Seeking the Beloved Community, State University Of
SEEKING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb i 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 SUNY series, Philosophy and Race 2 Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, editors 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb iiii 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 5 SEEKING THE 6 7 BELOVED 8 9 COMMUNITY 10 11 12 A Feminist Race Reader 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Joy James 29 30 Foreword by Beverly Guy-Sheftall 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb iiiiii 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Published by State University of New York Press, Albany 10 © 2013 State University of New York 11 12 All rights reserved 13 14 Printed in the United States of America 15 16 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without 17 written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or trans- 18 mitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in 19 writing of the publisher. 20 21 For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY 22 www.sunypress.edu 23 24 Production by Ryan Morris 25 Marketing by Anne Valentine 26 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 27 28 James, Joy 29 Seeking the beloved community : a feminist race reader / Joy James. 30 p. cm. — (SUNY series, philosophy and race) 31 Includes bibliographical references and index. 32 ISBN 978-1-4384-4633-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Womanism—United States. 33 2. Feminism—United States. 3. African American women—Intellectual life. 34 4. African American women—Political activity. I. Title. HQ1197.J36 2013 35 305.420973—dc23 36 2012018269 37 38 39 40 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb iviv 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 5 To the cyborg maternals and ghost warriors— 6 7 Chicago Mamie Tills; Oakland Georgia Jacksons; 8 Soweto and São Paulo mothers Dona Marias— 9 all who made and make the impossible demand 10 to the omnipotent state, its allies, and apologists: 11 “Resurrect the child you killed.” 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb v 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 Contents 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Foreword ix 11 Beverly Guy-Sheftall 12 Acknowledgments xi 13 14 Part I. Feminist Race Theory 15 16 1. Teaching Theory, Talking Community 3 17 2. Politicizing the Spirit: Toni Morrison 9 18 19 3. Black Feminism in Liberation Limbos 25 20 21 4. Resting in Gardens, Battling in Deserts: 37 22 Black Women’s Activism 23 5. Radicalizing Black Feminism 47 24 25 6. Angela Y. Davis: Liberation Praxis 67 26 27 7. Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency 93 28 29 Part II. Democracy and Captivity 30 8. Democracy and Captivity 119 31 32 9. Black Suffering in Search of the “Beloved Community” 143 33 34 10. American Prison Notebooks 153 35 11. Violations 185 36 37 12. War, Dissent, and Social Justice 197 38 13. Academia, Activism, and Imprisoned Intellectuals 207 39 40 vii
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb viivii 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM viii Contents
11 22 Part III. Sovereign Political Subjects 33 14. Activist Scholars or Radical Subjects? 215 44 55 15. Campaigns Against Blackness 223 66 16. Sovereign Kinship and the President Elect 251 77 88 17. The Dead Zone 269 99 1010 18. Racism, Genocide, and Resistance 293 1111 19. “All Power to the People!”: Arendt’s Communicative 307 1212 Power in a Racial Democracy 1313 1414 1515 1616 1717 1818 1919 2020 2121 2222 2323 2424 2525 2626 2727 2828 2929 3030 3131 3232 3333 3434 3535 3636 3737 3838 3939 4040
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb viiiviii 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 Foreword 4 5 Beverly Guy-Sheftall 6 7 8 9 10 . . . we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, 11 heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task 12 the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon 13 the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. 14 The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of 15 our lives. As black women we see black feminism as the logical 16 political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous 17 oppressions that all women of color face. 18 —The Combahee River Collective, 1983 19 20 . . . dissidents are anchored to revolutionary possibilities 21 that demand both intellectual discipline and irrepressible 22 courage to speak the unspeakable, to stand alone if neces- 23 sary, and to accept the material and emotional consequences 24 of tramping over hegemony’s “holy” ground. 25 —Antonia Darder, 2011 26 27 28 I am reminded while reading Joy James’s provocative essay collec- 29 tion, Seeking the Beloved Community: A Feminist Race Theory Reader, 30 of Antonia Darder’s riveting anthology, A Dissident Voice: Essays 31 in Culture, Pedagogy, and Power. Educators, scholars, endowed 32 professors, activists, critical race theorists, dissidents—James and 33 Darder emerge from marginalized/racialized communities in the 34 United States and Puerto Rico. It is important to embrace the 35 dissident women among us, so often maligned and misunderstood. 36 For nearly two decades, Joy James’s dissenting voice has been 37 loud and unrelenting, beginning with the publication of her first 38 book, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. 39 Culture (1996), followed by Shadowboxing: Representations of Black 40 ix
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1 Feminist Politics and Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders 2 and American Intellectuals. Her edited books include Spirit, Space 3 and Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe; Warfare 4 in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy; 5 The New Abolitionists: (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison 6 Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on 7 Life, Liberation, and Rebellion; States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, 8 and Prisons; The Black Feminist Reader; and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. 9 One of the most prolific and radical, black feminist scholars, she 10 is completing a book on interracial rape cases, tentatively titled, 11 Memory, Shame, and Rage. 12 Like the Angela Y. Davis Reader that James edited, her own 13 feminist race theory reader underscores the heterogeneity of 14 contemporary black feminist discourse, a perennial theme in 15 James’s writings. Like dissident Angela Davis and the architects of 16 the Combahee River Collective document above, Joy James emerges 17 from a robust African American left tradition that is anticapitalist, 18 anti-imperialist, and passionately critical of the U.S. state. Davis 19 and James have been perhaps the most vocal black feminist voices 20 with respect to the ravages of the prison industrial complex and 21 U.S.-sponsored violence, including genocide, here and around 22 the globe. James’s work has been pioneering as well in its careful 23 attention to radical black women such as Harriet Tubman, Assata 24 Shakur, Angela Davis, and Ramona Africa. In fact, without James’s 25 work, it would be difficult to imagine the existence of black 26 women revolutionaries since African American political history 27 has privileged male figures such as Huey Newton, George Jackson, 28 Malcolm X, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, to name a few. 29 While most of the essays are not new and have appeared in 30 various publications, this Joy James reader is at its core a portrait 31 of “the making of a dissident voice,” to borrow from the title 32 of Antonia Darder’s introductory essay in the reader to which I 33 alluded earlier. What we most desperately need in a world that fears 34 and silences opposition—or worse—are revolutionaries who speak 35 truth to power and beckon us to stand with them in solidarity. A 36 luta continua. The struggle continues. 37 38 Beverly Guy-Sheftall, 39 Women’s Research and Resource Center, Spelman College 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb x 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 Acknowledgments 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Assisted by researchers Maddy Dwertman and Rebecca Bradford, 11 this project was begun at the suggestion of several radical scholar- 12 activists, and benefited from the support of SUNY series editors 13 Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and the 14 skills of editor Andrew Kenyon. Seeking the Beloved Community also 15 received support from UT-Austin’s African and African Diaspora 16 Studies, chaired by Edmund T. Gordon, and the John L. Warfield 17 Center for African and African American Studies, directed by Omi 18 Joni Jones, in both the writing of new articles and the editing and 19 revision of those previously published. 20 In 1998 and 2003, respectively, students at the University of 21 Colorado-Boulder (CU) and Brown University organized two 22 large conferences that led to a decade of anthologies on injustice 23 and incarceration. At the request of Angela Y. Davis, I organized 24 a spring 1998 national gathering on U.S. imprisonment at CU 25 as a precursor to, or prototype for, the fall 1998 “Critical Resis- 26 tance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex.” In March 1998, 27 “Unfinished Liberation” took place with panels that incorporated 28 the contributions of academics, graduate students, and activists 29 from California, Colorado, New York, and beyond; Davis’s campus 30 keynote drew several thousand. CU invested significant resources 31 into the conference, but the heart of the endeavor came from the 32 volunteer labor of activist students. Conference papers became 33 States of Confinement (2000), and subsequent anthologies and confer- 34 ences, such as Brown’s 2003 “Prison Intellectuals,” prominently 35 featured incarcerated activist authors. Encouraged to attend to their 36 studies first, as were CU undergraduates, Brown students found 37 the disruption of organizing for justice more compelling—a desire 38 that appeared incomprehensible to nonactivist academics. Students’ 39 40 xi
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1 preference for social justice—over grades, political conformity or 2 careerism—has brought greater critical scrutiny to mass and political 3 imprisonment within democracy. My thanks to all who have expanded 4 the boundaries and commitments to intellectual inquiry and political 5 acts for justice. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb xiixii 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM Part 1. FEMINIST RACE THEORY
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 1 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 ı 5 6 Teaching Theory, Talking Community 7 8 9 [P]eople of color have always theorized—but in forms quite 10 different from the Western form of abstract logic . . . our 11 theorizing (and I intentionally use the verb rather than the noun) 12 is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create . . . [in] 13 dynamic rather than fixed ideas. . . . How else have we managed 14 to survive with such spiritedness the assault on our bodies, social 15 institutions, countries, our very humanity? And women, at least 16 the women I grew up around, continuously speculated about the 17 nature of life through pithy language that unmasked the power 18 relations of their world. . . . My folk, in other words, have 19 always been a race for theory—though more in the form of the 20 hieroglyph, a written figure which is both sensual and abstract, 21 both beautiful and communicative. 22 —Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory” 23 24 25 Erasure in Academic Theory 26 27 Contemporary African American theorists such as Barbara Christian, 28 who writes that theory not rooted in practice is elitist, think within 29 a community-centered tradition in which the creativity of a people 30 in the race for theory sustains humanity. However, teaching theory 31 as nonelitist, and intending the liberation and development of all of 32 humanity, specifically Africana communities, contradicts much of 33 1 academic theory, which is Eurocentric. 34 35 This is an edited version of “Teaching Theory, Talking Community,” in 36 Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex, ed. 37 Anthony J. Nocella II, et al. (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010); the original 38 appears in Spirit, Space and Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe, 39 eds. Joy James and Ruth Farmer (New York: Routledge, 1993). 40 3
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1 All philosophy and theory, Eurocentric or Afrocentric, is 2 political. Academic “disciplines,” when sexualized and racialized, 3 tend to reproduce themselves in hierarchically segregated forms. 4 To confront segregation means recognizing that current academic 5 or educational standards have never worked, and were never 6 intended to for us as a people. Our paltry presence in (white) 7 universities and colleges speaks to the fact that individuals, but not 8 the community, may attain some success in an educational process 9 centered on the marginalization of all but the “European” (socially 10 constructed as white, male, propertied, and heterosexual). 11 Philosophy or theory courses may emphasize logic and memo- 12 rizing the history of “Western” philosophy rather than the activity of 13 creating philosophies or theorizing. When the logic of propositions 14 is the primary object of study, how one argues becomes more 15 important than for what one argues. The exercise of reason may 16 take place within an illogical context—in which academic canons 17 absurdly claim universal supremacy derived from the hierarchical 18 splintering of humanity into greater and lesser beings, or the 19 European Enlightenment’s deification of scientific rationalism as 20 the truly “valid” approach to “Truth.” 21 Some thinkers have argued that theory and philosophy are open 22 to the “everyday” person and intend the good of humanity. However, 23 few identify Africana people, women of color, women in general, 24 and black women in particular, or poor people or prisoners as both 25 equal partners in that humanity and important theorists in its behalf. 26 Fewer still connect the “life of the mind” to the understanding that 27 “black people have to a disproportionate extent supplied the labor 2 28 which has made possible the cultivation of philosophical inquiry.” 29 They, along with female labor in the “private realm” or the “house- 30 hold,” have disproportionately cultivated philosophies that provide 31 nonabstract meanings of freedom and justice. Surviving genocidal 32 oppression allows insights into (in)humanity and (in)justice that 33 transcend the abstractions of academic philosophy and theory, 34 infused in Western democracies by patriarchies and Eurocentrism, 3 35 which is not synonymous with European. 36 In a society and culture where the white European repre- 37 sents both the ideal and universal manifestation of civilization, 38 racist iconography infuses worldviews and misshapens European 39 philosophy, with destructive effects on the material lives of the 4 40 majority of the world’s people.
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Adhering to the tastes of white supremacy, “white solipsism” 1 masquerades as universal philosophy within the myth of racial 2 5 superiority. If legitimizing a world order of domination becomes 3 an intellectual mandate, like the carnival house of mirrors, theory 4 projects what it distorts in solipsistic reflections. 5 Playing by academic house rules sets standards for theory 6 6 that few will meet. The thoughts of “outsiders” are reduced to 7 descriptions of a part (of humanity or subhumanity) rather than 8 analyses of a whole (humanity). When teaching about the lives 9 of black activist women, for example, is viewed as a descent to 10 the particular from the “universal norm” (white, male, monied), 11 biology becomes the destiny theory (privileged biology becomes 12 manifest destiny). Recognition as “theorists” or “intellectuals” 13 because of their adherence or loyalty to house rules is the equal 14 opportunity moment for former outsiders to play inside; technique 15 is not inherently theory. (Self)Objectification through the “expert” 16 7 voices of “trained” speakers could be interference. Stripped of 17 context in community may mean forced relocation to some mental 18 8 or academic ghetto. Extreme locations offer the vantage point of 19 view: if the axis of the universe remains the same in reform, what 20 would it mean to revolutionize theory? 21 22 Talking Theory 23 24 Theoretical traditions in service to community challenge the 25 authoritative or authoritarian narratives about theory and philos- 26 ophy. Outside the academic or popular worldviews of “scientific” 27 materialism and “objective” rationalism, exist the nonduality of 28 the sacred and secular, spiritual and political, the individual and 29 communal. Discredited indigenous cosmologies, and political rebel- 30 lions, offer concepts of not just nonlinear time, or shared spatial 31 commitments to community, but they gesture toward the holy grail 32 of the “beloved community.” Toni Morrison sketches transcendent 33 theory in her observations on writing: 34 35 If anything I do in the way of writing . . . isn’t about the village 36 or the community or about you, then it is not about anything. 37 I am not interested in indulging myself in some private, closed 38 exercise of my imagination that fulfills only the obligation of my 39 personal dreams, which is to say, yes, the work must be political. 40
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1 It must have that as its thrust. That’s a pejorative term in critical 2 circles now: if a work of art has any political influence in it, 3 somehow it’s tainted. My feeling is just the opposite: if it has 9 4 none, it is tainted. 5 6 A tradition of labor for liberated communities evokes worldviews 7 where ethical concerns and liberatory acts move the community 8 closer to political thought. Activism is a great and difficult learning 10 9 experience, particularly if connected to communities in crisis. 10 Concretizing ethical ideals in action supports an unfamiliar form 11 11 of thinking—theorizing in the face of political violence. For 12 centuries, Indigenous and African peoples in the Americas have 13 theorized for their lives and so collectively crafted a revolutionary 14 praxis. Fiercely struggling for collective freedom, ancestors Harriet 15 Tubman, Ida. B. Wells, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, along with 16 countless others theorized with the weight of legacies not fully 17 comprehended and rarely engaged. 18 19 Notes 20 1. Samir Amin writes: “Eurocentrism is a specifically modern phenomenon, 21 the roots of which go back only to the Renaissance, a phenomenon 22 that did not flourish until the nineteenth century. In this sense, it 23 constitutes one dimension of the culture and ideology of the modern 24 capitalist world.” Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (New York: Monthly 25 Review Press, 1989), vii. 26 2. Elizabeth Spelman cites this quote from a journal on African Americans 27 and philosophy in Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist 28 Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), n. 26. 3. Samir Amin argues that Eurocentrism “assumes the existence of 29 irreducibly distinct cultural invariants that shape the historical paths 30 of different peoples.” According to Amin, it is “anti-universalist” 31 because instead of searching for “general laws of human evolution” 32 it represents itself as universalist by claiming that “imitation of the 33 Western model by all peoples is the only solution to the challenges 34 of our time.” See Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, vii. 35 4. The academic mind-set mirrors white supremacy: “the idea of white 36 supremacy emerges partly because of the powers within the structure of modern discourse—powers to produce and prohibit, develop and 37 delimit, forms of rationality, scientificity, and objectivity which set 38 perimeters and draw boundaries for the intelligibility, availability, 39 and legitimacy of certain ideas.” See Cornel West, “A Genealogy 40
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of Modern Racism,” Prophesy Deliverance (Philadelphia: Westminster 1 Press, 1982). 2 5. See Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman for a discussion of “white 3 solipsism.” 4 6. For theologian Bernard Lonergan, epistemology is based on a four-part process of: experience, reflection, judgment, and action; ethical 5 action expands experience, self-reflection, and judging to promote 6 consciousness of one’s own political practice. See Bernard Lonergan, 7 INSIGHT: An Understanding of Human Knowing (New York: Harper and 8 Row, 1957). 9 7. Patricia Hill Collins describes academic research methods rejecting 10 emotions and communal ethics. See Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning 11 from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black 12 Feminist Thought,” Social Problems 33, no. 6 (1986). 8. See Henry and Margaret Drewal, eds., Gelede: Art and Female Power 13 Among the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 14 74. 15 9. Toni Morrison, “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” in Black 16 Women Writers: A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans (New York: Anchor 17 Press/Doubleday, 1984). 18 10. Bernice Johnson Reagon argues this point about plagiarism in Martin 19 Luther King Jr.’s dissertation. See Bernice Johnson Reagon, “‘Nobody 20 Knows the Trouble I See’; or ‘By and By I’m Gonna Lay Down My Heavy Load,’” The Journal of American History 78, no. 1 (June 1991). 21 11. In the 1990s, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) traveled from its headquarters 22 in Indiana to rally in the local campus town where I spent a semester 23 as a visiting scholar. After viewing William Greaves’s documentary, 24 A Passion for Justice, on the life of antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells, 25 students formed a coalition, led by black women, to organize a 26 countereducational event critiquing racism, (hetero)sexism, and 27 anti-Semitism. At one meeting, a senior recalled being dragged off 28 a catwalk into the bushes as her white male assailant repeatedly punched her, yelling “nigger bitch.” As she struggled to get away, she 29 noticed white student spectators who offered no aid and later equally 30 nonresponsive university investigators and administrators. White and 31 black university employees and students would dismiss the anti-Klan 32 organizers as “radical” and as “overreacting.” 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 7 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 2 5 6 Politicizing the Spirit: 7 8 Toni Morrison 9 10 11 12 Within her nonfiction essays, Toni Morrison’s dissection of racist 13 paradigms is framed by a worldview that testifies to African 14 American ancestral spirits, the centrality of transcendent commu- 15 nity, as well as her faith in the abilities of black intellectuals to 16 critique and “civilize” a racist society. This reading of Morrison 17 quotes extensively from her nonfiction to sketch a framework 18 for her observations on racist stereotypes and black resistance. 19 Even a partial sketch reveals clues for deciphering how the author 20 uncovers and recovers ground for “discredited knowledge” in order 21 to reconnect “traditional” and contemporary cultural beliefs to 22 political struggles. This is not an argument for black “essentialism.” 23 Black cultural views manifest and mutate through time and space; 24 and are neither quintessential nor universal to everyone of African 25 descent. Likewise, a passionate interest in African American intel- 26 lectual and political resistance to antiblack racism is not a synonym 27 for indifference to nonblacks and the varied accommodations to 28 Eurocentrism and white supremacy. 29 30 “American-Africanisms” 31 32 My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an 33 African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, 34 wholly racialized world. To think about (and wrestle with) the 35 full implications of my situation leads me to consider what 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Politicizing the 38 Spirit: ‘American Africanisms’ and African Ancestors in the Essays of Toni 39 Morrison,” Cultural Studies 9, no. 2 (1995): 210–225. 40 9
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1 happens when other writers work in a highly and historically 1 2 racialized society. 3 4 Writers working in a highly racialized society often express 5 an overt and covert fascination with blackness. For Morrison, 6 European Americans “choose to talk about themselves through and 7 within a sometimes metaphorical, but always choked representation 2 8 of an Africanist presence.” This practice and its arsenal, which she 9 labels “American Africanisms,” mirror (if not stem from) European 10 Africanisms. The term Africanism represents: 11 12 the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples 13 have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assump- 14 tions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric 15 learning about these people. . . . As a disabling virus within 16 literary discourse, Africanism has become, in the Eurocentric 17 tradition that American education favors, both a way of talking 18 about and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and 19 repression, formations and exercises of power, and meditations 3 20 on ethics and accountability. 21 22 A literary and political tool and vehicle, the Africanism “provides 23 a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a 4 24 mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom.” The 25 distinctive difference of the New World, writes Morrison, is that its 26 claim to freedom coexisted with “the presence of the unfree within 5 27 the heart of the democratic experiment.” It is arguably still the 28 same. Morrison advises that we investigate “the Africanist character 29 as surrogate and enabler” and the use of the “Africanist idiom” to 30 mark difference or the “hip, sophisticated, ultra-urbane.” Her own 31 investigations inform us that within the “construction of blackness 32 and enslavement” existed: 33 34 not only the not-free, but also with the dramatic polarity created 35 by skin color, the projection of the not-me. The result was a 36 playground for the imagination. What rose up out of collective 37 needs to allay internal fears and to rationalize external exploita- 38 tion was an [European] American Africanism—a fabricated 39 brew of darkness, otherness, alarm, and desire that is uniquely 6 40 American.
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Newly constructed beings and inhumanities, such as the white male 1 as both exalted demigod and brutish enslaver, were sanctioned by 2 literature. Morrison emphasizes the cultural aspects of dominance to 3 critique the Euro-American literary imagination: “cultural identities 4 are formed and informed by a nation’s literature . . . what seemed 5 to be on the ‘mind’ of the literature of the United States was the 6 self-conscious but highly problematic construction of the American 7 7 as a new white man.” 8 In the formation of this “new American” identity, blackness 9 embodied in the African was indispensable to elevating whiteness. In 10 this elevation of whiteness, the Africanist other became the device 11 for “thinking about body, mind, chaos, kindness, and love; [and] 12 provided the occasion for exercises in the absence of restraint, the 13 presence of restraint, the contemplation of freedom and of aggres- 14 8 sion.” Within this framework, the boundaries of the conventional, 15 literary imagination were set to ignore or rationalize enslavement 16 and freedom-based-on-enslavement. Transgressing such boundaries 17 is rarely encouraged. However, those determined to see themselves 18 without mystification do transgress. 19 According to Morrison, historically an exceptional few, excep- 20 tionally brave European American writers attempted to free 21 themselves of entrapment in whiteness. Describing the courage of 22 Herman Melville’s tormented struggle to demystify “whiteness” in 23 Moby Dick, she observes: 24 25 [T]o question the very notion of white progress, the very idea of 26 racial superiority, of whiteness as privileged place in the evolu- 27 tionary ladder of humankind, and to meditate on the fraudulent, 28 self-destroying philosophy of that superiority, to “pluck it out 29 from under the robes of Senators and Judges,” to drag the “judge 30 himself to the bar,”—that was dangerous, solitary, radical work. 31 9 Especially then. Especially now. 32 33 This “dangerous, solitary, radical work” is discouraged by claims 34 that “race” or discussions of racism politicize and so pollute literary 35 work: 36 37 When matters of race are located and called attention to in 38 American literature, critical response has tended to be on the 39 order of a humanistic nostrum—or a dismissal mandated by 40
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1 the label “political.” Excising the political from the life of the 2 mind is a sacrifice that has proven costly. I think of this erasure 3 as a kind of trembling hypochondria always curing itself with 10 4 unnecessary surgery. 5 6 Such surgery is also selective, usually performed only on those 7 deviating from the dominant ideologies. Literary works derive their 8 meaning from worldviews with political consequences. Worldviews 9 carry cultural values as well as political agendas. Only by replicating 10 or naturalizing the dominant political ideologies, in effect reproducing 11 the racialized hegemony, can writers claim to be apolitical. Clearly 12 identifying her work as a practical art with a political focus, Morrison 13 writes in “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation”: 14 15 I am not interested in indulging myself in some private, closed 16 exercise of my imagination that fulfills only the obligation of 17 my personal dreams—which is to say, yes, the work must be 18 political. It must have that as its thrust. That’s a pejorative term 19 in critical circles now: if a work of art has any political influence 20 in it, somehow it’s tainted. My feeling is just the opposite; if it 11 21 has none, it is tainted. 22 23 These writings enable critical discussions in a society guarded 24 against analyses of white supremacy. Her critical thought, invigo- 25 rating analyses despite increasing calls for the irrelevance of “race,” 26 is particularly important in a society that routinely rejects such 27 critiques as politically uncivil. Racial discourse seems directed or 28 pulled by marionette strings working to curtail antiracist critiques. 29 As Morrison notes: 30 31 For three hundred years black Americans insisted that “race” was 32 no usefully distinguishing factor in human relationships. During 33 those same three centuries every academic discipline, including 34 theology, history and natural science, insisted “race” was the 35 determining factor in human development. When blacks discov- 36 ered they had shaped or become a culturally formed race, and 37 that it had specific and revered difference, suddenly they were 38 told there is no such thing as “race,” biological or cultural, that 39 matters and that genuinely intellectual exchange cannot accom- 40 modate it. In trying to come to some terms about “race” and
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writing, I am tempted to throw my hands up. It always seemed 1 to me that the people who invented the hierarchy of “race” when 2 it was convenient for them ought not to be the ones to explain 3 it away, now that it does not suit their purposes for it to exist. 4 But there is culture and both gender and “race” inform and are 5 informed by it. Afro-American culture exists and though it is 6 clear (and becoming clearer) how it has responded to Western 7 culture, the instances where and means by which it has shaped 8 12 Western culture are poorly recognized or understood. 9 10 African American culture exists within the worldviews that 11 shape and inform it. This culture and its traditional practices 12 reappear in Morrison’s work. For instance, typical of the call- 13 and-response tradition, Toni Morrison receives the calling to 14 testify to worldviews greater than white myths and to demystify a 15 Frankensteinian blackness. Politicized by and politicizing the spirit 16 of intergenerational black resistance, she issues her own charge and 17 challenge to intellectuals and educators. 18 19 Traditional Worldviews 20 21 [In Song of Solomon] I could blend the acceptance of the supernatural 22 and a profound rootedness in the real world at the same time 23 with neither taking precedence over the other. It is indicative of 24 the cosmology, the way in which Black people looked at the world. 25 We are very practical people, very down-to-earth, even shrewd 26 people. But within that practicality we also accepted what I suppose 27 could be called superstition and magic, which is another way of 28 knowing things. But to blend those two worlds together at the 29 same time was enhancing, not limiting. And some of those things 30 were “discredited knowledge” that Black people had; discredited 31 only because Black people were discredited therefore what they 32 knew was “discredited.” And also because the push toward upward 33 social mobility would mean to get as far away from that kind of 34 knowledge as possible. That kind of knowledge has a very strong 35 13 place in my work. 36 Distinguishing worldview from superstition requires sketching 37 the cosmology that grounds Toni Morrison’s work. What some call 38 “superstition” or “magic,” in Traditional African Religions and Philoso- 39 phies John Mbiti describes as aspects of a cultural worldview: 40
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1 Most [traditional] peoples . . . believe that the spirits are what 2 remains of human beings when they die physically. This then 3 becomes the ultimate status . . . the point of change or develop- 4 ment beyond which [one] cannot go apart from a few national 5 heroes who might become deified. . . . [one] does not, and need 6 not, hope to become a spirit: [s]he is inevitably to become one, 14 7 just as a child will automatically grow to become an adult. 8 9 Mbiti notes that historically African worldviews maintain 10 nonlinear time in which the past, present, and future coexist and 11 overlap (this view is also held in other cultures and in some scientific 12 communities). Traditional African cosmology sees the nonduality of 13 time (as past, present, and future) and space. Rather than suggest a 14 monolithic Africa, Mbiti’s work describes the diversity of religions 15 throughout the continent. Yet, he maintains that despite diversity, 16 organizing principles or structures prevail. The cosmology he 17 documents rejects the socially constructed dichotomies between 18 sacred and secular, spiritual and political, the individual and 19 community characteristic of Western culture. Mbiti’s structures 20 reappear in African American culture. Worldviews or values are 21 not deterministic. One may choose. An African theologian trained 22 in European universities, Mbiti depicts Christianity as “superior” 23 to traditional African religions, which he notes share Christianity’s 24 monotheism. One may reject the traditional worldviews shaping 25 African cultures, as Mbiti does, or reaffirm them, as Toni Morrison 26 does. Stating that “discredited knowledge” has “a very strong place” 27 in her work, Morrison refuses to distance herself from a traditional 28 African/African American cultural worldview, despite the fact that 29 academic or social assimilation and advancement “would mean to 30 get as far away from that kind of knowledge as possible.” 31 Without considering the validity of this “discredited knowledge” 32 or academically marginalized belief system, some may perceive 33 and portray Morrison’s work as romantic, ungrounded mysticism. 34 Outside of a worldview that recognizes the values mirrored in 35 her work, it is difficult to perceive of Toni Morrison as some- 36 thing other than exotic. Yet, her fiction is not mere phantasm: 37 she merely writes within the framework of African American 38 cultural, political-spiritual perspectives—cultural paradigms 39 documented by academics, theologians, and philosophers. For 40 centuries, these paradigms have been derided as primitive supersti-
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tion, through European colonization and Eurocentric thought, and 1 racial mythology that constructed a people who ape theory and 2 superstition, the “discredited knowledge” embraced by the not 3 fully assimilated endures conquest. Congolese philosopher K. Kia 4 Fu-Kiau notes in The African Book Without Title: 5 6 Africa was invaded . . . to civilize its people… [“civilization”] 7 having “accomplished” her “noble” mission. . . . African people 8 are still known as people without logic, people without systems, 9 people without concepts. . . . African wisdom hidden in proverbs, 10 the old way of theorizing among people of oral literature [cannot 11 be] seen and understood in the way [the] western world sees and 12 understands [a proverb]. . . . For us . . . proverbs are principles, 13 theories, warehouses of knowledge . . . they have “force de loi,” 14 15 [the] force of law. 15 16 A people whose traditional culture is “known” to be illogical and 17 without complexity cannot contribute to intellectual life, whether 18 reactionary, conservative, liberal, or radical. 19 Toni Morrison’s writings are transformative precisely 20 because—while cognizant of the value of some aspects of European 21 culture—they reject the Eurocentric mandate of traditional African 22 cosmology and African American cultural epistemology as primi- 23 tive. Challenging hegemonic paradigms, Morrison deconstructs 24 the Euro-American muse’s addiction to ethnic notions. She issues 25 two complementary and intermingled calls that politicize the 26 spirit: resist racist mythology and reconnect the values rooted in 27 traditional African American culture. The foundational value for 28 her work is black community, as she draws down the spirit to call 29 it home. 30 31 The Centrality of Community 32 33 The viability and value of an autonomous African American cultural 34 community is a “discredited” concept. Yet, the individual’s salvation, 35 or sanity, comes through relationship in community that inspires 36 and informs political risk-taking. The black community exhibits a 37 synthesis of seeming polarities, maleness and femaleness, ugliness 38 and beauty, good and evil, the spiritual and the mundane—a 39 complex humanity often erased in writings that objectify it. 40
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1 In “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” Toni Morrison analyzes her 2 novels; her comments on Beloved and the Song of Solomon emphasize 3 the centrality of community and the individual’s relationship 4 to it. In this essay, Morrison examines how language “activates” 5 and is activated by outlining the backdrop or context for the 16 6 first sentences of each of her novels. She reminds us that this 7 exploration into how she “practice[s] language” seeks and presents 8 a “position of vulnerability to those aspects of Afro-American 17 9 culture” shaping her novels. 10 Beloved is a striking example of awareness of the destructive 11 impact of unbalanced spiritual and political worlds. For Morrison, 12 Beloved’s haunting works in part “to keep the reader preoccupied 13 with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied 18 14 a controlled diet of the incredible political world.” The novel’s 15 political world is inspired by a specific historical tragedy, the nine- 16 teenth-century story of Margaret Garner fleeing slavery with her 19 17 children. The context of community, and resistance to oppression, 18 ground Garner’s story of the “unnatural” mother who may or may 19 not have demonstrated the fantastic depths of maternal love and 20 political resistance fictionalized in Beloved. 21 In life and in death, individuals remain connected to and grow 22 within the life of the community. In Song of Solomon, the essential- 23 ness of community informs Morrison’s description of freedom 24 and grace found in the fulfillment of the insurance agent’s suicidal 20 25 promise to fly from (no-)Mercy hospital: 26 27 The agent’s flight, like that of the Solomon in the title, although 28 toward asylum (Canada, or freedom, or home, or the company 29 of the welcoming dead), and although it carries the possibility 30 of failure and the certainty of danger, is toward change, an 31 alternative way, a cessation of things—as they are. It should not 32 be understood as a simple desperate act . . . but as obedience to 21 33 a deeper contract with his people. 34 35 Dangerous but not desperate, the insurance agent’s act embraces 36 rather than flees community. His notion of contract is tied to a 37 cultural understanding of community as transcendent; his flight 38 transcends dualities between life and death. The agent acknowledges 39 his not fully comprehensible gift: 40
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It is his commitment to them, regardless of whether, in all its 1 details, they understand it. There is, however, in their response 2 to his action, a tenderness, some contrition and mounting respect 3 (“They didn’t know he had it in him.”) and an awareness that the 4 gesture enclosed rather than repudiated themselves. The note he 5 leaves asks for forgiveness . . . an almost Christian declaration of 6 22 love as well as humility of one who was not able to do more. 7 8 Exploring the relationship between the community and the 9 individual, Morrison’s novels involve the reader and narrator in 10 communal ties. In this worldview, knowledge, insight and wisdom 11 emerge from communal relationships, despite the flawed character 12 and alienation of its constituents: 13 14 That egalitarianism which places us all (reader, the novel’s 15 population, the narrator’s voice) on the same footing, reflected 16 for me the force of light and mercy, and the precious, imaginative 17 yet realistic gaze of black people who (at one time, anyway) did 18 not mythologize what or whom it mythologized. The “song” itself 19 contains this unblinking evaluation of the miraculous and heroic 20 flight of the legendary Solomon, an unblinking gaze . . . lurking 21 in the tender but amused choral-community response to the 22 23 agent’s flight. 23 24 Morrison’s own unblinking gaze fosters critical self-reflection in 25 regards to African American communities. It would be simple and 26 simplistic to idealize an African American community as a haven 27 of safety and harmony against dehumanizing racism. Nowhere do 28 Morrison’s essays argue for this perfected black bliss. Everywhere 29 in her literature there exists the reality of grim, bizarre and deter- 30 mined struggle in communities grappling with rot and purification. 31 Morrison resists romantic idealism: “My vulnerability would lie in 32 romanticizing blackness rather than demonizing it; vilifying white- 33 24 ness rather than reifying it.” Her deconstruction of Eurocentrism 34 and Africanisms coexists with a critique of the limitations of black 35 community. Those limitations partly stem from African Americans’ 36 stunted abilities to be in community, and our refusal to recognize or 37 honor the ancestors and each other. Morrison details how, in Song of 38 Solomon, the ancestral figure represented by Solomon who embodies 39 40
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1 the ancestors’ flight toward freedom, is not readily recognized by 2 community: “The African myth is also contaminated. Unprogres- 3 sive, unreconstructed, self-born Pilate [the female protagonist] is 25 4 unimpressed by Solomon’s flight.” 5 Rejection, alienation, and violence toward self, others, or the 6 ancestors, however, do not negate the reality of the ties. Relation- 7 ships are determinant. One cannot erase community. One decides 8 only how to communally relate to self, others, ancestors, and 9 future born. Morrison’s reviews of Beloved and Song of Solomon place 10 ancestors as indispensable to community. Through and in them, 11 the past sits in the present and future, guiding descendants. To the 12 extent that they are recognized, contemplated for guidance and 13 spiritual power, we strengthen our ability to grow in community 14 with them and ourselves. 15 16 The Role of African Ancestors 17 18 When you kill the ancestor you kill yourself . . . nice things don’t 26 19 always happen to the totally self-reliant. 20 21 For some worldviews, the greatest spiritual development is tied to 22 service to the community; in fact, in time through such service one 23 evolves into elder and later ancestor. (Morrison uses the term ancestor 24 to refer to physically living elders and ancestral spirits; others reserve 27 25 the term for the deceased). Members of a community that extends 26 through time and space to include predecessors, contemporaries, and 27 future generations, ancestors anchor transcendence. 28 “There is always an elder” in black literature, Morrison main- 29 tains: “these ancestors are not just parents, they are sort of 30 timeless people whose relationships to the characters are benevolent, 31 instructive, and protective, and they provide a certain kind of 28 32 wisdom.” Still she observes the ambivalence among black writers: 33 34 Some of them, such as Richard Wright, had great difficulty 35 with that ancestor. Some of them, like James Baldwin, were 36 confounded and disturbed by the presence or absence of an 37 ancestor. What struck me in looking at some contemporary 38 fiction was that whether the novel took place in the city or in 39 the country, the presence or absence of that figure determined 40
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the success or the happiness of the character. It was the absence 1 of an ancestor that was frightening, that was threatening, and it 2 caused huge destruction and disarray in the work itself. That the 3 solace comes, not from the contemplation of serene nature as 4 in a lot of mainstream white literature, nor from the regard in 5 which the city was held as a kind of corrupt place to be. Whether 6 the character was in Harlem or Arkansas, the point was there, 7 this timelessness was there, this person who represented this 8 29 ancestor. 9 10 Speech about the ancestors not only enables critiques of historical 11 oppression (such as the references to slavery made in Beloved and 12 Song of Solomon); it also establishes communal realities to support 13 and reflect political-spiritual, secular-sacred traditions. Within 14 certain worldviews, ancestors illuminate an avenue for liberation; 15 their power does not necessarily promise redemption. In their 16 physical lives, predecessors who attained the stature of elders 17 helped others to develop as free human beings. As spiritual forces 18 after death, they continue to guide human development. According 19 to Congolese philosophy, knowledge is “the experience of that 20 deepest reality found between the spiritualized ancestors and the 21 30 physically living thinkers.” As a living thinker, Toni Morrison maps 22 31 recollection sites. Her writings present us with the knower who 23 reaches beyond the straitjacket of Africanisms into the past, which 24 is the present and future, to present both the African presence and 25 the Euro-American imagining of that presence. 26 Toni Morrison is only one of many following ancestral/communal 27 traditions. References or calls to the ancestral presence and the 28 primacy of historical black figures appear in African American 29 religion, politics, and art; in written, visual, performative, and oral 30 culture. The African American women’s vocal group, Sweet Honey 31 in the Rock, honors the ancestors in “Ella’s Song”; dedicated to civil 32 rights activist Ella Josephine Baker, the song uses excerpts from 33 Miss Baker’s speeches: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest, 34 until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, is as important 35 as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons.” Introducing the 36 song “Fannie Lou Hamer,” Sweet Honey founder, a former SNCC 37 activist and Smithsonian director of African American culture, 38 Bernice Johnson Reagon provides context: 39 40
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1 During the civil rights movement of the 1960s . . . Fannie Lou 2 Hamer . . . became a symbol of the strength and power of 3 resistance. . . . We call her name today in the tradition of African 4 libation. By pouring libation we honor those who provide the 5 ground we stand on. We acknowledge that we are here today 32 6 because of something someone did before we came. 7 8 Black activists and academics speak of the ancestors in their 9 memoirs. Historian Vincent Harding, who worked with Martin Luther 10 King Jr., pays tribute to the ancestors in There Is a River: The Black 11 Struggle for Freedom in America. Using we throughout the text, Harding’s 12 narrative history of African American resistance to enslavement 13 over centuries merges past, present, and future. Harding describes 14 as “mentacide” the “breaking in” practices that turned Africans into 15 slaves; to enslave a people, one must destroy their belief systems, 16 their knowledge in themselves, and their understanding of both 17 physical and metaphysical power. As a people, we resist enslavement 18 and genocide because spirits politicize our lives. As strangers in a 19 strange land, our perspectives have politicized the intellectual and 20 moral spirit of our times. 21 22 African American Intellectuals and Academic Questions 23 24 The education of the next generation of black intellectuals is 25 something that is terrifi cally important to me. But the questions black 26 intellectuals put to themselves, and to African American students, 27 are not limited and confi ned to our own community. For the major 28 crises in politics, in government, in practically any social issue in this 29 country, the axis turns on the issue of race. Is this country willing to 30 sabotage its cities and school systems if they’re occupied mostly by 31 black people? It seems so. When we take on these issues and problems 32 as black intellectuals, what we are doing is not merely the primary 33 work of enlightening and producing a generation of young black 34 intellectuals. Whatever the fl ash points are, they frequently have to 35 do with amelioration, enhancement or identifi cation of the problems 36 of the entire country. So this is not parochial; it is not marginal; it is 33 37 not even primarily self-interest. 38 39 In the interview “African American Intellectual Life at Princeton: 40 A Conversation,” Toni Morrison explores the intellectual service of
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African American educators, which, like or unlike the flight of the 1 insurance agent, humanizes both African American life and social life 2 34 in general. If, as Morrison argues, the questions black intellectuals 3 raise for and among ourselves reverberate beyond our own commu- 4 nities, then it would be vital to explore a worldview guiding our 5 writings which presents service and community as indispensable; time 6 and space as expansive; knowledge as intergenerational and responsive 7 to the conditions of people; and community as a transcendent, shared, 8 35 and thorny tie. 9 Worldviews shape educators’ lives and determine how they develop 10 curricula, pedagogy, and scholarship to talk about, or silence talk 11 about, racialized knowledge. Teaching Morrison’s writings without 12 a critical discussion of racism and slavery is an appropriation that 13 furthers racial dominance. Morrison weaves the demystification of 14 racism and black well-being into art. Unraveling these ties depoliti- 15 cizes the radical nature of her writings; in effect, it repoliticizes the 16 work as compatible with paradigms indifferent to antiblack racism. 17 Where analyses of whiteness are absent, critiques of racialized 18 oppression are insufficient to create a learning environment in which 19 Morrison’s work maintains communal ties and subversive insights. 20 Engaging in this “dangerous, solitary, radical work,” one might finally 21 confront the penchant for playing in the dark. 22 23 Conclusion 24 25 The ability to identify dehumanizing, racialized myth presupposes 26 critical thinking grounded someplace other than the conventional 27 mind. Since critical race thinking is rarely encouraged in racialized 28 settings, we rarely ask how a people, manufacturing and depending 29 on racist myths and ghosts in order to see their reflections in the 30 world, lose more than they gain. It seems that hauntings cannot be 31 restricted. Inevitably the racially privileged caste, and its entourage, 32 finds itself marked and demarcated, more obsessed and possessed 33 than its demonized, Africanist “inferiors.” Morrison’s work clinically, 34 coolly, dissects both production and possession. It brings witness to 35 a literacy that predates and overcomes Africanism, individualism, 36 and materialism. With this literacy, we read of spirit and power 37 through time and space. This knowledge is made meaningful, or 38 meaningless, by the worldviews we embrace to credit or discredit 39 the challenges posed by Toni Morrison. 40
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1 There are at least three types of compromised knowers—the 2 unwittingly, the voluntarily, and the forcibly compromised. Bernice 3 Johnson Reagon maintains that the uncompromised knower is the 36 4 one who straddles, standing with a foot in both worlds, unsplit by 5 dualities and unhampered by a toxic imagination. Morrison’s grace, 6 her ability to walk and call out both the reactionary Africanisms 7 and the revolutionary ancestors evokes the agility of the straddler 8 walking between worlds into a space of communal insight and 9 agency. Between and within worlds, Morrison as a traditionalist 10 and uncompromised knower, blends two worlds in which to stand, 11 and in that rootedness, politicized by and politicizing the spirit, 12 writes: 13 14 There must have been a time when an artist could be genuinely 15 representative of the tribe and in it; when an artist could have 16 a tribal or racial sensibility and an individual expression of it. 17 There were spaces and places in which a single person could 18 enter and behave as an individual within the context of the 19 community. A small remnant of that you can see sometimes in 20 Black churches where people shout. It is a very personal grief 21 and a personal statement done among people you trust. Done 22 within the context of the community, therefore safe. And while 23 the shouter is performing some rite that is extremely subjective, 24 the other people are performing as a community in protecting 37 25 that person. 26 27 28 Notes 29 1. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination 30 (New York: Vintage, 1993), 4. 31 2. Ibid., 17. 32 3. Ibid., 6–7. 4. Ibid., 4. 33 5. Ibid., 48. 34 6. Ibid., 38. 35 7. Ibid., 39. 36 David Roediger explores “naturalizing Whiteness” and argues that by 37 ignoring race-ethnicity, white Marxists have redoubled the hegemony 38 of “whiteness” or white supremacy by naturalizing it. David Roediger, 39 Wages of Whiteness (New York: Routledge, 1992). 40 8. Morrison, Playing in the Dark, 47–48.
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9. Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The African American Pres- 1 ence in American Literature,” Michigan Quarterly Review 28 (Winter 1988): 18. 2 10. Morrison, Playing in the Dark, 12. 3 11. Morrison, “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” in Black Women 4 Writers, ed. Mari Evans (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 344–345. 5 12. Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” 3. 6 13. Morrison, “Rootedness,” 342. 7 14. John Mbiti, Traditional African Religions and Philosophies (London: 8 Heinemann, 1969), 79. 9 15. K. Kia Buneski Fu-Kiau, The African Book Without Title (Cambridge: Fu-Kiau, 1980), 62–63. 10 16. Ibid. 11 17. Ibid., 33. 12 18. Morrison, Playing in the Dark, 32. 13 19. In an interview with the BBC, Morrison describes how her own 14 “haunting” by Margaret Garner’s life and death ended when she wrote 15 Beloved. 16 20. “The insurance agent does not declare, announce, or threaten his 17 act. He promises, as though a contract is being executed faithfully between himself and others. Promises broken, or kept; the difficulty 18 of ferreting out loyalties and ties that bind or bruise wend their 19 way throughout the action and the shifting relationships.” Morrison, 20 “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” 28. 21 21. Ibid. 22 22. Ibid. 23 23. Ibid., 29. 24 24. Ibid., xi. 25 25. Ibid., 29. 26. Morrison, “Rootedness,” 344. 26 27. Ancestor worship is global. Confederate iconography inspires 27 devotion; the fervor of canonical reverence belies the academy’s 28 “objective” disdain for spiritualism. 29 28. Morrison, “Rootedness,” 343. 30 29. Ibid. 31 30. Fu-Kiau, The African Book Without Title, 62. 32 31. Instructional or inspirational calls to expansive community come 33 from various sites of recollection, which point to unifying elements or commonalities based on shared values. 34 32. Sweet Honey in the Rock, “’B’lieve I’ll Run On . . . See What the 35 End’s Gonna Be” (Ukiah, CA: Redwood Records, 1977). 36 33. Albert Raboteau, Toni Morrison, Wanheema Lubiano, and Ruth 37 Simmons, “African American Intellectual Life at Princeton: A Conver- 38 sation,” Princeton Today (Summer 1993). 39 34. Tsenay Serequeberhan writes in African Philosophy: “The calling of 40
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1 the African philosopher . . . comes to us from a lived history whose endurance and sacrifice—against slavery and colonialism—has made 2 our present and future existence in freedom possible. The reflec- 3 tive explorations of African philosophy are thus aimed at further 4 enhancing and expanding this freedom.” Tsenay Serequeberhan, 5 African Philosophy (New York: Paragon House, 1991), xxii. This “call” 6 likely predates imperialism and enslavement. 7 35. Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory,” in Making Face, Making 8 Soul/Haciendo Caras, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa (San Francisco: Aunt Lutte, 9 1990). 36. Bernice Johnson Reagon, “‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I See’; or ‘By 10 and By I’m Gonna Lay Down My Heavy Load,’” Journal for American 11 History 78, no. 1 (June 1991). 12 37. Morrison, “Rootedness,” 339. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 2424 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 3 5 6 Black Feminism in Liberation Limbos 7 8 9 10 “Limbo” has multiple meanings. In its primary negative usage, it 11 refers to: Christian theological constructs of a site neighboring hell; 12 prison; oblivion or neglect; suspension between two states. In its 13 secondary meaning marked by play, struggle, and pleasure, limbo 14 refers to the black/Caribbean dance where dancers lean backward, 15 with knees bent to pass below an obstacle or bar that blocks their 16 path. When I was growing up in the Southern United States, it was 17 a broom handle that was lowered with each procession. As children, 18 we danced singing, “Do the limbo, limbo rock—All away around 19 the clock!” Only the very flexible and very audacious improvisers 20 were determined and managed to last more than several rounds. 21 Black feminisms (there is no monolithic black feminism) revolve 22 around the varied meanings, both negative and positive, of limbo. 23 Black feminisms respectively evade and evoke the two types 24 of limbos. Evaded is the relegation of black women’s issues to 25 marginal sites where critiques of racial-sexual oppression are 26 distanced from the centers of social and political debate. Like 27 unbaptized children and the non-Christian righteous, black femi- 28 nisms have been relegated to an outer realm where, while not 29 exactly punished for their sins, they are ghettoized for an alleged 30 poor timing and inability to encounter the “larger paradigms” 31 undergirding existence. Women from oppressed peoples routinely 32 find themselves in liberation limbos. For instance, when Native 33 American women began to organize the Indigenous Women’s 34 Network, they faced criticism from some men in their communi- 35 ties, through the International Treaty Council and the American 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Black Feminism in 38 Liberation Limbos,” in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential 39 Philosophy, ed. Lewis Gordon (New York: Routledge, 1996), 215–224. 40 25
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1 Indian Movement, who argued that by addressing the specificity 2 of their oppression, indigenous women weakened the collective 3 power of Native Americans. Similar accusations have been made 4 against black feminists. As they interpret and dissect, describe and 5 agitate around human existence via reflections on and interventions 6 by and for black females, African American feminisms display an 7 agility in paradigm-building and trashing, an imaginative power and 8 material resistance that grant fluidity to bend lower and lower and 9 with limber steps dance past a descending bar of political-intel- 10 lectual dismissals. Their evocative agency reasserts the centrality of 11 struggles and analyses often passed over in mainstream discourse. 12 Still, in the wake of (feminist) antiblack racism and (black and 13 multicultural) antifeminism, black feminisms appear to progress 14 only with considerable effort. 15 16 Criticizing (Black) Feminisms 17 18 Legitimate criticisms of mainstream black feminism include its 19 (neo)liberalism, its failure to sustain economic critiques, its 20 antiradicalism, and its neglect of state violence. Concerning its 21 antiradicalism, some black feminisms elide the radical nature of 22 black women’s resistance to state oppression. For instance, if black 23 women’s associations with the Communist Party, trade unions, the 24 Black Panther Party or Black Liberation Army, and the Student 25 Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), as well as other 26 self-defense organizations, are omitted from feminist theory, the 27 occlusion of radical praxis is normative in a culture and state where 28 conservatism and liberalism are hegemonic. Having made important 29 contributions to critiques of white (feminist) racism and (black) 30 sexism, black feminisms have offered less focused analyses of class 31 and educational elitism, liberalism, and state nationalism in the 32 general society and among African Americans. 33 Other accusations leveled by some feminists against black women 34 and black feminisms include the charges that black feminisms speak 35 only to the particular and that black women are, more than their 36 white counterparts, less inclined toward feminism given their alle- 37 giance to a romanticized “black community” that privileges males. 38 The criticism that black feminisms are not “feminist” enough simpli- 39 fies the existential dilemmas of black women’s lives and struggles in 40 a racist state. The liberation of black women as a group rather than
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as atomized individuals is inseparable from—but not identical with 1 or reducible to—the liberation of their people or communities of 2 origin. With historical, cultural worldviews that privilege ancestors 3 and community, and a historical genocidal diaspora in the Americas, 4 and centuries of antiblack racism from a motley assortment of 5 ethnic groups, black women’s associations and experiences of 6 sexual and gender politics—from exploitation in domestic work 7 and the labor market to sexual abuse and reproductive rights and 8 sterilization struggles—will necessarily reflect racist barriers 9 and racialized worldviews. This need not constitute an inherent 10 antifeminisrn or counterfeminism, although those tendencies exist. 11 Rather, it can lead to a unique form of feminism. In their best 12 forms, black feminisms offer new languages for formulating the 13 1 well-being of “community” and “family,” expanding and redefining 14 liberation politics and rhetoric to address the issues of power that 15 reflect black women as an outsider group and outsiders within 16 this grouping such as lesbians/bisexual/transgendered women, 17 prostitutes, the poor, incarcerated, and immigrant women. 18 The dismissive that black feminisms are handmaidens to white 19 feminisms, or are not “black“ enough, has no merit, but reflects in 20 part the sometimes corrective instructional roles to white racism 21 where black feminisms served as the “clean-up woman” or domestic 22 of racial messes and seem overly preoccupied with white, privileged 23 women. Also, in their construction as the source of exotic, emotive 24 stories of colored pain and pathology for nonblack consumers, 25 black feminisms have at times been commoditized for nonblacks 26 and nonfeminists. The historic functions of the subjugated black as 27 servant and entertainer endure. 28 Criticisms that black feminisms divert attention from black 29 liberation (if they are black feminisms) or women’s liberation (if they 30 are black feminisms) construct a binary that obscures the complexi- 31 ties of antiracist and antisexist struggles. The assertions that black 32 feminism privileges antiblack racism to reify the polarized binary 33 between “black and white,” making “race” the central issue and 34 thereby deflecting from “universal” feminism or other “ethnic” 35 women, ignores the material global phenomenon of antiblack 36 violence. In the modern and postmodern eras, dark-skinned or 37 black/Indians, Latinas/Chicanas, Asians, and Arabs contend with 38 an intensity of racialized abuses that their white or light-skinned 39 “ethnic” counterparts are often either spared or perpetrate. 40
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1 In limbos, one witnesses the incompatibility of linearity to 2 overlapping and contradictory relations of dominance. In this 3 regard, illustrating the intersections of existence, oppression, and 4 freedom with integrative analyses might be one of black feminisms’ 5 most important contributions to liberation movements. In limbos 6 of our own progressive movements, time is not linear. One bends 7 backward, in order to move forward: the past, present, and future 8 coexist and overlap. For those who are not first born into color and 9 ethnicity, later into an economic class, next into gender socializa- 10 tion, and finally into sexuality, linearity is dysfunctional. Those who 11 are born simultaneously into experiences and relationships shaped, 12 enriched, or vampirized by cultural, economic, and nation-state 13 policies are assaulted by our society’s acquiescence to classism, 14 and (hetero)sexism. In developing a critique of these experiences 15 and relationships, the notion of linear struggle is inadequate and 16 illusory. Linear projections prioritize abstract “primary” over 17 abstract “secondary” oppression. Expressing an agile ability and 18 willingness to grasp a multidimensional world and its multiplicity 19 and intersection of repression, black feminisms usually forgo 20 reified evil and trickle-down liberation theories. Rather than issue 21 a critique of a succession of oppressive institutions—“patriarchy,” 22 “white supremacy,” “transnational capitalism,” “colonizing culture,” 23 “homophobia”—most black feminisms examine the simultaneity 24 of oppression and the interrelatedness of gender, race, and class 25 struggles. 26 27 Academic Interventions 28 29 Struggling for recognition from dominant intellectuals, academic 30 black feminisms vacillate between conservative and progressive 31 interventions. Academics have been accused of “hyperintellec- 32 tualism,” of reflecting on abstractions of reality, disdaining and 33 distancing themselves from the ground of everyday life and the 34 specificity of political struggles. Black feminisms seem an unlikely 35 candidate for the label of disembodied theory, given their largely 36 ethical and pragmatic objectives and accessible language. Although 37 a blueprint for liberation is generally disparaged, there are both a 38 need and demand for functional discourse with a liberating intent 39 that reflects peoples’ material and spiritual battles to survive 40 poverty, drudgery in labor, premature births, and deaths. With
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women and children of African descent disproportionately in the 1 ranks of the impoverished, malnourished, illiterate, diseased, and 2 dying, many of those struggling to survive and resist destructive 3 conditions are black women and children. A black existence marked 4 by oppression and resistance has historically galvanized and directed 5 black women’s intellectual productions. 6 Making the contributions of “subaltern” survivors and resistors, 7 making the “invisible” visible has been a good part of the work of 8 black women scholars and writers. Countering the marginalization 9 of women’s voices in academic discourse, women of color have 10 greatly expanded academic discussions and knowledge. Black 11 feminisms’ antiracism makes it quite distinct from academic, 12 nonradical trends. There is no such phenomenon as abstract 13 womanhood or gender. Both are constructed in specific social and 14 historical context, often using blackness as a foil. Likewise, there 15 is no abstract “blackness” suffering racism devoid of gender, class, 16 sexuality, political history. Abstractions create limbos in which the 17 specificity of liberation struggles is supplanted by the “representa- 18 tive” or generic woman or black or worker—who tends not to 19 reflect the lives of black women but benefits from the subordinated 20 and exploited roles black women have in political economies and 21 economies of value and desire. 22 Despite its seeming dependence on the favor of Women’s Studies 23 or African American/Africana Studies programs, black feminist 24 studies have provided new dimensions for the study of existential 25 intersections of economic, racial, and sexual violence and human 26 rights advocacy. One case in point is the January 1994 conference, 27 “Black Women in the Academy: Defending Our Name, 1894–1994,” 28 held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the conclusion 29 of the conference, 2,000-plus attendees (most of whom were black 30 women) issued a conference resolution to President Bill Clinton: 31 “86% of black women who voted, voted for the Democratic Party 32 ticket which brought you and Hilary Rodham Clinton to the White 33 House and a Democratic Congress to Washington in 1992 . . . this 34 was the largest proportion of any constituency to vote for your 35 administration.” With copies sent to the Congressional Black, 36 Women, and Hispanic Caucuses, the petition requested that the 37 administration commission a “Blue Ribbon panel on race rela- 38 tions” building on the 1968 Kerner report, examine that original 39 report and its 1988 review of a diverging America, and make 40
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1 recommendations to alleviate “the continuing injuries of racism, 2 sexism and homophobia.” The petition addressed U.S. domestic and 3 foreign policies, calling for the end of antidemocratic covert actions 4 against Haiti and the restoration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the 5 Presidency; lifting the embargo against Cuba; aid for Somalia, and 6 U.S. support for the democratic process in Southern Africa. 7 Intellectual, politicized interventions by black women academics 8 and others are essential yet cannot serve as surrogates for political 9 organizing with working-class and impoverished women. In their 10 work, black feminist educators continue to build on the contribu- 11 tions of their historical predecessors. A black intellectual vanguard 12 such as the “talented tenth”—created by white northern philanthro- 13 pists and missionaries—is rejected by those who see its constraint 14 of nonelite transformative praxis. The older W. E. B. Du Bois’s 15 reflection on an intellectual cadre hence popularized has currency: 16 “out of the mass of the working classes, who know life in its bitter 17 struggle, will continually rise the real, unselfish and clear-sighted 2 18 leadership.” 19 Activism among black nonelites created considerable political 20 and social space for elites. The majority of social change agents 21 continue to be women working in triple shifts for depressed wages, 22 unpaid child-rearing and housework, and volunteer community 23 building black women’s pivotal role struggles that often go undoc- 24 umented and unnoticed. 25 26 Existence in Gray: Historical Political Struggles 27 28 Between white and black (and white supremacy and multicultur- 29 alism) exist curious sites of amnesia, the gray areas surrounding 30 political agency. Amnesia partly stems from the erasure of historical 31 archetypes (particularly those at odds with neoliberal politics) and 32 the erasure of the ways in which black women ancestors historically 33 fought for racial and gender justice. One of the first U.S. women to 34 lecture publicly on political issues and the first published African- 35 American woman political writer, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1869), 36 called for women of African descent to develop their highest 37 intellectual abilities. 38 Born a free African American woman in Boston, widowed at an 39 early age, impoverished by white swindlers, and childless, Stewart 40 wrote for the Liberator, an abolitionist paper established by David
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Walker. After Walker’s death, as copublisher of the Liberator, 1 Stewart became noted for an antislavery militancy and religiosity 2 that incensed white racists as well as alarmed Boston’s more 3 conservative, free blacks. Her claims to religious authority through 4 conversations with God (Stewart maintained that divine revelations 5 shaped her speeches, writings, and grounded her hope in African 6 liberation) estranged her from the church’s Paulist scriptures 7 that advocated the subservience of women and their exclusion 8 from ministry. Assuming that the martyrdom that claimed Walker 9 awaited her, Maria Stewart wrote in 1831, that “many will suffer 10 for pleading the cause of oppressed Africa, and I shall glory in being 11 one of her martyrs. . . . [God] is able to take me to himself, as he 12 3 did the most noble, fearless, and undaunted David Walker.” 13 4 Unlike Walker, Stewart was not murdered. Her militant public 14 life, however, was cut short by continuous criticism and censorship 15 from the black Bostonians for violating gender hierarchies of the 16 church and middle-class social values. While proslavery sectors cursed 17 Stewart, Bostonian blacks silenced her. In her last public speech until 18 the end of the civil war (in which she coordinated black refugee camps 19 and served as Matron of the freemen’s Hospital in Washington, DC), 20 “Farewell Address to her Friends in the City of Boston, Delivered 21 September 21, 1833,” Stewart castigates blacks who curtailed her 22 radicalism: “I find it is no use for me as an individual to try to make 23 myself useful among my color in this city. . . . [M]y respected friends, 24 let us no longer talk of prejudice, till prejudice becomes extinct at 25 home. Let us no longer talk of opposition, till we cease to oppose 26 5 our own.” 27 Likewise, one might also pull from the gray areas of political 28 memory the work of Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1935). Cooper 29 was ousted from her principalship at the prestigious Dunbar High 30 School in Washington, DC, because of racist and political resent- 31 ment that emerged from her preparing her black students to attend 32 prestigious white schools, such as Harvard, rather than follow 33 Booker T. Washington’s vocational education mandate. (She herself 34 eventually earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne.) One of three 35 African American women invited to address the World Congress 36 of Women in 1893, Cooper also addressed the 1900 Pan-African 37 Congress Conference in London, which she helped to organize; 38 five years later she cofounded the colored women’s YWCA. In 39 her classic text, A Voice from the South, Cooper gauges the progress 40
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1 of liberation of Africans not by the elevation or achievements of 2 black elites, particularly those by men, but by the freedom from 3 exploitation of the masses of laborers who worked the longest 4 hours, for the lowest wages, under the most arduous circumstances: 5 “Only the black woman can say when and where I enter, in the 6 quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and 7 without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro 6 8 race enters with me.” Cooper’s calls for a mass standard to measure 9 the efficacy and relevance of black praxis go against the tendency to 10 focus on elites and minimize the significance of laborers, of black 11 women who, as change-agents in local churches, schools, streets, 12 farm fields, factories, and prisons, reveal radical and communal 13 traditions of democratic power. 14 As the lives of Stewart and Cooper exemplify, historical and 15 contemporary black feminisms are tied to African American 16 struggles. From the nineteenth-century abolitionist movements to 17 the twentieth-century civil rights movement, blacks and nonblacks 18 received and shared political training, language, theory, and strategy 19 from and with black women as movements worked to radicalize 20 intellectual and political formations. 21 Those unfamiliar with black women’s radicalism will likely not 22 be well-informed on contemporary liberation struggles in the 23 United States, influenced and shaped by the often unacknowledged 24 contributions of antilynching militant Ida B. Wells-Barnett, civil 25 rights revolutionary Ella Baker, and black liberation militant 26 Assata Shakur. Confronting the marginalization of women leaders 27 and activists in historiography, Delores Williams observes that 28 “By uncovering as much as possible about such female liberation, 29 the womanist begins to understand the relation of black history 30 to the contemporary folk expression: ‘If Rosa Parks had not sat 7 31 down, Martin King would not have stood up.’” More precisely, 32 if Miss Parks had not sat down and later organized with E. D. 33 Nixon, Joanne Robinson and the Women’s Political Caucus, the 34 Montgomery Improvement Association and its Bus Boycott would 35 not have emerged. 36 Black women abolitionists, Reconstruction radicals, “Second Recon- 37 struction” civil rights activists, and black movement militants fought 38 against racial and sexual restrictions. Their courageous commitments 39 were responses to the threats against black existence posed under a 40 state built on black enslavement and white colonization.
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Today, white supremacy, economic exploitation, and the disen- 1 franchisement of women have mutated rather than disappeared. 2 In the United States, the black life span, already less than that 3 of whites, continues to decline; whereas black poverty, which is 4 greater than that of whites, is increasing. State policing and protec- 5 tion are as selective and as discriminatory as state punishment 6 and execution. Social, political, economic equality are chimerical 7 rights for black peoples, as is equal protection under the law from 8 racial and sexual violence/exploitation. Contemporary “existence 9 in black” occurs among nations where blackness symbolizes sexual 10 pathology, violence, and criminality, and where racial paranoia 11 constructs a fetish for prison and punishment. These constructions 12 ensure that although most violent attacks tend to occur within 13 one’s own ethnic group, the majority of whites are beaten, raped, 14 and robbed by other whites—the dominant image of the batterer, 15 rapist, and thief is “the black,” ergo what needs to be disciplined, 16 policed, and punished (including through punitive policies for the 17 poor is, as Fanon observed, le nègre). 18 Historically, invoking “the black” as breeder and instigator of 19 violence conveniently masked “white” and state violence. At the 20 same time that blacks gained notoriety as the most infamous 21 perpetrators of crime in a racialized society, they are given less 22 recognition as the victims of violence. Black feminisms that 23 deconstruct “the black” as primitive and degenerate in the Americas 24 and beyond, and counter the mythology that criminalizes black 25 existence and rationalizes antiblack violence, still must contend 26 with the tendency among activists to emphasize the common but 27 sporadic racist violence of police brutality or hate crimes over the 28 more prevalent racial and sexual violence inflicted by blacks on 29 8 other blacks. 30 31 Conclusion: Bleaching Bodies 32 33 As a preteen in the 1970s, visiting my first big city, LA, I met an 34 older play-kin who instructed me on life. My study, sequestered 35 from family trips to Disneyland, was relegated to Hollywood’s 36 drag strip, hanging out in the neighborhood, or running errands 37 to local stores. The most memorable lesson occurred while, with 38 her large Afro, hooped earrings, and dark black skin, she reclined 39 one afternoon in a great-aunt’s claw-foot tub. The visual memory 40
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1 survived the verbal instruction. With face and knees pointing to 2 the bathroom ceilings, expounding on racial and sexual politics, 3 my tutor soaked in hot water splashed with bleach. 4 Whatever we did or did not talk about had a great deal to do 5 with bodies, beauty, color, and marketing (but not antiracist or 6 black feminisms). Her fifteen-year-old savvy at the height of the 7 Black Power movement recognized aesthetics as socially constructed 8 and that altering, even mutilating, the body was an investment in 9 commerce and trade. The point was not to erase but to tamper with 10 blackness, to alter existence in black in its female teen form. Too 11 savvy to desire or believe in “whiteness” as an available option, she 12 opted for some distance from, or at least some control over, black- 13 ness—but always with an eye on what the market demanded. 14 In the antiblack performance, shaping some contemporary race 15 discourse, the play-kin of my youth reappears. The market provides 16 steady incentives. It seems that bleaching bodies, like bleaching 17 feminisms, produces a color of ash, a grayness. Those too sophisti- 18 cated to believe that they can obliterate a seemingly unassimilable 19 “blackness” might project it into gray areas of intellectual-political 20 peripheries. Others might seek to manage blackness out of its “too 21 black” state, altering its appearance to make it more of an inde- 22 terminate color palatable to market consumers and multiracialism. 23 Still others, outsiders, in limbo might proceed past lowering 24 booms—epidemics of race hatred, sexual violence, and poverty, 25 elites that posit the “irrelevance of race” and black community—to 26 form black feminisms in liberation movements. 27 28 Notes 29 1. Problematizing the heterosexual family as normative, Fran White 30 notes: “you can read anyone from Ron Karenga to Patrick Moynihan, 31 from Haki Madhubuti to Bill Moyers, and you will find that the 32 problem with the black community is that we have weak heterosexual 33 bonds . . . [these] building blocks for a strong community don’t 34 include welfare dependent families, single-parent female-headed 35 households, and especially they don’t include gay, lesbian and bisexual 36 family members.” See Phillip Harper, Margaret Cerullo, and E. 37 Frances White, “Multi/Queer/Culture,” Radical America 24, no. 4 (1993): 31.. The writings of Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Essex 38 Hemphill, Marlon Riggs confront the sexual politics mythologizing 39 black “family” and “community.” 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 3434 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM Black Feminism in Liberation Limbos 35 d 2. W. E. B. Du Bois, In Battle for Peace: The Story of My 83rd Birthday 1 (New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1952). 2 3. Maria Stewart, The Political Speeches of Maria Stewart, ed. Marilyn Richardson (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987). 3 4. Walker was allegedly poisoned by proslavery whites. 4 5. Stewart, The Political Speeches of Maria Stewart, 70–71. 5 6. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, foreward by Henry Louis 6 Gates Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 7 7. Delores Williams, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Voices,” 8 Christianity and Crisis (March 2, 1987). 9 8. With the exception of incarcerated women (whose numbers dispro- 10 portionately include black women) and indigenous women on reservations, black women’s lives are materially disciplined more by 11 the government than by black males, who control more household 12 violence than household income. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 3535 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 4 5 6 Resting in Gardens, Battling in Deserts: 7 8 Black Women’s Activism 9 10 11 12 Reminding you 13 Sister 14 It’s okay to rest your feet 15 from battles 16 But lay in gardens 17 warmed by sun 18 Not in spreading deserts 19 near convenient wells 20 —Audre Lorde 21 22 Introduction 23 24 The above epigram is taken from Audre Lorde’s inscription for The 25 1 Black Unicorn. Lorde, a mother, poet, feminist, and lesbian, is one 26 of many black women writers, including Toni Cade Bambara, Sonia 27 Sanchez, bell hooks, and Alice Walker, who have greatly influenced 28 the growth and development, the genius, of womanist or black 29 feminist theory and activism. 30 Tens of thousands of black women have furthered democratic 31 politics and social justice through their activism and analyses. Black 32 feminist politics display a radical singularity. In its revolutionary 33 tendency (only one of many trajectories within black women’s 34 activism), one finds the framework for an alternative to liberal 35 antiracist and feminist politics. Black women have tended incred- 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Resting in Gardens, 38 Battling in Deserts: Black Women’s Activism,” The Black Scholar 29, no. 4 39 (Winter 1999): 2–7. 40 37
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1 ible, secluded gardens within the expansive wasteland of this 2 dysfunctional democracy. 3 What often distracts attention from the fruits of black women’s 4 labors is depoliticizing representations that obscure their 5 political contributions. Commercial, stereotypical portrayals 6 of black females center on fetishized and animalized sexual 7 imagery; consequently, blacks, females, and politics become 8 effaced or distorted. Racial and sexual caricatures corseting the 9 black female body have historical legacies. Progressive intellectuals 10 and activists satirize denigrating stereotypes that recycle vilifying 11 images of black females as “tragic mulattas,” tricksters, and femmes 12 fatales. Nevertheless, commercial images of America’s sexualized 13 attraction as well as aversion to black females eclipse images of black 14 female political agency in conventional culture. Deconstructing 15 representations of black females as sexual deviants and of images that 16 promote antiblack and antifemale contempt and violence has been a 17 primary concern of black women writers and activists in the United 18 States for centuries. 19 The political agency of black women still seems to be infrequently 20 referenced, perhaps because black males remain the most influential 21 petitioners and pugilists in contemporary American race politics. 22 Although exceptions have occasionally been made for very extraor- 23 dinary women, historically, the image of “freedom fighters” has 24 been masculinized, a fact that furthers the erasure of black women 25 activists. 26 27 Historical Legacies 28 29 [W]e find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American 30 women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and 31 liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to 32 the American political system (a system of white male rule) has 33 always been determined by our membership in two oppressed 34 racial and sexual castes. . . . Black women have always embodied, 35 if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to 36 white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads on them 37 and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. 2 38 —The Combahee River Collective Statement 39 40
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Most Americans are unfamiliar with the history of militant black 1 female fighters, yet their stories are readily available. Memoirs such 2 as Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells; Angela Davis: An 3 Autobiography; and Assata: An Autobiography touch a raw nerve among 4 those who become politically stressed or polarized when facing 5 3 radical and revolutionary social justice battles. (Paradoxically, 6 political autobiographies expand an intellectual base for progressives 7 while simultaneously providing images of revolutionaries marketed 8 as commodities through publications for consumers.) Reading such 9 narratives reveals rebellions that democratized American politics. 10 Tens of thousands were and are inspired by Ida B. Wells’s crusade 11 against lynching, Ella Baker’s organizing for civil rights, Angela 12 Davis’s support for prisoners (beginning with the Soledad Brothers 13 in the late 1960s), and Assata Shakur’s revolutionary battles in the 14 black liberation movement (a movement eventually destroyed by 15 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s illegal counterrevolutionary 16 program, Cointelpro). The contradictory works of women such as 17 Wells, Baker, Davis, and Shakur, although not consistently “radical” 18 or “revolutionary,” pushed beyond conventional politics. Seeking 19 liberation, each offered models of black female resistance to 20 political, social, state, or gender dominance. 21 Following the unique political maneuvers executed by Wells 22 at the turn of the previous century, black women continuously 23 organized and shaped liberation leadership, leaving significant 24 imprints on the movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Even women 25 who uniformly considered themselves “antiracists” but not neces- 26 sarily “feminists” nonetheless expanded antiracist women’s politics, 27 community development, democratic power, and radical leadership. 28 Given the primacy of movements in the formation and articulation 29 of black female militancy, history plays a central role in contem- 30 porary analyses. 31 In the 1960s, black women participated in the Southern Chris- 32 tian Leadership Council, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 33 Committee, the Congress on Racial Equality, the Organization of 34 Afro-American Unity, and the Black Panther Party. Emerging from 35 the black liberation and antiracist movements that helped to rede- 36 fine radical action, in the 1970s, black women’s organizations such 37 as the Combahee River Collective issued cogent manifestoes that 38 39 40
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4 1 articulated a revolutionary black feminism. Reviewing radical and 2 revolutionary politics for contemporary struggles reveals dynamic 3 legacies changing in the activism of prisoners rights advocates 4 and environmental organizers. At a time of mass, militant unrest, 5 through bold confrontations with state authority, black women 6 activists forged prototypes for late-twentieth-century, and early 7 twenty-first-century, radicalism. 8 Of the many branches of black feminism extending from battles for 9 a liberated African and female existence in America, the most imagi- 10 native and transformative are rooted in black female radicalism. It is 11 impossible here to offer a comprehensive survey of the ideological 12 diversity or plurality of black feminist activisms or the more subtle 13 differences found even within radical black feminism. Yet it is essential 14 that we examine the limits of liberalism or civil rights advocacy, as 15 well as black women’s challenges to state power and antiradicalism 16 within conventional feminist and antiracist politics. 17 The most recognized political activism remains in conventional 18 politics. Despite exclusionary practices set by racism, sexism, 19 and class bias, African American women have made gains in the 20 “public realm” of electoral politics and appointed office; these are 21 the political victories most often seen and celebrated in antiracist 22 feminist politics. The 1992 election of Carol Mosely Braun as the 23 United States’ first black woman senator (whose politics often fell 24 short of progressive), and the reelections of Democratic leaders 25 Maxine Waters (who helped to publicize the connections between 26 the Central Intelligence Agency and cocaine trafficking in the 27 Iran-Contra scheme), Cynthia McKinney (active in human rights 28 advocacy in U.S. foreign policy), Corrine Brown, Carrie Meeks, 29 and Eleanor Holmes Norton to the U.S. House of Representatives, 30 stand as key examples of black female progress in electoral political 31 power. Outside of congressional halls, black women also have 32 mobilized the “private realm” of local and religious communities, 33 neighborhood schools, and cultural centers. Directly or indirectly 34 opposing institutional control, and social and state neglect or 35 violence, they have informed American political culture by leaving 36 indelible marks in antiviolence campaigns, resource redistribution 37 for underresourced communities, youth and women’s groups, and 38 labor and civil rights activism. Both the highly visible congress- 39 women and the nearly invisible community activists shape models 40 of political progressivism.
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Black women activists and feminists are not uniformly progres- 1 sive, although they all invariably face marginalization and opposition 2 fueled by white supremacy, corporate capitalism, patriarchy, and 3 homophobia. Radical or revolutionary black feminisms also face 4 resistance from liberal and conservative feminisms and antiracism. 5 Black feminist politics negotiates the “internal” opposition of anti- 6 radicalism among feminists and antiracists and the counterfeminism 7 evident among some radicals. 8 Battling with state power, patriarchal culture, as well as anti- 9 radicalism and counterfeminism among progressives, subordinate 10 women have forged a feminist politics through militant antiracist 11 movements. Discomfort with black feminist speech and activism 12 in its most radical expressions—those which confront exploitation 13 tied to militarism, corporate dominance, and neoimperialism stems 14 from and fosters restricted notions of “feminism” and “antiracism.” 15 Difficulties in accepting black feminisms on their own terms may 16 stem from not only sexism and racism but a lack of familiarity with 17 critiques of monopoly capitalism and neoliberalism. 18 Given our economic and ideological diversity, we cannot in good 19 faith posit black women as a class. A homogenized view of women 20 of African descent allows conventional politics to elide historical 21 black militancy. There is no “master” narrative that frames the 22 concerns of all black women and their organizations. The multi- 23 plicity of ideologies reveals varying degrees of political efficacy 24 and risk for social change; this diversity is often obscured by the 25 “framing” of feminism in ways that either erase the contributions 26 of radical black women or depict a homogeneous black feminism 27 as an (corrective or rebellious) appendage to either antiracist or 28 feminist struggles. 29 Resistance has historically challenged and shaped black female 30 praxis across a broad ideological spectrum. Black women’s autonomy 31 from the pervasive dominance of neoliberalism and corporate 32 culture, however, opens new avenues for political activism. 33 34 Continuing Crusades 35 36 Today, black women’s struggles center on related but seemingly 37 diverse issues, such as reproductive rights, environmental racism, 38 child-care and health issues, sexual violence, police brutality, and 39 incarceration. Key intersections along the American political curve 40
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1 of antiracist, feminist activism include community, ideology and 2 identity, revolutionary iconography, state punishment, sexuality, 3 black male patriarchy and profeminism, economic resources, and 4 social and racial justice. 5 One area for concentrated focus has been the assault on affirma- 6 tive action and the expansion of the prison industrial complex. 7 Combined, these form a twinned hydra for racial, economic, and 8 gender repression. A resurgent neoconservatism hostile to “racial 9 preferences” in education and employment acquiesces to racial 10 bias in imprisonment and state execution. The state of California, 11 which leads the nation in incarceration, spends more on prisons 12 than on schools. Of the nearly two million incarcerated in U.S. 13 jails, prisons, and detention centers, over 70 percent are people 14 of color. The Washington, DC–based Sentencing Project has noted 15 that blacks convicted of committing similar offenses are dispropor- 16 tionately more likely to be incarcerated than whites. 17 Black women are increasingly becoming active around human 18 rights abuses tied to policing and imprisonment given the destruc- 19 tive impact official and unofficial policies have on their families and 20 themselves. A few striking examples illustrate the gross inequality 21 and abuse rampant in the prison industry and state policing: the 22 Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution legalizes slavery for 23 prisoners; anyone convicted of killing a white person is three to 24 four times more likely to receive the death penalty, particularly 25 if she or he is not white; over 65 percent of juvenile offenders 26 sentenced to death since the reinstitution of the death penalty in 5 27 1976 have been either black or Latino. One of the few democratic 28 nations to execute minors and the mentally retarded, the United 6 29 States has executed more youths than any other country. 30 Although they are a minority of the prison population, women, 31 particularly women of color, are increasingly facing the punitive 32 powers of the state. In March 1999, the Amnesty International Rights 33 for All campaign issued a report, Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of the 34 Rights of Women in Custody, documenting the abuses of women in U.S. 35 prisons and jails. By 1997, there were 138, 000 women incarcerated 36 in the United States, triple the number since 1985 and ten times the 37 number of women imprisoned in Spain, England, France, Scotland, 7 38 Germany, and Italy combined. Most of the women incarcerated in 39 the United States are nonviolent offenders convicted of economic 40 crimes or drug use. Eighty percent are mothers, 80 percent are
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poor; and the majority are women of color. The less common violent 1 offenses are generally connected to domestic violence. Racial bias in 2 sentencing means that women of color incarcerated for nonviolent 3 and violent crimes will increasingly make up the growing population 4 of incarcerated females. Serving time, this population of caged women 5 finds itself subject to new forms of physical and sexual abuse; and, 6 although the Convention Against Torture, which the United States 7 ratified in 1994, defines rape of women in custody by a correctional 8 officer as torture, the United States government has engaged in 9 virtually no monitoring of the conditions and situations of imprisoned 10 8 women in respect to human rights violations. 11 In theory, human rights protections exist for both prisoners and 12 nonprisoners in the United States under the International Covenant 13 on Civil and Political Rights and the international conventions ban 14 on racial discrimination, torture, and ill-treatment. The govern- 15 ment, however, places itself above the law. In 1998, the United 16 States continued to exempt itself from international human rights 17 obligations that granted protections to U.S. residents and citizens— 18 rights still not available under U.S. law. Even after ratification of 19 key human rights treaties (generally the state weakens such treaties 20 with reservations), the United States fails to acknowledge human 21 rights law: It refused to ratify the International Children’s Rights 22 Convention; opposed human rights initiatives banning landmines, 23 child soldiers; and undermined the International Criminal Court 24 (ICC). At the Rome Diplomatic Conference in July 1999, 120 25 states voted for and 7, including the United States, against the 26 9 ICC treaty. 27 The above are only some of the battles which today’s progressive 28 activists face. Conscious of both U.S. domestic and foreign policies, 29 many black women also continue to organize and theorize around 30 other crises and conditions that erode freedom and democratic 31 culture and destroy life. These include racial and homophobic lynch- 32 ings; the international AIDS epidemic currently devastating parts 33 of Africa and U.S. cities; refugees and regional wars; embargoes 34 crippling Cuba and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children; 35 decolonization struggles in Puerto Rico and Ireland; Palestinian 36 statehood; political prisoners in China and other countries as well 37 as in the United States; the war on drugs; addictions; the interna- 38 tional resurgence of neo-Nazis; nuclear waste and toxic dumping; 39 incest, rape, and domestic violence; underweight babies and infant 40
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1 mortality; dire poverty amid the increasing stratification of wealth; 2 and, of course, hypertension and high blood pressure. 3 4 Conclusion 5 6 In a culture that greets antiblack and antifemale violence, and the 7 vilification and abuse of black females and their kin with consider- 8 able equanimity, many are compelled to act. Some African American 9 women do so with distinct political intent to revolutionize rather 10 than reform existing power structures, hoping to go to the root, to 11 nurture and grow structural change that alleviates and diminishes 12 oppressive conditions. Although for most Americans the recognized 13 public fighters or advocates remain male, the Others, black female 14 organizers, battle as outsiders, at times criminalized as cultural and 15 political outlaws. 16 In these struggles, activists find that, on the one hand, the state 17 has the power to extinguish a radical movement; on the other hand, 18 it can modify and absorb that movement so that it no longer func- 19 tions as resistance to official policy. Sometimes the most convenient 20 resting place seems to be in apolitical pursuits or politics that fit 21 within conventional frameworks. Retreat into isolationist politics of a 22 singular, pressing cause abstracted from other struggles, and demands 23 may fall short of collective abilities to rethink and effectively counter 24 corporate globalization, the stratification of wealth and poverty, the 25 routinization of expanding wars (bombing or embargo), and police 26 powers (War on Drugs and Omnibus Crime Bill). 27 Despite the institutional force and pervasive presence of state 28 and corporate policies, black feminist activism, like other insurgent 29 action, reveals in its organizing and analyses its own peculiar power. 30 Nowhere is this more evident than in the revolutionary potential 31 of black feminism such as that found among women of Jericho 32 98, the Black Radical Congress, the prison and death penalty 33 abolitionism, women’s health movement—all activists who take 34 rest and respite—just not by convenient wells. 35 36 Notes 37 1. This epigram is an excerpt from an inscription written by Lorde to 38 the author in September 1989, in Lorde’s collection of poems The 39 Black Unicorn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978). 40
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2. Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective State- 1 ment,” in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, ed. Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, 2 and Barbara Smith (Old Westbury: NY: The Feminist Press, 1932). 3 3. See: Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, 4 ed. Alfreda M. Duster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); 5 Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: Random 6 House, 1974); Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: 7 Lawrence Hill and Company, 1987). 8 4. For anthologies documenting the emergence of black feminist activism, 9 see: Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed., Words of Fire: An Anthology of African- American Feminist Thought (New York: The New Press, 1995); Toni 10 Cade Bambara, ed., The Black Woman (New York: New American 11 Library, 1970); and Barbara Smith, ed., Homegirls: A Black Feminist 12 Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983). 13 5. Morton Sklar, ed., Torture in the United States (Washington, DC: World 14 Organization Against Torture, October 1998), 6. 15 6. Ibid., 5. 16 7. Amnesty International, USA: Rights for All, Not Part of My Sentence: 17 Violations of Human Rights of Women in Custody (New York: Amnesty International, March 1999), 15–16. Amnesty documents that these 18 European countries combined have a combined population of 150 19 million women as compared to 120 million women in the United 20 States. 21 8. The United States was to submit a report on its compliance with 22 the Convention Against Torture in 1995 but no report to date has 23 been released. In response, a coalition of over sixty nongovernmental 24 organizations (NGOs) issued a report in October 1998 titled Tor ture 25 in the United States: The Status of Compliance by the U.S. Government with the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or 26 Degrading Treatment or Punishment. See Sklar, ed., Torture in the United 27 States. 28 The report notes that the major areas of noncompliance in the 29 United States center on: the death penalty, prison conditions and the 30 treatment of refugee detainees; physical and sexual abuse of women 31 in prisons; the return of refugees to situations of torture and persecu- 32 tion and their long-term detention under abusive conditions. 33 9. See Human Rights Watch World Report 1999 (New York: Human Rights Watch, December 1998), accessed December 28, 2011, http://www. 34 hrw.org/legacy/worldreport99. 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 4545 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 5 5 6 Radicalizing Black Feminism 7 8 9 10 In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part 11 of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now 12 exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going 13 to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical 14 in its original meaning—getting down to and understanding the 15 root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to 16 your needs and devising means by which you change that system. 17 That is easier said than done. But one of the things that has to be 18 faced is, in the process of wanting to change that system, how 19 much have we got to do to find out who we are, where we have 20 come from and where we are going. 21 —Ella Baker, “The Black Woman in the Civil Rights Struggle” 22 23 24 During the height of the black liberation and black power move- 25 ments, veteran activist Ella Baker’s cogent assessment of the 26 political contradictions of liberalism among black elites advocating 27 civil rights distinguished between attempts to become “a part of 28 the American scene” and “the more radical struggle” to transform 29 society. According to Baker, 30 31 In . . . struggling to be accepted, there were certain goals, 32 concepts, and values such as the drive for the “Talented Tenth.” 33 That, of course, was the concept that proposed that through 34 35 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Radicalising Feminism,” 36 Race and Class 40, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 15–31. A longer version appears 37 in Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (NY: 38 Palgrave, 2000), also found on line at http://repositories.lib.utexas. 39 edu/handle/2152/7083. 40 47
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1 the process of education black people would be accepted in the 2 American culture and they would be accorded their rights in 3 proportion to the degree to which they qualified as being persons 1 4 of learning and culture. 5 6 For Baker, the common belief that “those who were trained were 7 not trained to be part of the community, but to be leaders of the 8 community” implied “another false assumption that being a leader 9 meant that you were separate and apart from the masses, and 10 to a large extent people were to look up to you, and that your 11 responsibility to the people was to represent them.” This precluded 12 people from acquiring their own sense of values; but the 1960s, 13 according to Baker, would usher in another view: “the concept of 14 the right of the people to participate in the decisions that affected 2 15 their lives.” 16 Despite agitational movements, the concept of African Americans 17 participating in political decisions has historically been translated 18 through corporate, state or philanthropic channels. A century ago, 19 the vision and resources of the American Baptist Home Missionary 20 Society (ABHMS) allowed wealthy, white Christian missionaries 21 to create the black elite Talented Tenth as a shadow of themselves 22 as influential, liberal leaders, and to organize privileged black 23 Americans to serve as a buffer zone between white America and 24 a restive, disenfranchised black mass. Funding elite black colleges 25 such as Spelman and Morehouse (named after white philanthro- 26 pists) to produce aspirants suitable for the American ideal, the 27 ABHMS encouraged the development of race managers rather 3 28 than revolutionaries. To the extent that it followed and follows 29 the founders’ mandate, the Talented Tenth was, and remains, 4 30 antirevolutionary. The formation of the Talented Tenth—supported 31 by white influential liberals—historically included women. It 32 therefore liberalized the protofeminism of historical black female 33 elites. Contemporary black feminist politics as pursued by elites 34 evince an antirevolutionary tendency reflective of the bourgeois 35 ideology of “race uplift.” Vacillating between race management and 36 revolutionary praxes, black feminisms are alternately integrated 37 into, or suppressed within, corporate-consumer culture. 38 Yet, as Baker noted, the 1960s ushered in a more democratic, 39 grassroots-driven form of leadership. The “new wave” of black 40 feminisms originating from the 1960s, invariably connects with
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historical antiracist struggles in the United States. Black women 1 created and continue to create feminism out of militant national 2 liberation or antiracist movements in which they often functioned 3 as unrecognized organizers and leaders. Equally, their contributions 4 to American feminism are inadequately noted, even among those 5 who document the history of contemporary radical feminism. 6 Emerging from black militant groups, Afra-Americans shaped 7 feminist politics. A critical examination of these sites of emergent 8 feminism and their embedded contradictions reveals black femi- 9 nisms’ more radical dimensions. For instance, the Combahee River 10 Collective traces its origins to political formations now generally 11 considered as uniformly sexist: 12 13 Black feminist politics [has] an obvious connection to movements 14 for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and l970s. 15 Many of us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black 16 nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly 17 affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals, and the 18 tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and 19 disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as 20 experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to 21 the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those 22 of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white 23 5 men. 24 25 The Combahee River Collective took its name from the guerrilla 26 foray led by the black revolutionary Harriet Tubman on June 2, 27 1863. This freed hundreds of enslaved people in South Carolina’s 28 Port Royal region, and was the first and only military campaign in 29 the United States planned and executed by a woman. During the 30 Civil War, Tubman headed the intelligence service in the depart- 31 ment of the South and was the first American woman to lead black 32 and white troops in battle. Before making a name for herself as 33 a military strategist and garnering the people’s title of “General 34 Tubman,” this formerly enslaved African woman had earlier proved 35 herself “a compelling and stirring orator in the councils of the 36 6 abolitionists and the antislavers.” Tubman’s distinct archetype 37 for a black female warrior disputes conventional narratives that 38 masculinize black history and resistance. Although males remain 39 the icons for black rebellion embattled with white supremacy and 40
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1 enslavement, women engaged in radical struggles, including the 2 strategy of armed self-defense. As fugitives with bounties on their 3 heads, they rebelled, survived, or became casualties of state and 4 racial-sexual repression. 5 Despite being designated “outlaws” and turned into outcasts 6 because of their militancy, historical or ancestral black women such 7 as Tubman have managed to survive in political memory. A few have 8 been gradually (marginally) accepted into an American society that 9 claims their resistance by incorporating or “forgiving” their past 10 revolutionary tactics. Tubman’s antebellum, criminalized resistance 11 to slavery, like Ida B. Wells’s post-Reconstruction, antilynching call- 12 to-arms, typifies a rebellion that later became legitimized through 13 American reclamation acts. To recall or reclaim black women who 14 bore arms to defend themselves and other African Americans and 15 females against racial-sexual violence remains an idiosyncratic 16 endeavor in a culture that condemns subaltern physical resistance 17 to political dominance and violence, while supporting the use of 18 weapons in the defense (or, in some cases, the expansion) of the 19 nation-state, individual and family, home and private property. 20 Seeking explicitly to foster black female militancy in the 1970s, 21 Combahee black feminists selected an Afra-American military 22 strategist and guerrilla fighter as their archetype. Their choice of 23 Tubman over her better known contemporary, Sojourner Truth, 24 suggests an intent to radicalize feminism. Truth, not Tubman, is 25 closely identified with feminism because of the former’s work as a 26 suffragette and associations with the prominent white feminists of 27 her day. Tubman is identified with black people—men, women, and 28 children—and military insurrection against the U.S. government. 29 Her associations with white men are better known than those with 30 white women; for instance, she allegedly planned to participate in 31 John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, despite the warnings of the 32 prominent abolitionist and profeminist, Frederick Douglass. With 33 this black freedom-fighter as their feminist model, the Combahee 34 River Collective emerged in 1977 to contest the liberalism of the 35 National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) that preceded the 36 Collective. 37 In its manifesto, the Collective expressed its “serious disagree- 38 ments with NBFO’s bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of 7 39 a clear political focus” and offered an activist alternative. The 40 Collective, which included Gloria Hull and Margo Okasawa-Rey,
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later went on to organize against a series of murders targeting black 1 girls and women in the Boston area. Combahee’s black feminist 2 manifesto emphasized radical activism rather than liberal politics: 3 4 Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity 5 with progressive Black men.. . . Our situation as Black people 6 necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, 7 which white women of course do not need to have with white 8 men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. 9 We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we 10 8 also struggle with Black men about sexism. 11 12 Given the prevalence of antiradical bias in American society, one 13 must wade deeply into the mainstream to retrieve critiques such as 14 the following, also issued by the Combahee River Collective: 15 16 We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples neces- 17 sitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of 18 capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists 19 because we believe that work must be organized for the collec- 20 tive benefit of those who do the work and create the products, 21 and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must 22 be equally distributed among those who create these resources. 23 We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that 24 is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee 25 9 our liberation. 26 27 Ideology and Feminist Identity 28 29 How to maintain Combahee’s integrative analyses—intersecting 30 race, gender, sexuality and class—with more than rhetoric, that is, 31 in viable political practice that organizes in nonelite communities, 32 became a major challenge for feminists. All antiracist and antisexist 33 politics, notwithstanding the rhetoric, are not equally ambitious 34 or visionary in their demands and strategies for transforming 35 society. The majority culture’s desire or need to bring “closure” or 36 containment to the black revolutionary struggles that fueled radical 37 black feminism (such as Combahee) has filtered into black feminist 38 10 ideology, altering its potential for transformation. “Closure” 39 itself is, likely, either an illusory or a conservative pursuit, given 40
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1 the continuance of the repressive conditions (impoverishment, 2 abrogation of rights, racial and sexual denigration) that engendered 3 revolutionary struggle. 4 Although the greatest opponent to antiracist and feminist 5 revolutionary struggles has been the counterrevolutionary state 11 6 (embodied in the twentieth century by the United States ), black 7 feminist writings have, by and large, paid insufficient attention to 8 state repression and the conflictual ideologies and divergent prac- 9 tices found within black feminisms. This is partly because so much 10 necessary energy has been focused on black feminisms’ margin- 11 alization in European American and African American culture (in 12 addition, the impact of black feminisms on Latina, African, Asian, 13 Arab, and Native American women could be more fully addressed), 14 and partly because of the antiradical tendencies found within black 15 feminisms, tendencies that are often obscured. 16 Liberal, radical, and revolutionary black feminisms are often 17 reductively presented as ideologically unified and uniformly “progres- 18 sive,” while black feminisms are simultaneously viewed as having little 19 impact beyond black women. Sorting out progressive politics within 20 black feminisms, one may distinguish between ideological trajectories 21 that reveal black feminisms’ at times compliant, often ambiguous, and 22 sometimes oppositional, relationships to state hegemony. Delineating 23 ideology works to contextualize black feminist attitudes toward 24 institutional and political power. In the blurred political spectrum of 25 a progressivism that broadly includes “liberal,” “radical,” “neoradical,” 26 and “revolutionary” politics and their overlap, all of these camps 27 change character or shape-shift to varying degrees with the political 28 context and era. For instance, no metanarrative can map radical or 29 “revolutionary” black feminism, although the analyses of activist-intel- 30 lectuals such as Ella Baker serve as cartography. Some reject, while 31 others embrace, the self-proclaimed “revolutionary” that manifests 32 through rhetorical, literary, cultural, or conference productions. 33 “Revolutionary” denotes dynamic movement, rather than fixed stasis, 34 within a political praxis relevant to changing material conditions 35 and social consciousness. With a fluid rather than fixed appearance, 36 the emergence of the revolutionary, remains episodic. As conditions 37 change, what it means to be a revolutionary changes (therefore, the 38 articulation of a final destination for radical or revolutionary black 39 feminisms remains more of a motivational ideal, and the pronounce- 40 ment of an arrival at the final destination a depoliticizing mirage).
