What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African
Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up at all. It is not
just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or are plagued by poverty. They
are barred by law from doing so. And the major institutions with which they come
into contact are designed to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The
current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American
community out of the mainstream society and economy.
The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this perspective, the so-called underclass is better
understood as an undercaste—a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by
law and custom from mainstream society.
Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earliersystems of control did. Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate
collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.