Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how systemic issues can lead to incarceration rather than individual faults.
Rachel Kushner's quote reflects on the societal and systemic factors that contribute to incarceration rates among marginalized communities. It suggests that many individuals are not imprisoned due to their unique actions or characteristics, but rather because they belong to groups that face historical disadvantages and lack opportunities. This perspective urges a deeper understanding of the root causes of crime and punishment, emphasizing the need for social change and support for those who are disadvantaged from the start.
In practice
During a talk on social justice, this quote can be cited to highlight the need for reform in the criminal justice system.
I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.
But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.
I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.
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