A powerful exposé of the American public education system's indifference toward marginalized children and the "slow violence" that fashions schools into hostile work and learning environments. Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard 's 2024 Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize.
Advance Praise: "In Slow Violence, Ranita Ray manages to artfully and intellectually destroy the casual deployment of classroom "microaggressions" and "benevolent racism" opting instead to situate the brutality of our classrooms as slow, absolutely destructive violence. The book is a blending of what's possible when tenacious genius cultural workers take our educational past and future seriously." --Kiese Laymon, Author of Heavy: An American Memoir
"At a moment when diversity, equity and inclusion are under attack and re-segregation is underway in American institutions, Ranita Ray’s urgently needed book critically examines an overworked, majority white teaching force from a rarely heard perspective: that of the majority non-white school children who fill America's (sometimes windowless) classrooms. With pathos, care, and the righteous fury its subject deserves, Slow Violence will move readers to tears and, hopefully, to action." --Steven W. Thrasher, author, The Viral Underclass and former education reporter for the Village Voice
"A beautiful and aching book—at once a careful meditation on the hope we find in the eyes of our nation’s most vulnerable children, and a searing indictment of our failure to recognize their humanity...Ray shows us, in masterful strokes and through the eyes of children she followed, that teaching is a job, and that teachers are people who bring their gifts and biases into the classroom. [It] will change how you think about education." --Reuben Jonathan Miller, author of Halfway Home
"Gripping and powerful...Ray's clear-eyed and full-hearted analysis shows how the precarity of public education—particularly in communities marginalized by systemic racism and economic injustice—can push teachers to punch down on kids and parents who are even more powerless than they are.” --Jessica Calarco, author of Holding It Together
Winner. 2020 Pacific Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarship Award.
Honorable Mention. 2019. ASA Race, Gender, and Class Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award.
Finalist. 2020. ASA Sociology of Education Bourdieu Best Book Award.
Selected for Author Meets Critics. American Sociological Association (2019) & The American Society of Criminology (2018).
Reviewed in American Journal of Sociology, Contemporary Sociology, Journal of Family Theory & Review, Children's Geographies, Anthropology & Education Quarterly.
"A rich, vivid ethnographic account of the barriers young people from a low-income community face; excellent for teaching. Highly recommended."—Annette Lareau, author of Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
"This ethnography of the cruel illusion of upward mobility in the context of growing social inequality in America follows marginalized black and Latino youth who are 'playing by the rules.' They avoid drugs, gangs, and teenage parenthood and even apply to college, only to find themselves putting in 'mad hours' at underpaid, insecure, dead-end service sector jobs, scrambling to survive. The contemporary lie of the American dream comes alive in the everyday struggles and splintering hopes of the youths before they even have a chance to transition into adulthood."—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and coauthor of Righteous Dopefiend
"In a sobering and heart-wrenching account, Ranita Ray brilliantly captures the uncertainty and disappointment that prevail in the lives of marginal minority young people. Despite having high ambitions and work ethic – despite internalizing the individualist American success narrative – they suffer dearly and misrecognize the structural barriers that block their upward mobility. Ray masterfully documents their trials and tribulations through weaving family dynamics, school conditions, menial labor, romance, hunger – and more. This powerful book is a must read for anyone wanting an update on the state of young people stuck in the deep mud that is the American class system."—Randol Contreras, author of The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream
"Ray uses . . . details to reveal how deeply life is colored by poverty and how desperately these young people want to believe they can succeed."--American Journal of Sociology
"Ray provides a refreshing analysis of the challenges facing economically marginalized youth of color. . . . The Making of a Teenage Service Class has significant implications for family scholars, practitioners, and educators. It reminds family scholars and practitioners to pay attention to the intricacy of family dynamics and the importance of not assuming that everyone in a family shares the same experiences, has the same needs or interests, or responds the same way in the face of poverty."--Journal of Family Theory and Review
"Ray's engaging ethnography, filled with full-figured characters wearing colorful nail polish, inspires us to imagine a more just world where dreams are not just ideologically encouraged but structurally supported"--Contemporary Sociology
