• • • low end theory

theorizin' on the cheap since '09. for more about me, go here. e-mail: lowendtheory [at sign] lowendtheory [dot] org.

Schwarzenegger Seeks Shift From Prisons to Schools (NYTimes)

wrote this as a comment in response to a friend’s posting of this elsewhere:

i think part of my issue is the way the relationship between universities and prisons is being staged as a relationship; the relatively obvious part is that the state needs universities in order to build one (middle-upper) class of the population and the state needs prisons to maintain another (poor-working) segment of the population.

what makes me uncomfortable about the “universities, not prisons” rhetoric is the ease with which it slips into a “university students, not prisoners” rhetoric which, if we weren’t so well trained in ignoring it, should make clear the racial and class politics that we end up buying into in our defense of the university.

we’ve found it really easy to critique the state’s funding of prisons over (higher) education, but since we haven’t actually moved that critique into the larger question of the social function of the prison itself, which is as much about reproducing and maintaining the forms of social stratification, hierarchy, and privilege that we’ve been reticent to see as relevant to our movement. since we’ve too often allowed this to be framed as a funding problem, shifting funds from prisons to universities can begin to look like a viable solution.

we haven’t been very good at asking ourselves or others, why do some people end up in universities and others in prisons? why are so many of those people poor people, and usually black and latino? now, in a piece of legislation that virtually no one can really oppose without shooting themselves in the foot, i think we’re seeing some of the consequences of those failures. (and without, i should add, any assurance that more funding to universities will actually lead to a palpable difference in university life—most of that money could very well go to establishing counter-terrorism centers, biotech industry stuff, and construction projects that further marginalize other critical work).

Notes

  1. lowendtheory posted this
Top