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Despite ideological fluidity and border crossings, one can make 1 some valid or useful generalizations. Black feminisms that accept 2 the political legitimacy of corporate state institutional and police 3 power, but posit the need for humanistic reform, are considered 4 liberal. Black feminisms that view (female and black) oppression as 5 stemming from capitalism, neocolonialism and the corporate state 6 that enforces both, are generally understood to be radical. Some 7 black feminisms explicitly challenge state and corporate dominance 8 and critique the privileged status of bourgeois elites among the 9 “Left”: those that do so by connecting political theory for radical 10 transformation with political acts to abolish corporate state and 11 elite dominance are revolutionary. 12 Differentiating between liberalism and radicalism—or even 13 more so between “radical” and “revolutionary”—to theorize black 14 feminist liberation politics is extremely difficult but essential 15 for understanding some limitations of “left” politics and black 16 feminisms. Part of the difficulty in delineating the “Left” (of black 17 feminisms) stems from the resurgence of the Right and its modifica- 18 tion of liberal and progressive thought. 19 New terminology denotes the pervasive influence of conser- 20 vatism as neo becomes a standard political prefix for the era of 21 post–Civil Rights and postfeminist movements. The efficacy of 22 rightist conservatism has led to the coupling of reactionary with 23 conservative politics to construct the rightist hybrid “neoconserva- 24 tive”; the merger of conservative with liberal politics to create 25 the right-leaning “neoliberalism”; and the marriage of liberalism 26 with radicalism to produce “neoradicalism” as a more statist or 27 corporate form of radical politics. Alongside “neoconservatism” 28 and “neoliberalism,” one finds “neoradicalism.” All denote a drift 29 toward conservatism. This drift has engendered deradicalizing 30 trends that include the hegemony of bourgeois intellectuals within 31 neoradicalism and the commodification of the “revolutionary” as a 32 performer who captures the attention and imagination of preradical- 33 ized masses, while serving as storyteller for the apolitical consumer. 34 Responding to revolutionary struggles, the counterrevolutionary, 35 antirevolutionary, and neoradical surface to confront and displace 36 those inspired and sustained by vibrant rebellions. 37 Neoradicalism, like liberalism, denounces draconian measures 38 against women, poor, and racialized peoples, and, similarly, it 39 also positions itself as “loyal” opposition to the state. Therefore, 40
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1 what it denounces is not the state itself but its excesses—prison 2 exploitation and torture, punitive measures toward the poor, 3 environmental degradation, counterrevolutionary violence and 4 contra wars. Abolition movements directed by neoradicals rarely 5 extend their rhetoric to call for the abolition of capitalism and the 6 corporate state. When led or advocated by those representative of 7 the disenfranchised, the deradicalizing tendencies are muted by the 8 appearance of the symbolic radical. 9 All black feminists, including those who follow conventional 10 ideology to some degree, share an outsider status in a commercial 11 culture. That marginalization is not indicative of, but is often 12 confused for, an intrinsic or inherent radicalism. Ideological 13 differences among Afra-Americans belie the construction of (black) 14 women or, even more significantly, black feminists as a “class.” 15 Refusing to essentialize black women or feminism, writers such 16 as bell hooks have noted the conflictual political ideologies found 17 among black women. In 1991, hooks’s “A Feminist Challenge: Must 18 We Call All Women ‘Sister’?” interrogated feminist championing 19 of Anita Hill that made little mention of how this then Reaganite 20 Republican had promoted antifeminist, antigay/lesbian, antidisabled 21 and anti–civil rights policies at the Equal Employment Oppor- 22 tunity Commission (EEOC) under the supervision of Clarence 12 23 Thomas. The gender solidarity surrounding Hill obscured her 24 support for ultraconservative policies. Prior to her courageous 25 testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (which 26 eventually confirmed Thomas as a Supreme Court justice), she had 27 implemented reactionary attacks on the gains of the civil rights and 28 women’s movements (gains that had enabled nonactivists such as 29 Hill and her former supervisor to attend Yale Law School). 30 Legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw notes the consequences of 31 African Americans’ failure to distinguish and discuss political 32 ideologies among black public figures. Crenshaw argues against 33 a racial uniformity in black solidarity that includes reactionaries. 34 In July 1998, at a C-SPAN televised gathering of black lawyers 35 critical of the American Bar Association’s invitation to Thomas to 36 keynote its annual meeting, Crenshaw gave a scintillating critique of 37 black support for Thomas. She contended that, because of his race, 38 African Americans paid little attention to his right-wing politics and 39 so failed to distinguish between “conservative” and “reactionary” 40 ideologies. (Neo-nazi David Duke’s endorsement of Thomas’s
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appointment to the Court underscores the affinity right-wing 1 13 ideologues felt for Thurgood Marshall’s Republican replacement. ) 2 According to Crenshaw, ideological distinctions eroded black 3 opposition to former president George Bush’s Supreme Court 4 nominee, but, if black Americans had maintained and sharpened the 5 distinction between conservative and reactionary positions, more 6 would have actively opposed Thomas’s appointment to the Court. 7 Crenshaw’s argument has merit. Conservativism has some 8 respectability among black women and men immured in the “race 9 uplift” of Booker T. Washington’s black capitalism (but not fully 10 compliant with his prohibitions against competing with whites). 11 Reactionary politics, however, hold no respectable public place 12 among African Americans. Historically viewed as an extension 13 of white supremacy and racial dominance, reactionaries have 14 been considered anathema to black and female lives. Yet African 15 Americans seem unwilling, publicly and critically, to discuss 16 black reactionaries in service to the state and to distinguish their 17 counterrevolutionary service from the antirevolutionary disavowals 18 of black liberals and neoradicals. (In similar fashion, maintaining 19 distinctions between revolutionaries and radicals appears to be 20 equally problematic for Americans.) 21 Just as blurring the lines between black reactionaries and conserva- 22 tives politically accommodates reactionaries by reclassifying them as 23 respectable “conservatives,” black feminists have erased the distinc- 24 tions between liberalism and the radicalism that incited some of black 25 feminisms’ most dynamic, militant formations (like the Combahee 26 River Collective). Given that liberalism has accrued the greatest 27 material resources and social legitimacy, the coalition of liberals and 28 radicals to foment neoradicalism means that respectability has been 29 designated to dual beneficiaries. Liberal black feminism garners the 30 image of being on the “cutting edge” by appending itself to symbols 31 of radicalism and, hence, increases its popularity as “transformative.” 32 Radicals are able to mainstream or maximize their visibility and the 33 market for their rhetoric via legitimization through association with 34 liberalism. The terms for merger may be weighted toward liberalism, 35 for liberalism—and its offshoot neoliberalism—wields more material 36 resources and legitimacy than radicalism or neoradicalism. Liberalism 37 also allows black feminisms to increase their compatibility with main- 38 stream American politics, as well as mainstream African American 39 political culture. 40
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1 African Americans generally do not favor political “extremism,” as 2 is attested by their strong fidelity to a Democratic Party that takes 3 black voters for granted and that, under the Clinton presidency, 4 increased police powers and punitive measures against the poor. 5 Rather than rightist reactionary or leftist revolutionary politics, most 6 black Americans support a progressive liberalism (left of center) that 7 has a greater social conscience and, therefore, moral content than 8 that of the general society. This consequently places many African 9 Americans outside the narrowly construed, conventional political 10 spectrum. Due to a tendency to be more socially progressive and 11 supportive of vigorous, sometimes outraged and sometimes outra- 12 geous, condemnations of white supremacy, African Americans are 13 often portrayed as political “extremists” or outsiders. 14 Given that centrism remains the dominant political stance, some 15 black feminisms reconfigure radicalism to fit within liberal paradigms. 16 This enables an erasure of revolutionary politics and a rhetorical 17 embrace of radicalism without material support for challenges to 18 transform or abolish, rather than modify, state corporate authority. 19 An analogy for black feminist erasures can be made with the framing 20 of a painting. The mounting or mat establishes the official borders 21 for the viewer. Often, matting crops off the original borders of the 22 picture. If incorrectly done, the mat encroaches on the image itself 23 and the signature of the image-maker. In matting or framing black 24 feminisms for public discourse and display, the extreme peripheries 25 of the initial creation are often covered over. Placing a mat over the 26 political vision of black feminism establishes newer (visually coordi- 27 nated) borders that frequently blot out the fringes (revolutionaries 28 and radical activists) to allow professional or bourgeois intellectuals 29 and radicals to appear within borders as the only “insurgents.” With 30 layered or overlapping mats that position rhetoric as representative 31 of revolutionary struggle, the resulting portrait will obscure radicals 32 to portray liberals or neoradicals as gender and race “rebels.” 33 34 Resisting and Reshaping Radicalism 35 36 Although a great impetus for the development of black feminism 37 came from black revolutionary movements, antiradicalism within 38 American feminism (as well as masculinism among American radi- 39 cals) obscured black female militancy. Antiradical sentiment among 40 some black feminists (which has led some black feminist writers
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to dismiss black women’s ideological critiques of black feminist 1 politics as “sectarian”) raises the issue of the place of revolutionary 2 and antirevolutionary thought within progressive black feminism. 3 Black feminist liberation ideology challenges state power by 4 addressing class exploitation, racism, nationalism, and sexual 5 ― ― violence with critiques of and activist confrontations with corpo- 6 rate state policies. The “radicalism” of feminism recognizes racism, 7 sexism, homophobia, and patriarchy, but refuses to make “men” 8 or “whites” or “heterosexuals” the problem in lieu of confronting 9 corporate power, state authority, and policing. One reason to focus 10 on the state, rather than on an essentialized male entity, is that 11 the state wields considerable dominance over the lives of nonelite 12 women. The government intrudes on and regulates the lives of poor 13 or incarcerated females more than bourgeois and nonimprisoned 14 ones, determining their material well-being and physical mobility, 15 and affecting their psychological and emotional health. Never the 16 primary economic providers for black females, given the history 17 and legacy of slavery, un- and underemployment, and racialized 18 incarceration, the majority of black men exert little economic 19 control over female life, although they retain considerable physical, 20 sexual, and psychological dominance. 21 Radical black feminists’ liberation theories address their nemesis: 22 political violence, in both its private and public manifestations; 23 counterrevolutionary state police repression; and a liberal antirevo- 24 lutionary discourse that seeks to contain radical black feminism by 25 portraying it as an idealistic maverick. Radicalizing potential based 26 on incisive analyses; autonomy from mainstream and bourgeois 27 feminism; independence from masculinist or patriarchal antiracism; 28 a (self-)critique of neoradicalism, and, most importantly, activism 29 (beyond “speech acts”) that connects with “grassroots” and nonelite 30 objectives and leadership—all mark a transformative black feminism. 31 Yet, radicalism remains problematic for many. 32 Revolutionary praxis or the radical sentiments of the movement 33 era (roughly 1955–1975 to include the black civil rights struggle, 34 the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Puertoriqueño 35 insurrections, and militant feminism) were not discarded solely 36 because they became “anachronistic.” These praxes proved to be 37 dangerous and costly in the face of state and corporate opposition and 38 co-optation. The attacks launched against militancy had to do with its 39 effectiveness, its potential to effect radical change. 40
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1 Today one finds in American politics in general, and black 2 feminisms in particular, the “mainstreaming” of radicalism as a form 3 of resistance to radical politics in which formerly radical means, 4 such as protest marches and demonstrations disrupting civic and 5 economic affairs, are increasingly deployed for nonradical or liberal 6 ends, such as the maintenance of affirmative action. Likewise, 7 formerly radical causes—such as prisoners’ rights activism and 8 advocacy to abolish the prison industrial complex—are increasingly 9 administered through conferences, research, and social service 10 centers financed by corporate philanthropy seeking to influence 11 policy objectives. 12 In corporate culture, gender and race are filtered through class 13 to juxtapose and contrast “workers” and “professionals.” To the 14 extent that corporate culture has infiltrated U.S. progressivism, the 15 polarities of worker/manager resurface to foster a resistance to, 16 or reshaping of, radicalism embodied in a “corporate Left.” Those 17 able to raise large sums of money through corporate largesse to 18 institutionalize their political formations and identities as astute 19 “organizers,” maintaining a political leadership that reflects the style 20 of chief executives and mirrors state corporate sites (among which 21 academia is included), would qualify as members of the corporate 22 Left. Their status as sophisticated politicos goes unchallenged 23 because of the material resources garnered. That these corporate 24 sites and their corresponding political style are not known for 25 their accountability to disenfranchised communities or democratic 26 processes, but for funding alternative entities to diffuse radical 27 movements, is viewed as irrelevant by some progressives. Joan 28 Roelofs, however, argues that: 29 30 One reason capitalism doesn’t collapse, despite its many weak- 31 nesses and valiant opposition movements, is because of the 32 “nonprofit sector.” Yet philanthropic capital, its investment 33 and its distribution, are generally neglected by the critics of 34 capitalism. . . . Some may see a galaxy of organizations doing 35 good works—a million points of light—but the nonprofit world 36 is also a system of power which is exercised in the interest of 14 37 the corporate world. 38 39 Whether through the academy, government agencies, or private 40 foundations, an emergent “corporate Left” has helped to deradicalize
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feminism and antiracism and so antiracist feminism or feminist 1 antiracism. Distinguishing between the “revolutionary” and the 2 postmovement hybrid “neoradical” places a finer point on analyses 3 of progressive black feminist politics and their contradictions. 4 Questions of co-optation and integrity are audible to those 5 who listen attentively for sounds of political independence from 6 corporate (state) influence. The din can be confusing, given that 7 conflictual allegiances abound in American politics and culture. 8 For instance, the oxymoronic wit of PBS “public service announce- 9 ments” that validate corporate state funders, while broadcasting 10 acquiescence to business elites, reappears in progressive projects 11 funded by corporate entities and severed from nonelite, community 12 leadership. Searching for political independents, one finds that 13 liberalism competes with and censures radicalism, while radicalism 14 competes with and censures revolutionary praxis. Both forms of 15 censorship seem to be guided by an amorphous notion of what 16 constitutes responsible “Left” politics, delineated within a rapacious 17 corporate world funding the political integration of “radicals” on 18 terms favoring the maintenance of stability and accumulation of 19 capital as prime directives. 20 Corporate culture oils radicalism’s slide into neoradicalism. 21 According to consumer advocate Ralph Nader, being raised in 22 American culture often means “growing up corporate.” (For those 23 raised “black,” growing up corporate in America means training 24 for the Talented Tenth.) One need not be affluent to grow up 25 corporate; one need only adopt a managerial style. When merged 26 with radicalism, the managerial ethos produces a “neoradicalism” 27 that, as a form of commercial “left” politics, emulates corporate 28 structures and behavior. As corporate funders finance “radical” 29 conferences and “lecture movements,” democratic power-sharing 30 diminishes. Radical rhetoricians supplant grassroots organizers 31 and political managers replace vanguard activists. Within this 32 context, feminist “radicals” are encouraged to forgo both effective 33 oppositional politics to social and state dominance and organic 34 links to nonelite communities. Instead, they are encouraged, as 35 progressives, to produce a “ludic feminism” that, according to 36 Teresa Ebert, “substitutes a politics of representation for radical 37 15 social transformation.” Ludic feminism has a curious relation- 38 ship to black feminism because the latter has been shaped and 39 contextualized by radical movements. 40
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1 In the Politics of “Sisterhood” 2 3 In the late 1960s, liberal bourgeois feminism among white 4 women gradually expanded to include black women. This emer- 5 gent multiracial “sisterhood” transferred the nineteenth-century 6 white missionary mandate (promoting an elite leadership to serve 7 as interpreters of, and representatives for, the racialized and 8 marginalized nonelite) to white bourgeois feminists. The result 9 was a political paradox: on the one hand, black feminisms pushed 10 white feminism (in its various ideologies) to repudiate ethnocen- 11 trism and racism and so, to some degree, “radicalized” America’s 12 dominant feminism. On the other hand, the more financially 13 endowed white cultural feminism supported and “mainstreamed” 14 black feminism by rewarding liberal politics within it, and so, 15 to some degree, deradicalized black feminist politics by normal- 16 izing its liberalism. This logically follows the historical trajectory 17 of white radical feminism in contemporary American politics. 18 Amid the political battles waged by white middle-class women 19 in the movement era, Alice Echols’s Daring to Be Bad: Radical 16 20 Feminism in America, 1967–1975 notes three forms of activism. 21 First emerged the “politicos” who worked in civil rights organi- 22 zations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 23 (SNCC), antiwar and radical youth groups, such as Students for 24 a Democratic Society (SDS), and revolutionary or underground 25 spinoffs, such as the Weathermen. Out of these formations emerged 26 radical women who became disaffected because of the sexism of 27 male-dominated organizations, and who subsequently developed, 28 as “radical feminists,” organizations such as Redstockings, who 29 were opposed to the state’s dehumanizing domestic and foreign 30 policies. 31 From the gains or concessions that radical feminists were able to 32 wrest in the 1960s from the corporate military industrial complex 33 arose “cultural feminists” who benefited from the radicals’ path- 34 breaking work; according to Echols, cultural feminists, as liberal 35 feminists, benefited from the militancy of radical feminists, whom 36 they later excised in order to consolidate an image of respectability 37 and to garner corporate support for hegemonic or mainstream 38 feminism. Women such as Gloria Steinem, Robyn Morgan, and 39 other founders of Ms. came to represent the cultural feminism that, 40 unlike its radical rivals, defined men, not the state, as the primary
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obstacle or “enemy” of women. Radical feminists acknowledged that 1 men needed to change sexist attitudes and behavior, writes Echols, 2 but emphasized structural critiques (of capitalism and the state). 3 Radical feminists became increasingly marginalized and eventually 4 supplanted by cultural feminists who expressed politics less critical 5 of, and so more compatible with, the state and its financial centers. 6 In fact, Ms.’s early funders were white corporate males who, while 7 categorized as women’s “oppressors,” became the financiers of 8 17 mainstream feminisms. 9 Given their accommodationist politics and access to state and 10 corporate resources, one could refer to such feminisms, whether 11 conservative or liberal in ideology, as “state feminism.” Echols’s 12 depiction of cultural feminism, or what is referred to here as state 13 feminism, as supplanting radical feminism because of its compat- 14 ibility with, or complementarity to, state hegemony resonates with 15 18 the black liberation struggles of the time period she analyzes. This 16 raises important questions about the aspirations and dimensions 17 of today’s black cultural feminism and its relationship to black 18 radical feminism. For instance, one might ask if a cultural form of 19 black feminism (one that essentializes African women or women 20 of color) functions as a buffer against revolutionary (feminist) 21 critiques that cite capitalism and the state as primary obstacles 22 to black and, therefore, female advancement? Can cultural black 23 feminism exist as a hybrid heavily invested in the political appear- 24 ances of revolutionary symbolism and representations shaped by 25 ludic feminism, rather than political organizing with nonelites for 26 revolutionary praxes? 27 If the answer to either or both of the questions above is “yes” or 28 even “perhaps,” then neither race, gender, nor class is the radicalizing 29 impetus or deradicalizing tendency influencing black feminisms. 30 Political ideologies shape feminist aspirations. Given that it is 31 more assimilable, liberal black feminism remains more likely to be 32 promoted into the political mainstream as representative or normative 33 among gender-progressive Afra-Americans. Like the general society, 34 mainstream feminism allows scant political space for revolutionary 35 antiracists, even if they are white feminists, whose militant critiques 36 of state power contest the assumptions (and funding) of liberal 37 feminism. Cultural or liberal black feminism wields more influence 38 in bourgeois, European American feminism than revolutionary white 39 antiracist feminism does. Compatible ideologies allow white liberal 40
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1 feminist politics transracial privileges that mask an alienation from, 2 or antipathy toward, radical antiracism. New forms of multiracial 3 feminism allow dominant white feminists to “privilege” black female 4 political celebrities over white female political prisoners. Revolu- 5 tionary, antiracist white women, rarely referenced by feminists (or 6 black militants and white antiracists), are even more isolated than the 7 white radical feminists and groups described by Echols. 8 The low visibility granted antiracist revolutionary white women 9 in mainstream feminism coexists with their marginalization in 10 discursive “critical white studies” and “abolition of whiteness” and 11 “race traitor” movements, where whites challenge the existential 12 (if not always material) benefits of white supremacy. There is little 13 mention of whites who viewed racism, patriarchy, and economic 14 exploitation as embedded in state power and so who, as revolution- 15 aries, resisted the state. Little is known among liberal feminists or 16 antiracists of Sylvia Baraldini, an Italian national convicted of aiding 17 black revolutionary Assata Shakur to escape from prison, or white 18 female revolutionaries Susan Rosenberg and Marilyn Buck, also 19 convicted of assisting Shakur, who (along with black male revolu- 20 tionaries) are serving between thirty- and seventy-year sentences. 21 (Baraldini received an additional three years for refusing to testify 22 before a Grand Jury investigating the Puerto Rican Independentista 19 23 movement. ) Likewise, the case of Judy Bari, the white feminist 24 Earth Firster! garners little attention in liberal feminism, black or 25 white or multicultural, perhaps because it points to the continuance 26 of Cointelpro (under the guidance of FBI veteran Richard Held) 20 27 in policing white female radical environmentalists. Bari, who 28 died from breast cancer in March 1997, survived a May 1990 car 29 bombing. A nonviolent activist, she offered analyses that made 30 connections between the FBI repression of the Black Panther Party 31 and the American Indian Movement and environmental radicals. 32 The meeting and embrace between Bari and Ramona Africa, who 33 survived the 1985 bombing of the African organization MOVE 34 in Philadelphia, in which eleven African Americans died, reflects 35 radical forms of transracial “sisterhood” and political solidarity. 36 Revolutionary feminist politics are more likely to note the political 37 ramifications of radical alliances for “sisterhood” and antiracist 38 feminist movements. Such politics are also more inclined to scrutinize 39 coalitions between radical and liberal black feminisms and white 40 radical and bourgeois feminisms. There has been considerable discus-
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sion about interracial conflict between black and white women; some 1 focus on collaboration between the two groups, but greater analysis of 2 the ramifications of cross-ideological alliances or coalitions between 3 African American and European American women is required. 4 5 Conclusion 6 7 The legacies of black female radicals and revolutionaries contest 8 arguments that state repression and subaltern resistance are not 9 “black women’s issues” or are too “politicized” for “feminism.” Such 10 legacies also contradict contentions that feminism is inherently 11 “bourgeois” and therefore incapable of an organic revolutionary 12 politics. Yet, even the “revolutionary” is marketed in a corporate 13 culture (where Revlon commercials once proclaimed that the corpo- 14 ration made “revolutionary cosmetics for revolutionary women”). 15 Revolutionary black feminism transgresses corporate culture in 16 its focus on female independence, community building/caretaking 17 and resistance to state dominance, corporate exploitation, racism, 18 and sexism. Emphasizing economic and political power rather 19 than social service programs for the disenfranchised, it challenges 20 basic social tenets as expressed in “law and order” campaigns, the 21 respectability of political dissent channeled through lobbying and 22 electoral politics, and in the acceptance of the corporate state as a 23 viable vehicle for redressing disenfranchisement. 24 The blurred lines between revolutionary, antirevolutionary, 25 and counterrevolutionary politics allow, in the United States, for 26 the normative political and discursive “sisterhood” that embraces 27 conservative and liberal women, yet rarely extends itself to radical 28 or revolutionary women. Adherence to mainstream political 29 ideology appears key in the normative appeal of antiracism, 30 feminism, and antiracist feminism. Because political marginaliza- 31 tion usually follows challenges to repressive state policies and 32 critiques of female or feminist complicity in those practices, the 33 revolutionary remains on the margin, more so than any other 34 exponent of black feminism. 35 The symbiotic relationship between subaltern black feminists 36 and the “white” masculinist state contests any presumption of a 37 unified politics. Seeking a viable community and society, antiracist 38 feminism can serve as either sedative or stimulant. Conflicting 39 messages about the nature of political struggle and leadership can 40
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1 be found within black feminisms. Black feminisms function as a 2 “shadow,” both in the negative aspects attributed to them and in 3 their subordinate status on the American scene. Ever present, often 4 ignored but completely inescapable, their plurality is stereotypically 5 seen as monolithic and depicted as the antithesis of the “robust 6 American” body. Fending their shadows as American alter, political, 7 egos, black women paint varied portraits of the shadow-boxer 8 as radical; as lone warrior; successful corporate fund-raiser for, 9 and beneficiary of, progressive issues; individual survivalist and 10 community worker, disciplined to the leadership of nonelites in 11 opposing state corporate dominance. 12 The predicament of progressive black feminisms remains the 13 struggle to maintain radical politics despite black feminisms’ 14 conflictual persona. Yet this, after all, is the shadow-boxer’s 15 dilemma: to fight the authoritative body casting one off, while 16 simultaneously struggling with internal conflict and contradic- 17 tions. 18 19 Notes 20 1. Baker presented this speech in 1969 at the Institute for the Black World 21 in Atlanta, Georgia. Ella Baker, “The Black Woman in the Civil Rights 22 Struggle,” in Ella Baker: Freedom Bound, ed. Joanne Grant (New York: 23 John Wiley, 1998), 228. 24 2. Ibid. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham documents how white Christian 25 philanthropists such as Henry Morehouse and other leaders within 26 the American Baptist Home Missionary Society (ABHMS) in 1896 27 promoted the concept of the Talented Tenth as black elite race 28 leaders. ABHMS funded the emergence of this elite to serve a population facing severe discrimination and persecution following 29 the aborted Reconstruction; it created the Talented Tenth with a 30 dual function as both a model showcase for whites (and blacks), to 31 discredit propaganda of black inferiority; and, buffer to counter- 32 revolutionary tendencies among a disenfranchised, impoverished 33 black mass. See Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham Righteous Discontent: The 34 Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, 35 MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois 36 popularized the term in The Souls of Black Folk with his essay “The Talented Tenth.” 37 3. See Righteous Discontent, op. cit. Amnesty International documents 38 over 100 “prisoners of conscience” currently in the United States. 39 4. The antirevolutionary politics of liberals or neoradicals are not 40 synonymous with counterrevolutionary state policies of police terror,
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repression, infiltration, and co-optation. The antirevolutionary can 1 also be antireactionary and seek a centrist or center-left politics; the counterrevolutionary is reactionary. 2 5. The Combahee River Collective Statement, in Home Girls: A Black 3 Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table, 4 Women of Color Press, 1983), 273. The manifesto was first printed 5 in Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the 6 Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black 7 Women’s Studies (New York: Feminist Press, 1982). 8 6. Earl Conrad, “I Bring You General Tubman,” Black Scholar l, nos. 3–4 9 (January/February 1970): 4. 7. Combahee River Collective Statement, 275–276. 10 8. lbid., 279. 11 9. Ibid., 275–276. 12 10. For an example, see Patricia Hill Collins’s discussion of organizing 13 in Black Feminist Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990). 14 11. For a discussion of U.S. counterrevolutionary initiatives and human 15 rights abuses, see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: 16 South End Press, 1988). 17 12. bell hooks, “Must We Call All Women ‘Sister’?,” Z Magazine (February 1992): 19–22. 18 13. At a 1997 New York University forum on black women writers, on a 19 panel shared with Angela Davis, Brown referred to Maulana Karenga 20 as an American “Buthelezi”; Kimberle Crenshaw makes the same 21 reference to Clarence Thomas in a July 1998 presentation. 22 14. Joan Roelofs, “The Third Sector as a Protective Layer for Capitalism,” 23 Monthly Review 47 (September 1995): 16–17. 24 15. Teresa L. Ebert, Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and 25 Labor in Late Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 3. 26 16. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967– 27 1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). Echols’s 28 insightful text is limited by her failure to adequately research black 29 feminist radicals such as Frances Beale, cofounder of the Student 30 Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Black Women’s Alliance, and 31 Barbara Smith, cofounder of the Combahee River Collective. 32 17. See Echols, Daring to Be Bad, for documentation on the initial funding 33 for Ms. 18. Echols’s descriptions of the strife between radical and liberal 34 feminists parallel to a certain extent the black liberation movement’s 35 conflictual relationship between revolutionary nationalism of the 36 Black Panther Party and the cultural nationalism of US. The New 37 York Panthers synthesized an Africana aesthetic with critiques of 38 capitalism, war, and police violence. 39 19. Baraldini, Rosenberg, and Buck fall within the category of prisoner 40
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1 of conscience as defined by Amnesty. Amnesty International has also declared U.S. citizen Lori Berenson a Peruvian political prisoner. See 2 Rhoda Berenson, “A Mother’s Story,” Vogue (May 1997). 3 20. See Judi Bari, Timber Wars (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 4 1994). For the political use of grand juries and the policing of the 5 environmental and Puerto Rican Independence movements, see Elihu 6 Rosenblatt, ed., Criminal Injustice (Boston: South End Press, 1996). 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 6666 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 6 5 6 Angela Y. Davis: 7 8 Liberation Praxis 9 10 11 12 I felt an almost unbearable tension—it was as if I were two 13 persons, two faces of a Janus head. One profile stared disconso- 14 lately into the past—the fretful, violent, confining past broken 15 only by occasional splotches of meaning. . . . The other gazed 16 with longing and apprehension into the a future glowing with 17 challenge, but also harboring the possibility of defeat. 18 —Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography 19 20 21 The Janus Head 22 23 In her memoir, Angela Davis evokes Janus—the Roman god of 24 doors or beginnings. Depicted with two visages facing, like portals, 25 in opposite directions, Janus serves as a metaphor for the past and 26 future directions of Davis’s political and intellectual life: the past 27 manifests in the violent repression of blacks in the United States, the 28 future reflects the possibility of an internationalist movement for a 29 socialist, feminist, nonracialist democracy. Janus, like Eleggua, the 30 Yoruba orisha of the crossroads, marks awakenings, polarities, and 31 contradictions. In the autobiography, it references the possibilities 32 of choice and realization within struggles for class, race, and sexual 33 liberation. It also symbolizes simultaneous existence in the seemingly 34 exclusive social worlds of black disenfranchisement and poverty and 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Angela Davis: A Life 37 Committed to Liberation Praxis,” Abafazi: The Simmons College Review of Women 38 of African Descent 8, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1997); reprinted as “Introduction” to 39 Joy James, ed., The Angela Y. Davis Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998). 40 67
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1 white privilege and education. Representing a dialectic of theory and 2 resistance in revolutionary struggle in Davis’s political and intellectual 3 development, Janus signifies conflictual and transitional stages that 4 foster feelings of alienation from the familiar, yet open new avenues. 5 Life is set by a series of decisions, paths taken and paths avoided. 6 The existential dilemmas described in Angela Davis: An Autobiography 7 reflect a tension magnified by the heightened expectations and fears 8 characteristic of revolutionary social and political movements. In the 9 United States, during the era of militancy depicted in the memoir, 10 radical choices courted triumphs for liberation, or disasters and the 11 possibility of imprisonment and death. Shaping Davis’s future as a 12 black radical, Communist, and international feminist, the past and 13 present profiles of the Janus head denote transformative thought and 14 personal/political struggle. Such thought, scanning both directions to 15 avoid stagnation, considers the past from which movements originate 16 in order to maintain momentum for the future. For activist-intellec- 17 tuals, such as Davis, who struggled with exclusionary but overlapping 18 worlds shaped by race, class, sex, gender, and violence, Janus in its 19 positive manifestation represents the opportunity to confront the 20 contradictory existence of abrogated freedom within the world’s most 21 powerful nation-state. In its negative aspect, it represents hypocrisy 22 and denial, a “two-facedness” manifest when stares or political systems 23 claim democratic principles while systematically disenfranchising 24 marginalized peoples or political minorities. 25 26 The Formation of an Activist-Intellectual 27 28 Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944, 29 near the close of the Second World War and the emergence of the 30 United States as heir to British hegemony (a dominance which the 31 U.S. militarily retains, despite its slippage in the global economic 32 and intellectual marketplace). She grew up in the Southern United 33 States under Jim Crow segregation and codified racial discrimina- 34 tion. During the late 1940s, her family moved into a neighborhood 35 that subsequently became known as “Dynamite Hill,” because of Ku 36 Klux Klan terrorism against black families being integrated into 37 the previously all-white community. Although the Davis home was 38 never targeted by white arsonists, houses across the street were 39 bombed. Bombings and burnings continued for several years; 1 40 “miraculously,” recalls Davis, no one was killed.
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Racial segregation had created an apartheid-like Southern 1 United States in which African American students, regardless of 2 their economic status, usually attended the same (underfunded) 3 schools. As a child, Davis was considered part of an elite, among 4 impoverished peers. Because of her family’s financial security and 5 the extreme poverty of some classmates, the grade-schooler stole 6 from her father, giving money to children to buy their school 7 lunch. Partly to escape the social roles defined by her middle-class 8 standing in the black community and the educational limitations 9 of local schools bound by Jim Crow and inequitable state funding, 10 Davis left the South in 1959, for Manhattan, New York, where, 11 under the auspices of a Quaker educational program, she lived 12 with a progressive white family and attended a private high school, 13 Elizabeth Irwin/Little Red School House. There she studied Karl 14 Marx and Frederich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, and at age 15 fifteen became active in a youth organization associated with the 16 Communist Party. Familiarity with the Party was part of her family 17 history. Since her birth, Davis’s parents had been close friends 18 with black members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). 19 Although neither ever joined the Party, they were black middle- 20 class educators who organized as “communist sympathizers.” Her 21 mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading activist 22 in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, an organization associated 23 2 with the CPUSA that had campaigned to free the Scottsboro Nine. 24 During her childhood, anti-Communist repression in the 25 ― McCarthy era forced the elder Davis’s friends the parents of 26 young Angela’s playmates—underground. Despite the prevalence 27 of repressive anti-Communism, Davis was profoundly affected by 28 Marxism, and sought a disciplined, antiracist movement against 29 racialized economic exploitation. Like Janus, Marxism with one 30 profile surveyed economic, political, and social oppression while 31 the other provided a glimpse of a possible future without the 32 inequities of capitalism. 33 Upon high school graduation and with a scholarship in hand, 34 Davis left New York to attend Brandeis University in Massachusetts; 35 she studied there with philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and took her 36 junior year in France at the Sorbonne. This was the height of the 37 Civil Rights Movement emanating from the 1955 Montgomery, 38 Alabama bus boycotts that had destabilized U.S. apartheid. The 39 memoir describes the young Davis’s dissonance as she embarks for 40
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1 Europe to develop as a formally trained intellectual yet desires to 2 remain connected to black liberation struggles in the United States: 3 “The Janus head was still fixed—one eye full of longing to be in 4 the fray in Birmingham, the other contemplating my own future. It 5 would be a long time before the two profiles came together and I 3 6 would know the direction to both the past and the future.” Janus 7 would continue to haunt Davis politically during the Civil Rights 8 Movement as she furthered her academic studies in France and 9 Germany. Like other influential, progressive writers, particularly 10 the black “public intellectuals,” Davis’s educational and economic 11 privileges both distanced her from the most marginalized (African 12 Americans) and infused her theories of (black) liberation with 13 an internationalist perspective. Parisian anti-Algerian racism had 14 a strong impact on her understandings of international racism 15 and colonialism and their connections to U.S. antiblack racism 16 (European racism also had a marked influence on another black 17 American intellectual living in Paris during that time, James 18 Baldwin). Torn between the desire to learn from different national 19 cultures and political systems and the need to join “the movement,” 20 Davis decided not to pursue a doctorate at Goethe University in 21 Frankfurt, Germany, choosing instead to return to the tates to 22 work with Marcuse at the University of California at San Diego. 23 Terrorist assaults against black activists provided the radicalizing 24 impetus to end her European studies in the late 1960s. In fact, the 25 racist murders of childhood acquaintances in her hometown during 26 her first study abroad, in the early 1960s, profoundly affected 27 her. In both the autobiography and a 1993 essay, “Remembering 4 28 Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise,” Davis recounts how, 29 while in France, she learned of the September 15, 1963, bombing of 30 Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. In that foray by white 31 extremists, fourteen-year-olds Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and 32 Addie Mae Collins, and eleven-year-old Denise McNair, died. The 33 bombing occurred soon after the historic 1963 March on Washington, 34 DC, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s eschatological “I Have a Dream” 35 speech. Davis reminisces that declining the scholarship to the private 36 school in Manhattan would have probably placed her nearby at Fisk 37 University in Nashville, Tennessee, at the time of the bombing. It was 38 during her stay in Europe, far from family ties and a society schooled 39 in surviving and confronting white violence, that Davis learned of, 40 and became deeply disturbed by, the girls’ deaths:
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If I had not been in France, news would not have been broken 1 to me about the deaths . . . in the “objective journalism” of the 2 International Herald Tribune. . . . I was in Biarritz, living among 3 people so far removed from the civil-rights war unfolding in the 4 South that it made little sense to try to express to them how 5 devastated I felt. I wrestled in solitude with my grief, my fear 6 5 and my rage. 7 8 The absence of public mourning in France for the slain youths—an 9 absence put into sharp relief several months later when French 10 nationals collectively mourned the assassination of U.S. President 11 John F. Kennedy—was strongly felt: 12 13 I carried around in my head for many years an imagined repre- 14 sentation of the bombing’s aftermath that was far more terrifying 15 than any cinematic image of violence I have ever encountered: 16 the fixed eyes of Carole’s and Cynthia’s bloody decapitated 17 heads and their dismembered limbs strewn haphazardly among 18 the dynamited bricks and beams in the front yard of the stately 19 church. My own private imagination of what happened that day 20 was so powerful that years would pass before I felt able to listen 21 6 to the details of my mother’s story. 22 23 Three decades later, Davis extensively discussed the tragedy with 24 Sallye Davis. In 1963, on hearing the explosion from her home, 25 the elder Davis had contacted Alpha Bliss Robertson and driven 26 her to the Sunday School class at the church to find her daughter, 27 Carole; instead, the women found debris and parts of the children’s 28 bodies. In the collective remembrance of this tragedy, Davis notes 29 erasure: 30 31 The time in the country my mother and I spent remembering 32 that terrible day three decades ago—“Bloody Sunday,” she calls 33 it—was both healing and frustrating. As we spoke about the 34 girls as we had known them, it occurred to me that the way 35 the memory of that episode persists in popular imagination is 36 deeply problematic. What bothers me most is that their names 37 have been virtually erased: They are inevitably referred to as 38 “the four black girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing.” 39 Another traumatic moment occurred in 1964 when James 40
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1 Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were killed 2 in Mississippi. A decade earlier, Emmett Till was found at the 3 bottom of the Tallahatchie River. These boys, whose lives were 4 also consumed by racist fury, still have names in our historical 7 5 memory. Carole, Denise, Addie Mae and Cynthia do not.” 6 7 “Bloody Sunday,” the term used by many activists to describe the 8 atrocity, became a fixture in American political racial memory. 9 Yet few, Davis observes, remember that the girls were young 10 activists, who at the time of their deaths were preparing to speak 8 11 about civil rights at the church’s annual Youth Day program. For 12 most, the four “function abstractly in popular memory as innocent, 9 13 nameless black girls’ bodies destroyed by racist hate.” All four 14 shared political commitments with other youths who in that volatile 15 year had confronted police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner’s 16 high-powered fire hoses and, according to Davis, “filled the jails in 17 Birmingham in a way that reenergized the Civil Rights Movement 10 18 like nothing since the Montgomery Boycott.” 19 Missing the courageous confrontations with repressive state laws 20 waged by youths, particularly girls and young women, Davis spent 21 most of her years between 1959 and 1967 outside of the South 22 and, therefore, distanced from the Southern Civil Rights Movement 23 (as did other African American women, such as Black Panther 24 leaders Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, and Assata Shakur). 25 However, Davis periodically “touched base” with the movement. 26 For instance, testing voter disenfranchisement of blacks, in 1965, 27 when she became twenty-one, she attempted to register to vote 28 in Birmingham and was denied that right because of her race. In 29 the early 1980s, during a National Women’s Studies Association 30 keynote address, Davis recalled the abrogation of her civil rights 31 to illustrate the political repression of women. Examining the 32 repressive legacy of continuing voter disenfranchisement during the 33 Reagan administration’s destabilization of social and political gains 34 from the Civil Rights and women’s movements, she cited the case 35 of Julia Wilder and Maggie Bozeman of the Black Belt of Alabama 36 who were convicted in January 1982, of voter fraud. Both women 37 had “assisted older people and people who, as a result of the racist 38 educational system that is particularly acute in the South, never 39 managed to learn how to read and write well enough to fill out 40 a ballot . . . [consequently] they were tried and convicted by an
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all-white jury and sentenced to four and five years, respectively, 1 11 in the state penitentiary.” 2 With the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the de jure right to vote 3 won by the “second reconstruction,” the de facto abrogation of 4 rights continued. Paradoxically, as repression continued, the 5 definition of rights for the dispossessed expanded beyond that of 6 civil rights to the more encompassing social and economic rights. 7 This growing demand for justice and equality also sparked calls to 8 militancy. 9 10 SNCC and the Black Panther Party 11 12 The search for human liberation greater than the U.S. Constitution’s 13 promise of electoral powers led Angela Davis to the Student 14 Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black 15 Panther Party (BPP). The Black Panther logo of the Lowndes 16 County, Alabama, Freedom Democratic Party was propelled 17 into the national spotlight in 1966 by television broadcasts of 18 a Greenwood, Mississippi, march. There—with Martin Luther 19 King Jr. in attendance—SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael, having just 20 been released from jail by local police attempting to destabilize 21 the demonstration, galvanized the black gathering to chant for 22 “Black Power!” The “Panther” captured the political imagination 23 of black youths. Speaking to black political frustrations with the 24 intransigence of an entrenched white power structure, one enforced 25 by police malfeasance and brutality, it echoed Malcolm X’s calls for 26 self-defense with the heightened sense of risk and confrontation 27 which followed his 1965 assassination. The Panther—which remains 28 the political-cultural symbol for black militancy and resistance in 29 the United States—became the contested namesake and symbol for 30 several organizations; interestingly, these organizations emerged on 31 the West Coast, far from the civil rights struggles of the north- and 32 southeast. 33 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale’s Black Panther Party for Self- 34 Defense emerged in Oakland, California, in 1966, and later expanded 35 into Los Angeles, where Davis was a member of the Black Panther 36 Political Party. In 1967, at the demands of Oakland’s leadership for 37 exclusive claim to the title and SNCC national leaders Carmichael and 38 James Forman’s suggestion, the Black Panther Political Party became 39 “Los Angeles SNCC.” It was short-lived as a political group. Los 40
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1 Angeles SNCC women ran the office but men dominated as official 2 spokespersons and media figures, according to Davis, who states that 3 Los Angeles SNCC dissolved because of women’s refusal to accept 4 the sexist and masculinist posturing of male leadership. Other factors 5 leading to the demise of the organization were national SNCC’s anti- 6 Communism, and attempts by the New York–based national SNCC 7 office (under the leadership of H. Rap Brown, but over the protests 8 of Forman) to dictate policy to chapters; one dictate led to an aborted 9 attempt to merge with Newton’s Panthers. 10 On leaving SNCC, Davis joined the Black Panther Party for Self- 11 Defense. She describes her affiliation with the Panther organization as 12 a “permanently ambiguous status” that fluctuated between “‘member’ 13 and ‘fellow-traveler.’” Active in community organizing, temporarily in 14 charge of political education in the West Side (which she worked with 15 Bunchy Carter and John Huggins to open) and formulating political 16 education for the Los Angeles Chapter, Davis remained on the fringes 17 of the Panthers’ internal contestations. Years later, she recalls her 18 doubts about the Party’s militarist posturing: 19 20 I thoroughly respected the BPP’s visible defiance and principally 21 supported the right to self-defense. . . . I also found myself 22 using funerals and shootings as the most obvious signposts of 23 the passage of time. However, sensing ways in which this danger 24 and chaos emanated not only from the enemy outside, but from 25 the very core of the Black Panther Party, I preferred to remain 12 26 uninformed about the organization’s inner operations. 27 28 Part of the contradictions of internal operations revolved 29 around sexual politics. The Black Panther Party as a masculinist, 30 revolutionary organization operated in ways that promoted both 31 males and females to perceive women “as objects of male sexual 13 32 desire,” according to Davis. No matter how close a woman came 33 to approximating the contributions of the most esteemed male 34 leader, maintains Davis, the respect granted a Panther woman, 35 even those in high-ranking leadership, could be and was “reversed 36 with the language and practice of [male- or female-initiated] sexual 37 seduction.” Davis’s generalizations concerning Panther women (and 38 men) universalize the behavior of elite Oakland leadership (as 39 portrayed by Elaine Brown), suggesting a gender uniformity for 14 40 the leadership and of chapters and branches across the country.
