studies also largely ignore the critical roles that natural and formal Black female faculty play in serving as a buffer between Black female graduate students (BFGS) and PWIs more broadly. From a critical perspective using counter-narrative, we address the limitations of the scholarly literature on BFGS and other challenges faced by BFGS. We come to the disappointing – albeit unsurprising – conclusion that PWIs should do more to make the academy a welcoming place for BFGS, however, the ways in which PWIs function make support for BFGS unlikely. We conclude with a discussion about the implications of continued marginalisation of BFGS at PWIs for individuals, families, communities, disciplines, and for PWIs across the nation.

The Complexity of Color and the Religion of Whiteness

African American’s self-consciousness about their skin color is closely related to their engagement with whiteness in a world in which whiteness has been the dominant religion. After all, self-conception is intersubjective. We come to know ourselves, in part, in response to our perception of others and, in turn, as reflections of other people’s perceptions of us. Du Bois’s aphoristic reflection on “double consciousness” is salient for just this reason (Du Bois, 1903).

Been There Done That

Sadly, the George Zimmerman verdict was not news; rather, it was history repeating itself. I am reminded of the documentary, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, which included a still image of Stanley Leibowitz, a Jewish lawyer from New York (Goodman & Goodman, 2001). The International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of the Communist Party, retained Leibowitz to defend nine indigent Black males wrongfully convicted of raping two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, on a train headed for Chattanooga, Tennessee (Markovitz, 2004). Leibowitz won the right to have the defendants tried separately.