Response to Wideman

Within popular culture prisoners are constructed with a very negative image.  They are viewed not really as people but solely stamped as criminal, as if a different breed of people.  They are often assumed to have little education and people assume they are violent.  Everyone thinks prisoner and thinks killer.  People also hear the word prisoner and think bad person, this is just how we are taught growing up to think of prisoners but this is most certainly not always the case.  Everyone has a story for how and why they ended up in the system and things like race, education, and religion all play a role in this story.  For example Robby from the reading at first glance would simply look like a black man who got involved with the drug scene and ended up in jail.  Only at a closer glance would someone realize there is much more to his story along with every other person in prison.  Even his own family had trouble truly hearing his story until he was already behind bars.  Robby felt as if to make a name for himself, to stand out in his family he had to blaze a different trail than the one of academics his brothers and sister had already succeeded in.    By being kept away from other black people as a young child his curiosity for their community and culture grew stronger and stronger to the point where when he was finally exposed to it he was fascinated and wanted to feel like he belonged, a feeling he had not experienced before.  This may have been the original reason for why he dove head first into the world of selling drugs.  In the end he could not be the successful person he had hoped and instead ended up in jail.  Expectations for a young, poor,  black male are not high in a lot of cases but for Robby they were, he was expected to be smart and follow in his sibling’s footsteps but this expectation instead drove him in a complete opposite direction.