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Despite its sexism, complexity marked Panther sexual politics; for 1 example, the BPP newspaper took a stance for gay/lesbian, and 2 women’s rights as Davis remarks elsewhere. 3 Davis notes that although some African-American women in revo- 4 lutionary organizations “detested the overt sexism of male leaders,” 5 they also associated feminism with middle-class white women: “In 6 failing to recognize the profoundly masculinist emphasis of our 7 own struggles, we were all at risk. We often ended up affirming 8 hierarchies in the realm of gender relations that we militantly 9 15 challenged in the area of race relations.” Of her romanticizing of 10 the Panthers, Davis writes: “I cannot deny the attraction that the 11 Panther representations of black militant masculinity held for me 12 at a time when precious few of us had begun thinking about the 13 16 politics of sexism and compulsory heterosexuality.” The construc- 14 tion of the revolutionary, of the militant leader with transformative 15 agency for social justice, was masculine: 16 17 Revolutionary practice was conceived as quintessentially mascu- 18 linist. The Party’s imagined power was too often conflated with 19 power over the means of violence, wielded both against the 20 “enemy” and in the ranks of the Party itself. This power was 21 sexualized so that women’s place was always defined as unalter- 22 ably inferior. It articulated notions of revolutionary democracy 23 with gang-inspired, authoritarian organizational principles. It 24 sexualized politics and politicized sexuality in unconscious and 25 17 dangerous ways.” 26 27 The Black Panther Party, as “part of our historical memory,” 28 provides a contested terrain, one often navigated with blinders 29 of romanticized or demonized iconography. Romanticization and 30 demonization would also extend to the Communist Party, which 31 by the 1960s was a radical (rather than revolutionary) organization, 32 perceived as less of a political threat than the BPP and so less of 33 a target for violent destabilization on the part of local and federal 34 police agencies. The BPP was in decline by 1969 due to infiltration 35 by police and FBI agents and provocateurs, internal factionalism, 36 gender bias, and the corruption of West Coast elite leadership. The 37 CPUSA, which had been infiltrated decades earlier and crippled by 38 the McCarthy era’s persecution, had its own internal contradictions 39 around race and gender. 40
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1 The Communist Party USA 2 3 Davis became a member of the Communist Party USA in 1968, at 4 the same time that she joined the Panthers; however, her ties with 5 the CPUSA proved less problematic than her relationship with the 6 BPP. Her affiliation with the Panthers would last less than two 7 years; with the Communist Party, it would endure for over twenty. 8 Initially Davis joined the CPUSA because of her commitments to 9 internationalist struggle. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, who after the 10 Second World War, began to incorporate Marxist theory into his 11 analyses of oppression, Davis felt that black liberation was unob- 12 tainable apart from an international workers’ movement against 13 capitalism, imperialism, and racism. Her understanding that a mass 14 liberation struggle needed to be class-based in order to confront 15 the racist foundations of capitalism was strengthened by a 1969 trip 16 to Cuba. (In 1959, Cuba had waged a successful revolution against 17 the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, and in 1963, again success- 18 fully, defended itself against the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion.) 19 In part, joining the Communist Party was Davis’s response to the 20 deficiencies she found in the black liberation movement’s nation- 21 alism. For her, black nationalism inspired African Americans by 22 emphasizing the collective African past and a “black aesthetic,” but 23 its dominant culturalist outlook lacked comprehensive economic 24 and political analyses for black equality and human rights. In her 25 view, black nationalist ideology’s construction of “race” distilled 26 from economic, gender, ethnic, and class considerations erased 27 the connections between oppressed blacks, other racially marginal- 28 ized peoples, the exploitation of white workers, and sexism. The 29 limitations of cultural nationalism in the 1960s led Davis (by then 30 a Marxist for over a decade) to ideologies such as those espoused 31 by the Che-Lumumba Club of southern California. One of the 32 CPUSA’s few all-black collectives, the Club conducted successful 33 campaigns against police brutality and executions in black neighbor- 34 hoods. Davis found Che-Lumumba unhampered by the conservative 35 gender and sexual politics undermining radical organizations such 36 as the West Coast Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and 37 the West Coast Black Panther Party. 38 Davis’s political work and personal life within organizations such 39 as the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party made her 40 vulnerable to attacks by university administrations. By 1969, the new
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assistant philosophy professor at the University of California at Los 1 Angeles (UCLA) was recognized in the state as a radical antiracist 2 and a Communist. Although it had no formal punitive measures for 3 ousting antiracists (as did schools in the South which had criminalized 4 membership in the National Association for the Advancement of 5 Colored People), the university administration codified persecution 6 of Communists. In 1949, in the advent of McCarthyism, the Univer- 7 sity of California Regents had passed a bylaw banning the hiring of 8 Communists. Twenty years later, it terminated Davis’s contract under 9 the leadership of then California Governor and later U.S. President 10 Ronald Reagan (when head of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild, 11 Reagan had provided the names of film artists/artisans suspected of 12 18 “communist leanings” to the FBI) It would be two decades before 13 Davis, who had trained for years to become an academic, would be 14 permitted a tenured professorship in the University of California. 15 Despite the professional costs, she openly served for twenty- 16 three years in active leadership on the Party’s Central Committee 17 and twice ran for Vice-President on its national ticket. In 1991, 18 on the eve of the CPUSA 25th National Convention, seeking with 19 other longtime Party members to democratize the internal life 20 of the CPUSA, Davis and approximately 800 activists and intel- 21 lectuals formulated, signed, and disseminated an internal document 22 designed to open up avenues of debate, “An Initiative to Unite and 23 Renew the Party.” The “Initiative” criticized the CPUSA for elitism 24 and racial and sexual bias. For example, it argues for the need to 25 19 restore “the principle of black and white leadership,” maintaining 26 that the Party has “gone backward in attention to the struggle for 27 20 African-American equality.” Referring to the struggle for gender 28 equality, the document states: “While the ultra-right has furiously 29 attacked women’s rights precisely to divide the people, a kind of 30 simplistic interpretation of a class approach has led us to pay scant 31 21 attention to the very dynamic women’s movement.” Advocating 32 a stronger grassroots mandate for the CPUSA, the “Initiative” 33 criticizes past Party practices as nondemocratic: “Our participation 34 22 in mass struggles should be our primary task and yardstick.” The 35 “Initiative” makes no mention of sexuality, homophobia, and gay, 36 lesbian, bi-, and transsexual rights. 37 During the national elections that followed, Communist Party 38 leaders who signed the paper were refused placement on the 39 official slate; consequently, none of the “Initiative” signatories were 40
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1 reelected to office. Later that year, along with most of the 800, 2 including leaders such as Charlene Mitchell, Herbert Aptheker, and 3 James Jackson, Davis left the Communist Party. The following year, 4 at a Berkeley, California, conference, the reformers created the 5 Committees of Correspondence, on whose National Coordinating 6 Committee Davis briefly served. 7 8 Political Trials 9 10 Active in the Communist Party, Davis became engaged in prisoners’ 11 rights activism during the time that she was defending her right 12 to teach at UCLA. Her organizing focused on a mass defense for 13 the Soledad Brothers: George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John 14 Clutchette. These three incarcerated African American leaders in 15 the California prisoners’ rights movement were falsely charged 16 with killing a prison guard in January 1970. Through the Soledad 17 Brothers’ Defense Committee she met prison intellectual and 18 liberation theorist George Jackson. Author of Blood in My Eye and 23 19 Soledad Brother, he would eventually become an intimate friend 20 of Davis. At the age of eighteen, Jackson had been sentenced to 21 an indeterminate sentence of from one year to life for driving a 22 car involved in a gas station robbery, which netted seventy dollars. 23 Jackson, who had served ten years at the time Davis met him, 24 maintained that he was unaware of his acquaintance’s robbery as 25 he sat in the car. On August 21, 1971, at the age of thirty, this 26 Soledad prison leader and field marshall for the Black Panther Parry 27 was shot and killed by a guard, in what many activists viewed as a 24 28 political assassination. 29 Before meeting Jackson, Davis established friendships with his 30 family—mother Georgia, sisters Penny and Frances, and seventeen- 31 year-old brother Jonathan, who eventually became one of her 32 bodyguards. The activist academic was daily receiving multiple death 33 threats. Campus police provided some measure of protection as she 34 taught classes and met with students. Friends and coactivists provided 35 official campus security, often with guns legally purchased by the 36 twenty-six-year-old assistant professor and kept in her apartment. 37 To publicize prison conditions and state abuses against the Soledad 38 Brothers, and out of love for his brother, George, in August 1970, 39 Jonathan Jackson, a member of Davis’s security, carried guns into a 40 courtroom in northern California’s Marin County. With prisoners
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James McClain, William Christmas, and Ruchell Magee, he took as 1 hostages the judge, district attorney, and several members of the jury. 2 The high school student and inmates brought the hostages to a van 3 in the parking lot. San Quentin guards fired on the parked vehicle, 4 killing judge Haley, Jonathan Jackson, and prisoners McClain and 5 Christmas, while seriously wounding the district attorney, several 6 25 jurors, and prisoner Magee who later became Davis’s codefendant. 7 She was not in northern California at the time, but because the 8 guns were registered in her name, Davis was named by police as 9 an accomplice. In that era, at the height of the FBI’s counterintel- 10 ligence program (Cointelpro) to undermine the Civil Rights and 11 black liberation movements—police, assisted by federal agents, had 12 killed or assassinated over twenty black revolutionaries in the Black 13 26 Panther Party. Rather than turn herself in to the authorities, Davis 14 went underground and for two months was on the Federal Bureau 15 of Investigation’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” Captured in Manhattan 16 on October 13, 1970, she would spend the next sixteen months 17 in prison, most of it in solitary confinement, before her release on 18 bail. 19 On January 5, 1971, in The People of the State of California v. Angela 20 Y. Davis, the state arraigned Angela Davis in a small Marin County 21 27 Courtroom on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. 22 Throughout 1971, various judges denied more than thirty pretrial 23 motions made by defense counsel. Responding to the defense team’s 24 motion for a change of venue—the defense hoped that the trial would 25 be relocated to the more racially mixed Alameda county—the state 26 moved the case to Santa Clara County, ensuring the likelihood of 27 an all-white, conservative jury. Nevertheless, the case was closely 28 monitored by progressive activists and intellectuals petitioning for 29 a fair trial. In April 1972, the National United Committee to Free 30 Angela Davis published her opening defense statement in a pamphlet 31 titled Frame-Up, which argues that Davis was prosecuted because of 32 her effective leadership in mobilizing African Americans to support 33 political prisoners such as the Soledad Brothers, and to oppose 34 the state’s efforts to “eliminate” the Brothers and derail the radical 35 28 movement. California Assistant Attorney General Albert Harris, 36 who was specially appointed to prosecute Davis, would later complain 37 about the “international conspiracy to free the defendant” when Santa 38 Clara County jail authorities were flooded with calls, telegrams, and 39 letters from around the world protesting the conditions under which 40
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1 Davis was housed. President Richard Nixon, Attorney General John 2 Mitchell, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (architect of the illegal and 3 violent counterrevolutionary Cointelpro), and Governor Reagan were 4 also deluged with millions of pieces of mail objecting to inadequate 5 conditions hampering Davis’s defense team. 6 The trial took place in a time of severe government repression 7 against radicals and revolutionaries that included the use of state 8 juries to tie up black activists in court on falsified criminal charges 29 9 or to falsely incarcerate them. Nationwide though, exposés on 10 Cointelpro, state malfeasance, and flimsy evidence, coupled with 11 educational campaigns and demonstrations to end repressive policing 12 and judiciaries, led juries to throw out cases or rule in favor of 13 activists. In New Haven, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San 14 Francisco, Denver, and Detroit, juries exonerated defendants such as 15 the Harrisburg 7, Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale, the New York 21, 16 and others. In fact, at the time of Davis’s trial, jurors in a San Rafael 17 court acquitted the Soledad Brothers of all charges (George Jackson 18 did not live to see his exoneration), with some jurors greeting the 19 defendants after the reading of the verdict, according to Frame-Up. 20 In February 1972, after intense and lengthy lobbying by activists to 21 end dehumanizing prison conditions and judicial racism in sentencing, 30 22 the state Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, 23 a decision that would facilitate Davis’s release on bail. Organizers had 24 effectively mobilized a massive, (inter)national campaign, inundating 25 the trial judge with demands for immediate bail, including a telegram 26 signed by all thirteen of the African American U.S. congresspeople, at 27 that time, the entire membership of the Congressional Black Caucus. 28 On February 23, 1972, noting the magnitude of the public demands, 29 the presiding judge granted bail. Given that her release undermined 30 the presumption of guilt, which had been promoted in most media, 31 prosecutors sought, and were denied, a delay in the trial proceedings. 32 The trial, which progressed throughout 1971 and into the following 33 year, ended just as the Soledad Brothers’ trial had: Angela Yvonne 34 Davis was acquitted of all charges when the jury rendered its “not 35 guilty” verdict on June 4, 1972. 36 37 Prison Writings 38 39 Davis’s pioneering works include her “prison writings,” and the 31 40 memoir If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance. Women’s
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rights and leadership remain a central theme in her work on 1 liberation politics. Her leadership in the Soledad Brothers’ Defense 2 Committee led to correspondence with George Jackson (reprinted 3 in Jackson’s Soledad Brother), whose letters included critiques of the 4 social function of prisons and chauvinism antithetical to liberation 5 praxis. According to Davis, “He seemed to have internalized the 6 notions of black women as domineering matriarchs, as castrating 7 females, notions associated with the “Moynihan Report.” I could 8 detect this in the comments he made in his letters, especially 9 32 comments about his mother.” To challenge Jackson’s gender poli- 10 tics, she began to investigate the role of African American females 11 during slavery and eventually developed the essay “Reflections on 12 33 the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.” At the time, 13 little had been written on enslaved black women from a feminist 14 perspective. As an inmate, Davis was able to research this article 15 only with extreme difficulty, obtaining books only by stating that 16 they were pertinent to her case: 17 18 I informed the jail authorities that I had the right to whatever 19 literature I needed for the preparation of my defense. In a large 20 sense this research really was very helpful for the preparation 21 of my defense because in my trial I focused a great deal on the 22 misogynist character of the prosecution’s case. The theoretical 23 work I did on black women actually assisted me to develop a 24 34 strategy for my own defense. 25 26 Sexist imagery was a pillar in Prosecutor Harris’s March 27, 1971, 27 opening argument in which he depicted Davis as a “student of 28 violence,” and, referring to her relationship with George Jackson, 29 a “‘woman of uncontrollable passions,’ the vicious conspirator 30 35 blinded by love.” 31 Davis’s autobiography recounts the conditions under which she 32 was held while awaiting trial, describing the penal environment 33 and key moments of her imprisonment and trial defense. Despite 34 adverse conditions while incarcerated, she served as co-counsel, 35 preparing her defense with movement attorneys. Scholarly literature 36 produced while in jail, such as the above mentioned “Reflections on 37 the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” reflected her 38 own political experiences of sexism. Davis traces the thesis of black 39 matriarchy (expressed by Jackson) to various theories, including 40
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1 E. Franklin Frazier’s in the 1930s, that argue that black women 2 “remained the only real vestige of family life” because slavery had 3 destroyed the black family and consequently created hybrid black 4 women, overwhelming creatures that oppressed or emasculated 5 black males. Senator Daniel Moynihan’s 1965 government report, 6 The Negro Family—A Case for National Action, promoted this image 7 as it portrayed black mothers as matriarchs who pathologized 8 the black family through their subversion of gender roles. Davis’s 9 critique of the “Moynihan Report” addresses labor exploitation of 10 black women and men in the community of slaves. Responding to 11 the pervasive depiction of black women as domineering matriarchs, 12 Davis offers one of the earliest analyses of the intersections of 13 racism, sexism, and capitalism within the slave economy and one of 14 the earliest essays on antiracist feminist theory contextualized in the 15 black experience in the Americas. She also provides a corrective to 16 biased historiography that marginalizes or caricatures the realities 17 of enslaved women. Introducing the concept that equal exploita- 18 tion or “deformed equality” tended to disrupt gender hierarchies 19 for black women and men, the essay both challenges common 20 misperceptions of black female life under slavery and highlights the 21 manner in which stereotypes shape contemporary perspectives and 22 scholarship. Precisely because it demystified stereotypical images of 23 enslaved black women and emphasized the specificity of historical 24 women in resistance, this influential essay became widely circulated 25 among feminist and black studies readers. 26 Another prison essay, “Political Prisoners and Black Liberation,” 27 first appeared in If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, an 28 anthology edited by Davis, from her cell, and activist-academic 29 Bettina Aptheker, with contributions from U.S. radicals such as 30 Aptheker, and political prisoners or prison intellectuals such as 31 Davis and Newton. “Political Prisoners and Black Liberation” is 32 perhaps the first essay authored by an African American woman 33 within the genre of contemporary black protest and prison litera- 34 ture, a genre traceable to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1955 “Letter 35 from Birmingham Jail.” Davis writes in this essay, which was first 36 published in 1971, that “the entire apparatus of the bourgeois 37 democratic state, especially its judicial system and its prisons, is 38 disintegrating. The judicial and prison systems are to be increasingly 39 defined as instruments for unbridled repression, institutions which 40 may be successfully resisted but which are more and more imper-
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36 vious to meaningful reform.” While she was incarcerated, her 1 1969 philosophy lectures on the Hegelian dialectic and the slave- 2 turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass (for a course she designed, 3 Recurring Philosophical Themes in Black Literature, as UCLA’s first 4 class on black philosophy, and to encourage philosophical reflec- 5 tions on black enslavement and freedom) were collected. The New 6 York–based Committee to Free Angela Davis printed the lecture 7 notes in 1971, as the pamphlet Lectures on Liberation. Later edited 8 into “Unfinished Lectures on Liberation-II,” Davis’s first published 9 theoretical piece appeared in the groundbreaking anthology on 10 37 African American philosophy, Philosophy Born of Struggle. 11 Davis’s analysis of enslavement and freedom, developed prior to 12 her own incarceration, proves relevant to both the postbellum and 13 postmodern United States, where law codifies slavery. The Thir- 14 teenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution legalizes “involuntary 15 servitude” within penal institutions, while U.S. politics and racism 16 create a racialist legal system marked by sentencing disparity so 17 that the majority of the nearly two million now incarcerated in 18 prisons or detention centers are African American, Chicano-Latino, 19 and Native American. The desire for freedom on the part of the 20 enslaved in the nineteenth century reflects the rights—or limitation 21 of rights—of those incarcerated in the twentieth, and twenty-first, 22 centuries. Her most recent writings return to the consuming 23 interests of three decades ago. Arguing for a new “abolitionism,” 24 Davis maintains that raising “the possibility of abolishing jails and 25 prisons as the institutionalized and normalized means of addressing 26 social problems in an era of migrating corporations, unemployment 27 and homelessness, and collapsing public services [may] . . . help to 28 interrupt the current law-and-order discourse that has such a grip 29 on the collective imagination, facilitated as it is by deep and hidden 30 38 influences of racism.” 31 32 Antiracist Feminist Writings 33 34 As mentioned earlier, the most distinctive contribution of Davis’s 35 prison writings, in fact her work in general, is the gender analysis 36 in which she radicalizes feminism through a class and antiracist 37 analysis and offers new constructions for black female identity 38 and politics. In the intersectional analyses of Marxism, antiracism, 39 and feminism, exists the body of written work for which Davis 40
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1 is best known. Activist women’s contributions to Marxism and 2 Communism are frequently and easily overlooked, according to 3 Davis. Citing women such as Lucy Gonzales Parsons and Claudia 4 Jones, Davis notes that many women who devoted their lives to 5 organizing for a revolutionary, socialist society produced neither 6 theoretical nor autobiographical literature. In the absence of such 7 writings, their intellectual and political agency has often “disap- 8 peared” or been dismissed. The reappearance of, and recognition 9 for, the contributions of the intersections of Marxist, antiracist, and 10 feminist praxes and radical female activists characterizes Davis’s 11 work. 12 Her writings examine the contradictions and contributions of 13 contemporary women to radical and feminist politics. Davis asserts 14 that the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s held little 15 attraction for black female militants and other progressive Chicana, 16 Puerto Rican, Asian, and Native American women, despite the 17 gender hierarchies within their respective antiracist or nationalist 18 movements (one exception she notes is the black or Third World 19 Women’s Alliance which grew out of SNCC chapters on the east 20 coast to focus on a tripartite struggle against racism, sexism, 21 and imperialism). In the nascent movements, the bifurcation of 22 antiracist and antisexist struggles took curious turns: (middle-class) 23 white women struggled with learned passivity and a hyperfemi- 24 ninity; black women were castigated for being too assertive and 25 aggressive, or not feminine (passive) enough. In Davis’s evolving 26 feminism, radical black women and antiracist white women altered 27 the nature of feminist theory and feminist practice, expanding 28 praxes and ideologies, and leading to differentiations of feminisms. 29 She maintains that when women “oppressed not only by virtue of 30 their gender but by virtue of their class and their race win victories 31 for themselves, then other women will inevitably reap the benefits 32 of these victories”; asserting the value of Marxism for feminism, 33 she continues, “it is possible to be a Marxist, emphasize the central 34 role of the working class, but at the same time participate in the 39 35 effort to win liberation for all women.” A theory that accepts the 36 overlapping interests of different groups reflects the present range 37 of social and political repression. Drawing on the intersections 38 of racist, sexist, and heterosexist repression, Davis contends that 39 sexism has a “racist component which affects not only women of 40 color but white women as well. Ku Klux Klan-instigated violence
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against black people incites, for example, violence against women 1 who attempt to use the services of abortion clinics. Low wages for 2 women of color establishes a standard which leads to low wages 3 for white women. So that white women are the victims of any 4 40 upsurge in racism.” For Davis, it is “not coincidental that the same 5 forces” attacking “abortion clinics and their personnel have also 6 41 tried to prevent integrated schools.” Likewise, decrying the lack 7 of a mass effort to challenge homophobia, and the “ghettoization” 8 of the gay and lesbian political movements, Davis writes that the 9 roots of homophobia are intertwined with the roots of racism, 10 sexism, and economic exploitation. Reactionary intellectuals and 11 activists, including extremists, have promoted violence against 12 gays and lesbians, and a “fraudulent analysis holding homosexuals 13 42 responsible for the so-called breakdown of the family.” Linking the 14 repression of heterosexuals’ sexuality and that of their gay, lesbian, 15 bi-, and transgender counterparts, Davis maintains that racism has 16 played a central role in creating the prevailing repressive sexual 17 environment. 18 Describing how African American women’s work in black 19 liberation organizations constituted a form of feminist conscious- 20 ness-raising, she marks the developing feminisms that presented an 21 alternative to the women’s circles in the emerging (white) feminist 22 movement: “Black women and women of color were making impor- 23 tant contributions to the effort to elevate people’s consciousness 24 about the impact of sexism. While we didn’t define ourselves as 25 women’s liberationists, we were in fact fighting for our right to 26 43 make equal contributions to the fight against racism.” Making an 27 equal contribution often entailed confronting sexism both within 28 the movement and embedded in literature and academic discourse 29 about black women. 30 Unique to mainstream feminist thought of the early 1970s (and 31 still somewhat of a novelty in contemporary mainstream feminism) 32 were analyses of the intersections of racist and sexual violence. 33 Addressing the simultaneous and intersectional appearances of 34 sexism and racism, and by extension sexual and racist violence, 35 Davis’s early work presented a corrective to feminist theory that 36 erased racist violence, and antiracist theory that masked sexist 37 44 violence. “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting,” which first 38 appeared in The Black Scholar’s 1978 special issue on “The Black 39 Woman,” critiques the role of class in racial-sexual violence. 40
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1 Likewise, “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge 45 2 to Racism,” issued as a 1985 pamphlet, investigates the function 3 of racist and sexist violence in a racialized, patriarchal society. 4 Nowhere were the intersections of race and gender so volatile as in 5 the antirape movement within the women’s liberation movement, 6 which in the late sixties or early seventies tended to represent rape 7 only as a gender issue of male dominance of females, ignoring the 46 8 impact of race and class on state prosecution and “protection.” As 9 Davis notes, the black community bore the brunt of white women’s 10 demands for more police and longer prison sentences. In the 11 early days of the feminist movement, the disparity in perspectives 12 promised few possibilities for coalitions between black and white 13 women. Yet they did coalesce, for instance in antirape/antiracist 14 organizing around the JoAnne Little case. In “JoAnne Little: The 47 15 Dialectics of Rape,” Davis reflects on the case of the young black 16 woman incarcerated in North Carolina for petty theft who in 1974 17 killed the white prison guard who was raping her. The Little case 18 highlighted the complicitous role of the state in the intersections 19 of racial-sexual violence. Little’s act of self-defense, and subsequent 20 flight, led to charges of murder and a “shoot to kill” edict from 21 authorities. Her extradition from New York and subsequent trial 22 in North Carolina were marked by effective mass mobilization and 23 legal defense, which led to her acquittal. After the trial, according 24 to Davis, Little issued a call for women who had supported her to 25 organize around the Florida case of a young black man fraudulently 26 charged with raping a white woman, yet most white feminist groups 27 initially refused (some later changed their position) to assist in a 28 defense committee for an accused rapist. The possibilities for, and 29 obstacles hindering, multiracial women’s alliances against violence 30 is a recurring theme in Davis’s discourse on freedom. 31 The issues of women’s emancipation are tied not only to coun- 32 tering violence but also to work—labor, reproductive, and political 33 work. “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and 48 34 Liberation” explores economic exploitation in the workforce. 35 Exploitation in nonwaged labor or reproductive labor for the 36 household is the focus of “The Approaching Obsolescence of 49 37 Housework: A Working-Class Perspective;” and its critique of 38 the reconstruction of domestic labor is based in part on the Italian 39 feminist movement’s “Wages for Housework,” which was influential 40 in Europe in the 1970s. Davis presents an economic proposal for
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the liberation of women from domestic labor exploitation through 1 restructuring domestic work as government-subsidized wage labor, 2 suggesting that the deprivatization of labor coupled with attrac- 3 tive salaries and generous benefits liberates domestic work from 4 its debased status as women’s “free” contribution to familial and 5 social units, and national and international economies. She briefly 6 discusses how the select group licensed to perform this labor may 7 remain alienated given that the repetitive, isolated nature of the 8 work is not necessarily altered through higher wages. Biological 9 reproduction is another form of women’s unpaid labor addressed by 10 Davis in “Surrogates and Outcast Mothers: Racism and Reproduc- 11 50 tive Politics in the Nineties,” which reviews the medical ethics, 12 health hazards, and social stigmatism associated with black women’s 13 fertility and reproduction in the late twentieth century. “Black 14 51 Women and the Academy” raises the issues of women’s political 15 work, responsibilities, and rights in connection with representation 16 and education for social justice. 17 18 Conclusion: Revolutionary Actors 19 and Radical Intellectuals 20 21 Davis’s writings are surpassed in the popular mind by her 22 iconographic status. This raises a number of questions for our 23 consideration as readers and consumers. In an essay, Davis quotes 24 from Marx’s Eleventh Feuerbach: “Philosophers have interpreted the 25 world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” If the 26 point is to change the world, one must address what constituted 27 liberation praxis in the radical and revolutionary movements and 28 moments of previous decades; and, what constitutes it today for 29 intellectuals and activists at a time when both the Black Panther 30 Party and the Communist Party are considered by many to be 31 anachronistic or romanticized organizations. 32 Davis herself grappled with these questions in a 1997 course that 33 she taught at the University of California at Berkeley. Discussing 34 the distinctions between radical and revolutionary politics, and 35 intellectual critique and political engagement, Davis recounted 36 how black militant activists would define “radicals” as bourgeois 37 whites who had political critiques and intellectual commitments to 38 opposing racism and economic exploitation but little experiential 39 confrontation with the state; “revolutionaries,” on the other hand, 40
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1 were those whose philosophical ideals about a just society and 2 democratic state were manifested in their risk-taking political acts 3 against oppressive state apparatuses. Today, few, if any, U.S. writers 4 qualify as “revolutionaries” (perhaps a notable exception, the over 5 100 political prisoners that Amnesty International documents as 6 being held in the United States, raises the issue of the relationship 7 between radical intellectuals and revolutionaries). 8 Within the context of a past liberation movement, a younger 9 Davis had offered insights into revolutionary liberation praxis in the 10 1970 LIFE Magazine profile published while she was underground. 11 LIFE’s cover superimposed the caption “The Making of a Fugitive” 12 over her photograph, while the feature article reprinted the 13 following quote taken from one of Davis’s speeches for the Soledad 14 Brothers: 15 16 Liberation is synonymous with revolution. . . . A revolution is 17 not just armed struggle. It’s not just the period in which you can 18 take over. A revolution has a very, very long spectrum. . . . Che 19 made the very important point that the society you’re going to 20 build is already reflected in the nature of the struggle that you’re 21 carrying out. And one of the most important things in relation- 22 ship to that is the building of a collective spirit, getting away 23 from this individualistic orientation towards personal salvation, 24 personal involvement. . . . One of the most important things that 25 has to be done in the process of carrying out a revolutionary 26 struggle is to merge those two different levels, to merge the 52 27 personal with the political where they’re no longer separate. 28 29 Merging the personal with the political, young militants faced 30 the urgent immediacy of struggle in which they attended funerals 31 of slain activists and, with and as survivors, attempted to continue 32 in their commitments for radical social change despite deadly state 33 repression. Although the revolutionary movement of the previous 34 era was derailed, according to Davis, contemporary progressive 35 or Left intellectuals have “achieved a measure of lucidity, based 36 on those experiences.” For Davis, “There is much more extensive 37 consciousness of that dialectic between the concrete work that we 38 do, the activist work, and the international context. . . . [The chal- 39 lenge is to make] the transition from consciousness to action, from 53 40 theory to practice.” In contradistinction to the construction of the
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theorist or philosopher as the disengaged, nonactivist, Davis adds, 1 “while theoretical work, intellectual work, is extremely important, 2 the work of the activist will determine whether or not we will 3 move to a new stage . . . everyone should learn how to become 4 an activist on some level, in some way. Everyone who considers 5 herself or himself a part of this overall progressive movement 6 must establish some kind of organizational ties, and must definitely 7 54 participate in one or more movements.” 8 Readers have varying perspectives on Davis as political-intellectual. 9 Some see her as a revolutionary of the late 1960s and early 1970s; still 10 others, as a former political prisoner who now functions as a radical 11 public intellectual. Whatever one’s “read,” it is clear that through 12 her writing and political advocacy, Angela Y. Davis has expanded the 13 scope of social thought and political theory. Scanning both directions, 14 one recognizes Janus at the crossroads. In an encounter with her 15 work, one sees the past revolutionary acts and state repressions that 16 radicalized her political consciousness, the progressive intellectualism 17 of contemporary thinkers, and the fluid, dynamic tension that charges 18 the relationships between the two. 19 20 Notes 21 22 1. Angela Y. Davis, “Remembering Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and 23 Denise,” Essence, February 1993, 92. 2. The Scottsboro Nine were African Americans falsely accused of raping 24 two white women. Tried and sentenced in Scottsboro, Alabama, the 25 young males were incarcerated for decades before their pardon. 26 3. Davis, Angela Davis, 113. 27 4. Davis, “Remembering Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise,” 92. 28 5. Ibid. 29 6. Ibid. 30 7. Ibid., 123. 31 8. Carole Robertson had contacted Sallye B. Davis days before the bombing to ask for a ride to a “Friendship and Action” meeting, a 32 new organization formed by black and white parents and teachers 33 to develop grassroots antiracist activism amid school desegregation 34 and allow Birmingham School children to meet each other. Davis, 35 “Remembering Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise,” 123. 36 9. Davis, “Remembering Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise,” 123. 37 10. Ibid. 38 11. Angela Y. Davis, “Women, Race and Class: An Activist Perspective,” 39 Women’s Studies Quarterly 10, no. 4 (Winter 1982), 5. This Keynote 40
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1 Address was first delivered at the Fourth National Women’s Studies Association Convention at Humboldt State University, in Arcata, 2 California, June 17, 1982, 5 3 12. Angela Y. Davis, “The Making of a Revolutionary,” Review of Elaine 4 Brown’s A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, in Women’s Review of 5 Books (June 1993). 6 13. Ibid. 7 14. While a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Cali- 8 fornia–San Diego, Davis’s first major political project was a campaign 9 on behalf of a young African American Navy-enlisted man who faced court-martial charges during the Vietnam War for having circulated a 10 petition accusing President Lyndon Baines Johnson of racist policies. 11 Working in this campaign as a member of the Black Student Alliance, 12 in 1967/’68 she met Elaine Brown, who like Davis later joined the 13 Panthers. Brown served as Chair of the Black Panther Party, taking 14 over from Huey Newton. Likely Brown became BPP Chair when its 15 function had been reduced to that of a local or regional organization 16 from that of central leadership for a unified (inter)national party. 17 15. Davis, “The Making of a Revolutionary.” 16. Ibid. 18 17. Ibid. 19 18. Regents continued to denounce Davis as they demonized past libera- 20 tion movements in order to oppose contemporary progressivism. In 21 his March 18, 1996 correspondence to Davis, University of California 22 Regent Ward Connolly, Chairman of the conservative Civil Rights 23 Initiative that led California’s anti–affirmative action legislation, 24 castigated her for campus speeches to defeat the Initiative, writing: 25 “your record as a revolutionary is not merely disturbing but it may impair your effectiveness as a member of the faculty of one of this 26 nation’s most highly respected academic institutions.” (Correspon- 27 dence, author’s papers.) 28 19. “An Initiative to Unite and Renew the Party.” 29 20. Ibid., 3. 30 21. Ibid. 31 22. Ibid., 2. 32 23. See George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (New York: Random House, 33 1970) and Soledad Brother: The Prison Letter of George Jackson (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970). 34 24. See Michel Foucault, et al. “The Masked Assassination of George 35 Jackson,” Warfare in the American Homeland, ed. Joy James (Durham: 36 Duke University Press, 2007). 37 25. Ruchell Magee remains imprisoned. The autobiography’s record of 38 the trial testimony includes the defense cross-examination of a prison 39 officer concerning official policy on escapes. To defense attorney Leo 40 Branton’s question, as to whether standard prison policy requires
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guards to prevent escapes where prisoners use hostages as shields 1 “even if it means that every hostage is killed?”—San Quentin’s Sergeant Murphy answered: “That is correct.” Davis, Angela Davis, 2 370. 3 26. See Joanne Grant, Black Protest: History, Documents and Analyses 1619 to 4 Present (New York: Ballantine, 1968); Ward Churchill and Jim Vander 5 Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s War Against AIM and the Black Panther 6 Party (Boston: South End Press, 1989); Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X: 7 The FBI File, ed. David Gallen (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991). 8 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover targeted the Black Panther Party as a 9 preeminent domestic threat. 27. Although all deaths resulted from the police, defendants were charged 10 with the killings. 11 28. Frame-Up, author’s papers. 12 29. The death penalty was reinstated in California in 1977. 13 30. Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) is one such case. After spending twenty- 14 seven years in prison for the murder of Caroline Olson in southern 15 California, he was released on a $25,000 bail in June 1997, when a 16 California judge ruled that his incarceration was based on perjury by 17 a felon, FBI and LAPD informer Julio Butler; and that the District Attorney’s office had withheld information from the jury concerning 18 Pratt’s innocence. Pratt was in northern California at the time of the 19 southern California shootings; FBI wiretaps that could place him at a 20 BPP meeting in northern California mysteriously disappeared when 21 requested by his defense team. See Don Terry, “Los Angeles Confronts 22 Bitter Racial Legacy,” New York Times, July 20, 1997, Al, A10. 23 31. Angela Y. Davis, ed., If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance 24 (New Brunswick,NJ: Third World Press, 1971). 25 32. Ibid., 75. 33. Angela Y. Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the 26 Community of Slaves,” The Black Scholar 3, no. 4 (December 1971). 27 34. Davis, Angela Davis. 28 35. Frame-Up, iii (author’s papers). 29 36. Davis, ed., If They Come in the Morning, 3. 30 37. Leonard Harris, ed., Philosophy Born of Struggle (Dubuque, IA: Kendall 31 Hunt, 1981). 32 38. Davis notes the hypocrisy of attacking Mexican and Latin American 33 “migrating working class people” while exonerating “migrating trans- national corporations [seeking] cheap labor.” Angela Y. Davis, Keynote 34 Address for Defensa de Mujeres Benefit, Santa Cruz, California, June 35 9, 1995, author’s papers. 36 39. Angela Y. Davis, “COMPLEXITY, ACTIVISM, OPTIMISM: An 37 Interview with Angela Y. Davis,” Feminist Review (Fall 1988) (Interview 38 by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, July 1988, Berkeley, California). Coalition- 39 building is a central theme in Davis’s writings and political work. 40
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1 40. Ibid., 71. 41. Ibid. 2 42. Ibid. 3 43. Davis, “COMPLEXITY, ACTIVISM, OPTIMISM,” 69. 4 44. Angela Y. Davis, “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting,” The Black 5 Scholar (April 1978): 24–30. 6 45. Angela Y. Davis, “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge 7 to Racism,” The Freedom Organizing Pamphlet Series (Latham, NY: 8 Women of Color Press, 1985). 9 46. “The Myth of the Black Rapist,” in Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage, 1981), offers a feminist critique of white 10 racism and sexual violence. 11 47. Angela Y. Davis, “JoAnne Little: The Dialectics of Rape,” Ms., June 12 1975, 74–77, 106–108. 13 48. Angela Y. Davis, “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression 14 and Liberation,” in Marxism, Revolution, and Peace, ed. Howard Parsons 15 and John Sommerville (Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1977). 16 49. Angela Y. Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A 17 Working-Class Perspective,” Women, Race, and Class. 50. Angela Y. Davis, “Surrogates and Outcast Mothers: Racism and 18 Reproductive Politics in the Nineties,” in “It Jus’ Ain’t Fair”: The Ethics 19 of Health Care for African Americans (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994). 20 51. Angela Y. Davis, Keynote Address, January 1994, “Black Women and 21 the Academy,” Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Cambridge, 22 MA. 23 52. LIFE Magazine 69, no. 11, September 11, 1970, 26. The quote, from 24 a speech Davis made for the Soledad Brothers, comes from a June 25 27, 1970, interview with Maeland Productions, which was doing a documentary on Davis. 26 53. Ibid. 27 54. Ibid. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 9292 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 7 5 6 Assata Shakur and 7 8 Black Female Agency 9 10 11 How we imagine a revolutionary is shaped by our ideas concerning 12 1 gender, sex, and race, not just ideology. How we imagine transfor- 13 mative black political leadership is very much influenced by how we 14 think of gender and agency. The absence or presence of maleness 15 shapes common perceptions of women revolutionaries. The same 16 is not true for femaleness in perceptions of male revolutionaries. 17 One can easily imagine antiracist revolutionary struggle against the 18 state without (black) women clearly in the picture, but to imagine 19 revolution against state violence in the absence of (black) men often 20 draws a blank. Men appear independent of women in revolutionary 21 struggles; women generally appear as revolutionaries only in 22 association with men, often as “helpmates.” As a category, the female 23 revolutionary remains somewhat of an afterthought, an aberration; 24 hence she is an abstraction—vague and not clearly in the picture. 25 In this regard, former Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black 26 Liberation Army (BLA) member Assata Shakur is extraordinary, as 27 we shall see later. Assata Shakur is unique not only because she has 28 survived in exile as a political figure despite the U.S. government’s 29 bounty—“dead or alive”—on her head but also because she may prove 30 to be “beyond commoditization” in a time in which political leadership 31 seems to be bought and sold in the marketplace of political trade, 32 compromise, and corruption. Above all, Shakur is singular because 33 she is a recognizable female revolutionary, one not bound to a male 34 persona. 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Framing the Panther: 37 Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency,” in Want to Start a Revolution? 38 ed. Dayo Gore, et al. (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 39 138–160. 40 93
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1 Gender Politics and “Panther Women” 2 3 Influential male narratives have helped to masculinize the political 4 rebel in popular culture and memory. Nationally and internation- 5 ally, the most prominently known black political prisoners and 6 prison intellectuals are male. The brief incarceration of Martin 7 Luther King Jr., in Alabama, produced the “Letter from Birmingham 8 Jail” (1963), which popularized civil disobedience against repressive 9 laws. The imprisonment as a petty criminal of Malcolm X in the 10 1950s engendered the political man and somewhat fictionalized 11 Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; published posthumously and 12 creatively embellished and edited by Alex Haley, who had worked 13 for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which sought to discredit 14 Malcolm X). The 1971 killing by prison guards of George Jackson, 15 author of Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson and 16 the posthumously published Blood in My Eye, helped to incite 2 17 the Attica prison uprising in New York. The violent and deadly 18 repression by the National Guard deployed by New York governor 19 Nelson Rockefeller created more male martyrs and more closely 20 linked incarceration, repression, and rebellion to the male figure. 21 Current organizing for a new trial for former Black Panther Mumia 22 Abu-Jamal is galvanized by his incisive commentaries and critiques 3 23 in Live from Death Row. Conventional political thought and memory 24 associate few women with revolutionary literature or with armed 25 resistance, political incarceration, or martyrdom stemming from 26 struggles against enslavement or racist oppression. 27 Along with Harriet Tubman, Shakur would become one of the 28 few black female figures in the United States recognized as a leader 29 in an organization that publicly advocated armed self-defense 30 against racist violence. From its emergence in 1966, originally 31 named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, given police 32 brutality and police killings of African Americans, and cofounded by 33 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party captured 4 34 the national imagination and inspired its paranoia. The Black 35 Panther Party remains the organizational icon (with Malcolm X the 36 individual icon) for black militant resistance to racial domination 37 and terror. 38 The average American political spectator was and is more 39 captivated or repelled by the Black Panthers’ stance on armed 40 self-defense and their battles with local and federal police—and
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resulting martyrs—than with the BPP social service programs 1 largely organized and run by women. Hundreds of women, including 2 Shakur before she was forced underground, served in the Black 3 Panther Party’s rank and file, implementing the medical, housing, 4 clothing, free breakfast, and education programs. Female Panthers 5 displayed an agency that (re)shaped American politics, although 6 their stories recede in popular culture before the narratives of 7 elites or icons. 8 Violence, race, and sex mark the symbolism surrounding BPP 9 icons. African American male revolutionaries are not perceived 10 as having been politicized through their romantic or personal 11 relationships with female counterparts; rather, their speeches and 12 deeds mark them for public recognition. Each male in the Panther 13 pantheon can stand individually yet still “possess” a female counter- 14 part: George Jackson was linked to Angela Davis, Elaine Brown to 15 Huey P. Newton, Kathleen Cleaver to Eldridge. Only Assata Shakur 16 stands alone as an iconic figure, embodying masculine and feminine 17 aspects. Her hybridity is a confluence of masculine and feminine 18 (stereotypical) characteristics. Without a towering male persona, 19 Shakur—unlike the “conventional” black female revolutionary—has 20 no shadow of a legendary fighter and revolutionary to shade her 21 from full scrutiny: the speculative or admiring gaze, the curious 22 gawk, the hostile stare. 23 Black female icons were recognized as the lovers or partners of 24 black male revolutionaries or prison intellectuals (Newton, Cleaver, 25 and Jackson all wrote from prison). Kathleen Cleaver’s tumultuous 26 marriage to Eldridge Cleaver; Elaine Brown’s devotion to her 27 disintegrating, drug-addicted former lover, Huey Newton, who 28 installed her as Black Panther Party chair (from 1974 to 1977); and 29 Angela Davis’s relationship with prison theorist George Jackson, 30 which began while she was organizing to free the incarcerated 31 Soledad Brothers—all serve as markers, promoting the image of 32 black female militants as sexual and political associates, as beautiful 33 consorts rather than political comrades. The American public as 34 spectator would recognize in these personal if not political lives 35 familiar heterosexual dramas of desire, betrayal, abandonment, 36 and battery. 37 Assata Shakur least fits this scenario, although her memoir speaks 38 volumes about gender politics in the BPP. Shakur was already an 39 incarcerated revolutionary when she conceived and gave birth to 40
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1 her codefendant’s daughter (who graduated from Spelman College 2 and whose father’s name is eclipsed by the name of her mother). 3 Equally, the names of her BLA comrades linked to her capture at 4 the turnpike police shooting are largely unknown. In the 1973 5 confrontation with New Jersey state troopers, Shakur was seriously 6 wounded; Zayd Shakur was killed (along with Trooper Werner 7 Foerster, who may have died in police crossfire); and Sundiata Acoli 8 (Clark Squire) escaped to be later apprehended and sentenced to 9 prison. 10 Assata Shakur’s leadership persona keeps considerable distance 11 from problematic relationships to men. Interestingly, there are no 12 men in the East Coast Panthers whose stature equals hers (although 13 some, such as Dhoruba bin Wahad, who was incarcerated for nearly 14 two decades, were political prisoners). Although West Coast Panther 15 leaders Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Geronimo Pratt, and 16 George Jackson and the Chicago leader Fred Hampton are more 17 prominent, they wear the shroud of “martyrs”—the psychological or 5 18 physical casualties of a liberation war. 19 In some ways the men’s status as icons does not compare 20 favorably with Shakur’s, for she has longevity as a living political 21 figure, one not marred by personal “pathology” or voluntary exile 22 from a U.S. black mass. Shakur’s narrative marks her flight as a 23 revolutionary act in itself. She escaped from prison as “quietly” 24 as she lived and struggled (she writes in the memoir that she 25 planned the escape). Shakur was not released by the courts as were 26 Malcolm, Newton, Cleaver, Pratt, Hampton, and Davis. Assata: An 27 Autobiography makes her continuously (re)appear to progressives, 28 while the police manhunt that commands her reappearance into 29 prison keeps her visible in the conservative or mainstream public 30 mind (to the degree that it is attentive). 31 Assata Shakur became a fugitive in the only communist country 32 in the hemisphere. Cuba thus shares an “outlaw” status with the 33 black female fugitive it harbors. (Cuba continues to shelter U.S. 34 political dissidents.) The 1959 Cuban Revolution’s ability to expel 35 U.S. crime syndicates and corporations from the island was the 36 ultimate act of enduring revolution within America’s “sphere of 37 influence.” Likewise, Shakur is the only prominent Panther able to 38 “successfully” escape from prison. Her “legend” is augmented through 39 exile and her political sensibilities and literary ability. (That she was 40 trained by the Cubans and received a postgraduate degree at the
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University of Havana suggests a set of skills that surpass those of her 1 revolutionary colleagues who died or imploded while young.) Unlike 2 the men, there is little notoriety of a personal life lived in excess 3 and criminality. Rather, there is a dignified restraint that must seem 4 confusing when juxtaposed with her advocacy of liberation “by any 5 means necessary.” 6 Shakur is not more reticent than her male compatriots mentioned 7 here; she is more mature—perhaps in part because she lived long 8 enough to see middle age (but so did Newton and Cleaver), perhaps 9 because her political style was less personality driven. It is difficult 10 to compare Shakur’s political legacy with those Panther- and BLA- 11 imprisoned intellectuals disciplined by decades of incarceration who 12 have not been in the public spotlight. 13 Unlike her female elite comrades, Shakur never had to explain 14 (or forget) a controversial male partner or have his silent pres- 15 ence trail her throughout her political and private life. Women 16 more famous than she—Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Elaine 17 Brown—do not possess her iconic stature as a revolutionary either. 18 In “Black Revolutionary Icons and NeoSlave Narratives,” I compare 19 in greater detail Black Panther leaders and associates Elaine Brown, 20 6 Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur; here, I only 21 note that she differs from both male and female elite leadership 22 connected to armed resistance. 23 Shakur’s background is remarkable for its unremarkable nature. 24 Among the women, Brown grew up in Philadelphia slums, became 25 a Playboy Bunny, and moved in circles that included Frank Sinatra. 26 Cleaver was the daughter of a diplomat and went to elite schools 27 before embracing SNCC and then the Soul on Ice author and convicted 28 rapist Eldridge Cleaver. Davis was mentored by the communist 29 leaders the Apthekers in New York City and grew into an international 30 figure in the Communist Party. Shakur came from neither poverty 31 nor wealth or privilege. She was as ordinary a young woman, with the 32 exception of truancy as a teenage runaway, as the working or (lower-) 33 middle-class black society would issue. For some, how frightening 34 must be the prospect that any ordinary colored girl, within the 35 appropriate context, could grow up to become a revolutionary. 36 Born in a New York City hospital in 1947, Joanne Chesimard 37 would later reject her birth name as a “slave name” to become 38 “Assata Shakur.” In the mid-1960s, according to her memoir, she 39 enrolled at Manhattan Community College to acquire secretarial 40
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1 skills in order to advance in the labor market. Instead, she became a 2 political activist and began working in the black liberation struggle, 3 the student rights movement, and the movement against the Vietnam 4 War. Upon graduating from college, Shakur joined the Black Panther 5 Party. Although she was active in the social service aspects of the 6 New York BPP, its breakfast program, sickle-cell testing, and health 7 services, she was forced out of this work and into the underground 8 due to violent police repression against black radicals associated with 9 the Party. Assata describes how she sought out the Black Liberation 10 Army, an underground, military wing of largely East Coast Panthers, 11 for self-protection. The BPP had become a primary target of one 12 of the FBI’s violent counterintelligence programs (Cointelpro) and 13 its most murderous intentions. While underground, Shakur became 14 accused of numerous crimes, charges that were eventually dismissed 15 or of which she was exonerated. 16 However, in March 1977, following a 1973 change of venue and a 17 1974 mistrial, Assata Shakur was convicted as an accomplice to the 18 murder of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster and of atrocious 19 assault on trooper James Harper with intent to kill. Despite the 20 testimony of expert witnesses, who argued that medical evidence 21 showed that Shakur, who herself had been shot by police while sitting 22 in a car, could not have shot either trooper, an all-white jury, with 23 five members with personal ties to state troopers, convicted her. 24 The judge did not allow any evidence of Cointelpro repression to 25 be entered into the case and refused to investigate a break-in at the 26 office of her defense counsel. Two years after her conviction, Shakur 27 escaped from New Jersey’s Clinton Correctional Facility. In 1984, she 28 received political asylum in Cuba, where she remains today, meeting 29 with foreign delegations and working—with a million-dollar bounty 30 on her head. 31 32 Waging a People’s War: 33 Violence and Trauma in the Absence of “Victory” 34 35 Historically within the United States, black resistance to domina- 36 tion has been pacifist, militarist, or a creative combination of the 37 two. Most of the violence in resistance movements has been from 38 the state. The story of Cointelpro as a form of state violence is like 39 a Brothers Grimm tale: it is meant to chill and chasten most who 40 hear it. Unlike in the Grimm’s fairy tales, however, the victors in
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American stories of political struggle for a greater democracy are 1 not usually the victims-in-resistance. Deployed since the 1920s in 2 some fashion against communists, workers, artists, women, civil 3 rights and human rights activists, and antiwar organizations, the 4 FBI counterintelligence program destabilized progressive political 5 movements by targeting, intimidating, and killing activists. The 6 program remains in effect today, with the continuing harassment 7 7 and incarceration of its targets. In 1968, when FBI director J. 8 Edgar Hoover designated the Black Panther Party as the “greatest 9 threat to the internal security” of the United States, imprisonment 10 as well as assassinations of key Panther leaders followed. However, 11 no concerted national outrage emerged in response to the state’s 12 violent repression of black insurgency. The lack of concern seemed 13 tied partly to ignorance and partly to the consequence of negative 14 media depictions of black revolutionaries. According to the U.S. 15 Senate’s 1976 Church Commission report on domestic intelligence 16 operations: “The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the 17 public’s perception of persons and organizations by disseminating 18 derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through 19 8 ‘friendly news contacts.’” 20 While Angela Davis’s 1972 acquittal proves to some liberals that 21 the “system” works (and, conversely, for some conservatives, that it 22 is dangerously flawed), Assata Shakur’s escape from prison in 1979 23 invalidates that conviction. Shakur’s political life reworks the neoslave 24 narrative to invert its deradicalizing tendencies with the testimony 25 of an unreconstructed insurrectionist. She is disturbing because 26 she was never exonerated, because her 1979 prison escape rejects 27 “the system,” because she bears witness as an unrepentant insur- 28 rectionist and “slave” fugitive. Shakur represents the unembraceable, 29 against whom (and those who offer her refuge) the state exercises 30 severe sanctions. Nevertheless, her case has received support from 31 ideologically disparate African Americans, ranging from incarcerated 32 revolutionaries and prison intellectuals to neoliberal black studies 33 professors. Her narrative, which is more that of the revolutionary 34 slave than the slave fugitive, seems to construct Cuba, not the United 35 9 States, as the potential site for (black) freedom. 36 Assata Shakur’s political contributions to black liberation are 37 enmeshed in high controversy and life-and-death crises. Scholar 38 Manning Marable writes in his essay “Black Political Prisoners: The 39 Case of Assata Shakur” (1998): 40
