Attend a social justice campus event and write a 600 word (double-spaced) evaluation of your experience at the event and its connections to our course themes. Remember that the audience is friends who are not in this class and who have not attended the event. In your evaluation, identify:

·       the main themes of the event

·       who was in the audience and how they responded

·       your experience of being in the audience and how you responded personally and/or politically, and connections to at least 2 ideas presented in our course readings, referring to specific page numbers. 

Excellent (A)	Strong (B)	Adequate (C )	Inadequate (D-F)
Description of main themes 4 points	Main themes are vividly described using language accessible to a friend not present at the event	Main themes are competently described using language that is familiar to the course but not to a friend	Main themes are included but with little additional detail. Some language from the course and/or accessible to friends is present but not fully used	Description of main themes are not accessible, are difficult to understand, or are not present
Assessment of audience and audience response 2 points	Audience is described in vivid detail and audience response supported by details that help friend not present at the event understand both response and motivation for the response.	Audience is described and some illustration of audience is included. Response and some motivation for response is included.	Audience is described and response summarized.	Audience is summarized but not described. Response is summarized, but not described. OR Description of audience or response is not included.
Description of writer’s experience as an audience member, including personal and/or political response 4 points	Description of the writer’s experience is vividly described and supported with evidence from the event. Connections to personal and/or political response are thorough and illustrated with detail that make connections easy to understand for a reader.	Description of the writer’s experience is described and illustrated with some evidence. Connections to personal and/or political responses are present and supported with some illustrations.	Description of the writer’s experience is included, and connections to personal and/or political responses are made but not illustrated.	Description of the writer’s response is alluded to but not detailed. Connections to personal and/or political responses are unclear or not present.
Connections to course readings 5 points	Connections between the event, the writer’s experience, and 2 course readings are carefully explained so that the reader understands both the main themes of the event and the readings.	Connections between the event, the writer’s experience, and 2 course readings are included and explained in some detail.	Connections between the event, the writer’s experience, and 2 course readings are included, but connections are not easily accessible to a reader.	Connections between the event, the writer’s experience, and course readings are not thorough or are inaccessible to a reader OR Some element of this requirement is absent.

Assignment #2: Write an evaluation of a campus event focused on or related to social justice (600 words, double-spaced, worth 15 points).

Due by Friday of week 8 at 11:55pm.

Post your submission to GauchoSpace in the folder under Femst 20 Week 8.

Audience: Friends who are not in this class

Why is this a useful Femst 20 assignment? 

This assignment helps you to make connections between what we’re studying in FemSt 20 and events outside of the classroom. It also will help you develop your ability to choose among different forms and styles of writing.

Assignment:

Attend a social justice campus event and write a 600 word evaluation of your experience at the event and its connections to our course themes. Remember that the audience is friends who are not in this class and who have not attended the event. In your evaluation, identify:

the main themes of the event

who was in the audience and how they responded

your experience of being in the audience and how you responded personally and/or politically, and connections to at least 2 ideas presented in our course readings, referring to specific page numbers. 

Critical Resistance-Incite! Statement on Gender Violence And the Prison-Industrial
Complex
Author(s):

Critical Resistance and Incite!

Source: Social Justice, Vol. 30, No. 3 (93), The Intersection of Ideologies of Violence (2003),
pp. 141-150
Published by: Social Justice/Global Options
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768215
Accessed: 24-01-2020 00:35 UTC

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Critical Resistance-Incite!
Statement on Gender Violence
And the Prison-Industrial Complex

Critical Resistance and Incite!

WE CALL ON SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS TO DEVELOP STRATEGIES AND ANALY?

SIS that address both state and interpersonal violence, particularly
violence against women.1 Currently, activists/movements that address

state violence (such as anti-prison, anti-police brutality groups) often work in
isolation from activists/movements that address domestic and sexual violence.

The result is that women of color, who suffer disproportionately from both state
and interpersonal violence, have become marginalized within these

movements.

It is critical for us to develop responses to gender violence that do not depend on
a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic criminal justice system. It is also
important that we develop strategies that challenge the criminal justice system,

while providing safety for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. To live
violence-free lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence
that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.

The anti-violence movement has been critically important in breaking the
silence around violence against women and providing much-needed services to
survivors. However, the mainstream anti-violence movement has increasingly
relied on the criminal justice system as the front-line approach toward ending
violence against women of color. It is important to assess the impact of this
strategy.

(1) Law enforcement approaches to violence against women may deter some
acts of violence in the short term. However, as an overall strategy for ending
violence, criminalization has not worked. In fact, mandatory arrest laws for
domestic violence have led to decreases in the number of battered women who kill

their partners in self-defense, but they have not led to a decrease in the number of

batterers who kill their partners.2 Thus, the law protects batterers more than it
protects survivors.

(2) The criminalization approach has also brought many women into conflict
with the law, particularly women of color, poor women, lesbians, sex workers,

Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence are U.S .-based organizations.
To sign on to the Critical Resistance-Incite statement as an organization or individual, e-mail
incite_national@yahoo.com or phone (415) 553-3837.

Social Justice Vol. 30, No. 3 (2003) 141

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142 Critical Resistance and Incite!

immigrant women, women with disabilities, and other marginalized women. For
instance, under mandatory arrest laws, there have been numerous occasions in
which police officers called to domestic incidents have arrested the woman being
battered.3 Many undocumented women have reported cases of sexual and domes?
tic violence, only to find themselves deported.4 A tough law-and-order agenda also
leads to long punitive sentences for women convicted of killing their batterers.5
Finally, when public funding is channeled into policing and prisons, budget cuts
for social programs, including women’s shelters, welfare, and public housing, are
the inevitable side effect.6 These cutbacks leave women less able to escape violent
relationships.

