ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 evaluates wider, individual public attitudes and actions, as a phenomenon constituting a wider punitive effect. A wider punitive effect attributes the stereotyping and stigmatization levied against the Black family and community a disciplinary cadence, corresponding with retributive punishment. The wider society recognizes Black youth, according to the stereotypes that stigmatize them, as unsocialized and thereby both unpredictable and threatening to social stability. This recognition is understood here as the stigma of intractability. As scholars like sociologist Erving Goffman (1968) propose stigmas have the capacity to disqualify entire groups from full social acceptance. Consistent with Goffman’s logic, it is well-established that race carries such a stigma, where it has become normalized to view racialized individuals with suspicion. The chapter gives stigma a lens through which it can be assessed: intractability. Informed by this dominant understanding, the wider society takes up the mantle of the state and exacts their own forms of punitiveness, displaying both attitudes and actions which Black youth experience punitively.