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1 If Assata Shakur is involuntarily returned to the U.S. . . . she 2 will be imprisoned for life, and very possibly murdered by state 3 authorities. The only other Black Panther who survived the 1973 4 shoot-out, Sundiata Acoli, is 61 years old and remains in prison 5 to this day. No new trial could possibly be fair, since part of 6 the trial transcripts have [sic] been lost and crucial evidence has 7 “disappeared.” 8 9 Assata Shakur is less marketable in mainstream culture given 10 that her life and writings present a narrative similar to that of 11 Mumia Abu-Jamal. As the unrepentant rebel, she calls herself 12 “slave,” rejects her “slave name,” and denounces the white-domi- 13 nated corporate society and state as “slavemasters.” Aspects of her 14 narrative (found in the memoir, interviews, documentaries, and 15 media reports) link her more to the underground Black Liberation 16 Army than to the Black Panther Party, which has become on some 17 levels a cultural commodity. Hence she is not only a rebel but also 18 a militarist. 19 Shakur thus functions as political embarrassment and irritation 20 for the police and conservative politicians, and conversely as 21 political inspiration, or at least quiet satisfaction, for some of 22 their most ardent critics. Those who worked above ground with 23 the courts saw and see in Angela Davis’s release and exoneration 24 a vindication of their political agency. Likewise, those who did 25 advocacy work or worked underground, or who understood 26 that circumstances and police malfeasance required extralegal 27 maneuvers, see in Shakur’s self-liberation an affirmation of their 28 political efficacy or the practicalities of resistance. That her escape 29 entailed neither casualties nor hostages obviously helps pacifists to 30 support her strategies. 31 Assata: An Autobiography depicts a public persona hardly compat- 32 ible with commoditization by those who romanticize political 33 or revolutionary violence. Rejecting the image of violent black 34 revolutionaries, her account offers a complex portrait of a woman 35 so committed to black freedom that she refused to reject armed 36 struggle as a strategy to obtain it. Even during violent upheavals, 37 community remains central for Shakur. Refusing to make revolu- 38 tionary war synonymous with violence, she writes of a “people’s 39 war” that precludes elite vanguards. Assata describes the limitations 40 of black revolutionaries:
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Some of the groups thought they could just pick up arms and 1 struggle and that, somehow, people would see what they were 2 doing and begin to struggle themselves. They wanted to engage 3 in a do-or-die battle with the power structure in America, even 4 though they were weak and ill prepared for such a fight. But 5 the most important factor is that armed struggle, by itself, can 6 never bring about a revolution. Revolutionary war is a people’s 7 10 war. 8 9 The “people’s war,” however, retained a military dimension for 10 Shakur. Her memoir cites the importance of organizing an under- 11 ground, the serious consideration of “armed acts of resistance” in 12 11 scenarios that expand black people’s support for resistance. 13 In news interviews and documentaries, narratives have emerged to 14 portray the black revolutionary as a political icon and the lone active 15 12 survivor of a tumultuous era. Shakur’s image in Lee Lew-Lee’s 16 documentary All Power to the People! The Black Panther Party and Beyond 17 appears with archival footage in an exposé on the murderous aspects 18 of Cointelpro. What Lew-Lee labeled “death squads” and I term 19 “state violence” operated against both the Black Panther Party and 20 the American Indian Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 21 the documentary, former New York Panther Safiya Bukhari is one of 22 the few black women—women are not prominently featured in All 23 Power to the People!—who discusses the emergence of the BLA as an 24 underground offshoot of the Panthers. According to Bukhari, New 25 York Panthers, accused of breaking with the West Coast leadership, 26 were caught between “a rock and a hard place.” Huey P. Newton had 27 allegedly put out a death warrant on them, condemning them as 28 traitors and “government agents”; the New York Police Department 29 (NYPD), assisted by the FBI, had done likewise, marking them as 30 traitors and “terrorists.” 31 The BLA formed against the frightening background memories of 32 Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination and healthy paranoia inspired by the 33 unclear roles played by the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and 34 NYPD undercover agent who had infiltrated Malcolm’s organization 35 to serve as his “bodyguard.” Likewise, the 1969 executions of Panthers 36 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a predawn raid by the Chicago 37 police coordinated by the FBI (survivors would later collect a large 38 settlement from the government, which admits no wrongdoing) 39 framed the choices of black radicals as life-and-death options. 40
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1 In Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the War Against Black Revo- 2 lutionaries, former Panther Dhoruba Bin Wahad offers insights into 3 the underground organization and reveals the complex gender and 4 race dynamics surrounding Shakur. Assata Shakur’s revolutionary 5 icon exists sans celebrity posing or adulation for past dramatic and 6 traumatic clashes with the state. Her solitude—in prison, as a fugi- 7 tive, as a revolutionary woman not tied to a dependent relationship 8 with a man—epitomizes the aloneness, if not loneliness, of the 9 unrepentant revolutionary. 10 Physical violence and battlefield knowledge and fatigue foster 11 a unique black female political being. Her encounters with police 12 both in the street and in “safe havens” such as hospitals are revealing. 13 Shakur was shot while unarmed, with her hands raised, then taken to 14 the hospital, where she was brutally beaten. The memoir describes 15 her being shackled to a hospital bed with bullet wounds, while New 16 Jersey state troopers tortured and threatened to kill her. Assata 17 recounts how medical staff and poetry kept her alive despite police 18 assaults: 19 20 They gave me the poetry of our people, the tradition of our 21 women, the relationship of human beings to nature and the 22 search of human beings for freedom, for justice, for a world 23 that isn’t a brutal world. And those books—even through that 24 experience—kind of just chilled me out, let me be in touch with 25 my tradition, the beauty of my people, even though we’ve had 26 to suffer such vicious oppression . . . it makes you think that no 27 matter how brutal the police, the courts are, the people fight to 13 28 keep their humanity. 29 30 Revolutionary Fugitive and Slave Rebel 31 32 At first confined in a men’s prison, under twenty-four-hour 33 surveillance, without adequate intellectual, physical, or medical 34 resources during the trial, Shakur was later relocated to a women’s 35 correctional facility in Clinton, New Jersey. Sentenced to life plus 36 thirty-three years, after being convicted of killing Werner Foerster 14 37 by an all-white jury in 1977, she was initially housed in facilities 38 alongside women of the Aryan Nation sisterhood, the Manson 39 family, and Squeaky Fromme, who had attempted to assassinate 40 former-President Gerald Ford. Shakur maintains that her escape
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was motivated by a fear of being murdered in prison. In her memoir 1 she also writes that she ultimately decided to “leave” after dreaming 2 of her grandmother instructing her to do so, and realizing that she 3 would not be able to see her young daughter while incarcerated. 4 In a 1978 petition concerning political prisoners, political perse- 5 cution, and torture in the United States, the National Conference 6 of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance against Racist and Political 7 Repression, and the United Church of Christ’s Commission for 8 Racial Justice brought Shakur’s case before the United Nations. The 9 petition stated that Assata Shakur became a hunted fugitive after 10 and due to: the FBI and NYPD charging her with being a leader 11 of the Black Liberation Army, which the agencies characterized 12 as an “organization engaged in the shooting of police officers”; 13 the appearance of public posters that depicted her as a dangerous 14 criminal involved in fabricated terrorist conspiracies against civil- 15 ians; and her appearance on the FBI’s “Most Wanted List” which 16 rendered her “a ‘shoot-to-kill’ target.” 17 In 1998, black activist-intellectuals S. E. Anderson, Soffiyah Jill 18 Elijah, Esq., Joan P. Gibbs, Esq., Rosemari Mealy, and Karen D. Taylor 19 circulated, via e-mail, “An Open Letter to New Jersey Governor 20 Whitman.” This letter to Christine Todd Whitman (who would later 21 head the Environmental Protection Agency in the first administration 22 of George W. Bush) protested the $50,000 bounty the governor had 23 placed on political exile and fugitive Shakur. (In 2006, Attorney 24 General Alberto Gonzalez, who would later resign from the Bush 25 administration due to abuse of his office, raised the bounty to $1 26 million.) The letter castigated the Republican governor: “In seeking 27 her apprehension by . . . ‘kidnapping,’ you have engaged in the kind 28 of debased moralism that the former slave masters in this country 29 resorted to when seeking the return of runaway Africans to slavery.” 30 For the letter’s authors, Assata Shakur “followed in the footsteps of 31 Harriet Tubman, who instructed: there was one of two things I had 32 a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the 33 other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty 34 15 as long as my strength lasted.” 35 In early 1998, concurrently with the circulation of “An Open 36 Letter to New Jersey Governor Whitman,” an “Open Letter from 37 Assata Shakur” circulated online. Shakur’s letter begins: “My name 38 is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave.” Of herself 39 and her codefendant, Sundiata Acoli, she writes that they were both 40
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1 convicted in pretrial news media, and that the media were not allowed 2 to interview them although the New Jersey police and FBI gave daily 16 3 interviews and stories to the press. Shakur’s conflictual relation- 4 ship with mainstream media would be rekindled a decade later. 5 On December 24, 1997, a press conference was held to announce 6 that New Jersey State Police had written a letter (which was never 7 publicly released) to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on 8 their behalf and to aid in having Shakur extradited to the United 9 States. In response, Shakur wrote to the pope, explaining her story. 10 Then in January 1998, during the pope’s visit to Cuba, Shakur granted 11 an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza. For this three-part 12 “exclusive interview series,” NBC advertised on black radio stations 13 and placed notices in local newspapers. The series erased or distorted 14 much of the information Shakur and other progressives had presented 15 concerning her case. 16 However, most striking here is the bizarre polarization of female 17 identities with images so antipodean that the only comparable 18 extremes in American cultural iconography are the neoslave narra- 19 tives, those of the white plantation mistress and the black field 20 slave. In a media interview, Governor Whitman expressed outrage 21 at Shakur’s happiness about being a grandmother, and her haven 22 or home in Cuba. Shakur’s rejoinder notes that she has never seen 23 her grandchild. She argues that if Whitman considers that “50 years 24 of dealing with racism, poverty, persecution, brutality, prison, 25 underground, exile and blatant lies has been so nice, then I’d be 26 more than happy to let her walk in my shoes.” 27 During the NBC special, one interviewee suggested that the 28 New Jersey police would do everything to extradite Shakur from 29 Cuba, including “kidnapping” her and using bounty hunters. Shakur 30 responds in her “Open Letter”: 31 32 I guess the theory is that if they could kidnap millions of Africans 33 from Africa 400 years ago, they should be able to kidnap one 34 African woman today. It is nothing but an attempt to bring about 35 the re-incarnation of the Fugitive Slave Act. All I represent is just 36 another slave that they want to bring back to the plantation. Well, 37 1 might be a slave, but I will go to my grave a rebellious slave. 38 I am and I feel like a maroon woman. I will never voluntarily 17 39 accept the condition of slavery. 40
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Leadership Without a Vanguard? 1 2 What could have protected Shakur and other militant black leaders 3 in liberation organizations from the counterrevolutionary war and 4 murder waged by a democratic state? In theory, the answer to that 5 question is: a politicized mass base that demanded and enforced 6 their human and civil rights, one that could negotiate the end to 7 police surveillance and brutality that sought to undermine legal 8 and productive organizing in black communities ignored by the 9 welfare state. These communities desperately needed what the 10 BPP provided without fostering dependency on an aloof and 11 depoliticizing bureaucracy: breakfast and educational programs, 12 literacy and newspaper publishing, drug counseling and health 13 care. Yet the problem in leadership would emerge for this black 14 revolutionary woman, and all revolutionaries, if the mass lacked 15 not only the will but also the desire to constitute itself as leaders, 16 as a political vanguard. 17 During her time in prison, Shakur became familiar with the mass 18 base, or its most depressed sectors, in ways that her organizing 19 outside of prison, providing social services largely denied to blacks 20 at that time by the state, never permitted. While incarcerated, 21 she was housed with the sector of the population most in need of 22 transformative politics or revolutionary struggle. But this sector 23 proved ambivalent toward organized political struggle. In that space, 24 prison, she and the other incarcerated women functioned less as 25 members of a vanguard and more like social workers. Her writings 26 on her time in captivity are quite revealing about the disparities 27 within black female agency. Throughout her time and trials of being 28 hunted and prosecuted, Assata Shakur would write and publish mostly 29 essays. Assata both reveals her skills as a poet and reveals in many 30 18 ways the triumphal black woman despite institutional trauma. But 31 that memoir was written and published in Cuba, several years after 32 her self-emancipation from prison. The writing during incarceration 33 is filtered with despair for vanguard formations among severely 34 oppressed black women in repressive sites. 35 A year before Shakur’s escape, the Black Scholar published her 36 19 April 1978 essay “Women in Prison: How We Are.” Here Shakur 37 describes New York Riker’s Island Correctional Institution for 38 Women, arguing that at the prison “there are no criminals . . . only 39 40
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1 victims.” The environment is uncomfortable and the food inhospi- 2 table. The name of the space they occupy, with a heating system 3 whose thermostat cannot be adjusted for more warmth, is the “bull 4 pen.” The women held in the pen are “all black” and “all restless” 5 and freezing, according to Shakur. But the physical discomfort is 6 less disturbing than the frightening and embarrassing emotional and 7 psychological decay of the black women caged in the pen. Shakur 8 observes the state of her fellow inmates: 9 10 All of us, with the exception of a woman, tall and gaunt, who 11 looks naked and ravished, have refused the bologna sandwiches. 12 The rest of us sit drinking bitter, syrupy tea. The tall, forty-ish 13 woman, with sloping shoulders, moves her head back and forth 14 to the beat of a private tune while she takes small, tentative 15 bites out a bologna sandwich. Someone asks her what she’s in 16 for. Matter-of-factly, she says, “They say I killed some nigga’. 17 But how could I have when I’m buried down in South Carolina?” 18 Everybody’s face gets busy exchanging looks. A short, stout 19 young woman wearing men’s pants and men’s shoes says, “Buried 20 in South Carolina?” “Yeah,” says the tall woman. “South Carolina, 21 that’s where I’m buried. You don’t know that? You don’t know 22 shit, do you? This ain’t me. This ain’t me.” She kept repeating, 23 “This ain’t me” until she had eaten all the bologna sandwiches. 24 Then she brushed off the crumbs and withdrew, head moving 25 again, back into that world where only she could hear her private 20 26 tune. 27 28 The nameless woman, in comparison to whom all the other 29 incarcerated women can feel superior, appears in the first of several 30 short vignettes. The essay provides a framework for seeing a number 31 of representational black women. There is the mother of teenage chil- 32 dren, Lucille, who defends herself from her violent domestic partner. 33 He had mutilated her arm and partially severed her ear the night she 34 finally killed him. But a jury seeing no vulnerability, and hence no 35 need for self-defense, in a black woman with a drinking addiction 36 gives her a felony “C” conviction. Working as “jailhouse legal counsel” 37 on the women’s behalf, Assata, rather than the salaried court attorney 38 or judge, informs her that the sentence can carry up to fifteen years. 39 There is “Spikey,” a drug addict scheduled for release; her appearance 40 is so altered by her addictions, and her violations and abusiveness have
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so damaged her relations with her mother and her children, that she 1 prefers to spend the Christmas holidays institutionalized rather than 2 with her family and experience the shame that would follow. 3 The majority of the women inside are black and Puerto Rican 4 survivors of childhood abuse, abuse by men, and abuse by the 5 21 “system.” Shakur’s memoir chronicles suffering from political 6 violence rather than social or personal violence (the most traumatic 7 recorded memory is her escape from a “train,” or gang rape, by 8 teenage boys). Yet she expresses empathy with the seemingly 9 apolitical women: “There are no big time gangsters here, no 10 premeditated mass murderers, no godmothers. There are no big 11 time dope dealers, no kidnappers, no Watergate women. There 12 are virtually no women here charged with white collar crimes like 13 22 embezzling or fraud.” 14 The dependency of the women’s criminality strikes her: their 15 dependency on drug addiction, on male “masterminds” for whom 16 they work as runners, mules, prostitutes, and thieves. Shakur 17 radiates a sympathy or perhaps empathy for what she views as 18 impoverished rather than criminal people: “The women see stealing 19 or hustling as necessary for the survival of themselves or their 20 children because jobs are scarce and welfare is impossible to live 21 on. . . . amerikan capitalism is in no way threatened by the women 22 23 in prison on Riker’s Island.” 23 American capitalism and racially driven incarceration coexist with 24 patriarchy and the mystique of “home.” And the women are not fans 25 of white supremacy, or even the nation-state, but are loyalists toward 26 consumer-driven capitalism and the fetish of “home.” Shakur writes 27 that the “domesticity” of the women’s prison, its brightly colored 28 walls, television, plants, rooms with electronic doors (rather than 29 bars), and laundry facilities, produces in the incarcerated a sense 30 of well-being among emotionally and materially deprived women: 31 “Many women are convinced that they are, somehow, ‘getting over.’ 32 Some go so far as to reason that because they are not doing hard 33 24 time, they are not really in prison.” Yet the women’s relationships, 34 not their attachments to material resources, comfort, and structured 35 predictability, unavailable in their lives outside of prison, reveal their 36 convictions to be false. This false consciousness is dispelled by the 37 relations that women have among themselves as prisoners and with 38 their jailers. The women who police the lives of the incarcerated are 39 also black. Their particular type of black female agency in service to 40
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1 and on the payroll of the state works against the agency of both black 2 radical women prisoners such as Shakur and destabilized black women 3 prisoners such as Spikey. This presents a range of contradictions for 4 progressive politics and absolute Manichean divides. Assata Shakur 5 writes disparagingly of the bonds of “affection” exhibited between 6 black female jailers and their black wards: 7 8 Beneath the motherly veneer, the reality of guard life is [ever] 9 present. Most of the guards are black, usually from working 10 class, upward bound, civil service oriented backgrounds. They 11 identify with the middle class, have middle class values and are 12 extremely materialistic. They are not the most intelligent women 13 in the world. . . . Most are aware that there is no justice in the 14 amerikan judicial system and that blacks and Puerto Ricans are 15 discriminated against in every facet of amerikan life. But, at 16 the same time, they are convinced that the system is somehow 17 “lenient.” To them, the women in prison are “losers” who don’t 18 have enough sense to stay out of jail. Most believe in the boot 25 19 strap theory—anybody can “make it” if they try hard enough. 20 21 American exceptionalism filters down to the lowest reaches of the 22 social strata (which does not mean that black women can be general- 23 ized). Shakur’s problematic black women manage Frantz Fanon’s 24 “wretched of the earth” by ensuring the smooth operation of systems 25 that cage them. As guards, their dispensing of affection for the caged 26 (presumably based on some shared condition or affinity) pacifies 27 the wretched. American exceptionalism worn by the black woman 28 (guard) becomes a form of self-validation and social superiority. 29 Shakur grimly (or sadly?) notes: “They congratulate themselves 30 on their great accomplishments. In contrast to themselves they see 31 the inmate as ignorant, uncultured, self-destructive, weak-minded 32 and stupid.” She next proceeds to identify the source of black 33 achievement for these women (and, by extension, an extensive 34 segment of the black working-and middle-class): “They ignore the 35 fact that their dubious accomplishments are not based on superior 36 intelligence or effort, but only on chance and a civil service 37 list . . . no matter how much they hate the military structure, the 38 infighting, the ugliness of their tasks, they are very aware . . . [that 39 if] they were not working as guards most would be underpaid 40 or unemployed.” The absence of their employment in the prison
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industries would mean existential and material losses: “Many would 1 miss the feeling of superiority and power as much as they would 2 miss the money, especially the cruel, sadistic ones.” 3 Among the incarcerated, drug use and abuse provide the topics 4 for most conversations. Hence, Shakur argues: “In prison, as on the 5 streets, an escapist culture prevails.” She estimates that half of the 6 prison population is prescribed and required to take a psychotropic 7 drug (what contemporary incarcerated women have referred to as 8 26 “chemical handcuffs”). Other forms of addiction, socially accept- 9 able ones, manifest in television, prison love/sexual relations, and 10 games of distraction. Few women engage in academic, political, or 11 legal studies, and even fewer in radical politics such as feminism, 12 antiracism, or gay liberation politics. Their dependency on institu- 13 tionalized life moves beyond the borders of physical need expressed 14 in shelter, health care, food, and safety from violent males. 15 Assata Shakur observes gender disparities as marking the exis- 16 tence and expression of political agency of black incarcerated 17 people: “A striking difference between women and men prisoners 18 at Riker’s Island is the absence of revolutionary rhetoric among the 19 women. We have no study groups. We have no revolutionary litera- 20 ture floating around. There are no groups of militants attempting to 21 ‘get their heads together.’ The women at Riker’s seem vaguely aware 22 of what a revolution is, but generally regard it as an impossible 23 27 dream.” Revolution, of course, requires risk, sacrifice, discipline, 24 and work. Ironically, the women seek the “American dream” and 25 find that more attainable than the dream of revolution for a society 26 free of capitalism, institutional racism, and (hetero)sexism. 27 Noting that some women find prison “a place to rest and 28 recuperate,” Shakur sees that the trials of captivity in some ways 29 reflect the outside: “The cells are not much different from the 30 tenements, the shooting galleries and the welfare hotels they live 31 in on the street. . . . Riker’s Island is just another institution. In 32 childhood school was their prison, or youth houses or reform 33 schools or children shelters or foster homes or mental hospitals 34 or drug programs and they see all institutions as indifferent to 35 their needs, yet necessary to their survival.” Here, there are rings 36 of captivity to be explored, theorized, and resisted. The striking 37 problem, though, is whether or not the women have the agency and 38 energy to undertake such a task. In her inability to assert that they 39 28 do in this essay, Shakur functions as witness and advocate. 40
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1 In the final section of the essay, titled “What of Our Past? What 2 of Our History? What of Our Future?” Shakur notes that trauma and 3 grief are not new to black/red women: “I can imagine the pain and 4 the strength of my great great grandmothers who were slaves and 5 my great great grandmothers who were Cherokee Indians trapped 6 on reservations.” She then references the pain of contemporary 7 women in liberation movement(s), those supposedly so unlike 8 the “apolitical” women in Riker’s Island who are functioning at 9 low levels of consciousness with no level of active resistance. For 10 Shakur, movement women mirrored the dysfunctional attitudes and 11 behaviors of incarcerated or mass women: 12 13 I think about my sisters in the movement. I remember the days 14 when, draped in African garb, we rejected our foremothers and 15 ourselves as castrators. We did penance for robbing the brother 16 of his manhood, as if we were the oppressor. I remember the 17 days of the Panther party when we were “moderately liberated.” 18 When we were allowed to wear pants and expected to pick up 19 the gun. The days when we gave doe-eyed looks to our leaders. 20 The days when we worked like dogs and struggled desperately 21 for the respect which they struggled desperately not to give us. I 22 remember the black history classes that did [not] mention women 23 and the posters of our “leaders” where women were conspicu- 24 ously absent. We visited our sisters who bore the complete 25 responsibility of the children while the Brotha was doing his 26 thing. Or had moved on to bigger and better things. . . . And we 27 had no desire to sit in some consciousness raising group with 29 28 white women and bare our souls. 29 30 According to Shakur, the specificity of oppression that black 31 women, including the most “liberated” who manifested as “revolu- 32 tionary,” faced in the frame of a Black Panther is strikingly unique. 33 The essay focuses on women in prison, but the forms of contain- 34 ment and abandonment that black women face radiate beyond the 35 prison walls. Shakur maintains that women’s liberation is predicated 36 on a liberated country and culture, and that capitalism forecloses 37 that possibility. Her final injunction in the 1978 essay, one of the 38 last pieces written for publication while she was incarcerated, was 39 that black women must form a movement: “Under the guidance of 40 Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer and all of our foremothers,
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let us rebuild a sense of community. Let us rebuild the culture 1 of giving and carry on the tradition of fierce determination to 2 30 move on closer to freedom.” But what that “freedom” is, what 3 it is not—that is, capitalist, racist, sexist/misogynist, homo- 4 phobic—cannot be specified in her essay. 5 6 Conclusion: Honoring the Panther Woman 7 8 Assata Shakur’s power as a narrator of black struggles and freedom 9 movements would become eclipsed itself as she evolved, along 10 with the BPP, into an icon. The reified thing, the icon, replaces 11 the dynamic human being who changes her mind, her practices, 12 her desires as a living entity. As a living entity she grows. A fixed 13 site of notoriety, in which the stories that could be told about 14 freedom struggles increasingly become eclipsed by caricatures of 15 the antisocial black militant, is a conceptual and political grave. 16 In her “Open Letter,” Shakur evokes one of Martin Luther King 17 Jr.’s sermons from 1968 that alludes to his imminent assassination. 18 King states that he does “not mind” dying because he has been to 19 the “mountain top.” Shakur reflects: 20 21 Everybody has to die sometime, and all I want is to go with 22 dignity. I am more concerned about the growing poverty, 23 the growing despair that is rife in America . . . our younger 24 generations, who represent our future . . . about the rise of the 25 prison-industrial complex that is turning our people into slaves 26 again . . . about the repression, the police brutality, violence, the 27 rising wave of racism that makes up the political landscape of the 28 US today. Our young people deserve a future, and I consider it 29 the mandate of my ancestors to be part of the struggle to ensure 30 31 that they have one. 31 32 Arguing for young people’s right to “live free from political 33 repression,” Shakur—with “a special, urgent appeal” for struggles 34 for the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the only political prisoner on 35 death row—urges the readers of her letter to work to free all 36 32 political prisoners and abolish the death penalty. 37 Assata Shakur’s story depends in part on the frame that 38 establishes the borders or boundaries for its telling. There is the 39 antiracist feminist, the prison intellectual, the party member, the 40
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1 underground revolutionary, the lone iconic militant. There is fierce 2 resistance and profound grief. Shakur’s somber, measured response 3 to losses provides a word ritual for the dying and dead—whether 4 those entombed in Riker’s Island twenty years ago or a recently 5 fallen comrade. 6 Her eulogy for Safiya Bukhari, given in Havana on August 7 29, 2003, is haunting. Bukhari collapsed hours after she buried 8 her own mother—the grandmother who raised Safiya Bukhari’s 9 young daughter the day her own daughter became a BLA fighter 10 and fugitive, going underground only to surface for an eight-year 11 prison term. Bukhari survived the maiming medical practices of 12 prison doctors (although her uterus did not) only to succumb 13 to the “typical” black women diseases of hypertension, diabetes, 14 obesity, and heart failure in 2002. The eulogy could also be read 15 as Assata Shakur’s—and that of all revolutionary black women who 16 refused to circumscribe their rebellion, and paid the costs for that 17 decision: 18 19 It is with much sadness that i say my last goodbye to Safiya 20 Bukhari. She was my sister, my comrade and my friend. We met 21 nearly thirty-five years ago, when we were both members of the 22 Black Panther Party in Harlem. Even then, i was impressed by 23 her sincerity, her commitment and her burning energy. She was a 24 descendent of slaves and she inherited the legacy of neo-slavery. 25 She believed that struggle was the only way that African people 26 in America could rid ourselves of oppression. As a Black woman 27 struggling in America she experienced the most vicious forms of 28 racism, sexism, cruelty and indifference. As a political activist she 29 was targeted, persecuted, hounded and harassed. Because of her 30 political activities she became a political prisoner and spent many 31 years in prison. But she continued to believe in freedom, and 32 she continued to fight for it. In spite of her personal suffering, 33 in spite of chronic, life-threatening illnesses, she continued to 34 struggle. She gave the best that she had to give to our people. 35 She devoted her life, her love and her best energies to fighting 36 for the liberation of oppressed people. She struggled selflessly, 37 she could be trusted, she was consistent, and she could always 38 be counted to do what needed to be done. She was a soldier, a 39 warrior-woman who did everything she could to free her people 33 40 and to free political prisoners.
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For Assata Shakur, the weight of isolation, alienation, and vilifica- 1 tion are scars that are borne. Redemption does not occur on this 2 plane or in this life. Betrayal by nonblacks and blacks, by men 3 and women, is part of the liberation narrative. There will be no 4 gratitude, no appreciation, no recognition equal to the insults and 5 assaults. So, Assata Shakur, in true revolutionary fashion, must 6 conclude her testimonial embracing a community that radiates 7 beyond our immediate boundaries and limitations: “I have faith 8 that the Ancestors will welcome her, cherish her, and treat her 9 with more love and more kindness than she ever received here on 10 34 this earth.” 11 12 Notes 13 14 This chapter is based on “Black Revolutionary Icons and ‘Neoslave’ 1. 15 Narratives,” in Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). In that essay, I discuss 16 gendered differences among and between Black Panther leaders and 17 associates. For additional writings on Assata Shakur, see the Harriet 18 Tubman Literary Circle digital repository. 19 2. For some of the most incisive literature from the Black Power era, see 20 George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (New York: Random House, 1972); 21 Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (New York: Random 22 House, 1970). 23 3. Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row (New York: Harper, 1996). Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 of killing a Philadelphia police 24 officer, Daniel Faulkner. Trial perjury by witnesses, police suppres- 25 sion of evidence that would assist the defense, and inconsistencies 26 in ballistics reports have led to international calls for a new trial. 27 In December 2011, the courts ruled that he would be taken off of 28 death row. 29 4. Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (Baltimore: 30 Black Classic Press, 1998); Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds., 31 In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Mumia Abu-Jamal, 32 We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge: South 33 End Press, 2004); Robyn Ceanne Spencer, “Inside the Panther Revolu- 34 tion: The Black Freedom Movement and the Black Panther Party in 35 Oakland, California,” in Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in 36 America, ed. Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (New York: New 37 York University Press, 2005). 38 5. In Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the War Against Black Revolutionaries, 39 Dhoruba Bin Wahad offers insights into the underground organization 40
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1 and reveals the complex gender and race dynamics surrounding Shakur. Her solitude—in prison, as a fugitive, as a revolutionary 2 woman not tied to a dependent relationship with a man—epitomizes 3 the aloneness, if not loneliness, of the isolated revolutionary. Physical 4 violence, battlefield knowledge, and fatigue foster a unique black 5 female political being who is susceptible to being either romanticized 6 or demonized. 7 6. James, Shadowboxing. For a discussion of those activists and authors, 8 see Joy James, ed., Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners 9 Write on Life, Liberation and Rebellion (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 10 7. Although publicly condemned, the program allegedly remains in 11 effect today with the continuing harassment of “targets” such as the 12 San Francisco Eight. 13 8. The 1976 Church Committee Report on Domestic Surveillance and 14 Other Illegal Activities by U.S. Intelligence Agencies was named after 15 Frank Church (D-Idaho). 16 9. According to Shakur, she has never been “free”; even in Cuba, 17 protected and valorized as a “black revolutionary,” she remains a “slave” because of her status as a black or African woman, a status 18 that she sees as inseparable from the state of subaltern Africans 19 throughout the diaspora. 20 10. Shakur, Assata, 242–243. 21 11. Ibid, 243. 22 12. Assata Shakur continues to maintain her innocence in the shooting 23 of Werner Foerster. Her case was reintroduced to mainstream black 24 America in the mid-1980s through a segment on New York–based 25 black journalist Gil Noble’s television talk show, Like It Is. Noble traveled to Cuba to interview Shakur and with archival footage of 26 the Civil Rights and black liberation movements set the context 27 for their discussions. Following the two-part segment, a panel that 28 included the Reverend Jesse Jackson was convened to talk about 29 her case. In the 1990s, Shakur appeared in various documentaries 30 including Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando’s Eyes of the Rainbow, 31 which intersperses images of a serene Shakur with African Orisha, or 32 Yoruba female warrior deities and entities of love and community. 33 13. Shakur, Assata, 206–207. 14. Malfeasance was the norm during her discontinued 1973 trial in 34 Middlesex County. The court ruled that the entire jury panel had 35 been contaminated by racist comments like, “If she’s black, she’s ― 36 guilty.” Most whites and Shakur was tried and convicted by an ― 37 all white jury continued to equate “black militancy” or a “black 38 revolutionary” with criminality. Both Shakur’s political affiliations 39 and race marked her as criminally culpable. 40
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15. In closing, the signatories admonish Whitman concerning her civic 1 and political responsibilities: 2 The people of New Jersey, particularly people of African descent, 3 other people of colour and the poor, as well as your political 4 aspirations, would be better served by your attention to reducing 5 poverty, unemployment, underemployment, the incidence of AIDS, police brutality and corruption and improving housing, public 6 education and health care. 7 8 16. More contemporary media portrayal of victims of the 1973 tragedy 9 that ended in two deaths focused only on whites. Images of Foerster’s weeping widow were broadcast (in similar fashion to 20/20’s use of 10 images of Daniel Faulkner’s distraught widow in a segment, hosted 11 by Sam Donaldson in January 1999, was hostile to calls for a new 12 trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal). No references were made to slain Zayd 13 Shakur, or incarcerated Sundiata Acoli, or their families. Images are, 14 of course, the dominant factor for creating icons, particularly demon- 15 ized ones. NBC repeatedly aired a photograph of a black woman with 16 a gun implying that it was Shakur, although the photograph was taken 17 from a highly publicized case where she was accused of bank robbery but later acquitted (during the trial, several witnesses, including the 18 manager of the bank, testified that the woman in that photograph was 19 not Shakur). Despite NBC’s extensive resources for research, it failed 20 to establish the photograph as misidentified; although a subsequent 21 fax and e-mail campaign protested the misinformation, the network 22 continued to broadcast the woman in the photograph as Shakur. 23 17. “Open Letter from Assata Shakur,” 1998, accessed February 10, 2009, 24 http://www.handsoffassata.org/content/assataopenletter-text. 25 htm. 18. For a comparative reading of the life of a black female activist among 26 incarcerated black women, see Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Auto- 27 biography (New York: Random House, 1974). 28 19. Assata Shakur, “Women in Prison: How We Are,” Black Scholar 9, no. 29 7 (April 1978), accessed February 17, 2009, http://www.itsabout- 30 timebpp.com/Underground_News/pdf/Best_of_The_Black_Scholar. 31 pdf. 32 20. Ibid. 33 21. As of 2002, the population of New York jails and prisons was 84 percent nonwhite. (Mother Jones, Debt to Society, special report, 34 accessed February 10, 2009, http://www.motherjones.com/prisons/ 35 index.html; statistics gathered from Bureau of Justice Statistics, 36 Criminal Justice Institute, and U.S. Census Bureau.) 37 22. Shakur, “Women in Prison: How We Are.” 38 23. Ibid., 10. 39 40
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1 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 11. 2 26. For more information on the use of psychotropic drugs in prison, see 3 Kathleen Auerhahn and Elizabeth Dermody Leonard, “Docile Bodies? 4 Chemical Restraints and the Female Inmate,” Journal of Criminal Law 5 and Criminology 90 (Winter 2000): 599–634; D. Benson, “Getting 6 High in Jail: Legal vs. Illegal Drugs,” Prison News Service, no. 52 7 (September 1995): 5; “Overview of Mental Health Services Provided 8 by State Adult Correctional Facilities: United States, 1988,” Mental 9 Health Statistical Note 207 (May 1993): 1–13. 27. Shakur, “Women in Prison: How We Are,” 12. 10 28. Ibid., 13. 11 29. Ibid. 12 30. Ibid. 13 Between 1850 and 1860, escaped slave Harriet Tubman guided several 14 hundred enslaved people to free territories in the North on the 15 Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she served as liaison 16 between the army and newly freed African Americans, and following 17 the war she raised money for the education of former slaves and founded a home for the old and poor. 18 Fannie Lou Hamer was fired from her work as a sharecropper after 19 she attempted to register to vote in 1962 as part of the SNCC voting 20 rights campaign. Jailed and severely beaten in Mississippi in 1963 21 for her activism, she gave a rousing speech on behalf of the Missis- 22 sippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National 23 Convention. For Hamer’s speech, see http://americanradioworks. 24 publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html (accessed February 25 16, 2009). 31. “Open letter from Assata Shakur.” 26 32. Ibid. 27 33. Assata Shakur, “Message of Condolences on the Transition of our 28 Revolutionary Sista, Comrade and Friend, Safiya Bukhari,” accessed 29 February 10, 2009, http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/memorials/ 30 safiya_bukhari.html. 31 34. Ibid. 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
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JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 117117 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 8 5 6 Democracy and Captivity 7 8 9 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish- 10 ment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, 11 shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their 12 jurisdiction. 13 —Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1, U.S. Constitution 14 15 [T]he post-Civil War southern system of convict lease . . . 16 transferred symbolically significant numbers of black people from 17 the prison of slavery to the slavery of prison. 18 —Angela Y. Davis 19 20 As a slave, the social phenomenon that engages my whole 21 consciousness is, of course, revolution. 22 —George Jackson 23 24 “What Is in a Name?” 25 26 From its origins as a democratic slave state or a slave democracy 27 into its current manifestations as a penal democracy, the United 28 States of America has produced a wealth of writings constituting 29 perhaps the world’s largest collection of (neo)slave literature. 30 A singular achievement. This literary productivity will continue 31 given that the United States has the greatest incarceration rate in 32 the industrialized world—estimated at about 2.5 million (counting 33 children, nonlegalized immigrants, and the mentally disordered). 34 Overwhelmingly, these detainees are poor and people of African, 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Democracy and 37 Captivity,” Introduction to The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and 38 Contemporary Prison Writings, ed. Joy James (Albany: State University of New 39 York Press, 2005), xxi–xl. 40 119
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1 Latino, Asian, and Indigenous ancestry. The United States also 2 possesses the technological means and wealth to record and to 3 preserve (or censor and disappear) its captive/penal discourse as 2 4 part of its vast warehouse of “(neo)slave narratives.” 5 The above epigraphs are part of the abolitionist literature that 6 exists as subcategories of a genre that I identify as “(neo)slave narra- 7 tives.” (Neo)Slave narratives emerge from the combative discourse 8 of the captive as well as the controlling discourse of the “master” 9 state. (Neo)Slave narratives focus on the punitive incarceration and 10 containment of designated peoples in the United States (and its 11 “territories,” such as the prisons at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and 12 Abu Ghraib in Iraq). Here, I focus on three categories of (neo)slave 13 narratives: those of the “master-state”; those of the nonincarcer- 14 ated abolitionist and advocate; and those of the “prisoner-slave.” 15 Ideologically, these narratives range from conservative and liberal 16 to radical and revolutionary. The above epigraphs proffer fragments 17 of abolitionist (neo)slave narratives that clash in ideology and 18 political objective as they seek to alter the reality of enslavement 19 in the United States. (Narratives shaping penal/slave democracies 20 intend different, and at times complementary or contradictory, 21 abolitionisms; among African Americans, the most intensely policed 22 in the United States, (neo)slave narratives possess no uniform 3 23 ideology. ) 24 Of the state narratives, the most significant to this discussion is 25 the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Thirteenth 26 Amendment ensnares as it emancipates. In fact, it functions as an 4 27 enslaving antienslavement narrative. In contradistinction, slain prison 28 rebel, author, and theorist George Jackson—his 1971 death at the 29 hands of California prison guards would spark New York’s Attica 30 rebellion weeks later—calls into question the very right of the state 5 31 (as master) to exist. In abolitionists’ insurrectionary narratives, such 32 as those offered by Jackson, what is sought is not the mere abolition 33 of penal captivity or slavery, but the abolition of all masters, including 34 the state-as-master or master-state. Not all abolitionists seek the 6 35 same “freedoms” or even freedom at all. Some seek management 36 and containment of social or state violence. At times, both a visionary 37 freedom and an immediate emancipation are sought. 38 Advocacy abolitionism and its narratives by nonprisoners—like 39 state narratives—grant only “emancipation.” Neither advocacy 40 abolitionism nor state abolitionism can control or create “freedom”
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for the captive. These terms cannot be fully explored here. Yet, we 1 can note that despite the common assertion that “Lincoln ‘freed’ the 2 slaves,” the President issued proclamation and legislation to estab- 3 lish emancipated people. Emancipation is given by the dominant, it 4 being a legal, contractual, and social agreement. Freedom is taken 5 and created. It exists as a right against the captor and/or enslaver 6 and a practice shared in community by the subordinate captives. (In 7 fact, as W. E. B. Du Bois notes in Black Reconstruction, some 200,000 8 African Americans fought in the Civil War—for emancipation and 9 freedom.) Freedom is an ontological status—only the individual 10 or collective—and perhaps a god—can create freedom. 11 Narratives by penal slaves seek and demand freedom (no matter 12 7 for how limited a time, in what limited space). However, penal 13 captives or slaves conditioned by the state can see freedom and 14 emancipation as one and the same. As a consequence, not all penal 15 slave narratives offer new visions of freedom. Some yearn for 16 emancipation (parole, clemency) but not freedom (liberation from 17 racial, economic, gender repression) and the political agency and 18 risk-taking that could realize it. 19 Racially fashioned enslavement shares similar features with 20 racially fashioned incarceration. Plantations, historically, were 21 penal sites—prisons for the exploitation of agricultural, domestic, 22 8 and industrial labor and the dehumanization of beings. Prison is 23 the modern-day manifestation of the plantation. The antebellum 24 plantation ethos of dehumanization was marked by master-slave 25 relations revolving about sexual terror and domination, beatings, 26 regimentation of bodies, exploited labor, denial of religious and 27 cultural practices, substandard food, health care, and housing, 28 forced migration, isolation in “lockdown” for punishment and 29 control, denial of birth family and kin. That ethos is routinely 30 9 practiced and reinscribed in contemporary penal sites. Physical, 31 emotional, sexual, and economic exploitation and violence are 32 visited upon bodies with equal abandon and lack of restraint in sites 33 disappeared from conventional scrutiny. The old plantation was a 34 prison; and the new prison is a plantation. Both reconfigure the 35 (white) rural landscape, receiving and processing bodies forcibly 36 transported, at times from “black” spaces into often culturally 37 unfamiliar territory. In alien terrain, isolated captives witness and 38 participate in a conditioning in which their civil or human rights 39 10 are reduced to the rights of slaves. 40
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1 This discussion, by now, will have ignited old and heated argu- 2 ments about the “legitimate” use of the term slavery. Certainly, 3 ambiguities exist concerning the definition of slavery in modern 4 usage. Most likely debates center on the deniability of contempo- 5 rary enslavement—as a noncriminal or legal state enterprise—in a 6 Western, democratic nation-state. For example, Matthew Mancini 7 argues in One Dies, Get Another that the convict prison lease system 8 emerging in the late 1800s did not constitute slavery. While 9 Orlando Patterson suggests in Slavery and Social Death—by his 10 failure to mention the Thirteenth Amendment and to analyze U.S. 11 penal slavery—that “slavery” is not terminology applicable to the 11 12 postemancipation United States. 13 The political and ideological debates seem sharply drawn. 14 However, despite the contributions of these and other noted 15 scholars, the above three epigraphs were chosen to remind readers 16 that the state through legal narratives, the academic through her 17 scholarship, and the prisoner from his cell, all assert the presence 18 of slavery in the United States as a postemancipation reality. The 19 state has explicitly identified the slave; its narratives, as a subset 20 of (neo)slave narratives, both illuminate and obscure the racialized 21 body of the slave and/or prisoner. According to the U.S. Constitu- 22 tion, “other persons” (racially fashioned without any racial marker 23 in the text to designate them as African), and later, according to 24 the Thirteenth Amendment, “other persons” (criminally fashioned 25 again with no apparent racial referent) are designated real and 26 potential slaves. I highlight the Thirteenth Amendment to argue 27 this: The state does not create legal categories in abstraction. Legal 28 narratives materialize and manifest in political practice(s). Within 29 its possessions and territories, in the very act of (re)naming 30 involuntary servitude, the United States re-created rather than 31 actually abolished slavery. 32 Generally, most abolitionist discourse (excepting radical 33 discourse) tends to avoid the debate over naming, and to focus 34 on the rights of the incarcerated (or enslaved). Consequently, the 35 important contributions of advocacy organizations such as Human 36 Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and various policy and 37 organizing groups, tend to emphasize the conditions of penalty 38 and servitude (or slavery), not the ontological status of the servant 39 (or slave). If the question of “slave” status is a critical one and not 40 merely an exercise in semantics, then it might be that some types of
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abolitionism, just like the master-state narratives that they counter, 1 seek less than freedom—the agency of the captive individual or 2 community to chart their humanity through transforming and 3 12 negating slavery and social death. 4 Historically, legal discourse and institutions have manufactured 5 illegal or criminal races as slaves. Laws maintained the plantation 6 and reservation as penal camps, and fuel for labor in consumption 7 for those designated as socially living and free. Democracy rooted 8 in captivity and social parasitism meant that the civic body fed itself 9 through the state’s legal (criminal) apparatus and procurement and 10 containment of racially fashioned bodies. Although master-state 11 narrators maintained, for moral and political legitimacy, that it was 12 they who suffered the presence of social parasites—the plague of 13 criminal, antisocial savages poisoning the citizenry—still, in the 14 frame of the nation-state, they became engorged. The state fed the 15 master race (constructed by racial supremacy and propertied “free 16 person” status) with the bodies and lands of its captives. The master 17 race fed the state with the fruits of captive labor. Laws codified, 18 regulated, and policed the exchange. 19 The official narratives of the nation-state itself—which were 20 legally binding and enforceable—proved coercive and fashioned 21 not only the language of (neo)slavery but slavery itself. The narra- 22 tives reflect the languages of master, slave, and abolitionist. State, 23 master, and slave in an interminable battle over freedom created 24 the language of the fugitive or incarcerated rebel—the slave, the 25 convict. The language of the illegal or criminalized in turn created 26 the conditions for freedom not rooted in captivity. 27 Law mandated that to be socially alive, to be fully human and 28 part of the civic body, required the marking of the white European 29 body (of course gender, sexuality, and property would have signifi- 30 cance as well). Hence it assisted and encouraged the European body 31 (both individual and civic) by developing a relationship of social 32 parasitism through genocidal anti-Indigenous wars and the African 33 slave trade. The white civic body was strengthened by feeding 34 off those designated as socially dead. The encoding of slavery or 35 criminality onto blackness reflected a counterpart construction: 36 the inscription of “whiteness” and nonincarceration as freedom and 37 civility, hence as property or existential wealth. 38 The currency of white skin with its parasitical relationship 39 to red, black, brown, and yellow skin would spark centuries of 40
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1 antiracist abolitionism. Perhaps it did and does so because racism 2 is best expressed in the violence of penal culture; and the symbolic 3 and real renderings of penology, as a form of [sur]reality, are shat- 4 teringly visceral. Penal culture inverts conventional reality to link 5 the presence of torture and abuse to the law abiding civic body, 6 “civil” and “civilized state.” It thus places into question where to 7 locate the “savage.” 8 Abolitionists are heirs to their ancestors’ strengths and limita- 9 tions in combating violent captivity. It is impossible to survey here 10 all of the significant and lengthy history of abolitionist discourse. 11 Still, in order to place this anthology by contemporary imprisoned 12 writers advocating and agitating for justice within a historical 13 context, it is useful to review key state legal narratives that shaped 14 both slave and abolitionist narratives. 15 16 Law and Master-State Narration 17 18 In an European settler colony, in 1661, the Virginia State Assembly 19 became one of the first legislative bodies to equate enslavement 20 with racial standing by legally coding enslavement as ethnicity/race: 21 “Slave” would be synonymous with African/Black. At the time, 22 there were indentured Europeans as well as indentured Africans and 23 Native Americans; so, captivity was a penal designation applicable 24 to all. 25 One century after the legal codification of slavery as racially 26 driven, the new republic, triumphant in its war for freedom from 27 its British colonial master, issued its guiding laws and principles: 28 the Constitution of the United States. That document would also 29 codify the socially living and the socially dead, respectively as 30 master (race) and enslaved (race). (White women of course would 31 not garner the franchise until the 1920s, and so existed in between 32 both sites, masters of the enslaved race[s], subjects to their male 33 counterparts.) 34 The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution sets the template for the 35 construction of “we, the people” to be understood as white and prop- 36 ertied. In 1787, Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution establishes 37 the political profit tied to enslavement. Curiously, what is so present 38 in that document—the most famous issue of the founding fathers—is 39 what is unspoken. There is the specter in the subtext; she appears in 40
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the disappearance of the words black, African, or slave. No reference 1 to races binary in construction, designated as nonbeing/noncitizen 2 or being/citizen manifests in this document. Yet, without mentioning 3 the phenotyped captive (one must acknowledge that reservations to 4 warehouse and decimate Indigenous peoples were also penal sites), 5 race is everywhere: 6 7 Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among 8 the several States which may be included within this Union, 9 according to their respective Numbers, which shall be deter- 10 mined by adding to the whole Number of free persons, including 11 those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians 12 not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. 13 14 The Constitution’s three-fifths clause demarcates social life 15 from social death; thus it created a political opportunism to 16 benefit electoral elites. Those barred from voting could still accrue 17 political power for whites, increasing not only their congressional 18 13 representation but also their electoral votes. Ironically this would 19 be revisited over a century after the formal abolition of chattel 20 slavery. (For instance, the majority of prisons located in rural 21 Upstate New York house a considerable number of men and women 22 shipped in from downstate or urban areas such as New York City; 23 the state employs largely white prison guards and administrators 24 to police largely black and brown bodies; largely conservative, 25 white congressional representatives are elected in rural districts 26 augmented by [re]apportionment expanded by the incarcerated 27 who cannot vote while the urban congressional representation 28 in prisoners’ home districts in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx 29 shrinks with their enforced absence and appropriation or theft of 30 their electoral value.) 31 For the slave to attain civic identity and power required her 32 to possess freedom. The republic mandated that freedom could 33 not be obtained by virtue of any haven within its borders or act 34 of autonomy by the captives. Linking the prisoner with the slave, 35 Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution stipulates that there is no 36 “free” space or site for the prisoner or the slave; no place within 37 the nation where the register of social death would be erased by 38 the captive’s volition: 39 40
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1 A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other 2 Crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another 3 State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State 4 from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State 5 having Jurisdiction of the Crime. 6 No Person held to Service or labour in one State, under the 7 Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any 8 Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or 9 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom 10 such Service or Labour may be due. 11 12 Insurrectionists though would contest the absence of freedom 13 (rejecting the possibility of manumission or purchasing themselves 14 and family from their captors). In 1822, Denmark Vesey led a slave 15 uprising followed in 1831 by the bloody revolt of Nat Turner. In 16 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the absence of free space 17 for blacks with its majority decision in the Dred Scott Case in which 18 a former slave who had moved to free territory and who had lived as 19 a free man returned voluntarily to slave territory only to lose his free 20 status. Two years after the Supreme Court tendered its verdict on the 21 fixed nature of blackness as property, white abolitionist militant John 14 22 Brown executed the 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry and was summarily 23 executed by the state after forty days in prison. That armed rebellion, 24 as did the earlier Dred Scott ruling, hastened war—apparently the 25 only avenue to resolve the contestations over the disturbing presence 26 of the socially dead amid the larger civic culture populated by those 27 granted social life by the master-state. 28 In 1861, following the secession of southern states in the wake 29 of the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth 30 President of the United States, the Civil War commenced. Two 31 years later, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclama- 32 tion. This pronouncement was to abolish slavery; it garnered for 33 Lincoln—who felt that African Americans had no social life to 34 give to the nation and therefore should be “repatriated” to Africa 35 or shipped to the Caribbean—the title of the so-called great 36 emancipator. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln gave the following 37 declaration, as the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation: 38 39 That on the 1st day of January, AD 1863, all persons held as 40 slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people
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whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall 1 be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive 2 government of the United States, including the military and naval 3 authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of 4 such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, 5 or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual 6 freedom. . . . 7 And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to 8 abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I 9 recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor 10 faithfully for reasonable wages. 11 And I further declare and make known that such persons of 12 suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the 13 United States. . . . 14 15 Presidential cautiousness is evident in this abolitionist narrative. All 16 enslaved people of African descent are not “freed,” only those in the 17 territories or states in rebellion against the union. The President 18 furthermore pledges the use of the government’s military force to 19 ensure the “freedom” of those seeking liberation in the recognized 20 territories, and cautions blacks to remain “law abiding”—that 21 is, to continue in the workforce and to abstain from (political) 22 violence except in the case of self-defense. Over 200,000 African 23 Americans would serve in the Civil War; likely their armed status 24 would have prevented any forcible repatriation after the exhausting 25 and bloody confrontation (a war preceded by the written and oral 26 narratives of nineteenth-century antebellum abolitionists such as 27 David Walker, Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, 28 Harriet Tubman, Henry Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown). 29 Lincoln, the most venerated of the antislavery abolitionists, was 30 assassinated two years after he issued the Emancipation Proclama- 31 tion. Also that year, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment 32 to the U.S. Constitution; thus, after two years of wrangling, it 33 reinstated slavery that Lincoln abolished. Ratified in 1865, the 34 Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1 rebranded the captive: “Neither 35 slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime 36 whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within 37 the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Now, 38 slavery would operate in a restricted fashion. Congress resurrected 39 social death as a permanent legal category in U.S. life, yet no longer 40
