1. Repressive State Apparatus is a force that is used to control citizens. Althusser calls it “repressive” because it mainly uses repression to control citizens. An example of Repressive State Apparatus is imprisonment, cops, court, and the military. 

2. Ideological State Apparatus is used to convey the values and beliefs of the state. It uses schools, media, and churches to do this.  

3. Repressive state apparatuses uses physical force to put fear into citizens and get them on the state’s side. Ideological state apparatuses uses schools, churches, and media to influence citizens without physical force. 

4. Example of ideological state apparatus

1. I think ideology is ones beliefs, ideas, values, and opinions regarding social or political issues. I think people’s ideology affects how they live their lives and how they see themselves and others. I think people use their ideology to decide how they would prefer society to be like and to decide how they will conform to society. An example of an ideology is socialism. People who are socialists believe that everything in society should be collectively decided by citizens. 

 
2. The difference between conservative and liberal ideology is that liberal ideology is usually focused on human rights/equality while conservative ideology is usually about the economy and the military/guns or national defense. Conservatives are usually more traditional and want to keep the government how it was in the past and liberals want the government to change and be updated. An example of conservative ideology is that conservatives believe in lower taxes. An example of liberal ideology is that liberals believe that women should be allowed to have abortions. 

 
3. Althusser’s definition of ideology is that ideology is used to organize society. 

1. Southern racist politicians chose to frame their defense of racial segregation through the language of “law and order” to paint black people as criminals. In the reading it states, “Support of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely ‘rewarding lawbreakers.’” Southern conservatives were literally calling all black people criminals because they connected crime rates and the Civil Rights Movement and claimed the CRM was the cause of rising crime rates. Their choice of words helped them gain the support of poor white people, which would lead to the republicans forming a “new majority”. 

2. I believe that the Southern Strategy is still influencing American politics. I believe Trump has used the Southern Strategy plenty of times but one specific example is when a group of white supremacists, aka Proud Boys, were getting violent at protests for BLM. When Trump was asked to condemn the Proud Boys he said, “stand back and stand by”. When someone tells you to “stand by” it basically means “don’t do anything but be ready”, which leads me to believe that he was in support of the white supremacist group. 

1. M. Alexander claims that the main explanation of why so many people are sent to jail in the U.S. today is deeply wrong because the government claims it’s because of they were trying to fight the crisis caused by crack cocaine. But, Ronald Regan declared the War on Drugs in 1982, 3 years before crack was an issue. In 1985, after Regan declared the War on Drugs, is when crack started to spread throughout poor black neighborhoods. In the reading 2.1, it states, “Almost overnight, the media was saturated with images of black ‘crack whores’, ‘crack dealers’, and ‘crack babies’- images that seemed to confirm the worst negative racial stereotypes.” This presents the argument that the War on Drugs could possibly be an attempt to make black people look like criminals/look bad or to reinforce stereotypes. After the War on Drugs was declared, arrests skyrocketed, especially with people of color. 
 
2. Racial disparities in the rates of incarceration “cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes” because black men are admitted to prison more than white men. Even though according to the reading, studies have been done that “show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates”. The studies also showed that “white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. This shows that the rates of drug crimes are inaccurate because people of color are arrested more than white people even though both use and sell drugs at the same rate. 
 
3. I think the phrase “the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history.” means that incarceration is a form of social control where the government can “put minorities in their place”. I think incarceration is another way for the government to target minorities just like slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow.