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Rashad Shabazz: "Our Prison": Kitchenettes, Carceral Power and Black Masculinity During the Interwar Years

Date:
-
Location:
238 Classroom Building
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Rashad Shabazz

This talk examines the articulation of carceral power in the kitchenettes and the impact it had on identity formation.  I demonstrate this by highlighting how carceral power was expressed in the geography of kitchenettes.  Kitchenettes were small, tight, cramped spaces that many Black migrants were forced to live in once they arrived to Chicago.  I argue that the expression of police power that was operating in the Black Belt migrated into the homes of Black migrants.  Though not actual prisons, kitchenettes were amenable to the expression of carceral power—particularly containment and restriction—present throughout the Black Belt.  Kitchenettes absorbed the exercise of police power that functioned in the general space of the Black Belt and brought it closer to the skin.