(3) Prisons don’t work. Despite an exponential increase in the number of men
in prisons, women are not any safer and the rates of sexual assault and domestic
violence have not decreased.7 In calling for greater police responses to, and
harsher sentences for, perpetrators of gender violence, the anti-violence move?
ment has fueled the proliferation of prisons. The U.S. now locks up more people
per capita than does any other country.8 During the past 15 years, the number of
women in prison, especially women of color, has skyrocketed.9 Prisons also inflict
violence on the growing numbers of women behind bars. Slashing, suicide, the
proliferation of HIV, strip searches, medical neglect, and rape of prisoners has
largely been ignored by anti-violence activists.10 The criminal justice system, an
institution of violence, domination, and control, has increased the level of violence

in society.
(4) Reliance on state funding to support anti-violence programs has increased

the professionalization of the anti-violence movement and alienated it from its
community-organizing, social justice roots.11 Such reliance has isolated the anti
violence movement from other social justice movements that seek to eradicate
state violence, such that it acts in conflict rather than in collaboration with these

movements.

(5) Reliance on the criminal justice system has taken power away from
women’s ability to organize collectively to stop violence and has invested this
power within the state. The result is that women who seek redress in the criminal
justice system feel disempowered and alienated.12 It has also promoted an
individualistic approach toward ending violence, such that the only way people
think they can intervene to stop violence is to call the police. This reliance has
shifted our focus away from developing ways communities can collectively
respond to violence.

In recent years, the mainstream anti-prison movement has called attention to
the negative impact of criminalization and to the build-up of the prison-industrial
complex. Because activists seeking to reverse the tide of mass incarceration and
criminalization of poor communities and communities of color have not consis?
tently made gender and sexuality central to their analysis or organizing, they have
not always responded adequately to the needs of survivors of domestic and sexual

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Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 143

violence. We need to analyze the limitations of anti-prison and police accountabil?
ity activism.

(1) Prison and police accountability activists have generally organized around
and conceptualized men of color as the primary victims of state violence. Female
prisoners and victims of police brutality have been made invisible by a focus on
the war on our brothers and sons. This emphasis fails to consider that state violence
affects women as severely as it does men.13 The plight of women who are raped
by INS officers or prison guards, for instance, has not received sufficient attention.

In addition, women carry the burden of caring for extended family when family
and community members are criminalized and warehoused.14 Several organiza?
tions have been established to advocate for women prisoners;15 however, these
groups have frequently been marginalized within the mainstream anti-prison
movement.

(2) The anti-prison movement has not addressed strategies for addressing the
rampant forms of violence women face in their everyday lives, including street
harassment, sexual harassment at work, rape, and intimate partner abuse. Until
these strategies are developed, many women will feel shortchanged by the

movement. In addition, the anti-prison movement’s failure to seek alliances with
the anti-violence movement has sent the message that it is possible to liberate
communities without guaranteeing the well-being and safety of women.

(3) The anti-prison movement has failed to sufficiently organize around the
forms of state violence faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Two-spirited, and
Intersex (LGBTTI) communities. LGBTTI street youth and trans people in general
are particularly vulnerable to police brutality and criminalization.16 LGBTTI prison?
ers are denied basic human rights such as family visits from same-sex partners, and
same-sex consensual relationships in prison are policed and punished.17

(4) Although prison abolitionists have correctly noted that rapists and serial
murderers comprise a small percentage of the prison population, we have not
answered the question of how these cases should be addressed.18 Many anti
violence activists interpret this inability to answer the question as a lack of concern
for the safety of women.

(5) The various alternatives to incarceration developed by anti-prison activists
have generally failed to provide a sufficient mechanism for safety and accountabil?
ity for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. These alternatives often rely on
a romanticized notion of communities, which have yet to demonstrate their
commitment and ability to keep women and children safe or to seriously address
the sexism and homophobia that is deeply embedded within them.19

We call on social justice movements concerned with ending violence in all its
forms to:

(1) Develop community-based responses to violence that do not rely on the
criminal justice system and that have mechanisms to ensure safety and account

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144 Critical Resistance and Incite!

ability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Transformative practices
emerging from local communities should be documented and disseminated to
promote collective responses to violence.

(2) Critically assess the impact of state funding on social justice organizations
and develop alternative fundraising strategies to support these organizations.
Develop collective fundraising and organizing strategies for anti-prison and anti
violence organizations. Develop strategies and analysis that specifically target
state forms of sexual violence.

(3) Make connections between interpersonal violence, the violence inflicted
by domestic state institutions (such as prisons, detention centers, mental hospitals,
and child protective services), and international violence (such as war, military
base prostitution, and nuclear testing).

(4) Develop analyses and strategies to end violence that do not isolate acts of
state or individual violence from their larger contexts. These strategies must
address how entire communities of all genders are affected in multiple ways by
state violence and interpersonal gender violence. Battered women prisoners
represent an intersection of state and interpersonal violence and as such provide
and opportunity for both movements to build coalitions and joint struggles.

(5) Place poor and working-class women of color at the center of their analysis,
organizing practices, and leadership development. Recognize the role of eco?
nomic oppression, welfare “reform,” and attacks on women workers’ rights in
increasing women’s vulnerability to all forms of violence; locate anti-violence and
anti-prison activism alongside efforts to transform the capitalist economic system.

(6) Center stories of state violence committed against women of color in our
organizing efforts.

(7) Oppose legislative change that promotes prison expansion or criminalization
of poor communities and communities of color, and thus state violence against
women of color, even if these changes also incorporate measures to support
victims of interpersonal gender violence.

(8) Promote holistic political education at the everyday level within our
communities. Specifically, show how sexual violence helps to reproduce the
colonial, racist, capitalist, heterosexist, and patriarchal society in which we live,
as well as how state violence produces interpersonal violence within communities.

