With so much social unrest at this time it is not hard to see that there would be tremendous feelings of disenfranchisement among the black communities. It was hard for blacks to find secure jobs at this time, so many blacks found other methods and means of procuring income such as the underground economy. This trend was very visible to the public, which spawned many theories, such as the popular "Riff-Raff" theory. This theory took into account the fact that many black men were not working or seemed not to be working in the mainstream economy, thus meaning that those who were not working in the mainstream economy or those who didn't seem to be working were more likely to take part in criminal behaviors. We must consider this historical context of the film because it leads to one of C. Wright Mills" questions, "What is the structure of this particular society?" In this class we have talked about three forms of stratification when thinking about crime and victimization and in this film ethnic and class stratifications are operational. In the section of the film where Lesra is reading Carters book and Carter is describing his first run-in with the law as a child, we can find examples of ethnic and class stratifications. When a young Rubin Carter is brought in on charges of stabbing a man, the first officer says that it's a juvenile case and then the detective comes in and says "It's a nigger with a knife" implying that it doesn't matter whether or not he is a juvenile but the fact that he is black and prone to be a criminal due to his race. When a young Carter is asked if he knows whom he stabbed the detective tells him that the man he stabbed was an important man in the community. The detective failed to see that the man that had been stabbed was a child molester and based on the elevated class status of that man, the poor, young, black child must be the perpetrator. These are the first two indications of ethnic and class stratification in the film.
