Crook County

Chapter 2 focuses on the connection between immorality and criminality. It begins with the story of an elderly Black woman being sentenced for killing her husband. The sobbing woman explains that she was abused and that she hadn’t meant to kill her husband. The judge not only berates her for wasting the court’s time, but also degrades her character. This anecdote exemplifies the racial degradation ceremony, a term sociologists use to describe the “ritual destruction of a person being denounced” (52). Gonzalez Van Cleve explains that the racial degradation ceremony transforms social actors by diminishing their social status until they are separated from their social group. These marginalized actors are then publicly denounced, as the elderly woman in Gonzalez Van Cleve’s opening anecdote. The judge’s focus on the woman’s immorality, central to the operation of colorblind racism, justified her denigration by presenting her as deserving of punishment.

Gonzalez Van Cleve then explains that professionals at the Cook County courthouse classify defendants as mopes or monsters. Mopes are lazy, incompetent, and unmotivated people who deserve punishment and humiliation. Mopes make up most of the system and take time and resources away from prosecuting monsters.