Mostly out of step, young people, especially poor minorities and low-income whites, are increasingly inscribed within a machinery of dead knowledge, social relations and values in which there is an attempt to render them voiceless and invisible. Henry Giroux More Quotes by Henry Giroux More Quotes From Henry Giroux At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, young people all over the world are demonstrating against a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. These demonstrations have and currently are being met with state-sanctioned violence and an almost pathological refusal to hear their demands. Henry Giroux issues cutting people Individual struggles merge into larger social movements. Henry Giroux individual movement struggle As the welfare state is hollowed out, a culture of compassion is replaced by a culture of violence, cruelty and disposability. Henry Giroux violence compassion culture As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence. Henry Giroux democracy people promise As the pleasure principle is unconstrained by a moral compass based on a respect for others, it is increasingly shaped by the need for intense excitement and a never-ending flood of heightened sensations. Henry Giroux moral principles needs Young people refuse the notion that financialization defines the only acceptable definition of exchange, one that is based exclusively on the reductionist notion of buying and selling. Henry Giroux definitions buying people Marginalized youth, workers, artists and others are raising serious questions about the violence of inequality and the social order that legitimates it. They are calling for a redistribution of wealth and power - not within the old system, but in a new one in which democracy becomes more than a slogan or a legitimation for authoritarianism and state violence. Henry Giroux democracy artist order Everywhere we look we see the encroaching shadow of the police state. Henry Giroux police shadow looks In this particular historical moment, the notion of conjuncture helps us to address theoretically how youth protests are largely related to a historically specific neoliberal project that promotes vast inequalities in income and wealth, creates the student-loan-debt bomb, eliminates much-needed social programs, eviscerates the social wage, and privileges profits and commodities over people. Henry Giroux income historical people Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery. Henry Giroux black men america In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison. Henry Giroux black cities men Justified by the war on drugs, the United States is in the midst of a prison binge made obvious by the fact that since 1970, the number of people behind bars... has increased 600 percent. Henry Giroux numbers war people The market-driven spectacle of war demands a culture of conformity, quiet intellectuals and a largely passive republic of consumers. Henry Giroux demand war culture There is a need for subjects who find intense pleasure in commodification of violence and a culture of cruelty. Henry Giroux violence culture needs Under neoliberalism, culture appears to have largely abandoned its role as a site of critique. Henry Giroux neoliberalism roles culture The government now requisitions the publics' telephone records and sifts through its emails. It labels whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden as traitors, even though they have exposed the corruption, lawlessness and host of antidemocratic practices engaged in by established governments. Police can take DNA samples of all people arrested of a crime, whether they are proven guilty or not. The United States is incarcerating people in record numbers, imprisoning over 2.3 million inmates while 6 million people at any one time [are] under carceral supervision - more than were in Stalin's Gulag. Henry Giroux dna government practice With no adequate role to play as consumers, many youth are now considered disposable, forced to inhabit "zones of social abandonment" extending from homeless shelters and bad schools to bulging detention centers and prisons. Henry Giroux roles play school Violence maims not only the body but also the mind and spirit. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, it lies "on the side of belief and persuasion." If we are to counter violence by offering young people ways to think differently about their world and the choices before them, they must be empowered to recognize themselves in any analysis of violence, and in doing so to acknowledge that it speaks to their lives meaningfully. Henry Giroux lying people thinking There is no genuine democracy without an informed public. While there are no guarantees that a critical education will prompt individuals to contest various forms of oppression and violence, it is clear that in the absence of a formative democratic culture, critical thinking will increasingly be trumped by anti-intellectualism, and walls and war will become the only means to resolve global challenges. Henry Giroux wall war mean What has changed about an entire generation of young people includes not only neoliberal society's disinvestment in youth and the lasting fate of downward mobility, but also the fact that youth live in a commercially carpet-bombed and commodified environment that is unlike anything experienced by those of previous generations. Nothing has prepared this generation for the inhospitable and savage new world of commodification, privatization, joblessness, frustrated hopes and stillborn projects. Henry Giroux frustrated fate people