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1 registered the socially dead with the traditional racial markings. 2 Breaking with a 200-year-old tradition, the government ostensibly 3 permitted the enslavement of nonblacks. Now not the ontological 4 status of “nigger” but the ontological status of “criminal” renders 5 one a slave. Yet, as became apparent in the convict prison lease 6 system, blackness remained the signifier of social death, although 7 now all those relegated to prisons would be imbued with that pariah 8 race status. Law mandated the transition from chattel slavery to 9 penal slavery, from personal property to “public” property owned 10 by the state (and leased to corporate interests). In doing so, it 11 established new obstacles and challenges for abolitionism. 12 Constitutional amendments during and following the Civil War, a 13 war ostensibly to resolve institutional captivity, provide a mixture 14 of abolitionist victory and venality, of euphoria and despair. Three 15 years after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Four- 16 teenth Amendment’s Section 1 amplified the parameters of freedom: 17 “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 18 privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall 19 any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without 20 due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction 21 the equal protection of the laws.” Yet, contemporary abolitionists 22 recognize that judicial rulings do not allow prisoners full or equal 23 protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. 24 The Fifteenth Amendment (1870), Section 1 expands the fran- 25 chise: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not 26 be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on 27 account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Yet, in 28 1877, federal enforcement was rendered null and void in the Hayes 29 Compromise to secure electoral votes and the presidency of Ruth- 30 erford Hayes: Social slavery would remain intact and the radical 31 experiment of Reconstruction for a nonapartheid democracy would 32 end. Of the postbellum years, W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction 33 notes the Hayes Compromise and federal complicity (reminiscent 34 of the compromise reached in the 1787 Philadelphia convention); 35 that compromise promoted the rise of racial terror through the 36 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an aristocratic invention, romanticized in 37 D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, aligning poorer whites with the 38 economic interests of the plantocracy. The government and its 39 deputized civil society, enforced the institutionalization of Black 40 Codes (formerly Slave Codes) to re-create dead bodies—those
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denied political electoral power, and those bodies subjected to 1 15 ritualized and routinized violence. 2 Following the end of Reconstruction and large-scale black (male) 3 voter disenfranchisement, began the massive growth of the convict 4 prison lease system. In that system, primarily blacks, arrested in 5 “sweeps” of streets and communities, were worked to death in 6 mining, agriculture, and forestry in joint ventures between the 7 state and private industry, essentially, dying at higher rates than 8 they had during enslavement on plantations. 9 Coexisting with the convict prison lease system was the racial- 10 sexual terror and policing of lynchings (largely to prevent black 11 political and economic gains) that dominated the land from the 1880s 12 16 to 1920s. Although reform movements were initiated, they were 13 met largely with general indifference by the general society and by 14 Congress (which refused to pass any antilynching legislation). 15 Apparently, terror directed against the captive (black body) 16 appeared as “routine.” Normalization of terror and the invis- 17 ibility of racially fashioned bodies rendered state and master 18 social violence key obstacles for abolitionists searching for narra- 19 tives to expose the dehumanizing continuation of enslavement 20 in the “postslavery” era. The narratives of the prisoners them- 21 selves would mark and reveal the continuation of violence and 22 degradation and the arguments that legitimized captivity 23 and abuse. Although reform and penitence were ideological and 24 moral motivations for early penitentiary life, the mass introduction 25 of the “slave” body into prisons following the legislative “abolition” 26 of slavery, altered the “reformatory” aspects of incarceration. 27 28 Insurgency: Prison-Slave Narratives 29 and the New Abolitionists 30 31 John Edgar Wideman’s introduction to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Live from 32 17 Death Row cautions the reader and seeks to protect the imprisoned 33 author by demystifying the “reading” of former Black Panther 34 18 Abu-Jamal as spectacle and entertainment. In his introduction, 35 Wideman argues that many Americans encounter the trials and 36 trauma of black life and political struggles through the “(neo)slave 37 narrative.” Here he limits the definition of (neo)slave narrative to 38 that authored only by the captive black woman or man. Traceable 39 to the nineteenth century, this particular narrative is marked by 40
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1 key characteristics connected to enslavement, abolitionism, and 2 consumerism. It is marketed through literature accessible to and 3 desired by (curious or moral) readers. In addition, according to 4 Wideman, such (neo)slave narratives identify fixed sites of freedom 5 and enslavement. They juxtapose the southern plantation with the 6 northern city in the “free” or nonslave state. In these narratives, 7 the triumphal slave must engage in flight—from captivity, penal 8 or plantation misery—in order to triumph through an exchange 9 of social death for civil life. Coded as “north versus south,” this 10 assertion of identifiable sites of freedom and democracy suggests 11 a continual path of warfare or flight. (Neo)slave narratives can 12 provide illusory landscapes. Romantic evasions assume that the 13 duality is real; that there is a “free zone” in a democratic slave state, 19 14 that the “north” as haven, in fact, exists. 15 In the prison narrative, the successful escape or emancipation and 16 liberation manifest as physical and metaphysical fleeing from the penal 17 site through parole, exoneration, disappearance into fugitive status, or 18 abolitionism. In conventional (neo)slave narratives, or a subcategory, 19 prison narratives, the state, despite its abusive excesses, provides 20 20 the possibility of emancipation and redemption. According to such 21 narratives, the state cannot therefore be considered or constructed as 22 inherently and completely corrupt; for the state enables and maintains 23 the sites of freedom (open society), as well as those of enslavement 24 (prison). As the sympathetic reader lives vicariously through the 25 dangerous risk-taking that typifies the life of slave-as-prison-rebel 26 and fugitive, these narratives reassure her of reconciliation with 27 prevailing power structures that allow for or provide emancipation 28 and democratic culture. These structures then must be maintained 29 if not revered despite the “dead zones” within which democracy is 30 made incompatible with the life of specific subcultures. The dead 31 zones, such as the penal site, the immigrant detention center, the 32 military camp, the police station, the foreign prison in Cuba or Iraq 33 or Afghanistan—all deny the possibility of “new life” or rebirth. All 34 are manifestations of institutional and rational and irrational violence; 35 all are antidemocratic. 36 Although terror functions as entertainment, disciplinary perfor- 37 mance, and incitement to abolitionist activity, some abolitionist 38 texts fail to record or comprehend such terror inflicted on racially 39 marked bodies and thus erase racist violence. Yet any narrator not 40 (racially) blinded recognizes the body in penal sites, sees its trauma
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21 and scarring. The visual sparks reform and revolution—lynch- 1 ings of personal friends mobilized Ida B. Wells in 1892 to initiate 2 abolitionism. In 1955, months before Rosa Parks sat down and would 3 not voluntarily rise, the Mississippi lynching of fourteen-year-old 4 Emmett Till ignited the Civil Rights movement, not only because 5 he was murdered but because his mutilated corpse was viewed in 6 an open casket in a Chicago funeral that drew thousands; and the 7 image of that tortured body was disseminated to tens of thousands 8 22 through photographs published in the black magazine Jet. Whether 9 expressed in the popular nineteenth- and twentieth-century black- 10 and-white paper postcards depicting lynchings of blacks by whites, as 11 23 preserved in the exhibit “Without Sanctuary,” or illustrated in the 12 twenty-first-century color digital postcards depicting the torture and 13 rape Iraqi prisoners by their U.S. captors, the violent (racial-sexual) 14 dehumanization and dismemberment of the captive have proven 15 24 how memorable terror and sexual violence are. This suggests that 16 textual (neo)slave narratives have been buttressed (and may at times 17 be supplanted in their evocative power to affect civil society and 18 mobilize resistance) by visual or pictorial (neo)slave narratives. 19 Prison narratives as (neo)slave narratives represent border 20 25 crossings; just as did Charon, they ferry the dead and the living. 21 The lingua franca of (neo)slave narratives is all discourse that posits 22 distinct worlds: that of criminal and civil, that of outlaw and law 23 abiding, that of slave and freeman or freewoman. 24 Rhetoric instructs that there are contained sites of nonfreedom 25 and freedom. Yet, enslavement is manufactured in the “free” world; 26 “freedom” is imagined and created in the slave world. When the two 27 worlds meet, as they do incessantly and creatively and violently, 28 there is a border crossing, an intermingling of subordinate and 29 dominant narratives. In narratives—of the master race, the state, 30 the slave, the prisoner, the abolitionist, the advocate—redemption 31 and safety continue to appear as a variation of prison success stories 32 tied to “rehabilitation” rather than to rebellion. For instance, in 33 contemporary parole hearings for self-identified political prisoners, 34 supporters are asked to “tone down” their political rhetoric, to 35 emphasize that the individual on trial or up for parole poses no 36 “threat” to general society; and that their contributions to “social 37 26 service” were exemplary. Advocates are asked to make their 38 letters for clemency and parole abolitionist texts that harmonize 39 with master-state (neo)slave narratives. 40
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1 Contemporary insurrectionist penal-slave narratives, such as 2 Abu-Jamal’s Live from Death Row or Assata Shakur’s Assata: An Auto- 3 biography, can question the very premise of rehabilitation, indicting 4 the state and society, contextualizing or dismissing individual acts of 5 criminality by nonelites, the poor and racialized, to emphasize state 6 criminality or the crimes of elites. Some prison narratives issue calls 7 for dissent for a greater democracy. Dual narratives—those of the 8 petitioners and those of the antagonists to state authority—shape 9 political discourse. The narratives are in dialogue. As they debate 10 with each other, they are differently weighted—some abolitionist 11 (neo)slave narratives are considered more “respectable” and more 12 “valued.” Yet, when they emanate from the site of the noncitizen, 13 from men and women in cages, regardless of their outlaw and 14 disreputable status, they illuminate past, present, and future 15 possibilities for the reinvention of democracy. 16 17 Contemporary Policing and Political Repression 18 19 Through their narratives, imprisoned writers can function as progres- 20 sive abolitionists and register as “people’s historians.” They become 21 the storytellers of the political histories of the captives and their 22 captors. These narratives are generally the “unauthorized” versions of 23 political life, often focusing on dissent and policing and repression. 24 The more contemporary political activists represented in this volume 25 have intimately interwoven their own autobiographical resistance and 26 subsequent capture into their (neo)slave narratives. 27 Those currently incarcerated were largely politicized either in 28 pacifist activism during World War II, or more recently in the 1960s 29 and the following decades marked by political dissent and unrest. In 30 the 1960s, in response to radical and progressive social movements, 31 the “law and order” rhetoric and campaigns fed the contemporary 32 imprisonment crisis fueled by resistance and backlash to the turbulent 33 decades of protest against the prevailing order. A rapid review of that 34 history will be useful to situate some of the essays and chapters that 35 follow and help us to better understand the writing of incarcerated 36 radicals. 37 The year of 1963 proved to be a pivotal one. Martin Luther King 27 38 Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and the triumph of the March 39 on Washington transformed civil rights “troublemakers” and “crimi- 40 nals” into respectable citizens seeking to contribute to a democratic
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culture. Turmoil and tragedy ensued throughout the year which 1 witnessed: the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers; the 2 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, which resulted 3 in the deaths of four girls; and the assassination of President John 4 F. Kennedy. President Lyndon Johnson used the national mourning 5 for Kennedy to shepherd civil rights legislation through Congress, 6 ostensibly to abolish the social death of blacks. In 1964, the Voting 7 Rights Act was passed as another emancipatory gesture, part of the 8 state’s expanding abolitionist narrative. Yet riots followed in urban 9 communities. That year, the Grand Old Party (GOP) presidential 10 candidate Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), who influenced 11 Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s positions on policing and 12 imprisonment, stated in his acceptance speech at the Republican 13 National Convention: “Security from domestic violence, no less 14 than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary form and 15 fundamental purpose of any government.” 16 By 1966, segregation abolitionism in the Civil Rights Movement 17 was being replaced in popular culture by the militancy of younger 18 antiracists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 19 and the Black Panther Party. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s 1966 20 Memorandum on Cointelpro established the parameters for social 21 and political containment, reserving the harshest punishment for 22 rebels who militantly resisted social death: “The purpose of this 23 new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, 24 discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist 25 organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, member- 26 ship, and supporters.” Hoover’s fear that the militancy of black 27 emancipators would “infect” white America was also shared by 28 28 elected officials. In 1968, the assassination of Robert Kennedy 29 during his presidential campaign was followed several months 30 later by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the wake 31 of those killings, with a national heightened sense of fear and 32 uncertainty, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed 33 the “Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act.” This act led to the Law 34 Enforcement Assistance Administration and created SWAT (Special 35 Weapons and Tactics) teams, setting the stage for Richard Nixon’s 36 “law and order” campaigns. 37 In the 1980s, during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and 38 29 his former vice president George Bush, the war on drugs, contra 39 wars, and “constructive engagement” with apartheid along with the 40
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1 funding of contra or counterrevolutionary terrorists-insurgents 2 in Latin America and Africa would be normative. These domestic 3 and foreign policies would lead to a growth of both social and 30 4 political prisoners. The former were/are largely incarcerated for 5 crimes tied to drug use or sale (and poverty); the latter were/are 6 incarcerated for their rebellion against U.S. domestic and foreign 31 7 policies. In the 1990s, prisons saw an exponential growth in 8 incarceration, largely from drug sale and consumption. During the 9 Clinton administration, the 1996 “Anti-Terrorism and Effective 10 Death Penalty Act” broadened the use of the death penalty and 11 diminished federal habeas corpus; and the 1996 “Immigration 12 Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” abolished due process 32 13 for undocumented persons. Both laws were passed the year after 14 the Oklahoma City Bombing. 15 The diminishment of free acts—acts that can be engaged in without 16 fear of surveillance or reprisal—signals the shrinkage of free demo- 17 cratic space. The penal state grows not because of the proliferation of 18 prisons per se, but because “free” space diminishes or disappears. Part 19 of this diminishment stems from legislation. The state shrinks, and 20 alternatively can expand, democratic space through its criminal/civil 21 codes. Currently, it has chosen shrinkage as evidenced in the passage 22 of legislation such as the 1996 Omnibus Crime Bill and the 2001 23 USA Patriot Act. 24 Despite increasing police powers, and prison, police, and 25 military violence, the narratives and agency of imprisoned political 26 dissidents continue to redefine and revitalize struggles for a greater 27 democracy. In movements influenced by prisoners, gays/lesbians, 28 feminists, antiracists, and peace activists express insurgent desire 29 and discourse; whether pacifist or militarist, they have refashioned 30 (neo)slave narratives. Out of antiwar and social justice movements, 31 insurgency has produced and will continue to produce imprisoned 32 abolitionists and political icons. 33 However, the state continues to provide the midwifery to rebirth 34 disenfranchisement despite the civil, human rights, and liberation 35 movements of the twentieth century. The status of felon is used to 36 strip tens of thousands of people (from mostly poor or black and 37 brown communities) of the vote. In the 2000 Presidential election, 38 Florida voters, overwhelmingly registered with the Democratic 39 Party, in low-income, high-minority districts were over three times 40 more likely to have their votes discarded than voters in high-income,
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low-minority districts; and voters in some low-income, high-minority 1 districts were twenty times more likely to have their votes discarded 2 33 than voters in other districts. In 2004, similar controversy emerged 3 concerning Ohio. Yet to focus on Florida or Ohio and the role of the 4 Republican Party in the disenfranchisement of black voters would 5 miss a crucial point: Both national parties, Republican and Democrat, 6 routinely undercount African American votes nationwide, jettisoning some one 7 34 in seven according to a 2004 study. Hence “voting while black/brown” 8 suggests a rupture with the civic body—some form of nonbeing inter- 9 jected into restrictive democratic processes. That is, the black body 10 shares a proximity or positionality with the felon/prisoner—that 11 of the suspect or noncitizen. Consequently, contemporary radical 12 penal narratives as (neo)slave narratives denounce the State for 13 manufacturing slavery on both sides of prison walls. 14 15 Conclusion 16 17 In previous centuries, forging a new language, the modern anti- 18 slavery movement marked a significant awakening of the public 19 moral conscience in the Western world. In this century, antiprison 20 movements offer the same possibilities: to struggle by dismantling 21 mechanisms of incarceration and dehumanization. 22 Writings by prisoner-abolitionists (some identify as “slaves,” all as 23 former or current captives) focus on the captured rebel, visionary 24 35 or insurrectionist. New abolitionists shape and contest (neo)slave 25 narratives and penal democracy. They suggest that in America, as in 26 its Athenian progenitor, there is no free space, as we know it, without 27 penal or slave space, as we fear it. 28 29 Notes 30 31 1. Infused as they are with economic and ethnic-racial bias, the massive 32 incarceration and detention apparatuses constitute a crisis in Amer- ican democracy. In critiques of the incarceration industry, what is 33 reasonably contested is not the responsibility and need to contain 34 people to prevent them from harming themselves or others; what is 35 contested is containment fashioned as enslavement and policing and 36 imprisonment shaped by racial and economic status. 37 The most disturbing features of contemporary incarceration are 38 its abuses of humanity and its racially and economically driven 39 punitive characteristics. Poor people comprise the majority of those 40
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1 imprisoned and on death row. Some 70 percent of the more than 2 million incarcerated in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers are 2 African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian; approximately 3 1 million or 50 percent of the incarcerated are African American. 4 The racially driven features of punishment, detention, and imprison- 5 ment are documented. The Sentencing Project has noted disparity in 6 sentencing in which blacks convicted of the same crimes as whites are 7 much more likely to be sent to prison. The American Bar Association 8 has advocated a moratorium on executions citing the rampant racial 9 bias in determining death sentences given that the race of both defendant and victim is the primary factor in capital punishment. 10 Those convicted of killing a white person are significantly more 11 likely to receive the death penalty, particularly if they are not white 12 themselves. The abysmal living conditions and treatment of detained 13 immigrants in camps in the United States and “unlawful combatants” 14 at Guantánamo Bay have led to hunger strikes, riots, or attempted 15 suicides. See Joseph Lelyveld, “In Guantánamo,” New York Review of 16 Books, November 7, 2002. 17 2. See The Bureau of Justice Statistics Website (through the Department of Justice), which contains statistics on the U.S. prison/jail system, 18 accessed March 4, 2005, http://www.ojp.usdoj/bjs/. See also, 19 Jerome G. Miller, Search and Destroy: African American Males in the 20 Criminal Justice System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); 21 Terry Kupers, Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and 22 What We Must Do About It (Indianapolis, IN: Jossey-Bass, 1999); Marc 23 Mauer, The Race to Incarcerate (New York: The New Press, 2000). 24 3. The ways in which (neo)slave narratives are written and spoken 25 by African Americans deserves more careful scrutiny than can be provided here. However, we can note how black Americans 26 reinvigorate old language concerning captivity. For instance, African 27 American families and friends visiting their incarcerated relatives 28 have been known to refer to black guards as “Uncle Toms.” And 29 abolitionists in civil society who have married prisoners create new 30 narratives that conflate their experiences as synonymous with those 31 of prisoners and prison rebels. 32 4. (Neo)Slave narratives can seek to expand or expel freedom; only those 33 that seek to diminish or destroy slavery are abolitionist. Abolitionist discourse can also refashion shackles as in the Thirteenth Amendment 34 to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery during the Civil 35 War only to legalize it today. 36 5. See George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson 37 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970; reprint, Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 38 1994); and Blood in My Eye (New York: Random House, 1972; reprint, 39 Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1990). 40 6. In some abolitionist texts, what is sought is not “freedom” per se,
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because the master-state will not or cannot offer that. It cannot 1 provide what it does not possess. What the master-state grants, and often what the incarcerated acquiesce to, is emancipation. Yet 2 this emancipation cannot fulfill the conditions for a decent life or 3 livelihood. 4 Consider that in referring to the California Youth Authority, MSW 5 candidates in California universities speak disquietingly about the 6 “emancipation” of children who are wards of the state, in the foster 7 care system (also a prison, according to some who were warehoused 8 there during their youth). One is “emancipated” when one reaches the 9 age of eighteen. Emancipation suggests that prior to that moment, children were in bondage, housed in private or group homes. Upon 10 emancipation, technically no longer on the rolls to have their actions 11 directly dictated, that is, no longer the direct property of the state, 12 they are “free.” Essentially at the age of eighteen, whether or not 13 they have matriculated from high school (such students would 14 disproportionately not graduate by age eighteen having had their 15 schooling delayed because of frequent moves, familial disruption, 16 and childhood trauma), formerly captive children, now free adults, 17 are put out—without housing, without advanced schooling, and with no income. As in 1865, slaves would ask, emancipated for what 18 end—subsistence, starvation, or entry into the illegal, underground 19 economy? 20 7. A study of maroon societies in the United States—that is, the Semi- 21 noles—an amalgamation of Indigenous peoples and runaway African 22 slaves, the only entity to defeat the U.S. army on its own soil—the 23 Americas, or the Haitian revolution illustrates the sporadic appear- 24 ances of freedom struggles. See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins 25 (New York: Vintage Books, 1963); and Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 26 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 27 8. Rather than conflate penal and carceral, some scholars coin the term 28 punitive carceral(ity), drawing from Foucault in order to foreground the 29 distinction between punishment and incarceration. I find this distinction 30 to be somewhat unnecessary. The United States has rendered the two 31 as synonymous for racialized bodies on or in plantations, reservations, 32 prisons. When the quest for rehabilitation, for the individual as 33 opposed to the collective body, became severed from incarceration, incarceration became reduced to punishment. 34 9. Robert Jay Lifton, referencing the abuses in Iraqi prisons committed 35 by U.S. personnel, describes warfare and military prisons as an 36 “atrocity producing situation.” Atrocity producing situations exist 37 in ordinary civilian prisons and in military prisons. See Robert Jay 38 Lifton, “Mental Aspects of Abuse and War,” interview, Weekend Edition, 39 National Public Radio, WBUR-Boston, May 9, 2004. 40
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1 10. Some 40 percent of the nation’s prisons are housed in rural areas. Given draconian drug laws, such as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, many 2 prisoners from urban areas serve long prison terms in remote areas 3 that are highly inaccessible to low-income families without private 4 transportation. 5 11. See Matthew Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the 6 American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Caro- 7 lina Press, 1996); and Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death 8 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 9 12. Saidiya Hartman argues that emancipation enabled new “forms of subjection” that structured violence linked with slavery in “black 10 freedom.” See Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection (New York: 11 Oxford University Press, 1997). 12 13. Political scientist John Aldrich has noted that the 1800 presidential 13 contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, which was 14 determined, as all U.S. presidential elections are, by the electoral 15 college, would have likely been settled in favor of the latter, the loser, 16 if the three-fifths clause were not law. 17 14. The impact of the abolitionist John Brown, although erased or vilified in conventional memory, would spark continued abolitionist struggle, 18 ranging from the song “John Brown is moldering in his grave . . .” 19 sung by Union soldiers, a song which would later become “The 20 Battle Hymn of the Republic” (and later still, “Solidarity Forever,” 21 written in a prison cell by Joe Hill, the labor activist and socialist), 22 to twentieth-century white antiracist/imperialist revolutionaries such 23 as the John Brown/Anti-Klan network of former and current political 24 prisoners such as Linda Evans, Laura Whitehorn, David Gilbert, and 25 Marilyn Buck. 15. See: W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (Millwood, NY: Kraus- 26 Thomson Organization, 1976); Mancini, One Dies, Get Another. 27 16. In 1892, Ida B. Wells published Southern Horrors (New York: Arno 28 Press, 1969, reprint). Wells organized antilynching crusades and a 29 British boycott against southern cotton and joined 30 W. E. B. Du Bois in the founding of the National Association for the 31 Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909–1910. Lynching 32 abolitionists and turn-of-the century activists such as Ida B. Wells 33 and Mary Church Terrell foreshadowed women’s leadership in contemporary prison abolitionism. 34 17. See Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row: This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal 35 (New York: Avon, 1995). 36 18. An award-winning journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal began writing at 37 age fifteen as lieutenant minister of information for the Philadelphia 38 branch of the Black Panther Party. Mumia Abu-Jamal has been 39 incarcerated for over twenty years for a crime for which he maintains 40 his innocence, that of killing a (white) policeman. In 2003, he was
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declared a Citizen of Paris, an award the city last bestowed in 1971 1 on Pablo Picasso. 19. This illusion justifies the forcible “democratization” of other peoples 2 and cultures and nations. Historically the democratic enterprise 3 waged by the United States has meant the concentration of economic 4 wealth and property, the expropriation of the material wealth and 5 cultural-political autonomy of those Indigenous and African peoples 6 initiated into the “free” world, and the phantasm of civilizing missions 7 which made profitable the discourse of slave trades. 8 20. Of course, the exception in historical slave narratives would be the 9 Dred Scott case and the Supreme Court ruling that occasioned a mass exodus of black Americans to Canada and elsewhere. 10 21. The language of academic abolitionists varies in its political intent. 11 Consider only a small selection of Michel Foucault’s work: Discipline 12 and Punish and the “Attica Interview” (John K. Simon, “Michel 13 Foucault on Attica: An Interview,” Telos 19 [1974]: 154–161). In the 14 interview conducted in 1972, during his tour of Attica, the site of 15 the prison rebellion brutally repressed by then Governor Nelson 16 Rockefeller and the National Guard, Foucault does not once mention 17 the men who rebelled in Attica and who were killed there. Equally problematic is Foucault’s inadequate attention to the state’s 18 investment in criminality. Foucault in this interview asserts that crime 19 is a “coup d’état from below” and hence has a “proto-revolutionary” 20 function. Yet, the largest criminals are from “above”—in terms of 21 property theft (white collar crime), drug trafficking (laundering is 22 the most profitable; growers and street dealers garner only a fraction 23 of the take), and organized violence. The Bureau of Indian Affairs 24 reveals the structural or state nature of institutional theft and the 25 nation-state as criminal enterprise. The state is a manifestation of organized criminality against certain bodies. 26 22. See Jet, September 15, 1955. 27 23. See James Allen, ed., Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America 28 (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000). 29 24. Lynchings, with the racial-sexual terror that accompanies them, are 30 warfare. As do prisons, they represent the ultimate spectacles of 31 physical and sexual terror. 32 25. In Greek mythology, Hermes brings Charon, the ferryman of the 33 dead, the souls of the deceased, and Charon ferries them across the river Acheron. 34 26. Protesting at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 35 2000, Camilo Viveiros, a Portuguese organizer with the Massachu- 36 setts Alliance of Department of Housing and Urban Development 37 (HUD) Tenants, was arrested for allegedly striking Philadelphia 38 Police Commissioner John Timoney with a bicycle. Of the 420 39 protestors arrested along with Viveiros, over 95 percent had their 40
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1 charges dismissed for lack of evidence or were acquitted shortly after the arrests. In April 2004, Viveiros, Eric Steinberg, and Darby 2 Landy (known popularly as the “Timoney Three”), were the only 3 three protestors left facing charges. Viveiros, who was being tried 4 on three felony charges and four misdemeanors, faced up to forty 5 years in jail and $55,000 in fines. On April 5, 2004, the first day 6 of his trial, Judge William Mazzola exonerated Viveiros and his two 7 codefendants due to inconsistencies in the prosecution’s testimony 8 and video footage that showed Viveiros did not resist arrest and was 9 punched on the back of the head by an officer as he was handcuffed. See “Friends of Camilo,” accessed December 28, 2011, http://www. 10 friendsofcamilo.org. 11 27. The 1950s and 1960s constituted the “second reconstruction,” as 12 liberals in Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership 13 Conference (SCLC) would refer to it, and the “second civil war,” 14 as radical “shock troops” of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 15 Committee (SNCC) would describe it. Historian Howard Zinn, a 16 former mentor along with Ella Baker of SNCC, documented the 17 important contributions of the young activists in the book SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Boston: South End Press, 2002, reprint). 18 Much of Southern activism centered on the right to vote. The 19 Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution promised the 20 franchise and hence, theoretically, recognition of full citizenship with 21 the mandate that made the poll tax or any tax as the precondition 22 for voting illegal. 23 28. As reported in Eldridge Cleaver’s obituary, California governor 24 Ronald Reagan, responding to Black Panther Party leader (and former 25 convict) Eldridge Cleaver’s invitation to lecture at the University of California–Berkeley, warned: “If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach 26 our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats.” 27 See New York Times, May 2, 1998, B8. 28 29. In Lockdown America, Christian Parenti notes that during the Reagan 29 administration’s “war on drugs,” prisons and police departments 30 grew, along with poverty and cuts to grants for child nutrition, 31 education, and urban development. The Federal Crime Bill of 1984 32 created assets forfeiture laws that enabled police departments to keep 33 up to 90 percent of “drug tainted” property that they confiscated; police revenues from drug forfeiture laws grew from $100 million 34 in 1981 to over $1 billion in 1987. The Anti-Drug-Abuse Act of 35 1986 created twenty-nine new mandatory minimum sentences and 36 disparity in penalties for (“suburban”) powder cocaine and (“urban”) 37 crack (100:1). The majority of powder and crack cocaine users are 38 now white “suburbanites,” yet the majority of those incarcerated 39 for drug offenses are African American or Latino. Four years later, 40 a new federal crime bill would mandate a “one strike” policy in
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public housing and transfer counseling and drug rehabilitation to 1 law enforcement. See Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (New York: Verso, 1999). 2 30. For a discussion of “social prisoners,” “political-econ” prisoners, 3 and “political prisoners,” see Joy James, ed., Imprisoned Intellectuals: 4 America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion 5 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 6 31. Punishment meted out to political prisoners or prisoners of conscience 7 tended to be the most severe. See the Amnesty International reports 8 on torture and sensory deprivation at the Lexington Control Unit 9 for women, and at Marion Prison in Illinois for men. See Amnesty International USA, Allegations of Mistreatment in Marion Prison, Illinois, 10 U.S.A., AMR 51/26/87, May 1987. 11 32. See Parenti, Lockdown America. 12 Following the September 11, 2001 tragedies, Attorney General 13 Ashcroft issued directives for “lockdowns” of U.S. political prisoners. 14 The 2001 USA Patriot Act passed later that year provided provisions 15 that enable the government to: detain noncitizens indefinitely at the 16 discretion of the Attorney General; conduct searches, seizures, and 17 surveillance with reduced standards of cause and levels of judicial review; and construe guilt by association. 18 33. See Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division, U.S. House of 19 Representatives, “Income and Racial Disparities in the Undercount 20 in the 2000 Presidential Election,” July 9, 2001. 21 34. See Gregory Palast, “Vanishing Votes,” The Nation, April 29, 2004. 22 35. The New Abolitionists’ chapters are organized into four sections 23 interconnecting issues of activism, gender, resistance, and dialogue. 24 The narratives presented depict progressive polities. At times, social 25 inequality is reproduced in the volume through an author’s language of class, sexual, or ethnic chauvinism. Yet the pieces reflect humanity 26 struggling to reinvent and assert itself. Such writings and narratives 27 reveal social life amid social death with the urgency and power of 28 the political speech of prisoner and fugitive abolitionists representing 29 historical and contemporary struggles. Often referencing a political 30 present inextricably linked to the past, captives frame a future for 31 abolitionism, emancipation, and freedom. The table of contents to 32 The New Abolitionists (2005) is available at: http://www.sunypress. 33 edu/p-4133-the-new-abolitionists.aspx (accessed September 21, 2012). 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 141141 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 9 5 6 Black Suffering in Search 7 8 of the “Beloved Community” 9 10 11 Introduction 12 13 The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are 14 assembled . . . the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.” 15 —Martin Luther King Jr. 16 17 18 The concept of the “beloved community,” as a desirable and achiev- 19 able American phenomenon that encompasses black freedom, can be 20 traced to human rights activist and pacifist Reverend Martin Luther 21 King Jr. January is the month of King’s birth. April—the time of 22 Easter and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s birthday—is the 23 month of King’s assassination. In remembrance, we would rather 24 recall King’s entry into the world. The birth of any baby—with 25 sustenance and protection from a mother possessing the same— 26 offers promise. A prince of peace born in the winter and murdered 27 in the spring can be immortalized if his life struggles and violent 28 death are viewed as necessary sacrifices for the greater good. 29 King surely knew that Jesus was both a black Jew and a political 30 prisoner. He, like so many of his era, understood blacks as being 31 political captives occupying a unique position in society, unique but 32 universal to the human condition of struggle for liberation. 33 Some witness the hieroglyph of scars imprinted on the enslaved, 34 and see spirit and malevolence singing about the black body in the 35 diaspora. King preferred Negro spirituals. Yet the diaspora reflects 36 multiple forms of communication about the gravity of antiblack 37 38 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Black Suffering in Search 39 of the ‘Beloved Community,’” Trans-Scripts 1 (2011): 212–220. 40 143
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1 racism. When the Rastafarians reframed Psalms 137, the Melodians 2 and Bob Marley held sway as Jamaicans personalized the Bible to 3 black suffering, mapping the rivers of Babylon into the Atlantic 4 slave trade’s genocidal logic: 5 6 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down 7 Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion. 8 When the wicked 9 Carried us way in captivity 10 Required from us a song 11 Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land 12 13 Old Testament corollaries to Marley’s rendition of the self- 14 defense ballad, “I Shot the Sherriff,” exist. However, these would be 15 repudiated by King who, guided by the New Testament, Gandhi, and 16 love, saw only one redemptive route out of black suffering. Other 17 routes though would be explored by radical freedom lovers. 18 19 The Mandate for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience 20 21 King gave the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech/sermon on the 22 Washington Mall, mesmerizing an international audience with the 23 image of the beloved community where all God’s children can play 24 together. The March on Washington occurred in the absence of W. 25 E. B. Du Bois, the intellectual victim rebel of so much suffering and 26 resistance on American soil. Du Bois chose to die in Ghana, an exile 27 from the United States that had sought to imprison him during the 28 McCarthy era for his socialist views and antiracist activism. Du Bois 29 had a passion for justice, much like that of antilynching crusader 30 Ida B. Wells, whom he helped to marginalize and alienate from 31 the NAACP, an organization that would eventually itself alienate 32 and oust Du Bois. Despite his contradictions, he understood the 33 value of revolutionary struggle. W. E. B. Du Bois maintained that 34 his biography on John Brown, a book largely shelved by his white 35 liberal publishers because of its content, was the favorite of the 36 many he authored. For forty days and nights white abolitionist 37 militarist John Brown was held captive as a political prisoner for the 38 antebellum raid on Harper’s Ferry; then the state executed him. In 39 service to the underground movement, Harriet Tubman had found 40 a compatriot in Brown. Naming themselves the heirs to Brown’s
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legacy, a century later, white militant antiracists, such as Marilyn 1 Buck—released from a California prison in 2010 to die from cancer 2 among her beloved community in New York City—would support 3 the Black Liberation Army, an off-shoot of the Black Panther Party, 4 formed in response to violent state repression. 5 Historical political imprisonment, black suffering, and death have 6 become familiar—forming a backdrop to everyday reality. Prema- 7 ture violent death and captivity cease to astonish or seem unusual 8 in this landscape. They no longer register as political phenomena. 9 Consequently, when suffering blacks and their rare militant allies 10 break into rebellion, most people seem surprised and outraged. 11 They seem less disturbed by the repression, which they accept in 12 resignation or complicity, and more by the resistance. 13 According to the state, no suffering warrants rebellion; although 14 “freedom from tyranny” is one of its hallmark phrases. Perhaps what 15 is explicitly meant, but only implied, is that no black suffering 16 warrants rebellion. 17 King had to think critically, as he grappled with an emotional 18 landscape littered with bodies, trauma, and social and physical death. 19 (Initially, he focused on the domestic scene; later as had Malcolm, he 20 became an internationalist, fluent in the language of global suffering 21 but alphabetized in black vulnerability and resistance). Some of King’s 22 best thinking occurred while he was either imprisoned or being 23 threatened with death, which was likely most of his days and nights 24 as an activist for social justice and peace. Although Martin Luther 25 King, and other activists, were influenced by the teachings of Jesus, 26 Ghandi, and Thich Nhat Hahn, they still needed the transcendent, 27 beloved community as a political phenomenon and escape. One’s 28 instinct for self-preservation forms one’s mode of self-defense and 29 shapes pragmatic politics that are useful. 30 This is the irony or paradox. Political resistance could kill you, 31 well actually the state could in response to your resistance, but 32 the beloved community could save you. Not from physical death. 33 Nothing would do that, not even god. But from meaningless death 34 and despair. One does not negotiate with the state’s use of terror, 35 violent and premature death (actual physical death or disappearance 36 through incarceration). One opposes it and in that opposition finds 37 meaning in black suffering. 38 Given the scope and urgency of the suffering rooted in black 39 captivity, questions persisted: What is to be done? or King’s “Where 40
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1 do we go from here, chaos or community?” Martin King answered 2 in the April 16, 1963, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” There he 3 writes that, having waited more than 340 years for our Constitutional 4 and God-given rights, we must break unjust laws through civil 5 disobedience in order to alleviate our suffering and the suffering of 6 others. He states essentially that nonviolent crimes against the state 7 are a moral mandate. (Hence the adamant opposition by Republican 8 Party visionaries—from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to 9 present-day spokesmen—to King, and by extension “his” holiday.) 10 King qualifies as he strategizes from his jail cell in Birmingham. 11 Addressing the charges against him by clergy who demand “Why 12 protests in Easter season?” he delineates the principles of struggle. 13 Principled participants in a nonviolent campaign must: (1) determine 14 the facts of injustice; (2) negotiate; (3) engage in self- purification; 15 and (4) take direct action. 16 He does not explicitly state what one should do when: (1) facts 17 are on your side but few listen; (2) negotiations fail because you 18 lack existential or monetary capital; (3) self-purification becomes 19 self-mortification; and (4) direct action is met by state violence. 20 There are other primary questions, that King does not address, 21 to ask about our suffering and our activism: What is its relationship 22 to black political death and political prisoners? How is it relevant 23 to the issues of sexual violence and exploitation of black women, 24 children, and LGBT communities? What are sustainable commit- 25 ments and organic organizing for black freedom? How shall we 26 remember the political dead and disappeared? 27 28 Remembering the Dead as Political Phenomena 29 30 State indifference toward, or complicity in, antiblack political 31 violence makes certain passings first frighteningly significant, then 32 hazily familiar, and finally depoliticized memory. When one fails 33 to recognize political trauma as domination, one is more likely to 34 personalize and internalize violence rather than move against it. 35 So, the beloved community seems to be immobilized, preoccupied 36 with personal rather than political issues, avoiding a conversation 37 about and with the dead. 38 What is black death in American democracy but a political 39 phenomenon? We observe political passings—from premature 40 death, assassination, disappearance into prisons for decades—as
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museum pieces, far removed in emotive and intellectual importance 1 from our personal lives and present traumas. We are troubled 2 by current black sufferings fueled by the “new Jim Crow” or 3 “neoslavery” in a punitive mandate, organized by a racially driven 4 state, increasingly fragmenting us through poverty, abuse of power, 5 and predation. Yet our language is rarely considered political when 6 we speak of these challenges and the fragmentation that dismembers 7 the beloved community that King promised we would see from the 8 mountaintop. 9 King died the year before the FBI engineered killings of Black 10 Panther Leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago on 11 December 4, 1969. The joint FBI and Chicago police raid on Panther 12 headquarters killed the twenty-something revolutionaries in their 13 apartment while they slept. The black-and-white images captured 14 in the documentary Eyes on the Prize, Part II, A Nation of Law? disturb 15 my students screening self-defense organizing (the original name of 16 the Party, sparked by police killings of unarmed black male, was the 17 Black Panther Party for Self Defense) that preceded their births by 18 several decades. Perhaps it is not only the blood-soaked mattress and 19 Fred’s bleeding skull that no one dares to cradle that stuns them into 20 suffering. Perhaps they grieve the remorseful narrative of the FBI 21 informant, William O’Neil, who was coerced into providing detailed 22 drawings of the apartment to the police—and who committed suicide 23 after the documentary was made public—apparently because there is 24 no room for his suffering on these shores. I imagine that the twenty- 25 something students in the privileged classroom want what they cannot 26 or will not name. Not the self-indulgence of revenge; the crimes are 27 too old and revolutionary struggles too distant. Yet their shock and 28 outrage at the vulnerability of the black body is apparent; and the U.S. 29 government’s $1.8 million settlement to the young black Panthers 30 who survived, or the family members of those who did not, does not 31 muffle mute calls for “self-defense.” 32 Self-emancipated political prisoner Assata Shakur repeats the 33 demand for self-defense in her memoir, Assata: An Autobiography 34 (1987). Exiled in Cuba, with a million dollar “dead or alive” bounty 35 on her head, Shakur writes of her youth and of her work in the Black 36 Panther Party. As a child she confides that she could not participant in 37 civil rights nonviolent civil disobedience training advocated by King 38 because the thought of some white racist spitting on her with the 39 mandate that she turn the other check shocked her. Should there be 40
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1 a limit to suffering, even the redemptive kind? Shakur emphatically 2 answers “Yes” and is consistent in this affirmation. As a teenager, 3 she successfully resists a “train” or gang rape from black teens by 4 threatening to destroy the vases and lamps of one youth’s mother’s 5 apartment where she is trapped. Later driven underground by a 6 murderous FBI that has targeted her and her work in free breakfast 7 programs and sickle cell testing clinics, she is shot by New Jersey 8 State Troopers. Retaliating for the death of one of their own (who, 9 unlike Assata’s slain companion Zayd Shakur, may have died from 10 “friendly fire”), troopers torture her while “guarding” her as she 11 lays shackled to a hospital bed awaiting trial. There are acquittals 12 and hung juries in several trials, and court malfeasance before she is 13 convicted. While incarcerated, prison doctors actively “encourage” her 14 to abort through miscarriage her daughter. Through all, Assata Shakur 15 rebels. She fights as a political prisoner. She gives birth to a healthy 16 daughter who eventually permits her to be a grandmother—of the 17 revolutionary kind. Shakur survives to author an influential memoir, 18 one that embodies the fugitive slave rebel, and lives, for now, to tell 19 the tale of black suffering, resistance, and state violence. She wrestles 20 with the community, asking for more for the present, the captive, the 21 “free,” the young, the yet to be born. 22 23 Wrestling with the Beloved Community 24 25 [W]e’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. 26 Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point. . . . 27 We’ve got to see it through. . . . [E]ither we go up together, or 28 we go down together. . . . Let us develop a kind of dangerous 29 unselfishness. . . . 30 —Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” 31 32 The FBI and the CIA’s clandestine counterintelligence programs, 33 documented in Shakur’s memoir and the Freedom Archives docu- 34 mentary Cointelpro 101, devastated black liberation movements. 35 The long arm of state violence with its international human rights 36 violations extended furthest into black communities to inflict pain 37 on bodies organizing for democratic rights and self-defense in 38 search of the beloved community. In the 1960s, during rebellions 39 against racism, the FBI’s counterintelligence program led future 40 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to report the activities
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of SNCC students as subversive radicals when he worked with the 1 NAACP. FBI agents sent Martin Luther King Jr. anonymous letters 2 suggesting he commit suicide before being exposed as a moral 3 fraud. Through associates and journalists, the FBI influenced Repub- 4 lican integrationist Alex Haley while he edited and posthumously 5 completed The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 6 We belong to a beloved community that has an extensive police 7 file, and a bottomless bag of dirty tricks historically deployed 8 by the state to foster black suffering reserved especially for 9 it. That bag encompasses whatever enables black suffering to 10 serve others. Centuries old machinations reinvent themselves. 11 The three-fifths clause in the U.S. Constitution, without racial 12 referent, gave southern presidential candidates greater electability 13 as their slaves garnered electoral votes: Sally Hemings “voted” for 14 Thomas Jefferson, as did her children by him, allowing the author 15 of the virulently racist Notes on the State of Virginia, to defeat his 16 presidential rival John Adams in 1800. 17 Following the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment “rectified” 18 the three-fifths clause by legalizing slavery for those duly convicted 19 of a crime, which in the postbellum era included blacks seeking 20 economic or political equality. The convict prison lease system was 21 not only the source of massive suffering and premature and violent 22 death for captive blacks after Reconstruction; it was also a vehicle 23 for the transference of black wealth to whites. 24 Today, the shipping of black and brown bodies from New York 25 City into Upstate New York prisons increases census numbers and 26 federal resources for largely white conservative congressional 27 districts while diminishing federal dollars and votes for black/ 28 brown urban districts: prisoners are counted where their jail cells 29 are, although they cannot vote. Current political mandates (most 30 incarceration stems from nonviolent drug offenses) have led to the 31 majority of the 2 million imprisoned being black and Latino while 32 the majority of illicit drug consumers are white. The presence of 33 political prisoners in the United States, such as Jalil Muntaqim, 34 Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Mutulu Shakur, is rarely 35 1 discussed. Political prisoners cannot be easily interwoven into 36 our everyday history, particularly for those who trace their lineage 37 of antiracist struggle only to King. Most political prisoners were 38 and are not pacifists. They will not be mainstreamed and sanitized 39 as icons for national holidays. Their belief in self-defense is more 40
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1 tied to chaos than organized, structured community. The question 2 is what is our relationship to them, political violence, and their 3 quest for freedom not just for themselves but also for the beloved 4 community. 5 6 Conclusion: “It Doesn’t Really 7 Matter What Happens Now” 8 9 Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its 10 place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do 11 God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And 12 I’ve looked over. 13 —Martin Luther King Jr. 14 15 The demise of individual or collective humanity leads us to mourn 16 what we never accomplished, either as individual or community. 17 Regret over loss of time, ability, and will to forge a memorable 18 life is a form of suffering. This is particularly true, if one mourns a 19 life that sought to forgive all failings, one’s own and those of one’s 20 oppressors, but still demanded justice. 21 We know that suffering unfolds or folds in on itself even if 22 no one immediately talks; yet we still lack a shared, common 23 language for political violence. Death and mourning are universal 24 human traits. Black suffering and black resistance are part of the 25 human condition conditioned by white supremacy, imperialism and 26 capitalism, homophobia, patriarchy, female, and child sufferings. 27 We share universality with the particularities of black suffering that 28 suggest that this wilderness experience has lasted too long. 29 King did not live long enough to wander in retirement. At 30 thirty-nine, he was still young by Western standards. At Memphis 31 gatherings where King spoke, thousands came; police arrested 32 hundreds, injured scores, and shot and killed sixteen-year-old Larry 2 33 Payne. King’s last speech in Memphis foretold his premature, 34 violent demise. There were constant reminders of longevity’s 35 elusiveness. King recalls them in his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” 36 sermon: the mentally disturbed black woman who stabbed him at a 37 book signing in New York City, and the letter from the little white 38 girl who wrote King that she was so glad that he did not sneeze and 39 rupture his aorta; the firebombing of homes; the constant death 40
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threats. Later, the coup de grace: the sniper’s shot awaited him at 1 the motel balcony in Memphis. 2 We are not surprised. Death stalks us as a political reality. Striking 3 sanitation workers mobilized when inclement February weather, and 4 Jim Crow laws banning blacks from the city’s “white only” shelter, 5 forced several men to climb into the back of a garbage truck to escape 6 the rains. The accidental starting of crushing machinery birthed a 7 Memphis militancy unseen since Ida B. Wells confronted the lynchings 8 of her law abiding fictive kin. 9 Memphis was King’s last service to and in search of the beloved 10 community. The challenging promise he leaves us with, in addition 11 to his confidence that we will make the climb, is how we will 12 care for, defend ourselves, and reconcile communities to political 13 imprisonment as part of the journey. 14 15 Notes 16 17 1. In December 2010, New York Governor David Patterson offered clem- 18 ency, parole in his last days in office much as President Bill Clinton had a decade earlier. Patterson, New York’s first black governor, 19 did parole or pardon several Latinos with immigration and criminal 20 violations, and one black man, John White, who had shot and killed 21 a white seventeen-year-old, Daniel Cicciaro, in August 2006. 22 Cicciaro with other white male youths appeared on White’s Long 23 Island suburban lawn late on August 9, threatening harm to his family, 24 particularly his teenage son who had been falsely accused of harassing 25 a white female youth by text at a party. Racial epithets, white threats 26 of killing black bodies, allegedly sparked memories John White held of the lynching of a male relative in the South; after testifying that 27 the old family gun he brought outside to protect his wife and son 28 accidentally went off killing Cicciaro, he was convicted of involuntary 29 manslaughter. (Patterson later stated that he regretted not informing 30 the Cicciaro family before the pardon.) Activists had petitioned the 31 governor to pardon former members of the Black Panthers and Black 32 Liberation Army who had been incarcerated for decades for the 33 deaths of white police or guards during a robbery to finance their 34 underground liberation movement. There was no language of black suffering as an acceptable political phenomenon that would merit 35 recognition. 36 2. The strike ended when the widow Coretta Scott King co-led a march 37 in Memphis; and President Lyndon Johnson forced a settlement to 38 the violations of black workers. 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 151151 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 10 5 6 American Prison Notebooks 7 8 9 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place 10 for a just man is also a prison. 11 —Henry David Thoreau 12 13 It is the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You 14 have to do the right thing. It may not be in your time that there 15 will be any fruit, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right 16 thing. You may never know what results come from your action. 17 But if you do nothing, there will be no result. 18 —Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi 19 20 21 American “Prison Notebooks” 22 23 Antonio Gramsci, while imprisoned in Mussolini’s Italy for his 24 political beliefs and socialist activism, wrote in his Prison Notebooks 25 that, “Every social group . . . creates together with itself, organi- 26 cally, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity 27 and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic 28 but also in the social and political fields.” For Gramsci, because 29 everyone thinks critically and philosophically, everyone is an intel- 30 1 lectual; but not everyone officially functions as such in society. 31 In a stratified culture, one may superficially assume that only 32 professional intellectuals, recognized writers and pundits in the 33 public realm, academics, and policy makers constitute an intellec- 34 tual formation. However, every group has an “organic” intellectual 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “American Prison 37 Notebooks,” introduction to Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners 38 Write on Life, Liberation and Rebellion, ed. Joy James (Lanham, MD: Rowman 39 & Littlefield, 2003), 3–27. 40 153
