ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the meta history of the most explicit form of elite white control: using the state's autonomy over the means of violence to selectively target the black population. The two-pronged criminal justice system was a system of white-sanctioned violence disbursed across the state and white civil society. In addition to the demand for racial integration, the Montgomery bus boycott tested the two-pronged system of criminal justice that legitimated state-sanctioned white violence. The era of mass imprisonment begins in the neoliberal era. A central thread that ties racism with mass imprisonment and police brutality in the 21st century is the War on Terror. The days of America's two-pronged criminal justice system are also connected to the expansion of the present-day neoliberal criminal justice system. The neoliberal project now expands to places like parole and probation that directly impact poor whites and arbitration, which impacts the civil rights of middle-class whites.
