In his article Wacquant explores the symbiosis between ghetto and prison due to the rise of black populations in prisons
in U.S. and argues that American ghettos and prisons are interconnected in the sense that they serve to the same purpose of segregating and controlling the poor. He further argues that it is not only the case of contemporary era, but also a consciously followed pathway formed by the several peculiar institutions, including slavery, Jim Crow laws, and ghettos, those operated to define, confine and control African-Americans. The penal system and the social organization of law cannot be considered separate from the growing labor-market, urban change and developing of social-welfare states. He basically argues that there is the obvious institutionalization of racism with penal system in U.S. which serves to social stratification, urban change and cultural demarcation in its own right, reproducing the isolation of dispossessed groups, leaving them as urban ills. Thus, it gives way to the fourth peculiar institution for the containment of African-Americans, with the hyper ghetto and prison.Racism regarded as a type of
multiculturalism, and can be problematic that it means; a person’s race determines his identity. The term is sometimes used as a primary determinant of human capacities, which in turn results with
different treatments to people regarding their ascribed races, as in Hitler’s Germany. Racism is often used in political attitudes of some states which have tendencies towards oppression to those whom are referred as “the others”, the minority groups, and foreigners, in other words, those who are discriminated in the societal level. U.S. perception of black people can be considered in this framework since Wacquant harshly criticizes American society and penalty system as being ethnocentric, which means; one culture is superior to another, having the right to impose the tenants of one's own culture onto another culture. Wacquant problematizes the prison and hyper ghetto as a continuum of peculiar institutions, which serves for the containment of African-Americans leading to remaking of race and redefinition of citizenry. The symbiosis between the ghetto and prison is relevant in the sense that both are the instruments of closure and control in which the rest of the society considers these people as “the others” resulting from xenophobia. Criminals as different and dangerous from the mainstream “morally true” society, and black people living in ghettos are seen as different and not like “them” who are constituted from white mainstream society again. The discriminatory attitude towards “the other” derives from the belief that they are different from us, they are not like us. For everyone, there exist “the others” and, this “them” and “us” distinction starts the process. “The other” defines what we are not, which in turn leads to the fear of being like “them”.