
N*gga Theory
Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law
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Narrated by:
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Jody David Armour
About this listen
America's criminal justice system is among the deadliest and most racist in the world and it disproportionally targets Black Americans, who are also disproportionately poor, hungry, houseless, jobless, sick, and poorly educated. By every metric of misery, this nation does not act like Black Lives Matter.
In order to break out of the trap of racialized mass incarceration and relentless racial oppression, we, as a society, need to rethink our basic assumptions about blame and punishment, words and symbols, social perceptions and judgements, morality, politics, and the power of the performing arts.
N*gga Theory interrogates conventional assumptions and frames a transformational new way of thinking about law, language, moral judgements, politics, and transgressive art - especially profane genres like gangsta rap - and exposes where racial bias lives in the administration of justice and every day life.
Professor Jody Armour (Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism) calls for bold action: electing progressive prosecutors, defunding or dismantling the police, abolition of the prison industrial complex. But only after eradicating the anti-black bias buried in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans and baked into our legal system will we be able to say that Black Lives Matter in America.
©2020 Los Angeles Review of Books (P)2020 Los Angeles Review of BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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What listeners say about N*gga Theory
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- Robert
- 03-02-22
Illuminating
Great read, especially for a white guy like me whose eyes were open, were far more informed after reading professor Armour’s book. It’s an important book.
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- David P Couto
- 12-18-23
Ya ya. good stuff.
Within the space of audiobooks, I think this is Paired best with Danielle Sered's victim-oriented Until We Reckon. They end up commenting a lot on representations of one another's intellectual traditions while arriving at similarly radical policy places
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- Sergio
- 02-27-25
Insightful
Jody Armour gives great perspective in to the unjust laws, social discrimination, and undermining of Black Americans.
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