minority group. For example, African American women may often be stereotyped as uneducated, loud, or improper. Through racialization, if a woman of African descent immigrated to the U.S people will attribute those same stereotypes to her because through a racial lens, she fits the African American woman category. Therefore, those same stereotypes will be applied to her as well. Racialization combined with gender can also be seen through the actions of the person that is racializing the other. Racialization and incarceration Coming to fruition in the 1980s, the United States began to enact extensive legal reforms that worked to create a more punitive society. These reforms include mandatory minimum sentences, trying juveniles as adults, three strikes and you’re out laws, truth in sentencing practices, and many other policies and practices which served to increase reliance on imprisonment in response to crime. As a result, U.S. society has been pegged with a “mass incarceration” structure. A recent report has concluded that nearly 1 in 100 U.S. adults are incarcerated and nearly 7.3 million Americans are either in prison or under parole. Although these reforms were intended to apply to all citizens regardless of race, this has not proven to be the reality. Statistically, these punitive reforms have disproportionately impacted African Americans. Specifically, those who are uneducated and/or live in low-income areas. Some have renamed the emergence of the “mass incarceration” society as rather the emergence of “racialized mass incarceration.” The numbers are much more alarming for African Americans behind bars; nearly 1 in 15 African Americans are incarcerated and more narrowly 1 in 9 African American men are incarcerated. These numbers point to an obvious discrimination towards blacks in the U.S. criminal justice system. One clear reason for these disproportionate imprisonment rate can be tied to poverty and social structures. In particular, a pronounced weak attachment to labor among many working-age adults in black communities has fostered a common experience of poverty and economic hardship. Ultimately this has served to create social spaces where bonds of family and community begin to fray and fall apart. These types of environments have created higher levels of juvenile crime, drug use, and even violent and gang-oriented crimes. Although white Americans too have a history of living in poverty, the average national rate of family disruption and poverty among blacks is two to four times higher than among whites. Furthermore, another reason for the United