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1 caste, one that functions as a vehicle to articulate, shape, and 2 further the aspirations of its constituency. 3 Hence, the “public intellectual” encompasses the oft-forgotten 4 “prison intellectual.” That is, the imprisoned intellectual is a public 5 intellectual who, like his or her highly visible and celebrated 6 counterparts, reflects on social meaning, discord, development, 7 ethics, and justice. Prisons function as intellectual and political 8 sites unauthorized by the state. Yet, when and where the imprisoned 9 intellectual gives voice to the incarcerated or captive, those denied 10 social justice and full democratic power on both sides of the 11 concertina wire, then and there our stories of war and love shaping 12 visions of freedom and fulfillment take on a new life—often a quite 13 disturbing one. 14 Editing writings by imprisoned intellectuals, political prisoners 15 in the contemporary United States, reveals the impossibilities of 16 filtering language in harrying and prophetic narratives. One cannot 17 bring some definitive “academic” meaning to this collection, a 18 gathering of words in resistance, words written by revolutionaries 19 captured and detained—for days or years, decades or life—by 20 the leviathan against which they rebelled. This is the leviathan to 21 which most readers of this volume pledge their allegiance in some 22 fashion or another—tithing to domestic and foreign policies that 23 increase military and police powers, and concentrations of wealth 24 and poverty. The rebels went to prison; and, passing through or 25 surviving incarceration, they wrote as outlaw intellectuals with 26 unique and controversial insights into idealism, warfare, and social 27 justice. 28 When writing is a painful endeavor, marked by political struggle 29 and despair as well as determination and courage, it is potentially 30 transformative. Reading may also share (in an attenuated fashion) 31 the impetus and ethos of the writing. Yet it will not necessarily 32 compel the reader to moral and political acts. Author and academic 33 Barbara Harlow cautions, “Reading prison writing must . . . demand 34 a correspondingly activist counterapproach to that of passivity, 35 aesthetic gratification, and the pleasures of consumption that are 2 36 traditionally sanctioned by the academic disciplining of literature.” 37 An “activist counterapproach” to the consumptive indifference is 38 infrequent, but it does occur. If the circulation of rarely referenced 39 or vilified “resistance literature” reflects the growing public interest 40 in incarceration sites, intellectual and political dissent for social
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justice, and the possibilities of democratic transformations, then 1 collections such as this should spark new debates about “reading” 2 and activism and political theory. 3 Reading and editing, from the bipolar lens of academic and 4 radical intellectual, I see that the purpose of this work was to foster 5 or force an encounter between those in the so-called free world 6 seeking personal and collective freedoms and those in captivity 7 seeking liberation from economic, military, racial/sexual systems. 8 Like all good and necessary encounters, this one between writers 9 and readers is provocative and elicits more questions than can be 10 answered within the confines of a book—even an anthology of 11 critique, confrontation, and radical risk-taking. 12 13 Debates, Disobedience, and Dissent 14 15 Amid the debates about “political prisoners” in the United States, 16 one can distinguish between those engaged in civil disobedience 17 who identify as “loyal opposition”—and by their very dissent 18 the institutions of American democracy—and those so alienated 19 by state violence and government betrayals of humanitarian and 20 democratic ideals that their dissent chronicles their disaffection at 21 3 times insurrection. Such insurrection may also at times become 22 4 (proto)revolutionary. 23 “Law-abiding dissent” represents a political risk taking with 24 broader social acceptance. This is largely due to its adherence to 25 principles of nonviolent civil disobedience, widely shared moral 26 values, and, sometimes, proximity to the very “corridors of (institu- 27 tional) power” closed to the disenfranchised; such adherence spares 28 dissenters the harshest of sentences. Although not emphasized 29 in this volume, the narratives of influential political detainees 30 offer important insights. For example, after being imprisoned for 31 engaging in civil disobedience to protest U.S. military bombing 32 practices on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 33 wrote: 34 35 I arrived at my difficult decision to join the invasion of Vieques 36 only after I was convinced that its people had exhausted every 37 legal and political avenue to secure their tights. In my 18 years as 38 a lawyer and environmental advocate for the Natural Resources 39 Defense Council and the Riverkeeper movement, I had never 40
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1 engaged in an act of civil disobedience. As an attorney, I have 2 a duty to uphold the law. But I also had a countervailing duty 3 in this case. The bombardment of Vieques is bad military policy 4 and disastrous for public health and the environment. But the 5 most toxic residue of the Navy’s history on Vieques is its impact 6 on our democracy. The people I met there are United States 7 citizens, but the Navy’s abusive exercise of power on the island 8 has left them demoralized, alienated and feeling that they are 9 neither part of a democracy nor the beneficiaries of the American 5 10 system of justice. 11 12 Kennedy narrates that upon returning for trial, he encountered 13 Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was in Puerto Rico to support his wife, 14 Jacqueline, while she served a ten-day jail sentence for protesting 15 against military violations. Upon informing the civil rights leader 16 of Kennedy’s expectant wife Mary’s insistence that her husband not 17 take a deal to delay his sentencing, Kennedy recalls that Jackson 18 responded, “Suffering is often the most powerful tool against 19 injustice and oppression. If Jesus had plea-bargained the crucifixion, 20 we wouldn’t have the faith.” 21 Unlike Kennedy, Jesse Jackson is a veteran of civil rights protest 22 and civil disobedience. Leading demonstrations against domestic 23 infractions such as “driving while black/brown” or “voting while 24 black/brown,” the former aide to Martin Luther King Jr. has for 25 decades vocally criticized U.S. foreign policy and vocally supported 26 Palestinian self-determination and the abolition of apartheid states. 6 27 In the 1980s in solidarity with Nelson Mandela and other South 28 African political prisoners, Jackson encouraged U.S. citizens to 29 trespass at the offices of South African government agencies. 30 This civil disobedience, often by middle-class Americans, usually 31 resulted in several hours of detention in city jails, and became seen 32 as a “badge of honor” or rite of (political) passage. Such short-term 33 (symbolic?) jailings prompt several observations. First, it is likely 34 that it is not political incarceration per se that is stigmatized but 35 incarceration based on a refusal to suffer violence without resorting 36 to armed self-defense; the choice of the latter surely leads to 37 one’s “disappearance” from conventional society and “respectable” 38 politics. Second, even nonviolent conscientious objectors (COs) 39 during World War II—who sought to “redeem” themselves as 40 patriots by risking their lives as human guinea pigs in U.S. military
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medical experiments—and religious pacifists in the civil rights and 1 antiwar movements that followed were disavowed once designated 2 as “unpatriotic.” 3 Consider that despite his adherence to Christian faith and 4 Gandhian principles of nonviolent civil disobedience, Martin Luther 5 King Jr. lost considerable support and organizational funding from 6 both white and black liberals after he publicly criticized imperi- 7 7 alism (and capitalism) and the U.S. war against Vietnam. What 8 is largely condemned in American political culture is not the risk 9 taking that leads to incarceration but the radicalism that rejects the 10 validity of the nation-state itself and the legitimacy of its legal and 11 moral standing. How does one reconcile the proximity and distance 12 between the law-abiding loyalist and the pacifist or militarist radical 13 who appear in the same courts, often using similar legal arguments, 14 but with very different political intentions and consequences seem 15 to stand a world apart in their dissent? 16 Diverse worlds or parallel universes hover about this volume. 17 Contributors disagree about strategy and morality (“nonviolence 18 or violence”) and politics (“loyal or revolutionary”). Toward a work 19 such as this, one intended to raise queries, eyebrows, and passions, 20 there appear many questions and debates—particularly for those 21 informed about and disaffected by the criminalization of dissidents 22 amid state criminality and abuse of (police and war) powers. Many 23 debates seem to center on the question of what constitutes shared 24 community, one in struggle for commonly held ideals of justice, 25 individual freedom, collective liberation, and material well-being 26 in civil society marked by growing state control. 27 Radical philosophers have argued that street and prison gangs are 28 forms of “civil society” conditioned by the state and government 29 apparatuses’ manipulation of the drug trade, control of territory, 30 and deployment of police repression. Philosopher Michael Hames- 31 Garcia raises cogent questions about the relationships between 32 the incarcerated and those in the “free world,” asking, “how might 33 one situate the specifically intellectual activity of organic prison 34 intellectuals in relation to the state? To what kind of ‘civil society’ 35 or ‘counterpublic’ are prison intellectuals directing their writings 36 and how is this audience [readership] positioned in relationship to 37 8 the state?” 38 State conditioning is not the only force destabilizing progressive 39 politics. The prison movement has grown immensely over the last 40
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1 decades. Yet, it still has its own internal demons to fight concerning 2 coalitions and efficacy. Activists as “official representatives” can 3 invoke the political prisoner-as-icon in order to derail external and 4 internal criticisms of their strategies, and wield surrogate iconic 5 powers in an uncritical fashion. This raises the question of whether 6 the imprisoned—as political “dependents” relying on those outside 7 to garner support—might engage in self-censorship concerning the 8 limitations of their allies. Such “self-censorship” and self-conditioning 9 work both ways. The privileged academic might hesitate to criticize a 10 progressive “folk hero” sentenced to life or death in prison, although, 11 in a culture that widely disparages prisoners, the repercussions of 12 academic criticisms seem to be fairly limited. This suggests additional 13 queries about the nature of “parity” between political prisoners and 14 their political allies: In theory and practice, the imprisoned intel- 15 lectual can be ideologically “frozen” in or physically “freed” by the 16 work of nonincarcerated academics and activists. 17 Scholar Dylan Rodríguez questions whether, given the constraints, 18 an imprisoned intellectual can truly become a “public intellectual.” 19 Arguing that while in prison such writers are “disabled from 20 meaningful participation in the interpretation and translation of 21 their works,” Rodríguez references “radical/revolutionary intel- 22 lectuals whose praxis is in irreconcilable opposition to the very 23 historical and political logic of the ‘public’ (civil society) as it 24 exists for the endorsement of their virtual (and biological) death.” 25 I both agree and disagree with this assessment. True, the general 26 or mainstream public constitutes a mostly hostile or indifferent 27 readership and respondent. Yet, there are multiple “publics” and 28 varied “civil societies”; the “public sphere“ is shaped, to varying 29 degrees, by whoever enter as engagees. The intent of imprisoned 30 intellectuals to influence “the public” in its multiple formations 31 is a complicated proposition but a real endeavor. No monolithic 32 “radical political prisoner” exists. Despite shared antiracist and 33 anti-imperialist politics, U.S. political prisoners differ in identity, 34 ideology, and strategy. Rodrìguez, though, makes an essential point 35 about how imprisoned intellectuals are “read”: “[T]here is rather 36 widespread, normalized disavowal of the political and theoretical 9 37 substance generated by imprisoned radical intellectuals.” 38 This “abolitionist” assertion is further complicated if we consider 39 how contemporary racism and penal captivity likely evolved from 40
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within a historical colonial-settler state built on, and enriched by, 1 anti-Indigenous genocide and African enslavement. Some contribu- 2 tors to this volume argue in their respective chapters that there is a 3 “normalized disavowal” of the presence of (radical or independent) 4 blacks or Indians in conventional “civil society.” Hence, they call 5 for some form(s) of independence or autonomy from what they 6 view as an enveloping and destructive formation (what some have 7 called an “empire”). The racially marked political prisoner tends 8 to be most forgotten, and to serve the longest sentences. Some 9 of the longest sentences and most violent punishments have been 10 meted out to African and Native Americans in the Black Panther 11 Party or American Indian Movement and their allies, and Puerto 12 Rican Independentistas. To rationalize the sentences and punishments 13 by pointing to the advocacy or use of armed struggle or armed 14 self-defense by some of the incarcerated ignores the fact that a 15 number of those slain or incarcerated (for decades) were innocent 16 of charges. Their innocence is attested to as in the cases of Fred 17 Hampton and Mark Clark, who were slain, and Dhoruba Bin Wahad 18 and Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who were finally released in the 19 1990s, by the multimillion-dollar settlements paid out by the U.S. 20 government, ostensibly for wrongful deaths and incarcerations. 21 It is assumed that some readers of this volume will be critical 22 of the “prison industrial complex,” and so, to varying degrees, 23 self-identify as “abolitionists.” The most militant wing of the 24 twenty-first-century abolitionist movement will likely be that 25 antiracist minority who argues that the abolition of the death 26 penalty, and of (human rights abuses in) prisons and Immigration 27 and Naturalization Services (INS) detention centers, and of the 28 widespread racial bias in sentencing, merely addresses the symptoms 29 of a pervasive disease. Revolutionary abolitionists offer their own 30 readings, drawing from insights from contemporary battles and 31 historical lessons (following the Civil War, Congress abolished 32 slavery to sanction the convict prison lease system and sharecrop- 33 ping, new forms of legal servitude to be endured and fought by 34 African Americans for 100 years). 35 In the wake of the New York Police Department’s brutality 36 against people of African descent—viscerally recorded in the 1997 37 beating-rape of Abner Louima, and the 1999 firing of forty-one 38 shots at Amadou Diallo—theorist Frank Wilderson III, writes: 39 40
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1 [I]f we are to follow [Frantz] Fanon’s analysis [in The Wretched 2 of the Earth], and the gestures toward this understanding in 3 some of the work of imprisoned intellectuals, then we have to 4 come to grips with the fact that, for Black people, civil society 5 itself—rather than its abuses or shortcomings—is a state of 6 emergency. . . . In “The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy,” 7 [Steve] Martinot and [Jared] Sexton assert the primacy of 8 Fanon’s Manichean zones (without the promise of higher unity) 9 even in the face of American integration. . . . [T]his Manichean 10 delirium manifests itself by way of the U.S. paradigm of policing 11 which (re)produces, repetitively, the inside/outside, the civil 12 society/black world, by virtue of the difference between those 13 bodies that don’t magnetize bullets and those bodies that do. 14 “Police impunity serves to distinguish between . . . those whose 15 human being is put permanently in question and those for whom 16 it goes without saying” (Martinot and Sexton, 8). . . . Whiteness 17 then, and by extension civil society . . . must be first understood 18 as a social formation of contemporaries who do not magnetize 10 19 bullets. 20 21 Whether pacifist or militarist, responding to violence and racism 22 in domestic or foreign policy, these works will remain suspect and 23 heatedly debated by many in the public realm. Fine. Our goal here 24 was to ensure that they not remain largely overlooked or erased. Para- 25 doxically, those most passionately seeking collective liberation—from 26 racial or economic or military dominance—are those most likely 27 to lose their individual freedoms. The captive/free dichotomy is a 28 paradox rich in irony: imprisoned intellectuals, the most intensely 29 monitored and repressed by the state’s police apparatus, might in 30 fact be those most free of state conditioning. Existing not merely 31 as the output of “victims” of state responses to radical opposition, 32 the analyses of imprisoned intellectuals both deconstruct dominant 33 ideologies and reconstruct new strategies for humanity. Their writings 34 proffer reactive and proactive readings of struggle and freedom. 35 So the questions and answers continue. How do you make the 36 “disappeared” (the captive rebel, the impoverished, the racialized, 37 the addicted, the “queer”) reappear? When is a democracy not a 38 democracy? Have slavery, surrogate forms of captivity, and social 11 12 39 death been reinstated through the Thirteenth Amendment? To 40 what degree does self-critique in liberation movements prevent
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radical responses to state and racial violence from becoming self- 1 inflicted wounds? This collection raises and addresses queries and 2 explores the implications of responses. 3 4 Tracing a Historical Trajectory 5 6 The United States has a long and terrible history of confinement 7 and disappearance of those it racially and politically targets. Include 8 those captives in slavery and on reservations, and it becomes 9 a longer narrative of torture and resistance. W. E. B. Du Bois 10 notes in Black Reconstruction in America how over 200,000 African 11 13 Americans served in combat during the Civil War. Their ancestral 12 line included Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, and Harriet Tubman 13 and their political lineage, John Brown. With the rise of lynching 14 after the aborted Reconstruction era, investigative journalist Ida 15 B. Wells, armed with a pistol, vigorously organized against racial 16 terror in which as many as 10,000 whites attended “parties” 17 that toasted and dismembered black victims. There has always 18 been resistance. The colonized, subaltern, and subjugated have 19 continuously fought genocide and social death, and in battle called 20 14 on progenitors for guidance, and, in failure, for forgiveness. 21 Contemporary incarcerated writers and political theorists are no 22 different. Housed in San Quentin, Vietnamese activist and author 23 Mike Ngo writes of prisoners’ forced complicity with authorities 24 and his own shame in participating in the disciplinary machinery, 25 alleviated when he finds comfort in conversation with slain prison 26 writer, revolutionary strategist-turned-icon, George Jackson. 27 For Ngo, if it does not destroy, imprisonment teaches power and 28 political theorizing that emanate from intimacy with death: social, 29 15 physical, sexual, emotional. Intimacy with death, whether one’s 30 own or those prematurely engineered by the voracious appetites 31 of expanding military-corporate power, is written all throughout 32 the following pages: death in resistance to the Klan; death through 33 assassination; death in battles with the police; death in opposition 34 to U.S. military incursions and interventions; death execution 35 chambers; death on street comers; and death to the very concept 36 of blind civic obedience and patriotic fervor. This intimacy is 37 accompanied by death’s companion, life, and, if not the inevitability 38 of political and military victory for the rebels (who, in the phrase 39 of Black Panther Party [BPP] cofounder Huey P. Newton, seemed 40
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1 to court “revolutionary suicide”), the possibility of liberation and 2 freedom, and the certainty of striving for it. 3 The endemic flight from death in American culture (via its 4 fetishism of youth, technology, and immortality tied to materiality 5 and science) indicates a marathon of avoidance politics and censor- 6 ship. The disappearance of the incarcerated and the inhumane 7 punishment for rebels suggest that intimacy with the imprisoned, 8 particularly political prisoners, will be embraced and known by 9 only a few. For many “law-abiding Americans” are (or socially 10 seem) embarrassed by a family member’s incarceration and the 11 realities of political incarceration in their democracy. With some 12 2.5 million imprisoned or detained by the state, 70 percent of 13 whom are African, Latino, Native, or Asian American, many families 14 could claim this intimacy. Like families in denial, U.S. government 15 officials fervently deny the existence of U.S. political prisoners. 16 State employees do so by defining political militants as “criminals.” 17 Yet, who is the “criminal” whose crime is his or her physical 18 opposition to state criminality (as determined by UN conventions, 19 human rights law, and non-apartheid-based morality)—crimes 20 against humanity in warfare and profiteering, crimes against the 21 poor, against the racially subordinate, crimes against children, 16 22 against women? To address the issue of incarcerated intellectuals, 23 one would have to examine the reasons for their incarceration; 24 examine not just the acts of which they were accused and convicted 25 (at times with court malfeasance), but their commitments. Perhaps 26 discussions of political incarceration in the United States fail to 27 register in conventional speech and education because of political 28 ignorance and a moral reluctance to attain intimacy with life-and- 29 death confrontations. 30 The volume, largely by writers incarcerated because of their legal 31 or illegal, pacifist or violent resistance to repression, constantly 17 32 references antiracism. African Americans constitute the greatest 33 percentage not only of those incarcerated for crimes against 34 private property, drug violations, and social violence, but also of 35 those incarcerated for political acts (including armed struggle) in 36 opposition to repression. As the largest contingent of (social and) 37 political prisoners, African Americans tend to draw the longest 38 sentences with fewer possibilities for clemency or parole. There 39 is a specificity and temerity about black liberation struggles that 40 relate to and infuse political prisoners in the United States. From
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enslaved insurrectionists to their multiethnic progeny, antiracism 1 defines but does not dominate this collection. There remains the 2 question(s) of gender, community, culture, art, spirituality. I read 3 the connection of white anti-imperialists and peace activists, Puerto 4 Rican Independentistas, and Native American resistors through the 5 black gaze. Hence, there are two sections to the volume, the first 6 on black liberation, the second on internationalism and anti-impe- 7 rialism. The importance of various struggles is not reduced to but 8 is framed by the context of racial dynamics of state repression. 9 Such a context raises another series of questions that also have no 10 easy answers, ones that, hopefully, will be pursued in continuous, 11 painstaking dialogue: How and why do repressive conditions create 12 a certain brand of intellectualism? What roles do the voices of 13 incarcerated intellectuals play in moral and political thought and 14 action, and social consciousness? What makes someone a political 15 prisoner? 16 The last question, being the “easiest” to answer, reveals the varied 17 debates waged among those who acknowledge the existence of 18 political prisoners in the United States. 19 20 Political Prisoners 21 22 There is a continuum of debate on who or what constitutes a 23 political prisoner. The debate wages among prisoners and the 24 nonincarcerated. A political prisoner can be someone who was 25 put in prison for nonpolitical reasons but who became politicized 26 in his or her thought and action while incarcerated. Incarceration 27 is inherently political, but ideology plays a role. If everyone is a 28 political prisoner then no one is. Although the meaning of who 29 is a political prisoner appears to be expanding to include more 30 structural critiques of the state at large, I reserve the use of 31 (a somewhat awkward term) political-econ prisoners for those 32 convicted of social crimes tied to property and drug-related 33 crimes and whose disproportionate sentencing to prison rather 34 than rehabilitation or community service is shaped by the political 35 economy of racial and economic privilege and disenfranchisement. 36 As a caste, political-econ prisoners can and do develop and refine 37 their political critiques while incarcerated. (For example, of the 38 contributors, Malcolm X, George Jackson, and Standing Deer 39 were incarcerated for social crimes against property or people, 40
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1 and politicized as radicals within the penal site; also, paradoxically, 2 youths who renounced their gang memberships and social crime, 3 in order to bring about social change through the Black Panther 4 Party, would find themselves later targeted and imprisoned for 5 their political affiliations.) Those whose thoughts of social justice 6 lead to commitments and acts in political confrontation with 7 oppression acquire the standing of political prisoners. For those 8 who (continue to) prey on others in physical and sexual assaults 9 on children, women, and men, “political prisoners” would be an 10 obscene register; for they do not manifest as liberatory agents but 11 exist as merely one of many sources of danger to be confronted 12 and quelled in a violent culture. 13 Victimization by a dominant culture and aggrandizing state is 14 not sufficient to qualify one as a “political prisoner.” Although 15 the strategies vary concerning violence in resistance politics, if 16 agency and morality are prerequisites shaping the political being, 17 then we speak of a fragment of the incarcerated population, just as 18 we would speak of a fragment of the nonincarcerated population. 19 Here, our discussion centers on revolutionary and radical activists 20 who also constitute intellectual formations influencing political 21 contemporary culture. Some progressives assert that to construct 22 an entity called “political prisoners” creates a dichotomy between 23 a select group and the vast majority of prisoners, and thus in fact 24 promotes a new form of elitism—the iconic prisoner. Yet, these 25 men and women are different. They were different before their 26 incarceration, marked by their critical thinking and confrontations 27 with authoritarian structures and policies and violence. Also, 28 they were and are treated differently by the state, often receiving 29 the harshest of sentences, relegated to solitary confinement or 30 “lockdown” in control units so that they cannot “infect”—really 31 infuse—other prisoners with their radical politics and aspirations 32 for freedom. 33 Mondo we Langa (David Rice), incarcerated in Nebraska prisons 34 for decades for a crime that he states he did not commit, one 35 for which his attorneys argue that there is no physical evidence 36 implicating him, writes in “Letter from the Inside”: 37 38 I know what I mean by “political prisoner”: someone who, in 39 the context of U.S. laws and court system, has been falsely tried 40 and convicted of a criminal offense as a means of ending his or
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her political activities and making an example of the person for 1 others who are espousing, or might espouse, ideas that those in 2 power would find offensive. By this definition, I might be the 3 only political prisoner in this joint. But in a broader sense, most 4 people behind bars could be considered “political prisoners,” 5 inasmuch as the process of lawmaking, law-enforcing, and the 6 criminal “justice” system are all driven by a political apparatus 7 that is anti-people of color and anti-people of little economic 8 means. At the same time though, many, if not most of the people 9 who are locked up have acted in the interests of the very system 10 that oppresses them and victimized people who, like themselves, 11 18 are oppressed. 12 13 Attorneys Michael E. Deutsch and Jan Susler describe in “Political 14 Prisoners in the United States: The Hidden Reality” (1990) three 15 types of political prisoners. For Deutsch and Susler, U.S. political 16 prisoners are 17 18 1. Foreign nationals whose political status or political activities 19 against allies of U.S. imperialism (e.g., Israel, Great Britain, 20 El Salvador) result in detention or imprisonment; 21 2. Members of U.S. oppressed nationalities (African Americans, 22 Puerto Ricans, Chicano/Mexicanos, and Native Americans) 23 who are prosecuted and imprisoned for political activities 24 in furtherance of their [liberation] movements. . . . Included 25 in these groups are anticolonial combatants or prisoners of 26 war (POWs)—members of national liberation movements 27 who as part of clandestine organizations have employed 28 armed struggle as a means to achieve self-determination and 29 independence for their nation and upon capture have the right, 30 under the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Convention and 31 the UN General Assembly Resolutions, to POW status and not 32 to be tried as domestic criminals; and 33 3. White people who have acted in solidarity with the liberation 34 movements of oppressed nationalities or against U.S. foreign 35 19 or domestic policies. 36 37 Deutsch and Susler offer a useful categorization of political pris- 38 oners; however, the first category could be expanded to include 39 nonresident or immigrant detainees awaiting deportation. Following 40
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1 September 11, 2001, the sweeps of noncitizens legally organizing 2 for workers’ rights in Florida, mostly young people of South 3 Asian origin, construct a new category—that of political prisoner 4 awaiting deportation. Although the United States has a history of 5 deporting militants—Emma Goldman, Marcus Garvey, Claudia 6 Jones, C. L. R. James—there appears to be a schism in alignment 7 with “foreign” political prisoners housed in the United States and 8 awaiting deportation and U.S. citizens who are political prisoners in 9 other countries, as exemplified by the case of Lori Berenson (now 20 10 on parole in Peru). In radical politics around incarceration and 11 the “prison-industrial-complex” most of the strategies regarding 12 political prisoners have focused on the release campaigns of those 13 incarcerated for decades, and rightly so. However, preventive 14 measures and strategies to counter the increasing ability of the 15 government to “disappear” political prisoners (as was the case 16 following September 11, when Attorney General Ashcroft held 17 Sundiata Acoli, Philip Berrigan [who died of cancer in December 18 2002], Marilyn Buck, as well as other political prisoners, incom- 19 municado) do not appear clearly defined by advocates of prisoners’ 21 20 rights. 21 In its 2002 letter to Governor George Pataki and the New York 22 State Parole Board, the New York Task Force on Political Prisoners 23 states that in Europe, Africa, and the United States, “prisoners 24 long incarcerated for their political beliefs and actions have been 25 set free—and in their freedom, have given the world back some 26 hope and dignity. The release, for example, of Nelson Mandela, 27 who spent twenty-seven years in prison for revolutionary actions 28 against [the apartheid government] . . . has proved a catalyst for 29 healing and justice in South Africa.” 30 Signatories, attorneys who work pro bono for the release 31 campaign for political prisoners attest: 32 33 These prisoners’ convictions reflect as yet unresolved issues of 34 civil, racial, and economic justice of the 1960s and 1970s, a time 35 when thousands of people of all races, young and old, women 36 and men, formed militant movements to demand fundamental 37 social change. Their trials occurred during a time when their 38 juries and the general public did not know that, in response to 39 these movements, the government was engaging in illegal and 40 unconstitutional acts—acts of infiltration and surveillance which,
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according to the government’s own documents, carried over into 1 the legal arena. Foremost in the government’s campaign was the 2 FBI’s now-infamous Counter-intelligence Program [Cointelpro], 3 condemned by a 1975 United States Senate Committee which 4 became known as the “Church Committee” [named after Senator 5 Frank Church (D-Idaho), the committee’s proceedings were 6 22 published in 1976]. 7 The legal challenges brought by the prisoners referenced 8 in this letter have been denied, primarily due to the 1996 9 federal law drastically limiting prisoners’ access to habeas corpus. 10 Heartbreakingly for their families and communities, some of 11 these prisoners have repeatedly been denied parole because of 12 their political views or offenses despite the fact that they more 13 than meet current parole standards. . . . Some of the actions 14 for which these men were convicted were taken in response 15 to severe social repression and government misconduct. Some 16 convictions, for example, arose directly from the targeting of 17 activists by Cointelpro. Others sought to defend themselves 18 and their communities from police violence [or drug dealers]. 19 All of them devoted their hearts, their minds, and their lives 20 to working for a world of justice, peace and human equality. 21 Whatever one’s opinion of their political beliefs or alleged 22 actions, not one of these men was motivated by personal gain. 23 All have served enough time and all would be a credit to their 24 23 communities if released. 25 26 The imprisonment of those seeking social and political change 27 in the United States is as old as its elite-based democracy rooted 28 in slavery, anti-Indian genocidal wars, and “manifest destiny.” Yet 29 the attempts to bring the voices of imprisoned intellectuals to the 30 general society and petition for their release remain a constant 31 (re)invention of strategic interventions, using the language of “reha- 32 bilitation” commingled with the language of rebellious resistance. 33 34 Anthologizing Imprisoned Intellectuals 35 36 Prisons constitute one of the most controversial and contested 37 sites in a democratic society. The United States has the highest 38 incarceration rate in the industrialized world, with over 2 million 39 people in jails, prisons, and detention centers; with over 3,000 40
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1 on death row, it is also one of the few developed countries that 2 continues to deploy the death penalty. Examining intellectuals 3 whose analyses of U.S. society, politics, culture, and social justice 4 are rarely referenced in conventional political speech or academic 5 discourse, Imprisoned Intellectuals takes shape along the contours of 6 a body of outlawed “public intellectuals” offering incisive critiques 24 7 of our society and shared (in)humanity. 8 Imprisoned Intellectuals begins with European anarchist Emma 9 Goldman’s “A New Declaration of Independence” as a contrast to 10 calls for “patriotism” as unquestioning obedience to the state. The 11 collection ends with the poem “Incommunicado” by Marilyn Buck, 12 written after September 11, 2001, during and following her weeks 13 in detention in solitary confinement without access to attorneys or 25 14 family on the orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Buck, 15 imprisoned in the 1980s for her work with the militant sectors of 16 the black liberation movement, of course, has no actual or ideological 17 connections with reactionary al-Qaeda forces. Yet, the foreign war on 18 terrorism provided an excellent opportunity for expanding repressive 19 measures in the United States. 20 Confrontations combating state censorship of dissent and critical 21 voices reached their apex in the mass movements of the 1950s, 22 1960s, and early 1970s. In the postenslavement era of the mid- 23 twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movements, referred to by 24 some activists and academics as the “second Reconstruction” and by 25 their more radical counterparts as the “second civil war,” brought 26 the new wave of protests and dissent. Arrested while organizing 27 a bus boycott, Rosa Parks became briefly a political detainee. The 28 young man whom she and the organizers of the bus boycott chose 29 as their titular leader, largely because of his status as formally 30 educated clergy and middle-class, was the Rev. Martin Luther King 31 Jr. His missive opens the first section of the collection of writings 32 by imprisoned intellectuals. 33 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written the same year as the 34 1963 March on Washington, where King gave his famous “I Have a 35 Dream” speech-sermon; the same year that the Ku Klux Klan bombed 36 a Birmingham, Alabama church, killing four African American 37 girls—Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, Denise 38 McNair—and the year of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, 26 39 Texas. In his open letter to clergy, King set forth an eloquent plea for 40 support of an antiracist movement in which he had been active since
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27 1955. The anthology juxtaposes with King his peer and symbolic 1 nemesis, Malik El-Shabazz, or Malcolm X. In “The Ballot or the 2 Bullet” (abridged), Malcolm X offers a critique of King’s nonviolent 3 activism. Although Malcolm X was not a “political prisoner” in the 4 restrictive sense in which we use the term in this work, incarcerated 5 as Malcolm Little for social crimes (including the “crimes” of burglary 6 and of consorting with white women), he transformed or “reinvented” 7 himself as a political agent while imprisoned. Politicized through his 8 association (and later confrontation) with the Nation of Islam and his 9 pilgrimage to Mecca, he influenced the growing militancy of the Civil 10 Rights Movement. Through his life, speeches, and writings—most 11 notably, The Autobiography of Malcolm X— he achieved an iconic 12 stature for many, including (political) prisoners. Constant police and 13 FBI surveillance after he served his prison sentence likely increased 14 his radical political and moral presence and inspired activists who 15 would eventually become incarcerated, and in reflecting on his life, 16 spirit, and death struggle to “reinvent” themselves as political agents, 17 formulating a liberation praxis “by any means necessary.” One year 18 after Malcolm X’s assassination, the Black Panther Party (for Self- 19 Defense) was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. 20 Newton and Bobby Seale; armed resistance to police brutality became 21 the most noted and “inflammatory” position of their emancipatory 22 “10-Point Platform.” 23 Angela Y. Davis would work with the Panthers but become 24 better known as a communist and leader in the Soledad Brothers 25 Defense Committee, a prisoners’ rights organization cofounded by 26 imprisoned Black Panther Field Marshall George Jackson. Davis 27 was incarcerated in the early 1970s on charges related to George 28 Jackson’s younger brother Jonathan’s attempt, using weapons 29 registered in Davis’s name, to liberate African American prisoners 30 from the Marin County Courthouse, a failed endeavor that Newton 31 would describe later at the seventeen-year-old’s funeral as “revo- 32 lutionary suicide.” 33 One year before her 1972 acquittal of all charges, Davis wrote 34 from her prison cell “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Libera- 35 tion”; this essay would appear in the volume she coedited with 36 Bettina Aptheker, If They Come in the Morning. Also in that anthology, 37 which has been out of print for some time, was first published 38 writings by Huey P. Newton and George Jackson. In “Prison, Where 39 Is Thy Victory?” Newton distinguishes between types or classes of 40
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1 prisoners, reserving his highest consideration for the imprisoned 2 who rebel against rather than acquiesce to domination and (racial) 3 control. In “Towards the United Front,” George Jackson, self-identi- 4 fied militarist for liberation and a key theorist and proponent of 5 armed struggle, argues for a multiracial formation, new relations of 6 unity that transcend common divisions. The Black Panthers became 7 the most confrontational of the antiracist radical groups of the late 8 1960s and early 1970s (following the disintegration of the Student 9 Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]). Among the black 10 militant formations, the Panthers developed some of the strongest 11 allegiances with other racialized peoples, and the strongest ties 12 with white radicals and revolutionaries. 13 The Panthers would also become the lightning rod for some of 14 the government’s most horrific forms of violent repression used 15 against dissidents in the post–World War II era. Former Panther 16 Dhoruba Bin Wahad describes the deadly counterinsurgency 17 program, Cointelpro, initiated by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal 18 Bureau of Investigation. Decades before the BPP emerged, the FBI 19 had destabilized progressives with violent means; but its violence 20 would operate with virtually no restraint until the Black Panther 21 Party and the American Indian Movement (AIM) were destroyed. 22 “COINTELPRO and the Destruction of Black Leaders and Orga- 23 nizations” (abridged) presents the scenario in which state violence 24 against the Black Panther Party and its membership had become 25 routine. Bin Wahad argues that any revolutionary movement coin- 26 cides with a cultural movement, but a cultural movement will not 27 empower its people unless it is politicized. Cointelpro succeeded 28 because it halted the political consciousness of the Black Panther 29 Party that coincided with the cultural awareness of “Black Power.” 30 Through violence, manipulation of the media, and disinformation 31 campaigns, the FBI engaged in a twofold attack on the dissemination 32 of information by black revolutionaries, destabilizing the public 33 support base of the movement and then removing its leaders from 34 public discourse through imprisonment, exile, or death. 35 State malfeasance and criminality in which the FBI participated 36 included anonymous letters to Martin Luther King Jr. urging that 37 he commit suicide before his marital infidelities were publicized; 38 the extrajudicial killings or assassinations of Chicago Panther leaders 39 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in December 1969; and the many 40 killings during 1973–1976 of indigenous activists at the Pine Ridge
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reservation who aligned themselves with AIM. Such state violence 1 provides a context and background for the excerpted “On the Black 2 Liberation Army” (BLA) by Jalil Muntaqim. Muntaqim offers a brief 3 historical snapshot of an underground military formation in battle 4 with U.S. law enforcement, primarily on the East Coast. Although 5 no theoretical justification for armed struggle appears in this succinct 6 account of BLA activities, the historical trajectory of the Cointelpro 7 era of the early 1970s shapes the reasoning. Muntaqim’s view that of 8 a slave insurrectionist, stems from a different template than most, 9 and so it shapes a unique worldview, one gazed on, interacted with, 10 but not fully experienced by the nonrebel or nonslave. 11 “July 4th Address,” a statement issued by former Black Panther 12 and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur while she was in 13 prison and on trial, evokes slave-turned-fugitive then abolitionist 14 Frederick Douglass’s 1852 “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” 15 address. One of the few women leaders of the Black Panther Party 16 (whose leadership was not tied to an influential male partner), 17 Shakur would also become active in the military underground via 18 the Black Liberation Army. Her memoir, Assata: An Autobiography, 19 functions in a manner similar to the memoirs of King, Malcolm X, 20 Davis, Newton, and Jackson: it highlights turbulent and dangerous 21 times and personalizes the struggles and failings of revolutionaries 22 and revolutionaries-in-waiting. For example, Shakur writes in her 23 memoir: 24 25 Some of the groups thought they could just pick up arms and 26 struggle and that, somehow, people would see what they were 27 doing and begin to struggle themselves. They wanted to engage in 28 a do-or-die battle with power structure in amerika, even though 29 they were weak and ill prepared for such a fight. But the most 30 important factor is that armed struggle, by itself, can never bring 31 28 about a revolution. Revolutionary war is a people’s war. 32 33 Unlike Shakur, Safiya Bukhari-Alston has (to date) not written 34 a full-length memoir; yet, like Shakur, she was one of the few 35 women leaders in the Black Liberation Army. Her autobiographical 36 narrative, “Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary,” describes 37 conditions unique to women political prisoners. A unit leader while 38 underground, Bukhari-Alston encountered sexism in the party (as 39 did Assata Shakur). 40
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1 In “An Updated History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle” 2 (abridged) former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli provides 3 a continuum of African American resistance to captivity and 4 incarceration (the unabridged text places the enslavement era as 5 foundational in this resistance). Acoli presents the Black Liberation 6 Army as a “New Afrikan guerrilla organization” with mobile strike 7 teams. Guerrilla warfare was seen as an inevitable counterresponse 8 to U.S. “low-intensity warfare” against militants and radicals. Some 9 members of the BLA identify as “prisoners of war” or POWs, 10 viewing themselves as captive liberation fighters. The Republic of 11 New Afrika (RNA) stated its independence from the United States 12 in 1968. BLA combatants subsequently declared that the U.S. 13 courts had no jurisdiction over them. Acoli’s historical discussions 14 of “gang” formations in prisons as part of the prison struggles 15 provide insight into their political nature and functions both in 16 and outside of prison. 17 The idea of resisting all oppressive constraints—whether 18 racism, sexism, heterosexism, or class/corporate privilege—is 19 not uniformly shared in these essays. Women contributors tend 20 to note sexism and heterosexism more so than the men (white 21 women are more vocal about the rights of gays and lesbians 22 than black women are, perhaps because the former are writing 23 at a later date when gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights are more 24 publicly espoused). Although they fought for a more inclusive 25 democracy, centralized, nondemocratic decision making—steeped 26 in either patriarchal politics or a Leninist model of democratic 27 centralism—was routinely practiced by Martin Luther King Jr.’s 28 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Malcolm X’s 29 Nation of Islam (from which he was expelled in 1963–1964), 30 Angela Davis’s Communist Party USA (CPUSA) (from which she 31 was expelled in 1991), and Huey P. Newton’s faction of the Black 32 Panther Party. A discussion of forgoing vanguard or elite formations 33 and rigid fixations on a line of leadership is found in “Anarchism 34 and the Black Revolution” (abridged), by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. 35 Ervin, who organized with the BPP among other groups, is highly 36 critical of what he perceives as its “Marxist-Leninist” rigidity and 37 repressive authoritarianism. It is difficult at times to distinguish 38 which Black Panther Party critics are referencing—East Coast 39 or West Coast? Cleaver or Newton faction? Newton prior to or 40 during drug addiction and criminal intrigues? Nonetheless, the
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BPP in general (as did political organizations such as the SCLC 1 and CPUSA) embraced a wealth of contradictions that limited the 2 agency and efficacy of its “rank and file.” 3 What, then, constitutes leadership that can face and function 4 against repressive state policies? Such issues are explored in an essay 5 by journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Intellectuals and the Gallows.” This 6 essay was written while Abu-Jamal was facing a sentence of death. 7 It is one of the few pieces in this anthology that directly confronts 8 readers as nonincarcerated intellectuals, exploring their confines 9 in a Foucauldian carceral that restricts their own resistance to a 10 state that oversees life and death. 11 “Genocide against the Black Nation in the U.S. Penal System” 12 (abridged) by Mutulu Shakur, Anthony X. Bradshaw, Malik Dinguswa, 13 Terry Long, Mark Cook, Adolfo Matos, and James Haskins focuses 14 on African American emancipation, yet appeals to the international 15 community; and so, it provides a bridge between the two sections 16 of the anthology, emphasizing historical links between African 17 American activism and the interplay of domestic and foreign 18 policies. This essay’s argument follows in a tradition established by 19 African American radicals in the post–World War II era: William 20 Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress in 1951 presented to the 21 United Nations their antilynching petition “We Charge Genocide,” 22 and Malcolm X in the 1960s appealed to the United Nations for 23 redress from lynching and white supremacist policies in the United 24 29 States. “The Struggle for Status Under International Law” by 25 Marilyn Buck, revisits themes raised by “Genocide Against the 26 Black Nation in the U.S. Penal System” in its reflections on the 27 use of international law to address U.S. domestic human rights 28 violations. Situating Buck within the tradition of radical white 29 antiracism and armed resistance, a tradition that dates back to 30 and precedes John Brown’s antislavery militancy, lesbian activist 31 Rita Bo Brown describes the parameters of white activism in the 32 1970s and 1980s in “White North American Political Prisoners.” 33 Brown provides a comprehensive view that encompasses a number 34 of political formations. “On Trial” (abridged), by former Vietnam 35 veteran Raymond Luc Levasseur, chronicles the militancy of another 36 white anti-imperialist who invokes international law and human 37 rights conventions in antiracist struggles. Levasseur argued in his 38 opening trial statement for the dismissal of criminal charges under 39 International Law; he was acquitted of charges at the conclusion 40
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1 of his trial. Rejecting the domestic criminal charges brought by 2 the government, he asserted a morality based on human rights 3 and freedom fighters criminalized for their oppositional politics. 4 Maintaining that the U.S. government/corporations committed 5 crimes against humanity, Levasseur catalogs the acts that led to his 6 organizational response through the United Freedom Front (UFF) 7 and Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit. The series of bombings 8 against military targets attributed to these formations occurred 9 a number of years after the bombings attributed to the Weather 10 Underground, the militant splinter group from the Students for a 11 Democratic Society (SDS). 12 “Letter to the Weathermen” is a response by a Christian pacifist 13 militant, Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan. Berrigan and his brother 14 Philip, also a Catholic priest involved in activist resistance during 15 the 1970s and 1980s and beyond, were heavily influenced by Martin 16 Luther King Jr., and the “peaceful” confrontation of state repres- 17 sion by the Civil Rights Movement. Philip Berrigan would go on 18 to cofound the Plowshares community where Michele Naar-Obed 19 would become radicalized and, as a mother and peace activist, write 20 the pamphlet “Maternal Convictions: A Mother Beats a Missile into 21 a Plowshare.” In “Maternal Convictions,” Naar-Obed recounts her 22 growing spiritual and political awareness for peace activism that 23 entailed civil disobedience and illegal actions, and her multiple 24 “short-term” incarcerations. 25 Women have varied responses in their resistance to U.S. milita- 26 rism and warfare; not all of course are gendered as pacifist. “Dykes 27 and Fags Want to Know: Interview with Lesbian Political Prisoners” 28 was conducted in 1990–1991 by QUISP (Queer Women and Men 29 United in Support of Political Prisoners). This interview focuses on 30 Linda Evans, Susan Rosenberg, and Laura Whitehorn, women who 31 spent years incarcerated because of their political beliefs and acts. 32 Whitehorn completed her sentence and was released in 1999. Evans 33 and Rosenberg were granted presidential clemency by President Bill 34 Clinton in 2001. In 1999, Clinton had granted clemency to eleven 35 of fifteen Puerto Rican Independentistas or nationalists who had been 36 imprisoned for years (included in those receiving clemency was 37 Elizam Escobar). Clinton’s release of Independentistas did not signal 38 the end of imprisonment for advocates and agitators for freeing 39 Puerto Rico from its status as a colonial possession of the United 40 States. In “This Is Enough!” educator José Solís Jordan, incarcerated
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in Florida and later placed under detention in Puerto Rico, writes 1 of the historical struggle for Puerto Rican independence and 2 autonomy and his own connections to this struggle. 3 The essays speak of the nonmaterial, of the spiritual and tran- 4 scendent, of autonomy from the political formation and from purely 5 political identification and identity. “Art of Liberation: A Vision of 6 Freedom” by artist Elizam Escobar, offers one of the more creative 7 and imaginative discussions of roles, conflicts, and contradictions 8 of the revolutionary who maintains an independence from the 9 struggle itself via his or her connection through art. In “Violence 10 and the State” (abridged), Standing Deer recounts an attempt on 11 the part of prison authorities to get him to assault AIM activist and 12 political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Standing Deer’s “conversion” 13 is both political and spiritual, both rational and suprarational. It 14 provides an introduction to the essay by Leonard Peltier who offers 15 new meanings for freedom and resistance in “Inipi: Sweat Lodge.” 16 Peltier’s excerpt from his autobiography, Prison Writings: My Life Is 17 30 My Sundance, reminds us of the nonmaterial aspects of struggle 18 and the spiritual dimensions of freedom. 19 20 Conclusion 21 22 So much of what is controversial in this collection will center on the 23 issue of violence: the use of violence by the state to squash dissent 24 and destroy dissenters; the use of violence by dissidents either in 25 immediate self-defense, in military strategies for “nation-building,” 26 or to promote a political stance and commitment. Obviously state 27 violence is not synonymous with the violence of the subaltern 28 or oppressed or imprisoned. Most Americans are more familiar 29 with (inured to?) state violence, particularly when it is directed 30 against disenfranchised or racially or politically suspect minorities. 31 Therefore, police or military violence against the “racially suspect,” 32 against the poor and immigrants, against prisoners, is not as 33 unsettling as counterviolence against the police or military by the 34 subaltern and incarcerated. Thus, George Jackson’s militarist stance 35 31 in Blood in My Eye is more terrifying for the conventional reader 36 than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture manual for the 37 32 School of the Americas. Perhaps this is because the conventional 38 reader assumes (knows) that state violence is never earmarked for 39 33 the obedient and the law-abiding. 40
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1 No essay in the volume makes a sustained theoretical argument 2 for armed resistance to state violence—although several essays offer 3 theoretical and religious justifications for nonviolent civil disobedi- 4 ence and dissent. The book that heavily influenced many of the 5 activists whose writings appear here is Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of 6 the Earth. Fanon argues that the “native” (the colonized and racialized, 7 here, the imprisoned) does not have to theorize or articulate the 8 truth; she or he is the truth—the breathing, living embodiment of 9 the contradictions, debasement, rage, and resentment and rebellion 34 10 that mark the very conditions of oppression. Yet the “truth,” or 11 some approximation of it, can be spoken in critical encounters and 12 dialogues with rebels seeking social justice. 13 The nonincarcerated’s sense of security and our real and imag- 14 ined distance from political prisoners shape the expanse between 15 the law-abiding (reader) and the outlaw (writer). Yet, what if the 16 issues of political prisoners are in fact the touchstones to what ails 17 us: structural impoverishment, racial-sexual discrimination and 18 violence, political disenfranchisement, war profiteering? In degrees 19 of (imagined) separation, amnesic fatigue about state violence 20 couples with outrage at extralegal challenges to domination. Despite 21 stolid dichotomies, if liberation struggles for human rights—and 22 against war and captivity—intersect, radical imprisoned rebels may 23 in fact stand at Elegba’s crossroads; if so, then the writings in this 24 work illuminate bridges that span or buckle under the intimacies 25 of death and life struggles. 26 27 Notes 28 1. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and 29 ed. Quintin Hoarc and Nowell Smith (New York: International 30 Publishers, 1985), 5. Gramsci writes: “When one distinguishes 31 between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality 32 only to the immediate social function of the professional category 33 of the intellectuals . . . although one can speak of intellectuals, one 34 cannot speak of non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals do not 35 exist” (9). 36 2. Barbara Harlow, Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention (Middle- town, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1992). 37 3. For descriptions and analyses of U.S. domestic and foreign policies that 38 (violently) destabilized democracies, independence, and liberation 39 movements, see: Ward Churchill, From a Native Son: Selected Essays 40 in Indigenism, 1985–1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1997); Noam
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Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988); 1 Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: 2 South End Press, 1983); Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 1999); David J. Brown and Robert 3 Merrill, eds., Violent Persuasions: The Politics and Imagery of Terrorism 4 (Seattle: Bay Press, 1993); Troy Johnson et al., eds., American Indian 5 Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk (Urbana: University of Illinois 6 Press, 1997). 7 4. In its desires for freedoms guarded by institutions, revolutionary 8 politics encompass and surpass insurrectionary politics. Rather than 9 merely revolt against repressive hierarchies, laws, and customs, 10 revolutionary politics seeks to build new structures and norms. Hence, revolutionaries are more feared than are insurrectionists by 11 governing structures and elites. Just as insurrection is not inherently 12 revolutionary, neither is crime or violence intrinsically protorevo- 13 lutionary: consider that capitalism in the Americas is rooted in the 14 theft of land and labor and the mass murder of indigenous and African 15 peoples. 16 5. Page 80. The nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Senator 17 Robert Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a senior attorney for the 18 Natural Resources Defense Council, engaged in civil disobedience at Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2001. Joined by actor Edward James 19 Olmos and union leader Dennis Rivera, Kennedy protested the Navy 20 having “saturated Vieques with thousands of pounds of ordinance—a 21 total that eventually exceeded the explosive power of the Hiroshima 22 bomb.” Arrested after illegally trespassing on the military site, the 23 disobedientes were eventually sentenced to thirty days in Guaynabo 24 prison. After citing the Navy’s civil and criminal violations of federal 25 laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation 26 and Recovery Act, Kennedy writes: “Our defense was based on the doctrine of necessity; a defendant cannot be convicted of trespassing 27 if he shows he entered the land to prevent a greater crime from 28 being committed. . . . [W]e had engaged in civil disobedience for 29 a single purpose: to prevent a criminal violation of the Endangered 30 Species Act by the Navy that the federal court had refused to redress” 31 (115). The presiding judge, admonishing that he was not interested 32 in philosophy, dismissed the necessity defense. 33 As Kennedy’s attorney (and his sister’s father-in-law), former 34 New York Governor Mario Cuomo made the following argument at trial: 35 36 We ask the court to recall that this nation was conceived in the civil 37 disobedience that preceded the Revolutionary War, the acts of civil 38 disobedience that were precipitated by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, in the famous Sit-Down Strikes of 1936 and 1937, all through the 39 valiant struggle for civil rights in the l960s, and the movement against 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 177177 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 178 Democracy and Captivity the Vietnam War. Always they were treated by the courts one way: not 1 like crimes committed for personal gain or out of pure malice, but as 2 technical violations designed to achieve a good purpose. (115) 3 4 See Robert Kennedy’s essay in Outside, October 2001, 80–84 and 114–116. 5 Of course, Cuomo and Kennedy would see violations that resulted in 6 the loss of life (and liberty) as tragedies rather than as technicalities. 7 Years prior to Kennedy’s trial, Mutulu Shakur and Marilyn Buck 8 also unsuccessfully argued the “necessity defense,” appealing to 9 international instead of U.S. standards. 10 6. There is insufficient space to address the ways in which political 11 prisoners are at times burdened with the characteristics of prophets; 12 hence their limitations in efficacy in the “free world” once they are released resonate so much more intensely. Activists, such as the slain 13 leader Chris Hani, attempted to prevent the “marriage of Mandela- 14 ism with liberalism.” With the African National Congress (ANC)’s 15 acceptance of the apartheid government’s debt and its failure to 16 nationalize and redistribute key resources and wealth, the observation 17 by some local South African activists that Mandela had “sold out the 18 bush” resonated with the intense frustrations of an economically 19 subjugated people. 20 7. Some accounts of the southern Civil Rights Movement argue that pacifists were often provided protection from Klan and police 21 violence by armed and organized African American men and women, 22 such as those who formed the Deacons for Defense and Justice in 23 North Carolina. See: Anne Moody, The Coming of Age in Mississippi 24 (New York: Laureleaf, 1997, reprint); Robert Franklin Williams, 25 Negroes with Guns (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998, 26 reprint); and Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and 27 the Room of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 28 Press, 1999). 8. November 7, 2002, e-mail correspondence from Michael Hames- 29 Garcia, editor’s papers. For further discussions analyzing incarceration 30 politics, see: Michael Hames-Garcia, Crucibles of Freedom (Minneapolis: 31 University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 32 9. Dylan Rodríguez maintains: 33 “Free” activists (scholars, etc.) often appropriate the iconography of 34 captive radicals/ revolutionaries. . . . Yet, it is far more difficult for free 35 people to engage the political work of radical prisoners in a manner that 36 seriously informs their praxis.” (Dylan Rodríguez, September 2002 e-mail 37 correspondence, editor’s papers) 38 For another critical perspective on the “prison writer,” see Paul St. 39 John, “Behind the Mirror’s Face,” in Doing Time: Twenty-Five Years of 40 Prison Writing, ed. Bell Gale Chevigny (New York: Arcade, 1999).
