African American Women Mass Incarceration Summary

This critical reflection will focus on the piece “African American Women, Mass Incarceration, and the Politics of Protection” by Kali Nicole Grass. Grass currently works at the University of Texas and Gross’ research focuses on black women’s experiences in the United States criminal justice system between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this journal, Gross uses her historical research background and her research work to explain how history in the sense of race and gender help shape mass incarceration today. In this journal, Gross’s main argument is to prove that African American women are overpopulating prisons and are treating with multiple double standards that have existed for centuries. To prove this argument, first Gross starts off by

Through this section, Gross spoke about how laws existed to protect people, but black women were considered to be extremely sexual beings thus the law said that black women did not deserve to be protected. Gross used the experience of a woman named Hester and the using this experience in Gross’s writing made the talk about slavery much more effective. Furthermore, women were actually punishable by death if they choose to fight against their captors. Which further discussed the issues of being denied protection but fatally condemned by it at the same time. The last argument that Gross makes discussed how even though there were less African American living in a city compared to Caucasian or Latinos, but, female African Americans still took up 47.5% of prisoners. Also, African Americans served longer sentences and were shipped to custodial institutions whereas, Caucasians were sent to nicer establishments. To conclude, Gross explained that there was a clear relationship between women’s historical experiences and mass incarceration today. This journal used a heavy amount of historical texts such as books written by bell hooks, Deborah