ABSTRACT
The problem of violence has become the problem of the 21st century. Violence against young people in schools is a troubling index of the loss of faith in young people and the transformation of school from a source of social and economic mobility to despotic testing institutions for most youth, and repressive holding centers, primarily for youth of color. Police violence against Black people has become highly visible and thrust into the national spotlight as a result of individuals recording acts of police abuse with their cell phones and other new technologies. Violence permeates and drives foreign policy, dominates popular culture, and more and more is used to criminalize a wide range of social behaviors, especially among African Americans. The neoliberal machinery of dispossession, accumulation, and social death more and more extends its reach across American society, dissolving the bonds of sociality and undermining social obligations.