(9) Develop strategies for mobilizing against sexism and homophobia within
our communities to keep women safe.

(10) Challenge men of color and all men in social justice movements to take
particular responsibility to address and organize around gender violence in their
communities as a primary strategy for addressing violence and colonialism. We
challenge men to address how their own histories of victimization have hindered
their ability to establish gender justice in their communities.

(11) Link struggles for personal transformation and healing with struggles for
social justice.

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Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 145

We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but also create a
society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and passionate reciproc?
ity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat
of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to guaranteeing the
survival and care of all peoples.

Signatures:

Organizations

American Friends Service Committee, Arab Women’s Solidarity Association,
North America Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, San Francisco Chapter,
Arizona Prison Moratorium Coalition, Asian Women’s Shelter, Audre Lorde
Project, Black Radical Congress, California Coalition for Women Prisoners,
Center for Human Rights Education, Center for Immigrant Families, Center for
Law and Justice, Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle East, Colorado

Progressive Alliance, Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (New York),
Communities Against Rape and Abuse (Seattle), Direct Action Against Refugee
Exploitation (Vancouver), East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women’s Network Against
Militarism, Institute of Lesbian Studies, Justice Now, Korean American Coalition
to End Domestic Abuse, Lavender Youth Recreation & Information Center (San

Francisco), Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Minnesota Black Political
Action Committee, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National
Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, National Network for Immigrant and Refu?
gee Rights, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (Seattle), Pennsylvania Lesbian
and Gay Task Force, Prison Activist Resource Center, Project South San Fran?
cisco, Women Against Rape, Shimtuh Korean Domestic Violence Program, Sista
II Sista, Southwest Youth Collaborative (Chicago), Spear and Shield Publications,
Chicago, Women of All Red Nations, Women of Color Resource Center, and
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (Bronx)

Individuals

Debra M. Akuna, Gigi Alexander, Jiro Arase, Helen Arnold, Office of Sexual
Misconduct, Prevention & Education, Columbia University, Molefe Asante,
Temple University, Rjoya K. Atu, Karen Baker, National Sexual Violence
Resource Center, Rachel Baum, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects,
Elham Bayour, Women’s Empowerment Project (Gaza, Palestine), Zoe Abigail
Bermet, Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, Dine’ Nation, First Nations North & South,
Diana Block, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Marilyn Buck, Political
Prisoner, Lee Carroll, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Emma
Catague, API Women & Safety Center, Ann Caton, Young Women United,
Mariama Changamire, Department of Communication, Univ. of Massachusetts,
Amherst, Eunice Cho, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights,

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146 Critical Resistance and Incite!

Sunjung Cho, KACEDA and Asian Community Mental Health Services, Chris?
tina Chu, Dorie D. Ciskowsky, Cori Couture, BAMM, Kimberle Crenshaw,
UCLA Law School, Gwen D’Arcangelis, Shamita Das Dasgupta, Manavi, Inc.,
Angela Y. Davis, University of California ? Santa Cruz, Jason Durr, University
of Hawaii School of Social Work, Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylva?
nia, Siobhan Edmondson, Michelle Erai, Santa Cruz Commission for the Preven?
tion of Violence Against Women, Samantha Francois, Edna Frantela, National
Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Loretta Frederick, Battered Women’s
Justice Project, Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights, Dionne Grigsby, University of Hawaii Outreach College, Lara K. Grimm,
Sarah Hoagland, Institute of Lesbian Studies, Elizabeth Harmuth, Prison Activist
Resource Center, Katayoun Issari, Family Peace Center (Hawaii), Desa Jacobsson,
Anti-Violence Activist (Alaska), Joy James, Brown University, Leialoha Jenkins,
Jamie Jimenez, Northwestern Sexual Assault Education Prevention Program,
Dorothea Kaapana, Isabel Kang, Dorean American Coalition for Ending Domes?
tic Abuse, Valli Kanuha, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence,

Mimi Kim, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, Erl Kimmich,
Paul Kivel, Violence Prevention Educator, M. Carmen Lane, Anti-violence
activist, In Hui Lee, KACEDA, Meejeon Lee, Shimtuh & KACEDA, Beckie

Masaki, Asian Women’s Shelter, Ann Rhee Menzie, Shimtuh & KACEDA, Sarah
Kim-Merchant, KACEDA, Patricia Manning, Alternatives to Violence Project
(AVP) volunteer, Kristin Millikan, Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s

Network, Steven Morozumi, Programs Adviser, Univ. of Oregon Multicultural
Center, Soniya Munshi, Manavi, Sylvia Nam, KACEDA & KCCEB (Korean
Community Center of the East Bay), Stormy Ogden, American Indian Movement,
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Mills College, Angela Naomi Paik, Ellen Pence, Praxis,
Karen Porter, Trity Pourbahrami, University of Hawaii, Laura Pulido, University
of Southern California, Bernadette Ramog, Matt Remle, Center for Community
Justice, Monique Rhodes, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, Lisa
Richardson, Beth Richie, African American Institute on Domestic Violence,
David Rider, Men Can Stop Rape, Loretta Rivera, Alissa Rojers, Clarissa Rojas,
Latino Alianza Against Domestic Violence, Paula Rojas, Refugio/Refuge (New
York), Tricia Rose, University of California ? Santa Cruz, Katheryn Russell
Brown, University of Maryland, Ann Russo, Women’s Studies Program, DePaul
University, Anuradha Sharma, Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic
Violence, David Thibault Rodriguez, South West Youth Collaborative, Roxanna
San Miguel, Karen Shain, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Proshat
Shekarloo, Oakland, Anita Sinha, attorney ? Northwest Immigrant Rights
Project, Wendy Simonetti, Barbara Smith, founder, Kitchen Table Press, Matthea
Little Smith, Natalie Sokoloff, John Jay College of Criminal Justice ? CUNY,
Nan Stoops, Theresa Tevaga, Kabzuag Vaj, Hmong American Women Associa?
tion, Cornel West, Janelle White, Leanne Knot, Violence Against Women

