Sacrifice, Race, and Indifference
This chapter describes four social crises either generated or exacerbated by the neoliberal revolution: environmental destruction, slum proliferation, mass incarceration, and mass deportation. Damage wrought to the planet has become supercharged under neoliberalism’s encasement of the global economy against demands that could be made in favor of the health of the globe. The neoliberal era has also witnessed the mass movement of people into urban slums, where slumdwellers are sacrificable to the needs of an increasingly urban world economy, and given neoliberal programs of cutting social welfare, they cannot make viable demands on the urban economy, either. Racial neoliberalism strategically deploys discourses and practices like colorblindness, securitization, and privatization to exploit and profit from the punishment of communities of color. Mass incarceration and mass deportation are prime examples. Neoliberalism generates a culture of indifference to the sacrifices it makes, and Pope Francis’s theological idea of corruption deepens analysis of this.