Micah Ingold

3/18/2018
PHIL 1102-004
James

Writing Assignment #4

Many different types of societal practices lead certain groups to become socially dead
populations. To be socially dead, like we learned in previous chapters, means that a population is not
seen as or treated like actual people by the rest of their society or community. This is in a similar way in
which dead persons are compared to living persons. Mass incarceration is a practice that can lead to
socially dead populations. In Stephan Dillon’s article called “Possessed by Death,” he discusses how
Assata Shakur makes the connection between slavery and the neoliberal carceral state and how it
creates a predisposition for social death. Dillion says, “For Shakur, the regulations of a burgeoning
neoliberal-carceral state possessed life in ways that rendered the free world an extension of the prison”
(Dillon 113). Shakur compares the quality of life in prisons to the quality of life that they already live
within their own communities. The poverty that can be found in such communities is what causes such a
cycle of high incarceration. In a report from the Prison Policy Initiative, an article called Prisons of
Poverty says, “in 2014 dollars, incarcerated people had a median annual income of $19,185 prior to their
incarceration, which is 41% less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages” (Rabuy & Kopf 2015).
This analysis shows that people who live in communities with high poverty rates are much more likely to
be incarcerated. When these people are released, they return to a life of poverty and must now deal
with the trouble of what Rabuy and Kofp call “legally-acceptable employment discrimination.” The
reason that Shakur gives for this cycle is the aftermath of slavery on black communities. “The spirit of
slavery animated the bars of prison cells and the coldness that surrounded captured black bodies; it
seeped past the razor wire and concrete walls of the prison, structuring poverty on the street, regulatory
violence in the welfare office, and the unfreedom that governs an antiblack world” (Dillon 117). As we
learned in earlier chapters for this class, social death of a person or a population is a direct result of
slavery. Slaves are not seen as people with rights, so they are considered socially dead. This social
death that was caused by slavery has continued to possess the social status of poor black communities.
These communities have a high percentage of African Americans. In 2010, African Americans had the
highest rate of poverty. 27.4% of those among all who fell below the poverty line were black. These are
communities that are stuck in a cycle of poverty and incarcerations and that is how they are seen by the
higher members of our indifferent society. The forgotten members of these communities are possessed
by the demons of slavery and the cycle of poverty to create a socially dead population.

Works Cited

Dillon, S. “Possessed by Death: The Neoliberal-Carceral State, Black Feminism, and the Afterlife of
Slavery.” Radical History Review, vol. 2012, no. 112, Jan. 2012, pp. 113–125., doi:10.1215/01636545-
1416196.

Rabuy, Burnadette, and Daniel Kopf. “Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the Pre-Incarceration Incomes of
the Imprisoned.” Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the Pre-Incarceration Incomes of the Imprisoned |
Prison Policy Initiative, Prison Policy Initiative , 9 July 2015, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html.

“Poverty.” State of Working America, stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/.