Report on Challenging Perspectives: Essays on Prison Abolition and Racial Injustice by Davis and Young

Summary and Description of the Article “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Professor Davis

In the story, Davis has a staunch belief that prisons' current situation can only be understood by reflecting on the historical, social, and economic contexts. Ideally, the Davis story's primary theme, "Are Prisons Obsolete?" is the controversial argument on where prisons should be abolished or reformed as Young suggests that "the question of whether the prison has become an obsolete institution has become especially urgent in because then two million people now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails” (Young, 2011, p. 6). Throughout the text, she provides a compelling relationship between slavery in the past and today's prison role. Conventionally, the two parameters depict a special connection, because just as slavery was used to mistreat the weak and less fortunate in society, so does the prisons function as the destination for undesirables within the community structure. Most importantly, Davis reiterates that the historical view of slavery has eventually led to its demolition. Because they have a close linkage with prisons, it will be imperative to abolish the prisons for better alternatives. Based on the story's content, Davis targets everyone to read the book, devoid of their identity and personal characteristics such as gender, sex, age, ethnicity, language, and origin, among others. All categories of individuals are considered in the story of Davis and can act as the audience. Davis accurately uses a qualitative methodology approach by integrating history and past theoretical perspectives to make his readers contextualize and interpret the current theme in relation to the previous one. The comparison strategy is qualitative since it intends to construct new ideas and philosophies about imprisonment, using structural and compelling reasoning. In the book, Davis states that during the era of slavery, poor communities, minor races, and destabilized individuals were the principal targets. Therefore, they offered free labor to whites. In the present times, prisons are dramatically increasing in number, and the benefit to the prisons, they also provide free labor. Also, business organizations get the opportunity to secure the tender of supplies for the prisons in the name of feeding the prisoners. According to Davis, the increasing population of prisoners and the awarded tenders could substantially benefit society and its paradigm if schools and economic institutions replaced prisons. In chapter four, "How Gender Structures the Prison System," Davis further outlines that prisons disadvantage women to a greater degree while equally forming part of the backbone for development in society. I tend to believe that the proposal for better prison alternatives in chapter six is vital because the resources would inarguably benefit a larger population, including the imprisoned people, who will find opportunities, thus considering avoiding criminal act engagement.

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Evaluation of the Text and its Connection to the Keywords

Chapter one of the story "Prison Reform or Abolition?" appears like a central debate that requires a magnificent approach to derive a substantive outcome or decision. However, Davis proves that prison is characterized by gender, racial, and class dynamics. Her explanation offers an outlook of promoting social justice and adherence to human rights, rather than inserting more focus on crime and punishment. “What societal interest is served by prisoners who remain illiterate? How are people corrected while imprisoned if their education is outlawed?” (Davis, 2011, p. 28). In other chapters, Davis states that the prison systems are meant to promote the molestation of people of color and weaker populations like women; hence they do not provide any productivity to society. Even though his argument supports the fact that there should be reforms in prison systems to enhance equality, slavery had the same manifestation, and its abolition gave the best outcome. Therefore, Davis's story supports that prison systems should be abolished and not reformed.

Summary of “Third World Newsreel Visualizes the Internal Colony?” by Cynthia Ann

Chapter four of the article by Cynthia Ann Young typically describes the Newsreel's transformation process to the Third World Newsreel. Young outstandingly posits that this transition process was messy, as it was heavily integrated by a range of challenges, which posed challenges to people of color. Young states that “Though this process began while the group was in transition, Third World Newsreel developed a sharply honed political sense and a different visual vocabulary from that of its predecessor” (Young, 2007, p. 2). So, Young’s argument is centralized in reflecting the roles that culture and radicalization played in Third World news media. To better understand this phenomenon, Young stipulates that the term "Third World" was not coined to show that the United States of America was a first-world country. Instead, she insinuates that they described the living conditions of the third-world population living in the US, not the nation's geographical location. In a broad outlook, Young's objective is to discuss the history of racial injustice in the US and how its impacts have developed over time, to cause tremendous difficulties further. The article is best suited for African Americans who wish to discover the introduction of internal colonialism by the whites on their minority peers and how it eventually shaped the US's cultural, political, and economic landscape. To achieve this, her objective, Young, through chapter 4 of her book, postulates that the ideologies of inequality and racial injustice today present in the US began during the transition process from Newsreel to Third World Newsreel. The intermediary had very influential variables and hindrances, which prevented an effective transition process. For instance, Young uses historical frameworks as his methodology to suggest that the initially experienced and well-equipped leadership for Newsreel mysteriously disappeared and was out of reach, to help the newly created Third World Newsreel develop or acquire skills and different equipment. This framework further explains qualitatively how, when, and why the gap between whites and nonwhites was created. Therefore, my viewpoint on Young's discussion is that the introduction of racism, forming different stratum categories, and disseminating the same knowledge to newer generations acted as the origin of inequality and mistreatment of the nonwhites in the US. Due to the creation of these caucuses, movements such as Black Lives Matter were created to help rehabilitate the wine-growing philosophy that nonwhites are inferior.

Evaluation of Young's Chapter 4

Instructively, the text profoundly relates to the terms “Third World” and “Third Cinema” in various ways. Throughout Chapter 4, the author says that the Third World Newsreel was responsible for developing cultural and political communities. As whites divided themselves into groups to share the available resources and own different equipment from the Newsreel, they continued to empower Americans. It implies that the blacks were undermined, and most nonwhite population strata were subjected to economic exploitation, racial discrimination, and segregation issues. “In the case of U.S. national minorities, this condition included segregation, cultural denigration, racial discrimination, and labor exploitation.” (p. 6). In connection, the Third World Newsreel began to create its own "Third Cinema" of Third World Cinema to expose the living conditions of the nonwhites in the US. When the Newsreel was demolished, the first and second cinemas mainly propagated issues concerning the whites, so that the impacts of neocolonialism have expanded in the country. So, Young uses the term “Third Cinema” to show how the needs and problems faced by nonwhites were exposed.

References

Davis, A. Y. (2011). Are prisons obsolete? Seven Stories Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_wZ35GI4itgC&oi=fnd&pg=PT4&dq=ARE+PRISONS+OBSOLETE%3F+AnGela+Y.+Davis&ots=Pv1gP8oZ2B&sig=7bdV0VUy_n4Xr5mSoWYVvMFRv7s

Young, C. (2007). Third World Newsreel. In Global Migration, Social Change, and Cultural Transformation (pp. 77-99). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230608726_5