Remembering the age of mass incarceration

Abstract

What I have found to be most surprising about the course thus far has not been from our read-ings but my classmates ’ surprise to the state of the prison system in the United States. As an African American woman from a working class Detroit neighborhood, the criminal justice system has never been that far away from my reality … But, my experience, as my classmates have demonstrated, are not as universal as I once thought … My classmates, I realize, represent the public that we are trying to reach through this exhibition. People who come from backgrounds like mine, who have been experiencing this world for so long, sometimes forget that others can be blind to it.