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Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 147

Consortium, Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, Sherry Wilson, Women
of All Red Nations, Glenn Wong, Yon Soon Yoon, KACEDA, Mieko Yoshihama,
University of Michigan School of Social Work, Tukufu Zuberi, Center for
Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

NOTES

1. Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence are U.S.-based organiza?
tions that participate in transnational networks and alliances. Although many of the critiques of the anti

violence and anti-prison movements in the statement may be relevant to non-U.S. contexts, the authors
do not make any claims of universality and recognize that movements in other countries have
developed from distinct histories and political contexts.

2. In a 20-year study of 48 cities, Dugan et al. (2003) found that greater access to criminal legal
remedies for women led to fewer men being killed by their wives, since women who might otherwise
have killed to escape violence were offered alternatives. However, women receiving legal support were

no less likely to be killed by their intimate partners, and were exposed to additional retaliatory violence.
3. See McMahon (2003), Osthoff (2002), and Miller (2001). Noting that in some cities, over

20% of those arrested for domestic violence are women, Miller concludes: “An arrest policy intended
to protect battered women as victims is being misapplied and used against them. Battered women have
become female offenders.”

4. Women’s dependent or undocumented status is often manipulated by batterers, who use the
threat of deportation as part of a matrix of domination and control. Although the Violence Against

Women Act (VAWA, 1994; 2000) introduced visas for battered immigrant women, many women do
not know about the act’s provisions or are unable to meet evidentiary requirements. Since the Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act made domestic violence grounds for depor?
tation, women may also be reluctant to subject a legal permanent resident spouse to potential
deportation proceedings by reporting him to the police. In addition, women arrested under mandatory
arrest laws could themselves face deportation. See Raj and Silverman (2002) and Jang et al. (1997).

5. For example, former California Governor Grey Davis, whose tough law-and-order platform
included a promise that no one convicted of murder would go free, rejected numerous parole board
recommendations on behalf of battered women incarcerated for killing in self-defense (Vesely, 2002).
For further information and testimonies of incarcerated survivors of domestic violence, see

www.freebatteredwomen.org.
6. Christian Parenti (1999) documents the shift in government spending from welfare, educa?

tion, and social provision to prisons and policing.
7. The U.S. prison and jail population grew from 270,000 in 1975 to two million in 2001 as

legislators pushed “tough on crime” policies such as mandatory minimums, three strikes and you’re
out, and truth in sentencing (Tonry, 2001:17). Over 90% of these prisoners are men, and approximately

50% are black men. Despite claims that locking more people away would lead to a dramatic decrease
in crime, reported violent crimes against women have remained relatively constant since annual
victimization surveys were initiated in 1973 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994).

8. In 2001, the U.S., with 686 prisoners per 100,000 residents, surpassed the incarceration rate
of gulag-ridden Russia. The U.S. dwarfs the incarceration rate of Western European nations like
Finland and Denmark, which incarcerate only 59 people out of every 100,000 (Home Office
Development and Statistics Directorate, 2003).

9. The rate of increase of women’s imprisonment in the U.S. has exceeded that of men. In 1970,
there were 5,600 women in federal and state prisons; by 1996, there were 75,000 (Currie, 1998).

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148 Critical Resistance and Incite!

10. Amnesty International’s investigation of women’s prisons in the U.S. revealed countless
cases of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. In one case, the Federal Bureau of Prisons paid
$500,000 to settle a lawsuit by three black women who were sexually assaulted when guards took
money from male prisoners in exchange for taking them to the women’s cells; prisoners in Arizona
were subjected to rape, sexual fondling, and genital touching during searches, as well as to constant
prurient viewing when using the shower and toilet; women at Valley State Prison, California, were
treated as a “private harem to sexually abuse and harass”; in numerous cases, women were kept in
restraints while seriously ill, dying, or in labor and women under maximum-security conditions were
kept in isolation and sensory deprivation for long periods (Amnesty International, 1999).

11. See Smith (2000-2001).
12. May Koss (2000) argues that the adversarial justice system traumatizes survivors of domestic

violence. For a first-person account of a rape survivor’s fight to hold the police accountable, see Doe
(2003). Jane Doe was raped by the Toronto “Balcony rapist” after police used women in her
neighborhood as “bait.”

13. For a comprehensive account of state violence against women in the U.S., see Bhattacharjee
(2001).

14. Added burdens on women when a loved one is incarcerated include dealing with the arrest
and trials of family members, expensive visits and phone calls from correctional facilities, and meeting
disruptive parole requirements (Richie, 2002).

15. In the U.S., see Justice Now; Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, at http://
prisonerswithchildren.org; Free Battered Women, at www.freebatteredwomen.org; California Coali?
tion for Women Prisoners, at http://womenprisoners.org; and Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcer?
ated Mothers, at www.c-l-a-i-m-.org. In the U.K., see Women in Prison, at www.womeninprison.org;
and Justice for Women, at www.jfw.org.uk. In Canada, see the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry
Associations, at www.elizabethfry.ca/caefs_e.htm.

16. According to transgender activists in the Bay Area, the police are responsible for approxi?
mately 50% of all trans abuse cases. The Transaction hotline regularly receives reports from TG/TS
survivors of police violence who have been forced to strip to “verify gender,” or subjected to demands
for sex from undercover police officers (San Francisco Examiner, 2002; Bay Area Reporter, 1999).

