Reddit mentions of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New Perspectives in Crime, Deviance, and Law)

Like the other guy said, if you don’t know, then maybe you weren’t supposed to relate. I’m white and even I could understand where killmonger was coming from, from what I know from movies and music. If you really want to learn about what him and others like went through though, then read this
It’s even based in Oakland. Maybe you won’t suddenly relate, but at least you’d understand.

Yeah, joining gangs isn't something most of these kids would do if it wasn't a necessary part of life for them. This book does an incredible job explaining the issue.

The book is Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys by Victor Rios.

Two excerpts:

>The Stolen Bag of Chips

>[...] The store clerk, a balding, middle-aged, Asian American male, pointed to the door and yelled, "Only two kids allowed in the store at a time!" The three youths who were in line to pay for their items looked at the store clerk and at each other. I could see in their faces the look of despair as their most pleasurable moment of the day, to bite into a delicious candy bar, fell apart.

>Mike, who stood closest to the entrance of the door, responded, "We ain't doing shit." The store clerk looked at him and replied, "I am going to call the police!" Mike grabbed a twenty-five-cent bag of Fritos Flamin' Hot chips, lifted it up in front of the clerk's face, and said, "You see this? I was gonna pay for it, but now I ain't paying for shit, stupid mothafucka." He rushed out of the store with the bag of chips. The clerk picked up the phone and called the police. The rest of the youngsters dropped the snacks they were in line to purchase and ran out of the store. I walked up to the store clerk and gave him a quarter for Mike, who had stolen the chips. With an infuriated look, the clerk responded, "It's too late. The police are on their way to get the robbers."

>[...] When I ran into Flaco, he informed me that the police had arrested Mike that day for stealing the twenty-five-cent bag of chips. After interviewing the boys and observing the store clerk's interactions with them soon after this event, I found that Mike's "irrational" behavior had changed the way the store clerk interacted with the boys. The boys believed that the store clerk had begun to treat them with more respect. The store clerk avoided provoking negative interactions with the boys, even if it meant allowing a few more boys into the store than his store policy demanded. While even Mike's peers believed that his actions were "crazy," they also acknowledged that something significant had changed in their interactions with the store clerk.

>[...] In Mike's worldview, his strategy of fighting for dignity at the cost of giving up his freedom had paid off. Mike's actions resulted in his commitment to the criminal justice system. According to him, he was very aware of this risk when he stole the bag of chips. He had grown frustrated by the treatment he had received at school, by police, and then culminating at the store. This frustration, and a deep desire to feel respected, led Mike to willfully expose himself to incarceration.

> In the end, Mike lost his freedom, becoming supervised by the criminal justice system. Nonetheless, Mike gained a sense of dignity for himself and his peers, which, in his mind, made it worth exchanging his freedom. This scenario is representative of many of the crimes that the other boys committed. Demanding dignity from the system generated a paradox for the boys: they all indicated wanting to be free of incarceration, policing, and surveillance, while, at the same time, punitive surveillance, policing, and discipline led many of them to consciously seek their dignity and act in a way that pipelined them into the criminal justice system. Nonetheless, striving for dignity led some of the boys deeper into the system.

>The boys took control of their criminalization by using the few resources they had at hand. In this example, Mike and his friends changed the interactional dynamic between themselves and the store clerk. [...] However, the price Mike paid for this was steep, this arrest later led him deeper into the criminal justice system.

>[...] Maintaining a sense of dignity -- feeling accepted and feeling that their human rights were respected -- was a central struggle. The boys chose consciously chose to fight for their dignity, even if it meant risking their freedom.

[...]

>Defiance as Resistance

>It seemed that defiance constituted a temporary success to the boys. Watching interactions between the boys and authority figures was often like watching a life-sized game of chess in action, with a rook strategically moving in response to a queen's movement. A police officer would get out of his car, the boys would posture, an officer would grab a young man, his friends would prepare to run, and officer would humiliate one of the boys, and the boy would respond by not cooperating or by cursing back.

>As one side moved its pieces to repress, another moved its pieces to resist. The boys were almost always captured and eliminated from the chess board, but not before they had encroached into the opponent's territory, throwing the system off and influencing the rules and movements of the game.