Neoliberalism produces a vast disenfranchised black and brown subaltern stratum in the US

Evidence

These trends generate a massive, disenfranchised, urban, largely black and brown (yes there are some whites too) U.S. subaltern stratum, not only an underclass 4 la William Julius Wilson, but also a racially distinct melange: the others. Not just the subordinate, inegalitarian dimension of this group’s collective identity carries weight here (the “sub” of subaltern); but also the “alterity” of the term. The growing subaltern have the potential for disruption, both political and in everyday life. They also hover on the margins of “bare life,” experiencing the police state everyday: profiled, surveilled, “stopped and frisked.” This growing stratum of US. society, “working poor,” “on the run,” fugitives and “clandestinos,” prisoners and ex-felons (Newman 2000; Dow 2005; Goffman 2009; Park 2013), are aliens in the United States, whether they are citizens or not. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 221

Categorization

• XREF: This subaltern/bare-life vocabulary connects to the vault’s existing claims about racialized mass incarceration and policing, and to Goffman’s ‘on the run’ ethnography.
• DEFINE: Rewrites the Wilson underclass concept as a ‘racially distinct melange’ of subalterns defined by both subordination and alterity.