17. See Faith (1993: 211-223).
18. The response of abolitionists Thomas and Boehlfeld (1993) to the question of what to do about

Henry, a violent rapist, is an example of this problem. The authors conclude that this is the wrong
question since it focuses attention on a small and anomalous subsection of the prison population and
detracts from a broader abolitionist vision.

19. Alternatives to the traditional justice system such as Sentencing Circles are particularly
developed in Canada and Australia, where they have been developed in partnership with indigenous
communities. However, native women have been critical of these approaches, arguing that they fail to

address the deep-rooted sexism and misogyny engendered by experiences of colonization and may
revictimize women (Monture-Angus, 2000). See also Hudson (2002).

REFERENCES

Amnesty International
1999 Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in

Custody. New York.
Bay Area Reporter

1999 “Another Transgender Murder.” April 8: 29,14.

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Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 149

Bhattacharjee, Annanya
2001 Women of Color and the Violence of Law Enforcement. Philadelphia:

American Friends Service Committee and Committee on Women, Population,
and the Environment.

Bramman, Donald
2002 “Families and Incarceration.” Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (eds.),

Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment.
New York: The New Press.

Bureau of Justice Statistics

1994 National Crime Victimization Survey Report: “Violence Against Women.”
NCJ 145325.

Chesney-Lind, Meda
2002 Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment,

New York: The New Press.
Critical Resistance

2002 What Is Abolition ? At www.criticalresistance.org.
Currie, Elliott

1998 Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Henry Holt.
Doe, Jane

2003 The Story of Jane Doe: A Book About Rape. New York: Random House.
Dugan, Laura, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld

2003 “Exposure Reduction or Retaliation? The Effects of Domestic Violence
Resources on Intimate-Partner Homicide.” Law & Society Review 37:1.

Faith, Karlene
1993 Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and Resistance. Vancouver: Press

Gang Publishers.
Home Office Development and Statistics Directorate

2003 World Prison Population List. Online at: www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/
rl88 .

Hudson, Barbara
2002 “Restorative Justice and Gendered Violence.” British Journal of Criminology

42,3.
James, Joy

1996 Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Jang, Deena, Len Marin, and Gail Pendleton
1997 Domestic Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities: Assessing the

Rights of Battered Women. Second Edition. San Francisco: Family Violence
Prevention Fund.

Koss, May
2000 “Blame, Shame, and Community: Justice Responses to Violence Against

Women.” American Psychologist 55,11 (November): 1332.
McMahon, Martha

2003 “Making Social Change.” Violence Against Women (January) 9,1: 47-74.
Miller, Susan

2001 “The Paradox of Women Arrested for Domestic Violence.” Violence Against
Women 7,12 (December).

Monture-Angus, Patricia
2000 “The Roles and Responsibilities of Aboriginal Women: Reclaiming Justice.”

Robynne Neugebauer (ed.), Criminal Injustice: Racism in the Criminal Justice
System. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

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• Contents

p. 141
p. 142
p. 143
p. 144
p. 145
p. 146
p. 147
p. 148
p. 149
p. 150

• Issue Table of Contents

Social Justice, Vol. 30, No. 3 (93) (2003) pp. 1-153
Front Matter
Overview: The Intersection Of Ideologies of Violence [pp. 1-3]
Mapping Political Violence in a Globalized World: The Case of Hindu Nationalism [pp. 4-16]
The Imagination to Listen: Reflections on a Decade of Zapatista Struggle [pp. 17-31]
Defending the Pueblo: Indigenous Identity and Struggles for Social Justice in Guatemala, 1970 to 1980 [pp. 32-47]
The Racial Economies of Criminalization, Immigration, And Policing in Italy [pp. 48-62]
Learning to Kill by Proxy: Colombian Paramilitaries and the Legacy of Central American Death Squads, Contras, and Civil Patrols [pp. 63-81]
The False Allure of Security Technologies [pp. 82-93]
In Defense of Good Work: Jobs, Violence, and the Ethical Dimension [pp. 94-107]
Legitimacy and Political Violence: A Habermasian Perspective [pp. 108-126]
“Bowling for Columbine”: Critically Interrogating the Industry of Fear [pp. 127-133]
Toward a Holistic Anti-Violence Agenda: Women of Color as Radical Bridge-Builders [pp. 134-140]
Critical Resistance-Incite! Statement on Gender Violence And the Prison-Industrial Complex [pp. 141-150]
Back Matter

TheCombahee River Collective

Statement
Combahee River Collective

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together
since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of
defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing
political work within our own group and in coalition with other
progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement
of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively
committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class
oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated
analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of
oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates
the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as
the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous
oppressions that all women of color face.

We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the
genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the
specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black
feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black
feminist issues and practice.

1. The genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

Before looking at the recent development of Black feminism we would
like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-
American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and
liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the
American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been
determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual
castes. As Angela Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s
Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black women have always embodied,
if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male

rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their
communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been
Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet
Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church
Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a
shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial
identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political
struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth of
countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our
mothers and sisters.

A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection
with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in
the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been
involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside
reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself
have served to obscure our participation. In 1973, Black feminists,
primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate
Black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist
Organization (NBFO).

Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements
for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and I970s. Many of
us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black nationalism, the
Black Panthers), and all of our lives Were greatly affected and changed
by their ideologies, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their
goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation
movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male
left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike
those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white
men.

There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that
is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal
experiences of individual Black women’s lives. Black feminists and many
more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all

experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day
existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys and
that we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same
breath to be quiet both for the sake of being “ladylike” and to make us
less objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we grew older we
became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men.
However, we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us,
what we knew was really happening.

Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before
becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule,
and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that
we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial
politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow
us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into
our own experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness,
to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our
oppression. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary
economic and political position of Black people. The post World War II
generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of
certain educational and employment options, previously closed
completely to Black people. Although our economic position is still at
the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us
have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education
and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight
our oppression.

A combined anti-racist and anti-sexist position drew us together
initially, and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to
heterosexism and economic oppression under capItalism.

2. What We Believe

Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that
Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity
not as an adjunct to somebody else’s may because of our need as human
persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic,

but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has
ever consIdered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously
for the ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative
stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g. mammy, matriarch,
Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often
murderous, treatment we receive, Indicates how little value has been
placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western
hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us
to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a
healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows
us to continue our struggle and work.

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of
identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most
radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to
working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women
this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore
revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the
political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy
of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and
walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is
enough.

We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in
Black women’s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often
find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because
in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know
that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither
solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by
white men as a weapon of political repression.

Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with
progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that
white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people
necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white
women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their

negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black
men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about
sexism.

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the
destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and
imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe
that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do
the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses.
Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create
these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist
revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will
guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing
an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the
specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the
labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily
viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional
levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are
not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual
oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic
lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it
applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we
know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to
understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the
expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our
consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone
beyond white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the
implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our Black women’s
style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have
experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have
spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential
nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters
has ever been looked at before. No one before has ever examined the
multilayered texture of Black women’s lives. An example of this kind of

revelation/conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the
ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our
peers, particularly Black males. We discovered that all of us, because we
were “smart” had also been considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly.” “Smart-
ugly” crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to
develop our intellects at great cost to our “social” lives. The sanctions In
the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is
comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones
from the educated middle and upper classes.

As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism
because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out
far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women,
and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what
men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how
they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided
notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—
that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of
biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis
upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether Lesbian
separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and
strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any
but the sexual sources of women’s oppression, negating the facts of class
and race.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have
experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We
have found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist
issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black
feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties,
particularly since the white women’s movement continues to be strong
and to grow in many directions. In this section we will discuss some of
the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk
specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective.

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not
just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to
address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual,
heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the
minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone
of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this
presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can
never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black
women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an
early group member once said, “We are all damaged people merely by
virtue of being Black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and
on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change
the condition of all Black women. In “A Black Feminist’s Search for
Sisterhood,” Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:

We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the
moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this
society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would
have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world. [2]

Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black
feminists’ position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic
isolation most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom,
however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women
were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since
our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of
oppression.

Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black
people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions
about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power
relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a
Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s:

We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the
house. He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is
broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of
this information is wiser… After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of
the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home…
Women cannot do the same things as men—they are made by nature to function
differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the
abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, i.e. ability, experience or even
understanding. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and
silver—they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and
women are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a
man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life. [3]

The material conditions of most Black women would hardly lead them
to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent
some stability in their lives. Many Black women have a good
understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday
constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both.

The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative.
They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the
possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs.
They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hardworking
allies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their
habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing Black women.
Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful
deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women’s movement.

Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during
the three-year existence of our group. And every Black woman who
came, came out of a strongly-felt need for some level of possibility that
did not previously exist in her life.

When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first
eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing,
or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of
months of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and

started doing an intense variety of consciousness-raising. The
overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had
finally found each other. Although we were not doing political work as a
group, individuals continued their involvement in Lesbian politics,
sterilization abuse and abortion rights work, Third World Women’s
International Women’s Day activities, and support activity for the trials
of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inéz García. During our first
summer when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us
remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of opening a
refuge for battered women in a Black community. (There was no refuge
in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become an
independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO’s
bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear politIcal focus.

We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom
we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage
us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow
Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of
the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became
more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic
situation and to make our own economic analysis.

In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several
months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which
were first conceptualized as a Lesbian-straight split but which were also
the result of class and political differences. During the summer those of
us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work
and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an
emotional support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the
women who had not wanted to do political work and who also had
voiced disagreements stopped attending of their own accord, we again
looked for a focus. We decided at that time, with the addition of new
members, to become a study group. We had always shared our reading
with each other, and some of us had written papers on Black feminism
for group discussion a few months before this decision was made. We
began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the

possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. We had a retreat in
the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and
working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are planning to gather
together a collectIon of Black feminist writing. We feel that it is
absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other
Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and
distributing our work. The fact that individual Black feminists are living
in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and
that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us
want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black
feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other
groups.

4. Black Feminist Issues and Projects

During our time together we have identified and worked on many
issues of particular relevance to Black women. The inclusiveness of our
politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the
lives of women, Third World and working people. We are of course
particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex,
and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for
example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that
employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on
already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a
rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare
and daycare concerns might also be a focus. The work to be done and
the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the
pervasiveness of our oppression.

Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on
are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health
care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black
feminism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most
recently for high school women.

One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to
publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As Black

feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort
white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which
requires among other things that they have a more than superficial
comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture.
Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition
work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and
demand accountability on this issue.

In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always
justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been
done in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we
do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in
collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our
own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are
committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop
through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our
practice. In her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan writes:

I haven’t the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual
men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-
power.

As Black feminists and Lesbians we know that we have a very definite
revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work
and struggle before us.

[1] This statement is dated April 1977.

[2] Wallace, Michele. “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” The Village Voice,
28 July 1975, pp. 6-7.

[3] Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The
Nationalist Woman), Newark, N.J., ©1971, pp. 4-5.

THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: “The Combahee River Collective
Statement,” copyright © 1978 by Zillah Eisenstein.

