The Empire 477

Youth Beyond the Politics of Hope
Tuesday 13 October 2009
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Feature

This article is drawn from Henry A. Giroux's book, "Youth in a Suspect Society," which has just been published by Palgrave/McMillan. This is the first in a series of articles that will address issues raised in the book.

As the counterrevolution that has gripped the United States since the late 1980s appears to be somewhat modified in the emerging presidency of Barack Obama, the dark times that befell us under the second Bush administration have far from disappeared. The assault that the second Bush administration waged on practically every vestige of the public good - from the Constitution to the environment to public education - appears to have lessened its grip as the Obama regime inches towards its first year in power. Yet, the range, degree and severity of the problems the Obama team have inherited from the Bush administration seem almost too daunting to address successfully: a war raging in two countries, a legacy of torture and secret prisons, a dismantling of the regulatory apparatus, a poisonous inequality that allocates resources to the rich and misery to the poor, an imperial presidency that shredded the balance of power, a looming ecological apocalypse, a ruined reputation abroad and a financial crisis that is almost unprecedented in American history - policies and conditions that have brought great suffering to millions of Americans and many millions more throughout the world. But the crisis that is most often forgotten or repressed in the daily headlines of gloom is the war that is being waged at home, primarily against young people, who have historically been linked to the promise of a better life, one that they would both inherit and reproduce for future generations. In a radical free-market culture, when hope is precarious and bound to commodities and a corrupt financial system, young people are no longer at risk: They are the risk; young people are no longer troubled; they are trouble.

Also see:
Henry A. Giroux | Brutalizing Kids: Painful Lessons in the Pedagogy of School •

The conditions produced by the financial crisis have resulted in the foreclosure of not only millions of family homes, but also the future of young people, as the prospects of the unborn are mortgaged off in the interests of corporate power and profits. As wealth moved furiously upward into private hands for the last several decadesA name="A">[1], any talk about the future has less to do with young people than with short-term investments, quick turnovers in profits and the dismantling of the welfare state. Moreover, the destruction of the welfare state, or even better the social state, has gone hand in hand with the emergence of a prison-industrial complex and a new carceral state that regulates, controls, contains and punishes those who are not privileged by the benefits of class, color, immigration status and gender. How else to explain a national prison population that has grown from 200,000 in 1973 to slightly over 2.3 million in 2008? It gets worse. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that at the end of 2007 "over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole - 3.2 percent of all US adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults."[2]

As policing, containment and imprisonment merge with a market-driven society that places both the reasons for and redress of misfortune entirely in the hands of isolated individuals, the circuitry of social control redefines the meaning of youth, subjecting particularly those marginalized by class and color to a number of indiscriminate, cruel and potentially illegal practices by the criminal justice system. In the age of instant credit and quick profits, human life is reduced to just another commodity to be bought and sold, and the logic of short-term investments undercuts long-term investments in public welfare, young people and a democratic future. Not surprisingly, youth as a symbol of long-term commitment are now viewed as a liability rather than an asset. Barack Obama's repeatedly insisted both before and after his election that the United States must live up to its obligations to future generations. While Obama has only been in office a short time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how young people are benefiting from that promise. Obama's economic policies are being shaped by people who caused the crisis, thus condemning children to massive levels of unemployment and a future without hope. His education policies are simply an extension of the discredited Bush approach to schooling and Arnie Duncan, the Secretary of Education, appears unusually illiterate when it comes to being able to pose a democratic vision for education, given his love of the market, testing and his dislike for any mode of knowledge and classroom pedagogy that cannot be measured. Moreover, American society is still in a state of permanent war and many young people, especially poor minorities will continue to die or be maimed in imperial struggles abroad. We are still the largest arms dealer in the world and we have a Republican Party whose only goal seems to be to block every policy Obama proposes regardless of whether it is good for the country as a whole. The winners in this logic are the militarists, the defense industries, the most powerful corporations, the ruling elite, the advocates of ideological rigidity and commanding financial institutions.
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/1013092