The collateral consequences of possessing a record in the United States disclose that roughly 48,000 legal sanctions are set in place that obstructs the socioeconomic and political progression for carceral citizens (Martin, Huffman, Koon-Witt, & Brame, 2019; Miller, & Stuart, 2017; Nellis, 2016). Hiring nonviolent African American carceral citizens may aid in the support and reconciliation of Black families. Designing best practice approaches that recognize individual needs, programs can also customize services in common needs among population groups (Christian, Seamster, & Ray, 2019; Formon, Schmidt, & Henderson, 2018; Martin, Huffman, Koons-Witt, & Brame, 2019). The United States has the largest prison population worldwide, while the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that 95% of those detained will be released. Non-violent African American carceral citizens grapple with immense interference through the reentry process, and attaining lucrative employment is strategic to reducing recidivism (De Giorgi, 2017; Egleton, Banigo, McLeod, & Vakalahi, 2016; Flake, 2015; Heiner, 2016; Leung, 2018; Skinner-Osei, & Stepteau-Watson, 2018). If the problem persists of being prohibited from lucrative employment, countless non-violent African American carceral citizens resort to criminal methods of existence that accelerate their return to prison. African Americans/Blacks often face some of the poorest employment probabilities and contempt on the job; this event may draw a parallel with the condition of being a carceral citizen and being an African American (Narayan, 2017; Williams, Wilson, & Bergeson, 2019). Reaching employment that supplies fair wages is an imperative element in reducing recidivism. Empirical evidence-based data for employment discrimination conveys that businesses are generally less likely to employ African Americans because of the high rate of crime and incarceration (Curry, 2017). Carceral non-violent African Americans must deal with the historical effects of structural racism, which continues to weigh on contemporary obstructions of reentry (Truesdale-Moore, 2017). Anti-Black economic injustice ubiquity remains a crucial component that reveals how racial capitalism affects and eventually overwhelms African American families through the ostracism of African Americans/Blacks from the system of wealth formation (Narayan, 2017; Ogungbure, 2019; Onwuachi-Willig, 2019). Discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws developed to retain African people’s oppression, certifying that the heritage of the Negro Act of 1740 and connected regulations remained existent during the country for more than two hundred years (Alderman, Inwood, & Tyner, 2018). Therefore, the history of African labor in the United States is imperative not only to comprehend American xenophobia but also to “any dialogue of the nation’s production, politics, and the prospect of labor in today’s global economy.” American workforces agonizing from similar economic and political circumstances are considered “buyers instead of manufacturer, as a user instead of a provider, and as problems instead of blessings.” Reminding us that due to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Africans were brought to the Americas “specifically, for their labor” and that their descendants remain “the most subjugated and unsatisfactory element of the modern capitalist workforce (Brown & Allen, 2018; Owens, 2015). $31,992 is the median income in the African American household in Iowa in 2018. The median income of their white counterparts was $59,955. In 2018 the poverty rate for African Americans in Iowa was 30.7 percent. The URBAN EXPERIENCE | 2021 33
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