About the Black Lives
Matter Network

Black Lives Matter is a chapter-based national
organization working for the validity of Black life. We are
working to (re)build the Black liberation movement.

This is Not a Moment, but a Movement.

#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s
murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead
17-year old Trayvon was post-humously placed on trial for his own
murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country
who actively resist our de-humanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call
to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that
permeates our society.Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that
goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and
vigilantes.

It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within
Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black,
live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front

of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk
take up roles in the background or not at all.
Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks,
disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women
and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that
have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a
tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.

What Does #BlackLivesMatter Mean?

When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the
conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which
Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the
state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are
deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.

•
How Black poverty and genocide is state violence.

•
How 2.8 million Black people are locked in cages in this country is state
violence.

•
How Black women bearing the burden of a relentless assault on our children
and our families is state violence.

•
How Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-
patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously
fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.

•
How 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and
relegated to the shadows.

•
How Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war.

•
How Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of
state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes
of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.

#BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no
longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm
our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in
the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and
love for Black people into creating a political project–taking the
hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black
lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for
liberation.

The limits of anti-racism
by Adolph Reed Jr.
Antiracism is a favorite concept on the American left these days. Of course, all
good sorts want to be against racism, but what does the word mean exactly?

The contemporary discourse of “antiracism” is focused much more on
taxonomy than politics. It emphasizes the name by which we should call some
strains of inequality—whether they should be broadly recognized as evidence
of “racism”— over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the
steps that can be taken to combat them. And, no, neither “overcoming racism”
nor “rejecting whiteness” qualifies as such a step any more than does waiting
for the “revolution” or urging God’s heavenly intervention. If organizing a rally
against racism seems at present to be a more substantive political act than
attending a prayer vigil for world peace, that’s only because contemporary
antiracist activists understand themselves to be employing the same tactics and
pursuing the same ends as their predecessors in the period of high insurgency in
the struggle against racial segregation.

This view, however, is mistaken. The postwar activism that reached its
crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement
against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward
full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial
segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in
the South. The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed
against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production.
Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on
combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective
exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.

Clarity lost

Whether or not one considers those goals correct or appropriate, they were
clear and strategic in a way that “antiracism” simply is not. Sure, those earlier
struggles relied on a discourse of racial justice, but their targets were concrete
and strategic. It is only in a period of political demobilization that the historical
specificities of those struggles have become smoothed out of sight in a
romantic idealism that homogenizes them into timeless abstractions like “the

black liberation movement”—an entity that, like Brigadoon, sporadically
appears and returns impelled by its own logic.

Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several
generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in
depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social
structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately
individual, and ahistorical, domain of “prejudice” or “intolerance.” (No doubt
this shift was partly aided by political imperatives associated with the Cold War
and domestic anticommunism.) Beryl Satter’s recent book on the racialized
political economy of “contract buying” in Chicago in the 1950s and
1960s, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black
Urban America, is a good illustration of how these processes worked; Robert
Self’s book on Oakland since the 1930s, American Babylon, is another. Both
make abundantly clear the role of the real estate industry in creating and
recreating housing segregation and ghettoization.

Tasty bunny

All too often, “racism” is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity
or is characterized as an autonomous “force.” In this kind of formulation,
“racism,” a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity.
Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn’t be given independent life.

I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic
claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some
particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly
interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their
principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those
who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized
inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not.
Properly speaking, however, “racism” itself doesn’t do anything more than the
Easter Bunny does.

Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that
reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles
of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their
exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be
only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and
those who deny it. There can be only Todd Gitlin (the sociologist and former
SDS leader who has become, both fairly and as caricature, the symbol of a
“class-first” line) and their own heroic, truth-telling selves, and whoever is not

the latter must be the former. Thus the logic of straining to assign guilt by
association substitutes for argument.

My position is—and I can’t count the number of times I’ve said this bluntly,
yet to no avail, in response to those in blissful thrall of the comforting
Manicheanism—that of course racism persists, in all the disparate, often
unrelated kinds of social relations and “attitudes” that are characteristically
lumped together under that rubric, but from the standpoint of trying to figure
out how to combaeven what most of us would agree is racial inequality and
injustice, that acknowledgement and $2.25 will get me a ride on the subway. It
doesn’t lend itself to any particular action except more taxonomic argument
about what counts as racism.

Do what now?

And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the
racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of
injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention
seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because
the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the
real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to
recognize.

Those who aren’t so disposed have multiple layers of obfuscating ideology,
mainly forms of victim-blaming, through which to deny that a given disparity
stems from racism or for that matter is even unjust. The Simi Valley jury’s
reaction to the Rodney King tape, which saw King as perp and the cops as
victims, is a classic illustration. So is “underclass” discourse. Victimization by
subprime mortgage scams can be, and frequently is, dismissed as the fault of
irresponsible poor folks aspiring beyond their means. And there is no shortage
of black people in the public eye—Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey are two
prime examples, as is Barack Obama—who embrace and recycle those
narratives of poor black Americans’ wayward behavior and self-destructive
habits.

And how does a simple narrative of “racism” account for the fact that so many
black institutions, including churches and some racial advocacy organizations,
and many, many black individuals actively promoted those risky mortgages as
making the “American Dream of home ownership” possible for “us”? Sure,
there are analogies available—black slave traders, slave snitches, “Uncle
Toms” and various race traitors—but those analogies are moral judgments, not
explanations. And to mention them only opens up another second-order debate

about racial authenticity—about who “really” represents the black community.
Even Clarence Thomas sees himself as a proud black man representing the
race’s best interests.

My point is that it’s more effective politically to challenge the inequality and
injustice directly and bypass the debate over whether it should be called
“racism.”

