Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys

"That’s definitely part of it. One of the things you see on the progressive side, politically, when we talk about inequality and poverty and systematic racism, is that the state has been forced to play too small of a role. That Neoliberalism has taken the state out of poor people’s lives, and that what we need to do is put it back in so that they can be taken care of by the welfare state. This book is supposed to be about young black and brown boys and their experience, but it becomes about their interactions with the state because it is the agent that punishes them constantly. Rios talks about almost all of the subjects experiencing their first serious state punishment in school. Our problem is supposed to be that the state is not big enough or it’s not active enough. But it turns out that the state is incredibly active – but it’s active in a harmful, punitive, aggressive way where kids are walking around afraid that they’re going to be grabbed by police, constantly. Afraid for their physical safety. That that’s how they experience the state, not as absent but as very overwhelming in the present."