HUM 2395 Lecture Notes - Lecture 35: Southern Poverty Law Center, Lyndon B. Johnson, Capital Accumulation
Document Summary
Political scientist naomi murakawa apportions blame to liberals for the construction of the carceral state. What liberals sought to achieve in the area of criminal justice was professionalization through federal programming and funding of criminal justice systems. The latter were rooted, historically, in the states and, as such, immersed in racism, provincialism and cultural backwardness. From the progressive reforms through the new deal and on to the great society, regarded itself as an agent of national progress, which would be achieved by means of modernizing the state. Intellectuals, in their capacity are professionals, were organic intellectuals of the state, intent on pulling different regions and class fractions into an historical bloc constructed around the modernizing state. This forms the basis for what murakawa refers to as the long ideological tradition of liberal law and order, which starts from racism is a misconception embedded in both the police and the minority communities they serve.