I do recognize that, partly because of the terms on which the civil rights
movement’s victories have been achieved, there is a strong practical imperative
for stressing the racially invidious aspects of injustices: they have legal
remedies. Race is one of the legal classes protected by anti-discrimination law;
poverty, for instance, is not. But this makes identifying “racism” a technical
requirement for pursuing certain grievances, not the basis of an overall political
strategy for pursuit of racial justice, or, as I believe is a clearer left formulation,
racial equality as an essential component of a program of social justice.

Anti-Marx

I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen
from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics. It’s not clear to me
what drives it because it takes the form of snide dismissals than direct
arguments. Moreover, the dismissals typically include empty acknowledgment
that “of course we should oppose capitalism,” whatever that might mean. In
any event, the tenor of this anti-Marxism is reminiscent of those right-wing
discourses, many of which masqueraded as liberal, in which only invoking the
word “Marxism” was sufficient to dismiss an opposing argument or position.

This anti-Marxism has some curious effects. Leading professional antiracist
Tim Wise came to the defense of Obama’s purged green jobs czar Van Jones
by dismissing Jones’s “brief stint with a pseudo-Maoist group,” and pointing
instead to “his more recent break with such groups and philosophies, in favor of
a commitment to eco-friendly, sustainable capitalism.” In fact, Jones was a core
member of a revolutionary organization, STORM, that took itself very
seriously, almost comically so.

And are we to applaud his break with radical politics in favor of a style of
capitalism that few actual capitalists embrace? This is the substance of Wise’s
defense.

This sort of thing only deepens my suspicions about antiracism’s status within
the comfort zone of neoliberalism’s discourses of “reform.” More to the point, I

suspect as well that this vitriol toward radicalism is rooted partly in the
conviction that a left politics based on class analysis and one focused on racial
injustice are Manichean alternatives.

Devolutions

This is also a notion of fairly recent provenance, in part as well another artifact
of the terms on which the civil rights victories were consolidated, including the
emergence of a fully incorporated black political class in the 1970s and its
subsequent evolution. By contrast, examining, for example, the contributions to
historian and civil rights activist Rayford Logan’s 1944 volume What the
Negro Wants, one sees quite a different picture. Nearly all the contributors—
including nominal conservatives—to this collection of analyses from a broad
cross section of black scholars and activists asserted in very concrete terms that
the struggle for racial justice and the general struggle for social and industrial
democracy were more than inseparable, that the victory of the former largely
depended on the success of the latter. This was, at the time, barely even a
matter for debate: rather, it was the frame of reference for any black mass
politics and protest activity.

As I suggest above, various pressures of the postwar period—including carrots
of success and sticks of intimidation and witch-hunting, as well as the
articulation of class tensions within the Civil Rights movement itself—drove an
evolution away from this perspective and toward reformulation of the
movement’s goals along lines more consonant with postwar, post-New Deal,
Cold War liberalism. Thus what the political scientist Preston Smith calls
“racial democracy” came gradually to replace social democracy as a political
goal—the redress of grievances that could be construed as specifically racial
took precedence over the redistribution of wealth, and an individualized
psychology replaced notions of reworking the material sphere. This dynamic
intensified with the combination of popular demobilization in black politics and
emergence of the post-segregation black political class in the 1970s and 1980s.

We live under a regime now that is capable simultaneously of including black
people and Latinos, even celebrating that inclusion as a fulfillment of
democracy, while excluding poor people without a whimper of opposition. Of
course, those most visible in the excluded class are disproportionately black
and Latino, and that fact gives the lie to the celebration. Or does it really? From
the standpoint of a neoliberal ideal of equality, in which classification by race,
gender, sexual orientation or any other recognized ascriptive status (that is,
status based on what one allegedly is rather than what one does) does not

impose explicit, intrinsic or necessary limitations on one’s participation and
aspirations in the society, this celebration of inclusion of blacks, Latinos and
others is warranted.

We’ll be back!

But this notion of democracy is inadequate, since it doesn’t begin to address the
deep and deepening patterns of inequality and injustice embedded in the
ostensibly “neutral” dynamics of American capitalism. What A. Philip
Randolph and others—even anticommunists like Roy Wilkins—understood in
the 1940s is that what racism meant was that, so long as such dynamics
persisted without challenge, black people and other similarly stigmatized
populations would be clustered on the bad side of the distribution of costs and
benefits. To extrapolate anachronistically to the present, they would have
understood that the struggle against racial health disparities, for example, has
no real chance of success apart from a struggle to eliminate for-profit health
care.

These seem really transparent points to me, but maybe that’s just me. I remain
curious why the “debate” over antiracism as a politics takes such indirect and
evasive forms—like the analogizing and guilt by association, moralistic
bombast in lieu of concrete argument—and why it persists in establishing, even
often while denying the move, the terms of debate as race vs. class. I’m
increasingly convinced that a likely reason is that the race line is itself a class
line, one that is entirely consistent with the neoliberal redefinition of equality
and democracy. It reflects the social position of those positioned to benefit
from the view that the market is a just, effective, or even acceptable system for
rewarding talent and virtue and punishing their opposites and that, therefore,
removal of “artificial” impediments to its functioning like race and gender will
make it even more efficient and just.

From this perspective even the “left” antiracist line that we must fight both
economic inequality and racial inequality, which seems always in practice to
give priority to “fighting racism” (often theorized as a necessary precondition
for doing anything else), looks suspiciously like only another version of the
evasive “we’ll come back for you” (after we do all the business-friendly stuff)
politics that the Democrats have so successfully employed to avoid addressing
economic injustice.

Adolph Reed Jr. is a professor of political science at the University of
Pennsylvania.

• Black Lives Matter Statement
• The Combahee River Collective Statement
• The limits of anti-racism_Adolph Reed