Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration

Baldwin III, Robert. “Trayvon Martin’s Killing 10 Years Ago Changed the Tenor of Democracy.” NPR, Feb. 26, 2022. npr

This article, written by lawyer and journalist Robert Baldwin III, looks back on the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and the incident’s longstanding effects on US political and social culture. Baldwin traces the origins of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the current rise of racial justice organizing in the US to Martin’s death. He also provides current political context, including the backlash against BLM that grew during Donald Trump’s presidency and continues today. Both Martin’s death and the current wave of social justice activism in the US occurred after Marked was published, so this article links themes in Pager’s work to the present day.

Bertrand, Marianne and Sendhil Mullainathan. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” American Economic Review 94 (2004): 991-1013.

Pager cites this paper by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan in her own work. Bertrand and Mullainathan conducted a similar field experiment to Pager, responding to job ads in Chicago and Boston with fictitious resumes that used either “Black-sounding” or “white-sounding” names. Unlike Pager’s study, their work focused only on race, not the additional factor of criminality. The results of their experiment suggest that, despite anti-discrimination employment law, racial discrimination does affect hiring practices.

Bryson Taylor, Derrick. “George Floyd Protests: A Timeline.” The New York Times, Nov. 5, 2021.nytimes

This article provides a clear, detailed timeline of the events surrounding the Minneapolis protests of George Floyd’s killing by police.

Entman, Robert and Andrew Rojecki. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

This book explores the role of media in shaping white Americans’s perceptions of Black people and culture. It points out subtle ways in which Black characters are dehumanized in TV shows and commercials, such as not having speaking roles, and considers the impact of news reporting. It concludes that media focuses disproportionately on ideas of Black poverty and crime, which affects the way white people view Black people in general.

Gross, Jenny and John Eligon. “Minneapolis City Council Votes to Remove $8 Million From Police Budget. The New York Times, Dec. 10, 2020. nytimes

This article documents some of the political fallout from the killing of George Floyd, including shifting perceptions of the role of the police and their level of funding support from governments.

Heckman, James. “Detecting Discrimination.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 2 (1998): 101-16.

Economist James Heckman evaluates the impartiality of the audit method when evaluating discrimination. Heckman concludes that the evidence produced by the audit method is shaky because it is based on assumptions about race, class, and gender that may or may not exist; in the abstract, he concludes that “Audits can find discrimination when one exists and can disguise it when it does.”

Schwartz, Richard and Jerome Skolnick. “Two Studies of Legal Stigma.” Social Problems 10 (1962): 133-142.

This is a foundational study that addresses the role of sociology in legal thinking. It examines the stigma of contact with the legal system on formerly-incarcerated people, and whether punishment is an effective deterrent against crime or mechanism for rehabilitation.

Western, Bruce. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.

Published around the same time as Marked, sociologist Bruce Western takes a critical view of mass incarceration, focusing on its social and economic impacts. He examines the effects of “tough on crime” polices on young Black men, finding that most of them have been excluded from the economic prosperity of the 1990s and that incarceration comes with a lifetime of decreased work opportunities, lending to high rates of recidivism. The book also explores mass incarceration’s deleterious effects on communities.

Wilson, William Julius. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

William Julius Wilson’s book presents a view of race that was popular at the time of its writing: Discrimination is a thing of the past and is becoming less and less meaningful for Black Americans. This book was controversial at the time of its publication and is even moreso now, as much current literature focuses on the ways in which racial discrimination has continued into the 21st century. Still, Wilson’s view of a post-racial society is one that persists today.