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10. Using historian Eugene Genovese’s statement “The black experi- 1 ence in this country has been a phenomenon without analog” as the epigraph for his essay, Frank Wilderson III, quotes from Steve 2 Martinot and Jared Sexton, “The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy,” 3 April 2002, wwww.ocfberkeley.edu/~marto/paradigm/. Genovese’s 4 citation is given as: Boston Review, (October/November 1993). 5 See Frank Wilderson III, “The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) 6 Scandal,” Warfare in the American Homeland (Durham: Duke University 7 Press, 2007). 8 11. For a discussion of the concept “social death” in a global and context, 9 see: Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). For 10 contemporary analyses of “social death” within the context of U.S. 11 racial and incarceration politics, see: Wilderson, “The Prison Slave as 12 Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal,” and Dylan Rodríguez, “‘Social Truth’ 13 and Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals,” in Social Justice 30 (2003), 14 18–27. 15 12. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution legalizes slavery 16 for those duly convicted of a crime. In the convict prison lease 17 system following the Civil War, African Americans, criminalized for their “blackness,” were worked to death in mines, fields, and forests 18 in joint ventures between the state and private industries. For an 19 analysis of the history of the convict lease system in the United 20 States, see Matthew Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing 21 in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South 22 Carolina Press, 1996). 23 13. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Harcourt, 24 Brace, and Company, 1935). 25 14. See Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981). 26 15. See Mike Ngo, under pseudonym “An Unknown Soldier,” “A Day in 27 the Life,” prisoners’ zine, untitled, January 13, 2000; also see Dylan 28 Rodríguez, “Interview with Mike Ngo,” in The New Abolitionists: 29 (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings, ed. Joy James 30 (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2005). 31 16. For details of U.S. foreign and domestic policies that instigated 32 considerable warfare, destabilization, and death in the post–World 33 War II era, see: Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988). 34 17. Imprisoned Intellectuals (2003) can be found at the Harriet Tubman 35 Literary Circle digital repository, accessed September 25, 2012, 36 http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/13199. 37 18. See Mondo we Langa, “Letter from Inside,” Nebraska Report, May/June 38 1999, 9. For information on Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa 39 (David Rice), see Can’t Jail the Spirit, 5th ed. (Chicago: Committee 40
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1 to End the Marion Lockdown, 2002). Mondo we Langa was deputy minister of information for the Omaha, Nebraska, chapter of the 2 National Committees to Combat Fascism, an organization affiliated 3 with the Black Panther Party, and is serving a life sentence for the 4 first-degree murder of a policeman. He was active in protesting police 5 brutality against African American residents in Omaha. According 6 to the Center for Constitutional Rights, we Langa was targeted 7 by Cointelpro and his conviction “was based on the testimony of a 8 frightened teenager and on explosives allegedly found in [we Langa’s] 9 house.” A Federal Court of Appeals declared the search illegal yet the Supreme Court “sustained the conviction holding that the Federal 10 Courts should not have reviewed the state court decision.” See Center 11 for Constitutional Rights, “Political Prisoners in the United States,” 12 September 1988. 13 19. This article was first published in the International Association of 14 Democratic Lawyers Bulletin, January 1990, and reprinted in Social 15 Justice 18, no. 3 (1991). 16 20. For information on Lori Berenson, paroled in 2010, see Rhoda 17 Berenson, Lori: My Daughter, Wrongfully Imprisoned in Peru (New York: Context Books, 2000). For discussions of prisoners with the status 18 of “illegal [non]combatants” following September 11, 2001, see: 19 Amnesty International, “USA: Detainees from Afghan Conflict Should 20 Be Released or Tried,” AI Index: AMR 51/164/2002, November 1, 21 2002; and Joseph Lelyveld, “In Guantánamo,” the New York Review of 22 Books, November 7, 2002. 23 21. See Anne-Marie Cusac, “You’re in the Hole: A Crackdown on 24 Dissident Prisoners,” the Progressive, December 2001. The Progressive 25 reports that on October 26, 2001, John Ashcroft signed the “National Security: Prevention of Acts of Violence and Terrorism,” which was 26 subsequently published in the Federal Register. Cusac writes: “Under 27 the new rules, the Department of Justice, ‘based on information from 28 the head of a federal law enforcement or intelligence agency,’ will 29 select certain prisoners for ‘special administrative measures’ . . . [in 30 cluding isolation, denials of correspondence, telephone communica- 31 tion, visitations, and media interviews].” 32 22. Targets of FBI repression have been fairly varied, including Albert 33 Einstein, because of his socialism and antiracist activism (Einstein worked with W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson; with the latter he 34 cofounded an antilying organization), and John Lennon, targeted 35 because of his antiwar activism. See, respectively, Frank Jerome, The 36 Einstein F.B.I. File (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002); Jon Wiener, Come 37 Together: John Lennon in His Time (New York: Random House, 1984); 38 and “John Lennon versus the F.B.I.,” the New Republic 188. 39 On October 10, 2001, Laura W. Murphy, director of the American 40 Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Washington National Office, issued
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“Trust Us, We’re the Government”; the statement details govern- 1 ment malfeasance and illegal surveillance and harassment tied to Cointelpro, in which “few members of any of the groups targeted by 2 COINTELPRO were ever charged with a crime.” It also makes refer- 3 ence to the 1976 Church Committee Senate report that concluded: 4 “The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of 5 citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs 6 posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile 7 foreign power. . . . Groups and individuals have been harassed and 8 disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles.” In 9 1986, a federal court determined that Cointelpro was responsible for at least 204 burglaries by FBI agents, the use of 1,300 informants, the 10 theft of 12,600 documents, 20,000 illegal wiretap days, and 12,000 11 bug days. 12 Alongside Cointelpro, the ACLU notes the “STOP INDEX,” where 13 FBI computerized databases monitored antiwar activists; “CONUS” 14 (Continental United States), which in the 1950s and 1960s “collected 15 and maintained files on upwards of 100,000 political activists and 16 used undercover operatives recruited from the Army to infiltrate 17 these activist groups and steal confidential information and files for distribution to federal, state, and local governments”; “OPERATION 18 CHAOS” in the 1960s, where the Central Intelligence Agency engaged 19 in domestic spying to destabilize the American peace movement; and 20 “CISPES” harassment, in which the Committee in Solidarity with the 21 People of El Salvador (CISPES) was targeted because of its opposition 22 to President Ronald Reagan’s support of paramilitary squads in El 23 Salvador. 24 23. Writing for clemency for Anthony Jalil Bottom (#77A4283), 25 Herman Bell (#79C0262), Abdul Majid (#83A0483), Bashir Hameed (#82A63l3). Robert Seth Hayes (#74A2280), Sekou Odinga 26 (#05228-054), and David Gilbert (#83A6158) in the petition 27 were attorneys Robert Boyle, Robert Bloom. William Goodman, 28 Kathleen Cleaver, Jill Sofiyah Elijah, Elizabeth Fink, Karl Franklin, 29 Daniel Meyers. Charles Ogletree, Michael Tarif Warren, Nkechi Taifa, 30 and Susan Tipograph. New York Task Force for Political Prisoners 2002 31 Report/Petition, editor’s papers. 32 24. The brief biographies introducing each chapter of The New Abolitionists 33 contextualize the writings and the references help the reader further explore controversial liberation praxes. 34 25. The USA Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and 35 Obstruct Terrorism (Patriot) Act of 2001 permits the U.S. govern- 36 ment to detain noncitizens indefinitely with little or no process at 37 the discretion of the Attorney General; permits the government 38 to conduct searches, seizures, and surveillance with lower levels 39 of judicial review; and potentially criminalizes otherwise lawful 40
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1 contacts with groups engaging in politically motivated (violent and nonviolent) illegal acts. See Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: 2 How Post-September 11 Anti-Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liber- 3 ties (New York: Seven Stories, 2002); The USA PATRIOT Act: A Legal 4 Analysis (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library 5 of Congress, 2002). 6 26. See Spike Lee’s documentary, Four Little Girls (New York: Forty Acres 7 and a Mule/HBO Home Video, 1998). 8 27. Jalil Abdul Muntaqim offers an interesting perspective on the role of 9 liberation theology and Christianity in the injunction for freedom; see Jalil Muntaqim, “Religion and Revolution”; and Muntaqim, We 10 Are Our Own Liberators (Montreal: Abraham Guillen Press, 2002). 11 28. Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill 12 & Co, 1987), 242–243. 13 29. See William Patterson, ed., We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government 14 Against the Negro People, A Petition to the United Nations (New York: 15 Civil Rights Congress, 1951). 16 30. Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance, ed. Harvey 17 Arden (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999). 31. In September 1971, responding to George Jackson’s killing by San 18 Quentin prison guards and administrators and to dehumanizing and 19 racist prison conditions, 1,500 African American, Puerto Rican, and 20 white prisoners seized control of Attica, a maximum-security prison 21 in New York. See Freedom Archives, Prisons on Fire audio documen- 22 tary; and for an analysis of media coverage of George Jackson’s death, 23 see Michel Foucault et al., “The Masked Assassination,” in Warfare in 24 the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, ed. Joy 25 James (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 32. For a critique of the School of the Americas, see Jack Nelson-Pall- 26 meyer, School of Assassins: The Case for Closing the School of the Americas 27 and for Fundamentally Changing U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Orbis 28 Books, 1997). 29 33. Ralph Miliband writes in The State in Capitalist Society that in the 30 United States people “live in the shadow of the state,” as political 31 actors attempt to influence or represent “the state’s power and 32 purpose” in order to obtain its support. A comprehensive theory 33 of the state requires that we address economic, racial, and sexual as well as political, repression and disenfranchisement. I use “state 34 violence” as a descriptive term that denotes political-economic and 35 police violence based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, 36 class, and political ideology. Although Miliband distinguishes the 37 state system from the political system of electoral parties and seem- 38 ingly nonpolitical organizations such as religious and educational 39 institutions, media, businesses and civic groups, it is not realistic 40 to maintain a sharp division between the state and civil society. In
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a racially driven or constructed culture, without formally sharing 1 in state power, dominant social and ethnic groups can validate state violence. See: Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (New 2 York: Basic, 1969). 3 34. Frantz Fanon writes: “[T]he fellah, the unemployed man, the starving 4 native do not lay a claim to the truth; they do not say that they 5 represent the truth, for they are the truth.” See Frantz Fanon, The 6 Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 49. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 183183 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 11 5 6 Violations 7 (for Emily) 8 9 10 11 Mississippi goddam. 12 —Nina Simone, “Mississippi Goddam” 13 Nina Simone in Concert, 1964 14 15 A house is not a home. 16 —Luther Vandross, “A House Is Not a 17 Home,” Never Too Much, 1981 18 19 As an already- and always-raced writer, I knew from the very 20 beginning that I could not, would not, reproduce the master’s 21 voice and its assumptions of the all-knowing law of the white 22 father. Nor would I substitute his voice with that of his fawning 23 mistress or his worthy opponent, for both of these positions 24 (mistress or opponent) seemed to confine me to his terrain, in 25 his arena, accepting the house rules in the dominance game. If 26 I had to live in a racial house, it was important, at the least, to 27 rebuild it so that it was not a windowless prison. 28 —Toni Morrison, “Home” 29 30 There is something about violence and violations in the “household” 31 1 that begs for silence.” And disavowal. Academe, one of the most 32 influential gathering places of state and counterstate intellectuals, 33 is one “household” in the American homeland and its expanding 34 2 archipelago. It is there that I sit while I write this essay. (Like 35 predatory gentrification, academe has extended itself into my very 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Violations,” introduction 38 to Warfare in the American Homeland: Prison and Policing in a Penal Democracy, 39 ed. Joy James (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 3–16. 40 185
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1 kitchen.) The crafting and shaping of this anthology, by academics, 2 have occurred on a battlefield. In fact, the book was born in a state 3 of war—specifically, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq (sans 4 Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or connections to al-Qaeda and 5 September 11) and what has really worried some, the effectiveness 6 of Iraqi resistance movements a year after the world was informed 3 7 that the war was over and the United States had won. 8 Ostensibly, this work first raised its head in the expanding mili- 9 tary theater of U.S. imperial aspirations and its domestic/foreign 10 policy with their attendant human rights abuses. Yet, in truth, 11 however you wish to define it, the smaller, closeted military theater 12 (the “pit” as opposed to the amphitheater) permitted the ducking 13 and dodging of difficult struggles precisely because academe is 14 not the “streets.” So what it and this academic engagement offer 15 is not a political coalition (although old political ties and shared 16 respect among some contributors indicate that coalitions exist and 17 so manifest here—just not as an editorial process or text). Not a 18 home, this literary intervention, a politics of sorts, challenges while 4 19 it also reproduces containment. 20 Trace the genealogy and map the “penalscape” and one finds that 21 institutional intellectuals are rarely the “guerrilla intellectuals” that 22 some academics emulate or necessarily the “native intellectuals” 23 analyzed by Frantz Fanon. Nor, I believe, should they be: The 24 “academic archipelago,” with its increasing dependence on and 25 enthrallment with corporatist and statist structures and funding, is 26 not the most trustworthy of training camps for peace combatants 27 seeking just distributions of power and wealth. Has the academic 28 genealogist displaced the scientist who replaced the priest? Some 29 see the roles of progressive academic intellectuals as synonymous 30 with those of insurgent intellectuals, a conflation that produces 31 considerable confusions about the function of political coalitions 32 and the cooptation, commodification of “subjugated” forms of 33 political power. This suggests to me that to project or to perform 34 insurgency must be one of the technologies of warfare deployed, 35 and perhaps delighted in, by a goodly, ungodly number of Ameri- 36 cans. Ever-present projections of apparitions of cultural characters 37 such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood—or, now, the white 38 skins, black masks of the fugitive convict “Riddick” (Vin Diesel’s 39 “ambiguously raced” murderous con with a heart of gold) or The 40 Matrix’s “Neo” or anime’s hipster Cowboy Bebop bounty hunter “Spike
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Spiegel”—suggest how burdensome certain burdens can be for 1 progressives in an ambitiously pugilistic, hero-addicted society. 2 When has the archipelago got you by the “cojones”? to quote 3 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s castigation of the Cuban 4 government’s downing of the Miami-based, anti–Castro Brothers 5 for the Rescue planes as they violated Cuban airspace. The answer: 6 When your jailer dons drag to become you and usurps and repro- 7 duces your voice and politics without taking your place in the 8 cell. Mimetic becomes apocalyptic in the penal landscape that is 9 passing for a homeland—and logically so, for this is where death 10 is manufactured. 11 Michel Foucault was right in (more than) one sense: It is difficult 12 to locate the outside, particularly if the very voices of the physically 13 subjugated become mimed by their surrogate guards who then 14 perform as their liberators. Your own language and stories used 15 against you? What violation, whether misdemeanor or felony. What 16 violence, to be lectured on obedience with your own words, to have 17 your own “bio-stories” reworked and recited back to you—now as 18 spectacle turned captive audience—by anointed bard(s). Listen to 19 the charge of “reverse racism” or “(hetero)sexism” or “class warfare” 20 (in the absence of structural reversals of white supremacy, patriarchy, 21 and capitalism) that supplants articulations of nonelite black, female, 22 queer, or poor people’s rage with the narratives of white victimiza- 23 tion and racial or elite outrage, the verbal slippage of “by any means 24 necessary” from the mouths of police and city or state officials in their 25 assaults on and slaughters of black militants and their progeny (e.g., 26 Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode’s oration before the 1985 bombing 27 5 of the MOVE Organization). Or witness the bio-political power of 28 the Pygmalion who projects Medea onto those who refuse to mammy. 29 Finally, consider the academic “expert” and “rearticulation specialist” 30 on the lives and narratives of those imprisoned in the household or its 31 formal detention centers: Immigration Customs Enforcement—the 32 former Immigration and Naturalization Service—holding cells, 33 psychiatric wards, jails, police precincts, maximum security, death 34 row, closets, or basements, hiding places from domestic batterers 35 or the predation of aggressively “affectionate” adult kin. Consider all 36 these “violations.” 37 Yet the very calling out or detailing or analyzing of violations 38 perhaps at times reproduces new forms of erasure, distortion, 39 and violence. Thus, in the professionalism of prison discourse, 40
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1 the jailer (multitudinous rather than monolithic) may assume 2 the position of the jailed in the rhetorical sense and mask his or 3 her dual role as guard (or guardian of a certain order). There is 4 a reality of nonduality, one that reveals that penal territory is so 5 massive, so intricate, and so internalized that it circumscribes 6 and burdens all. Hence, everyone is “incarcerated” in some sense, 7 and captivity and violation are shared carceral experiences. Yet in 8 maneuvers one can as a “theorist” or “performer” siphon off the 9 political discourse of the imprisoned and hence engage in an elite 10 form of criminality—identity theft. Such theft dispossesses the 11 imprisoned of the labor and “wealth” they produce—the meanings 12 and narratives of their confinement, the meanings and narratives of 13 their resistance to repression, the meanings and narratives of their 14 lives. (Curiously, with identity theft, those who have been robbed 15 must prove that they themselves are not the thieves.) 16 Everything but the Burden is the title of the cultural critic Greg 17 Tate’s book on white and multicultural America’s enthrallment with 6 18 and appropriation of hip-hop and black culture. “Everything but 19 the burden”—I grimace as I begin to trace and sketch my dialogue 20 with elite voices chronicling the “gulag.” 21 Michel Foucault’s and coauthors’ pamphlet The Assassination of 7 22 George Jackson offers an important contribution. Foucault will 23 function as a convenient foil here for his alleged past “erasures” 24 of antiblack racism (and sexist) violence and terror in his text 25 Discipline and Punish. Yet, this anthology, the product of collective 26 endeavors and battles, is a product or construct, a discourse in 27 which several of us, while attempting to tunnel our way out of a 28 penal site—structural racism and sexism and the pathologizing of 29 antiracist rebellion and slave resistance—found that we had merely 30 dug ourselves into another prison corridor or cell. 31 It is fairly easy to begin as an ally “liberator” and slide into 32 role-playing as ally “appropriator.” For instance, “white antiracists” 33 or “people of color (POC)” are amorphous groupings that mask 34 the ethnic chauvinism and antiblack racism and that lie within. 35 Such formations can provide a rainbow prism of hatreds and envy 36 solidified by a refusal to “bow down” to blacks and their demands 37 for recognition based on “exceptionalism.” The quandary, though, 38 for those who never sought genuflection is what is the value of 39 recognition for the “uniqueness” of black bodies for whom white 40 supremacist cultures and state policing practices in the United
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States have reserved an exceptional place: that of targets for exces- 1 sive force and the penal site. What does it mean when “people of 2 color” or antiracist whites wear the black body to exercise their 3 grievances and outrage at white supremacy but maintain their 4 distance (and disdain?) for the antithesis of whiteness. 5 Women, black women, even those intimately aware of trauma, 6 can also violate and appropriate others, particularly if they are 7 housed in the most repressive sites of the archipelago, its domestic 8 (and foreign) prisons. Asha Bandele’s memoir, The Prisoner’s Wife, 9 offers an illustration of facile moves that glorify the mundane 10 resistor by mapping over the narrative of the impersonated insur- 11 gent. Such moves extinguish the political risk and vulnerability 12 that differentiate the “free” person, albeit one regulated to the 13 household by racial-sexual stigma and practices, and the unfree 14 person, locked in prison. Cloaking the middle-class author in the 15 dress of the prison revolutionary George Jackson, the Readers’ 16 Club Guide for The Prisoner’s Wife poses two queries that struck me 17 as masking and violating gestures: 18 19 The Prisoner’s Wife features allusions to Soledad Brother, George 20 Jackson’s seminal portrait of the struggles, politics, and intrica- 21 cies of prison life. How has Jackson’s book—the work of a brave 22 and embattled man—influenced our culture’s perceptions of 23 political imprisonment, racism, and the United States justice 24 system? 25 In what ways can we view The Prisoner’s Wife—the work of an 26 equally brave 27 and similarly embattled black woman—as a useful, even 28 indispensable, counterpoint (and complement) to the messages 29 8 in Jackson’s Soledad Brother? 30 31 It is noted that the Readers’ Club recognizes a black revo- 32 lutionary. Yet, mimetic performance, even one that must cover 33 Jackson’s ideology as a militarist in order to appropriate and wear 34 his iconic persona, is an equal-opportunity affair. Still, one must 35 note that drag is not worn with equal risk—that is, those already 36 designated part of the privatized realm for subordination, for 37 example, black women such as Bandele, when performing insur- 38 rectionist, are likely to pay a heavier price for their theater than 39 those designated part of the public realm of rulers and authoritative 40
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1 intellectuals and politicians such as white neoliberal or neoradical 2 male intellectuals. 3 Some valued and mimed for their presentations of radicalism 4 may never pay the price of the ticket (to use James Baldwin here) 5 in the academic landscape, a surrogate for and derivative of the 6 American penalscape. Useful registers—reliable in strategies 7 to survive warfare—rather than globalizing genealogies offer 8 precision. Remember the color codes of Homeland Security, red, 9 orange, yellow flags, as precautions against erasing or glossing over 10 subjugated and insurgent knowledge. 11 Back to the foil. Consider Foucault’s interview at New York’s Attica 9 12 prison. Attica was the site of the state’s killing of over thirty men, 13 mostly African American and Latino, who protested the slave-like 14 conditions of subjugation. For Foucault in the Attica interview, 15 crime is a “coup d’état from below.” Yellow. The United States and its 16 economic and political and social structures were and are founded 17 on theft of (Indigenous) land and (African) labor. Hence, the most 18 significant criminals, and the least interested in battling the state, 19 come from “above”—in property theft (white-collar crime), drug 20 trafficking (money laundering is the most profitable; growers and 21 street dealers garner only a fraction of the trade), and organized 22 violence and murder rationalized as warfare—Vietnam, Kissinger’s 23 Cambodia. (Surely, state violence, Reagan’s contras in Latin America 24 and Southern Africa, the School of the America’s training of death 25 squads, the occupation of Iraq, and the theft of national and global 26 resources and lives must register somewhere.) When the coup d’état 27 from below meets the coup d’état from above, the reinforcement of 10 28 the penalscape follows. 29 What constitutes critical theory that can analyze this troubled 30 symbiotic relationship? 31 Within the interview—which here serves as an illustration or 32 contrast for my larger argument that the technologies of contain- 33 ment encompass “radical” academic discourse—coupled with the 34 vanishing of state criminality in his narrative are Foucault’s comments 35 about Attica’s architecture that refer to “Disneyland” (Baudrillard?) 36 and the “cleanliness” of the prison halls (which he equates with 37 nineteenth-century French parochial schools). Orange. Those who 38 fear the physical terror of imprisonment may dissociate Attica from 39 the “Magic Kingdom.” Rather than foster a lack of imagination or 40 theoretical verve, closer proximity to state captivity and violation
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shape even the gallows humor of the dead zones of the household and 1 the penalscape. Those policed in virulent, violent fashions may have 2 different cognitive skills that produce different, deeper meanings. 3 Foucault’s comments about the physical structure of Attica 4 disconcerted some. Foucault is usually vigorously defended against 5 the ignorance of non-Foucauldian scholars (although the “discred- 6 ited knowledge” of Toni Morrison comes to mind: as the affliction 7 of all blacks must shape perceptions of ignorance and allow many 8 11 to ignore the query, “Where are the people—my people?” as some 9 form of infraction). 10 A violation that any chorus member who marks the demise of 11 (black/brown) renegades seeking freedom will remember: In his 12 interview, Foucault does not once mention the men who rebelled 13 in Attica and who were massacred there (to use the terminology of 14 Tom Wicker, the white, liberal New York Times writer). Not one man, 15 not once, does he name. Red. To say nothing of the victims when one 16 enters a mass graveyard is a breach of trust if one enters not as a 17 national guardsman, or as Governor Nelson Rockefeller, or as an idle 18 spectator or consumer, but as an ally. 19 Erasing a genealogy mapped by the “wretched of the earth” 20 allows the nonwretched to print over their (our?) texts, to use 21 insurgent narratives as recyclables. This is a practice of the police 22 machinery and its technologies of warfare. Professed allies, “radical” 23 theorists, are selective because they have that right and privilege. In 24 one narrative, Foucault disappears all impoverished and imprisoned 25 black/brown bodies, yet in another he presents, in painstaking 26 delineation, the corpse of the revolutionary icon and prison rebel 27 George Jackson; that killing in a California prison thirty years ago 28 sparked the Attica rebellion and additional killings in a prison on 29 the other side of the continent. 30 As did Jackson, the Attica captives and insurgents fashioned 31 reformist and revolutionary moves and were murdered for those 32 acts. Who witnesses this? Who supplants them? Who performs their 33 guerrilla theater? Who loves what they represented and the families 34 of their origins as they fashion new survival and liberation from 35 war? Who understands that they were both violators and violated? 36 And who comprehends that the most civil and surgical of violations, 37 those that leave no mark on the physical body, would be erasure or 38 dismemberment through mimetic performance that discredits the 39 legacies of the “household”—their resistance. 40
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1 Hence, the mesh of “revolutionary” desire and anxiety concerning 2 the academic, elite cartographer and genealogist that I bring as editor 3 to this work. A new “progressive radical” order can continue to elide 4 the “household” that I am “forced” to occupy and, in complicity, 5 reproduce. When the “household” of the disappeared—poor commu- 6 nities, prisoners, queers, red/black/brown peoples, women, 7 children—reappears and dictates its own narrative, in its own voice, 8 with its own unmitigated desires, surely that is, this is war. 9 Many are weary of warfare. Yet there are distinctions to maintain 10 between wars of survival and liberation and wars of conquest and 11 annihilation. Most fear violence and the realization that noncom- 12 batants largely are the victims of carnage or the designated targets. 13 In contemporary warfare, since World War II in the foreign theater, 14 the casualties have been in the majority women and children (giving 15 perverse meaning to the chivalric chant, “Women and children 16 first!”). In the domestic theater, women and children have always 17 dominated the landscape of broken and scarred bodies and minds 18 and disoriented souls. Still, exhaustion and terror cannot prevent 19 movement; one must travel or become buried under the penal 20 landscape. Those who don’t resist violation don’t survive. Some 21 who enact survival and liberation possibilities do. 22 Captives and rebels are not saints merely because they (or we) 23 are exploited or abused. Some relegated to confinements seek 24 rewards and approval for loyalties that “reproduce” the national(ist) 25 “family” and its “coherence.” According to the official, conven- 26 tional narratives, it is safer to harbor and shelter within a penal 27 democracy, despite its abusive excess. Some measure of safety is 28 promised in exchange for obedience and conformity to and within 29 the household. Is it not better to be a black woman in the Southern 12 30 United States than a black woman in South Africa or Sudan? In 31 Sudan, Arab Muslim militia men (embraced by the terms “people 32 of color” and “Third World people”), in their ethnic cleansing and 33 genocidal warfare, rape and mutilate African, Muslim, Christian, 34 and animist women, girls, and boys, cursing them with the Sudanese 35 epithets of “black,” branding survivors on their hands to ensure that 36 private trauma enters public record. The archipelago is global, and 37 so not always “American.” There are multiple predations confronted 13 38 and little adequate shelter—for some prey. 39 Nevertheless, resistance, in all of its contradictions and imperfec- 40 tions, continues. In the United States, antiviolence activists in the
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“abolitionist” movement embrace violent men rather than jettison 1 them to a “fatherly” state that punishes and destroys. Such activists 2 grapple with what to do with the rapists, torturers, and the killers 3 of children and women (and the lucrative market for sexual violence 4 that dismembers). The antiviolence movement is multifaceted. In his 5 essay, “Killers” in a volume of writings by prisoners, Prince Imari 6 A. Obadele describes and protests against “virtual rape”—male 7 prisoners’”killing” of female guards with their eyes, masturbating 8 in front of them as a form of warfare known as “taking the pussy.” 9 The women who do not report these violations are considered 10 14 “good” women. Obadele relates that he could care less about his 11 female captors, yet he condemns the practice (for its implications 12 for parolees): Predators require prey, don’t they?—no matter what 13 gender or on which side of the concertina wire. 14 A collection that contests the homeland as predacious territory 15 explores both repression and resistance to violations contributors 16 offer “critical thought” and political responsibility to the mapping of 17 strategies based on peace and freedom in this moment of love and 18 war so aptly expressed by Georgia Jackson to the captive after the 19 burial of her seventeen-year-old Jonathan: 20 21 My dear only surviving son, 22 I went to Mount Vernon August 7th, 1971, to visit the grave site 23 of my heart your keepers murdered in cold disregard for life. 24 His grave was supposed to be behind your grandfather’s and 25 grandmother’s. But I couldn’t find it. There was no marker. Just 26 mowed grass. The story of our past. I sent the keeper a blank check 27 15 for a headstone—and two extra sites—blood in my eye!!! 28 29 Notes 30 31 1. My understanding and critique of the “household” is situated in part 32 in experience and in part in the political theory of Hannah Arendt, discussed in chapter 19 of this volume. 33 2. In his translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, 34 1918, Thomas P. Whitney notes Solzhenitsyn’s use of the archipelago 35 as metaphor: 36 The image evoked by this title is that of one far-flung “country” with 37 millions of “natives” consisting of an archipelago of islands, some as tiny as 38 a detention cell in a railway station and others as vast as a large Western 39 European country, contained within another country—U.S.S.R. This 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 193193 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 194 Democracy and Captivity archipelago is made up of the enormous network of penal institutions 1 and all the rest of the web of machinery for the police oppression and 2 terror imposed throughout the author’s period reference on all Soviet 3 life. Gulag is the acronym for the Chief Administration of Corrective 4 Labor Camps which supervised the larger part of this system. 5 See Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, trans. Thomas P. 6 Whitney (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). 7 3. As of March 16, 2007, the Department of Defense (DOD) recorded 8 3,197 U.S. military deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, in addition to 9 24,042 soldiers wounded in action: see U.S. Department of Defense, 10 “OIF/OEF Casualty Update,” accessed March 18, 2007, http://www. 11 defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf. DOD issued no authoritative 12 estimates on the number of Iraqi civilian casualties. Iraq Body County, a group of volunteer U.S. and British academics and researchers 13 estimated between 59,236 and 65,160 Iraqi civilian deaths in March 14 2007. See “Iraq Body Count,” accessed March 18, 2007, http://www. 15 iraqbodycount.net. Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School 16 of Public Health in Baltimore published findings of a study in the 17 medical journal Lancet suggesting that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 18 2003 resulted in more than 654,965 civilian casualties by fall 2006. 19 See Les Roberts et al., “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: 20 A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” Lancet 368.95 (October 2006): 1421–1428. 21 4. Bernice Johnson Reagon provides wry, cautionary commentary about 22 coalitions: 23 24 Coalition work is not done in your home. Coalition work has to be done in the streets. And it is some of the most dangerous work you can 25 do. And you shouldn’t look for comfort. Some people will come to a 26 coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not 27 they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for a coalition, 28 they’re looking for a home! 29 30 See Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” in 31 Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (Albany: Kitchen 32 Table/Women of Color Press, 1983). 33 5. The MOVE Organization, its most prominent member being death- 34 row intellectual and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who 35 joined after the 1985 tragedy, was decimated by an aerial bombing by 36 police using Vietnam War surplus in Philadelphia. Eleven people died in the 1985 conflagration, including four children. See The Bombing 37 of Osage Avenue, dir. Louis Massiah (videocassette, 1986). 38 6. See Greg Tate, Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from 39 Black Culture (New York: Harlem Moon, 2003). 40
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7. See Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP), Intolerable 3: L’Assassinat 1 de George Jackson (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 8. See Asha Bandele, The Prisoner’s Wife (New York: Scribner, 1999). 2 9. See John K. Simon, “Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview,” Telos 3 19 (1974): 154–161. In September 1971, prisoners at New York’s 4 Attica rebelled against the prison administration’s failure to address 5 complaints about the poor living conditions. The uprising grew 6 from solidarity among prisoners following the August killing of 7 George Jackson by guards at California’s San Quentin prison. More 8 than 1,500 prisoners, across racial lines, seized the prison and held 9 hostages. Despite the warnings of observers and mediators selected by the prisoners, New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered 10 that the prison be retaken by force. State troopers stormed the 11 grounds; they fired some 4,500 rounds of ammunition at prisoners 12 and the hostages. Forty-three people were killed, and 150 were 13 injured, nearly all from the fire of the state troopers. Following the 14 suppression of the rebellion, prisoners were tortured. Sixty prisoners 15 charged with inciting the rebellion were defended by volunteer 16 lawyers and a national movement. By 1976, nearly all of the charges 17 had been dismissed; in 2002, New York State awarded survivors an $8 million settlement. See Freedom Archives, “Thirty Years After the 18 Attica Rebellion” (sound recording, 2001), accessed September 26, 19 2012, http://www.freedomarchives.org; Eyes on the Prize II: A Nation 20 of Law? 1968–1971 (Blackside Productions, videocassette, 1987); and 21 Tom Wicker, A Time to Die (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times 22 Books, 1975). 23 10. Foucault states: “. . . committing a crime questions the way society 24 functions in a more fundamental way? So fundamental that we forget 25 that it’s social, that we have the impression that it’s moral, that it involves peoples’ rights. . . .” Simon, “Michel Foucault on Attica,” 26 161. 27 11. See Toni Morrison, “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” in 28 Black Women Writers, ed. Mari Evans (New York: Doubleday, 1984). 29 12. Rape and domestic violence against women and children in South 30 Africa have been widely reported. See Amnesty International, “South 31 Africa: Women, Violence, and Health,” February 17, 2005; Amnesty 32 International, “Southern Africa: Women and Children Still Facing 33 Discrimination and Violence,” December 5, 2002, accessed July 20, 2004, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr030122002. 34 See Human Rights Watch, “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by 35 Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” Human Rights Watch 36 Report 16, no. 6A (May 2004); Amnesty International, “Korma: Yet 37 More Attacks on Civilians,” July 31, 2006, accessed August 28, 2006, 38 http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR54/026/2006. 39 40
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1 Documentation of the abuse of women in prison can be found in Amnesty International, “Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Miscon- 2 duct and Shackling of Pregnant Women,” March 2001, accessed July 3 10, 2004, http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/custody/abusein- 4 custody.html; idem, “‘Not Part of My Sentence’: Violations of the 5 Human Rights of Women in Custody,” 1999, accessed July 10, 2004, 6 http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/019/1999. For 7 a report on male rape in prison, see Human Rights Watch, No Escape: 8 Male Rape in U.S. Prisons (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001). 9 13. In Greek mythology, the second labor of Hercules was to slay the Hydra; when one of its heads was cut off, two more grew in its 10 place. The battle against an archipelago as “Hydra” suggests George 11 Jackson’s avowal in Blood in My Eye: “If one were forced for the sake 12 of clarity to define [fascism] in a word simple enough for all to 13 understand, that word would be ‘reform.’” 14 14. See Prince Imari A. Obadele, “Killers,” in The New Abolitionists: 15 (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings, ed. Joy James 16 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). 17 15. An early printing of Jackson’s Blood in My Eye (Bantam, 1972) attributes this statement to Lester Jackson; a reprint edition (Black 18 Classic Press, 1990) offers no source. Mothers birth and bury. I 19 see the bloodshot eyes of Georgia Jackson, not the father Lester 20 or “anonymous.” The title of an interview with Georgia Jackson, 21 “I Bought the Plot a Year Ago, I Knew They Would Kill Him” (Sun 22 Reporter [San Francisco], August 28, 1971), supports this attribu- 23 tion. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 196196 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 12 5 6 War, Dissent, and Social Justice 7 8 9 10 Since September 11, 2001, many Americans discuss or represent 11 war, terror, and death in shorthand. Two numbers separated by a 12 slash speak volumes (maybe Wittgenstein was right about math and 13 language). 9/11 signifies American loss and mourning, American 14 victimization and rage, American retribution, and American triumph 15 over tragedy and victory in violent confrontations. In the wake of a 16 national tragedy, which has expanded into global warfare, 9/11 also 17 evokes for some an amnesiac claim of political innocence, a guise of 18 national blamelessness in regard to state terror and violence, one 19 which philosopher Cornel West, in a speech given in the Bay area 20 months after the attack, describes as our “Peter Pan Complex.” 21 Although evocative, the term 9/11 (which some Manhattanites 22 shorten to 911) seems mute about U.S. terrorism. Our national 23 refusal to “grow up” does not permit many to become literate in a 24 language that adequately conveys the recent continuing history of 25 the U.S. government in state terror (specifically, in light of 9/11, 26 its support of violent extremists and the drug trade in Afghanistan 27 and elsewhere, in coalitions seeking to destabilize and destroy 28 communist or hostile governments to U.S. military and business 29 interests). 30 When I reflect on 9/11, I am no longer sure of what (my) 31 language can convey. Writing and speech seem contained or 32 restrained by convention or repetition, which alienate me from 33 what I analyze in print (how best to describe my tax dollars 34 supporting a government that refuses to accept responsibility for 35 extreme levels of violence and armaments in the world and state- 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Imprisoned Intellectuals: 38 War, Dissent, and Social Justice,” Radical History Review 85 (Winter 2003): 39 74–81. 40 197
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1 sponsored terrorism?). The immediacy and incisiveness of critical 2 thought and action often seem muted by numbness, grief, rage, or 3 political inertia—or locked away in sites I rarely visit. 4 So, the Radical History Review’s request for “reflections” leaves 5 me feeling uncomfortable. How to place myself in my words and 6 on a political landscape marred by crises? For some reason, I feel 7 compelled to try to answer an insistent query, “What did you do 8 during the war?” and the sotto voce interrogation, “What are you 9 doing during the wars?” Responding to interrogation, I place myself 10 in time and space in relation to an event that radically changed our 11 nation and culture and me; yet one that seems to evoke the past and 12 to have altered little of our behavior. We still face the continuing 13 corporate scandals and predatory abuses ranging from military and 14 economic profiteering in warfare to Enron’s energy and labor theft 15 to the Catholic hierarchy’s antichild machinations—all forms of 16 violence, all more interesting, it seems, to the American consumer 17 than the consequences and casualties of U.S. wars. 18 The philosopher of African religions and philosophy, John Mbiti, 19 writes that some cultures synthesize past, present, and future 1 20 time into the immediate now. When I think about the current 21 wars and the loss of thousands of lives—not just those of people 22 in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, but also the loss 23 of thousands of Afghani lives (since World War II, overwhelmingly 24 warfare disproportionately kills civilians rather than combatants), 25 time compresses itself and the images of wars of the recent history 26 fold into this one. I share an African view of cosmology. In its 27 selective and amnesiac time line of war and terror, the United 28 States (ironically, since it cannot muster either an apology for 29 slavery or negotiate reparations) is also “Africanized,” albeit in 30 a distorted fashion, in its popular representations: Time (past, 31 present, and future) is the immediate present. The recognizable 32 victim and inevitable victor—no matter what the cost—is the 33 American citizen. The U.S. response, as articulated through White 34 House spokesmen, to “What were and are you doing during the 35 war?” is a succinct swagger: “Winning.” 36 “What was, am, I doing during the wars?” When the planes hit, I 37 was on our farm in Upstate New York, listening to the news, mostly 38 the news on National Public Radio (NPR), because I could not 39 stomach the other media (but later I could not digest NPR either 40 as inane, patriotic rhetoric became its script). At first, hearing that
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one plane had struck the World Trade Center (WTC), I thought 1 it to be a commuter flown by a pilot with the overconfidence of 2 JFK Jr.; hearing of another plane striking the Pentagon, I knew it 3 to be a declaration of war. Before arranging for the installation of 4 the Dish Network to allow me to watch the war(s), which would 5 subsequently become more “real,” I try all day and into the night 6 to phone my godmother in the Bronx. When I finally get through, 7 she tells me that she is missing a loved one, someone who flew out 8 of Boston on the morning of September 11. Secluded, sheltered 9 on a farm, I tune into NPR and listen to their reports. Soon they 10 name the celebrities lost, and I call my godmother to tell her of 11 her loss. The words sorrow and grief do not communicate the wail 12 emitted when the mass or individual deaths of others become your 13 own private, terminal disease. And as I listen to my godmother, 14 I associate and sort the sounds, linking them with ones that I’ve 15 heard in the recent past in response to other manifestations of 16 terrorism: domestic violence and battery, prison beatings, police 17 rapes or executions of black bodies; “contra” or counterrevolu- 18 tionary maiming instructed by the Central Intelligence Agency 19 (CIA) and its torture manuals. 20 Sorting sounds of grief, I realize that when time folds, space 21 collapses as well, and everything seems to converge in a circle or 22 loop. Although those who responded to 9/11 by quoting Malcolm 23 X’s infamous metaphor for the John F. Kennedy assassination were 24 often castigated, I found that terrorism officially condemned while 25 manufactured at home (through police and military elites) had been 26 2 exported only to return as a (domestic) import. 27 So American exceptionalism rewrites history and time lines to 28 make immediacy and punitive reflex action normative and to place 29 the wounded and traumatized American body center while denying 30 the terror it has inflicted and does inflict on other bodies. These are 31 our self-inflicted wounds: Escalating wars on terrorism or terrorist 32 wars are transformed from police and military acts into pop cultural 33 aggression and aggrandizement that invite every “loyal American” 34 to participate; these wars will cost everyone dearly in monetary 35 reserves, civil liberties, and political freedom. There is also an ethical 36 and spiritual cost. Exceptionalism that allows a national preoccupa- 37 tion privileging the deaths of American citizens deflects attention 38 from massive losses of non-U.S. citizens. That over 500,000 children 39 were killed during the 1990s largely due to the U.S. embargo of Iraq 40
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1 appears to go unnoticed by most Americans, or at least merits no 2 public expression of outrage on their part. 3 Confronting American exceptionalism and the denial of state- 4 inflicted terror and death, Mumia Abu-Jamal observed in the 5 months following 9/11 how we rank suffering: “People in the 6 United States, drunk on imperial pride, think of themselves as 7 quintessential Americans, and think of the rest of the people 3 8 of the world as something else; something lesser: the Other.” 9 (Often the “free” think of the imprisoned as the subhuman Other, 10 ignoring the wars waged inside the interior—within prisons, jails, 11 detention centers.) Of the terror and foreign wars waged by the 12 U.S. government, Abu-Jamal references Latin America and the U.S. 13 Army School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning, Georgia, 14 used to train leaders of paramilitary death squads. Abu-Jamal quotes 15 Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman: “During the last 28 years, Tuesday, 16 September 11, has been a date of mourning, for me and millions of 17 others, ever since that day in 1973 when Chile lost its democracy 18 in a military coup, that day when death irrevocably entered our 19 lives and changed us forever.” The U.S.-backed coup bombed the 20 presidential palace, engineered the death of the democratically 21 elected president Salvador Allende, and installed the violent 4 22 dictator Augusto Pinochet. Those who would break from American 23 exceptionalism to protest this and other U.S.-sponsored tragedies 24 in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and southern Africa during 25 the 1970s and 1980s would eventually find themselves imprisoned 26 for their dissent. 27 28 Political Prisoners, Imprisoned Intellectuals 29 and the War(s) on Terrorism 30 31 I continuously seek the “exceptional” American who seems to 32 remember this recent history and how it plays out in the present 33 to shape our future. In the months preceding and following 9/11, 34 the exceptional Americans who would most occupy my thoughts 35 and energy would be imprisoned radicals: thinkers and activists 36 who attempted to re-create reality, to rewrite the past, present, 37 and future in line with some vision of social justice. Following the 38 September 2001 attack and tragedy, I swam in grief and paradoxi- 39 cally sought and found an anchor and buoy in working with current 40 and former U.S. political prisoners. This political community’s
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proximity to state terror, resistance, and violence offered an 1 alternative to sterile, conventional political language that seeks to 2 pacify rather than explain. Although the United States officially 3 denies having political prisoners or detainees, the international 4 human rights organization, Amnesty International, has noted the 5 scores of political prisoners, which have numbered up to 100, 6 in U.S. prisons. A select few exist as writers; these imprisoned 7 intellectuals began to shape my political life following 9/11. 8 Depressed yet galvanized by the tragedy and the (cluster) bomb- 9 ings that followed, throughout the winter of 2001 and into the 10 winter and spring and summer of 2002, I increased my interactions 11 and work with political prisoners (and in the process gradually 12 came to better understand myself as an academic constrained by 13 academe, and as a citizen confined by illusory political choices). I 14 began to plan a spring conference at Brown University, “Imprisoned 15 Intellectuals: A Dialogue with Scholars, Activists, and (Former) 16 U.S. Political Prisoners on War, Dissent, and Social Justice.” I also 17 renewed my efforts in gathering and editing material for several 18 5 anthologies of writings by imprisoned intellectuals. In October, 19 November, and December of 2001, drafts of manuscripts that I 20 sent from the university and personal correspondences mailed from 21 the farm to political prisoners for their review were confiscated 22 by prison authorities. 23 When a prison administrator wrote, informing me that I was 24 sending material advocating “illegal and unlawful acts,” I read 25 through a 9/11 lens: I was unpatriotic and potentially criminal. 26 That seemed both a politically obscene and logical pronouncement: 27 One anthology opened with Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter 28 from Birmingham Jail” and Malcolm X’s speech “The Ballot or the 29 Bullet,” both essays advocating respectively nonviolent disobedi- 30 ence and armed self-defense to combat white supremacy and 31 government repression. The manuscripts also included essays by 32 former members of the American Indian Movement, the Puerto 33 Rican Independence Movement, the Black Panther Party, and white 34 anarchists and anti-imperialists. All of the authors question the U.S. 35 state, its monopoly on violence, and the blind or loyal obedience 36 of its citizenry. None are remotely linked to the Taliban, but that 37 did not deter the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons 38 from enacting punitive, “protective” procedures, directed against 39 U.S. political prisoners and their advocates. 40
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1 I was surprised by the response—censorship and intimidation— 2 from prison authorities. For although I had listened attentively to the 3 public radio reports on the U.S. war on terrorism (having turned off 4 the television in order to protect myself from its visual bombard- 5 ments), I did not connect these news accounts with my academic and 6 political work with imprisoned writers, creating a language that could 7 grapple with the violent realities we endure and that could lead to 8 new critiques and confrontation with police and state abuses. I had 9 minimized the project as just an educational intervention. After all, 10 a book is just a book. Consequently, I failed to anticipate how the 11 government would wage its domestic war on terrorism by attempting 12 to criminalize and disappear some of its most radical critics. I 13 underestimated the weight of words, even ones that would find 14 limited acceptance. And so, I failed to immediately comprehend that 15 my contributors, although already criminalized, had been designated 16 by the attorney general John Ashcroft as public enemies and national 17 security threats in the new “war on terrorism.” 18 Since September 11, in a heightened age of security, increasing 19 police and military presence, and eroding civil liberties, the 2001 20 USA Patriot Act and other legislation or directives (many of them 21 challenged by advocacy groups), permit secret military tribunals 22 and mass detentions for noncitizens; the extension of wiretaps; the 23 monitoring of previously private attorney-client communications; 24 and the “lockdown” of U.S. political prisoners (some of whom have 25 been incarcerated for decades). On October 26, 2001, Ashcroft 26 signed the directive, the “National Security: Prevention of Acts 27 of Violence and Terrorism,” enabling the Department of Justice 28 to select certain prisoners for “special administrative measures,” 29 including isolation and denying correspondence and communica- 30 tion through telephone, visitations, or media interviews. The new 31 regulations allow an intelligence agency to instruct the Bureau of 32 Prisons to detain an inmate incommunicado for up to one year, 33 with additional one-year periods of detention. These regulations 34 were used to remove imprisoned intellectuals from their families, 35 attorneys, and political communities after 9/11. 36 Criminalizing dissent in the United States, the government 37 placed in lockdown the catholic Ploughshares pacifist Philip 38 Berrigan, the white anti-imperialist Marilyn Buck, the former Black 39 Panther leader Sundiata Acoli, and the Puerto Rican Independence 40 leaders Antonio Comacho Negron and Carlos Torres. (As attorneys
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J. Soffiyah Elijah and Robert Boyle note, in barring prisoners from 1 communicating with their lawyers, the government depicts counsel 2 as potential “co-conspirators” in terrorism and hence legitimate 3 targets for harassment and prosecution.) 4 A number of the prisoners mentioned above, Acoli, Berrigan, 5 and Buck, incarcerated for their political acts against the U.S. 6 government, provide individual and collective works and analyses 7 of U.S. society, politics, culture, and social justice rarely refer- 8 6 enced in conventional political or historical discourse. Their 9 writings were central to the teaching and research that gave me a 10 response to what I was doing during the war(s). They constitute a 11 body of outlawed public intellectuals, with commentaries on our 12 contemporary state and society and our recent history of radical 13 resistance to violence and war. Prisons are intellectual and political 14 sites unauthorized by the state, where analyses and writings in 15 opposition to repressive policies often go unnoticed on this side 16 of the walls and concertina wire. Writer-activists incarcerated 17 because of their political beliefs and acts or politicized while 18 incarcerated for social crimes, working as educators and activists 19 behind bars, offer controversial and thought-provoking theories of 20 politics and liberation. They therefore provide a body of resistance 21 literature reflecting political dissent for social justice. For some 22 teachers and students, they allow us to explore parameters and 23 possibilities of democratic change that merge intellectualism with 24 community building and activism. Our encounters with imprisoned 25 intellectuals meant to either challenge, buoy, or anchor us, present 26 7 possibilities for change and commitment. 27 28 Conclusion: Shared and Expanding Community 29 30 Amid U.S. wars on terrorism, my memory fills with data on U.S. 31 domestic and foreign policies. I remember that prisons constitute 32 one of the most controversial and contested sites in a democratic 33 society and that the United States has the highest incarceration 34 rate in the industrialized world, with over 2 million people in 35 jails, prisons, and detention centers. With over 3,000 on death 36 row, it is also one of the few developed countries that continues to 37 deploy the death penalty. Given the class and racial disparities in 38 sentencing, 70 percent of the incarcerated are people of color. That 39 the Thirteenth Amendment legalizes slavery by codifying slavery, 40
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1 legalizing it for those duly convicted of a crime, compresses time 2 on my political continuum of reflections on repression and resis- 3 tance. Some of that resistance led to the formation of communities 4 of imprisoned intellectuals or political prisoners. 5 Internationally, I recall that the United States has attacked 6 institutions that could sustain a world community. Although the 7 International Court of Justice and the United Nations were created 8 in response to World War II, the United States declares itself bound 9 by neither the court nor by the proclamations of the United Nations, 8 10 such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In theory, 11 human rights protections exist for everyone in the United States 12 under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 13 the international convention’s ban on racial discrimination, abuse, 14 and torture. The United States continues to exempt itself from 15 international human rights obligations and place itself above the law; 16 the government can weaken treaties it ratifies with reservation. The 17 U.S. withdrawal in May 2002 from the International Tribunal on War 18 Crimes, and earlier from the September 2001 United Nations World 19 Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia in South Africa, signaled 20 its aloof stance toward peace and antiracist initiatives. It failed to sign 21 on, as the European Union did, to a statement designating the slave 22 trade as a “crime against humanity.” Yet within days after the tragedy, 23 the United States would condemn the September 11, 2001, terrorist 24 attacks as “a crime against humanity,” call on Americans to voluntarily 25 relinquish political rights, and demand global solidarity in a world 26 community united to isolate and destroy—a word of finality and 27 eschatology—terrorism. This in a national military/police campaign 28 initially named Infinite Justice, overseen by the Pentagon, White 29 House, and its new cabinet-level post for the defense of homeland 30 security. 31 What many of us did and do during the wars is to continue to 32 struggle and work with colleagues and caged intellectuals targeted by 33 the state. Shouldering and sharing democratic responsibilities while 34 rejecting promises of protection and comfort via military supremacy, 35 many seek to extend the Black Panthers’ maxim: “All Power to the 36 People!” Although a liberal castigator of black militancy and civil 37 disobedience and dissent, Hannah Arendt noted that the importance 38 of critiquing and confronting the expansion of government control 39 and domination marks an essential act if democracies are to survive: 40 “It is the obvious short range advantages of tyranny, the advantages
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of stability, security, and productivity, that one should beware, if only 1 because they pave the way to an inevitable loss of power, even though 2 9 the actual disaster may occur in a relatively distant future.” 3 The very possibility of realizing a world in which terrorism is 4 not common and the Panthers’ refrain not merely a slogan—that 5 is, to create and re-create societies where power resides not with 6 the police or ruling elites who determine domestic and foreign 7 policies and the levels of institutionalized violence, nor with 8 vanguards, but with the multitude resisting institutionalized force 9 and violence from others and themselves—relies on a democracy 10 where we form communities with the incarcerated to confront 11 violence and disappearances. In such communities, we can respond 12 to our own queries and decisions about what to do during the 13 wars, and collectively raise new questions to articulate a vision of 14 transformative struggle better equipped to challenge terror in its 15 varied manifestations. 16 17 Notes 18 19 1. John Mbiti, Traditional African Religions and Philosophies (London: 20 Heineman, 1969). 2. Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 21 1988). 22 3. Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Voices from the Other America,” December 3, 23 2001, accessed December 5, 2001, http://www.socialistaction. 24 org/news/200112/mumia.html.4. Ibid. 25 5. Writings by political prisoners, are found in Joy James, ed., Imprisoned 26 Intellectuals (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); and Joy 27 James, ed., New Abolitionists (Albany: State University of New York 28 Press, 2005). 6. Resisting state violence led many to organize; that progressivism was 29 met with repression through FBI Cointelpro or destabilization of the 30 Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), 31 which opposed U.S.-funded death squads. 32 7. Activism, like academia, can also commodify imprisoned intellectuals, 33 appropriate their words, reify them in oppositional stances as either 34 objects for ridicule or romanticism. 35 8. On December 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the 36 Universal Declaration of Human Rights with thirty articles asserting that the “inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the 37 foundation of freedom, justice and peace. . . .” 38 9. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago 39 Press, 1958), 222. 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 205205 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 13 5 6 Academia, Activism, 7 8 and Imprisoned Intellectuals 9 10 11 The radical intellectual, struggling for her own place in an 12 academy already under siege by market forces and political 13 interference, may lack the stomach for engaging in external 14 conflicts that are deemed “controversial” by the media projectors 15 of the status quo; for even radical intellectuals must eat; and to 16 eat means to affiliate with aggregates of intellectual organization 17 and power (universities), if one wants to teach. . . . Nothing 18 written in this essay will relieve the tension between one’s fear 19 and one’s conscience, for nothing is more controversial in the 20 American context than the state’s role in determining whether 21 its purported citizens should live or die. 22 —Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Intellectuals and the Gallows” 23 24 25 Love and Rage 26 27 In a recent letter addressing my queries about a trade book by one 28 of his former attorneys, death row author and intellectual Mumia 29 Abu-Jamal succinctly signed his missive. Describing his emotional 30 response to his former activist-attorney’s breach of trust and 31 commodification of Abu-Jamal as a spectacle for the marketplace 32 and the executioner-state, he closed: “Love and Rage—Mumia.” 33 Love and rage initially seem paradoxical, coupled as oddities. 34 They are assumed by some to appear in exclusive sites, as distinct 35 and unrelated experiences and feelings. But they coexist, with a 36 dynamic ability to metamorphose or shape-shift, one into the other. 37 38 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Academia, Activism, and 39 Imprisoned Intellectuals,” Social Justice 30, no. 2: 3–7. 40 207
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1 Love and rage are the impetus for much reflection, agonizing, 2 action, and risk taking. They also seem to fuel considerable thought- 3 lessness and inactivity, either in abstract or maudlin sentiment or in 4 pyrotechnic performance, and their respective sterility illuminates 5 their shared characteristics. Love and rage constitute the organizing 6 force behind this gathering coordinated during expanding wars. 7 Love for community, freedom, and justice, for the incarcerated and 8 for the “disappeared”—for those dying or surviving in war zones. 9 To the extent that love for humanity leads to rage against injustice, 10 we also must ask and answer: Where does rage lead us? 11 For now, we can remember that in our national context, love and 12 rage led to resistance in antiracist, antiwar, and antigender/sexual 13 violence movements. Resistance was met with further repression, in 14 the context of the United States, aptly administered by the Federal 15 Bureau of Investigation and its Cointelpro or counterintelligence 1 16 program. These repressive government measures surveilled 17 and destabilized the Committee in Solidarity with the People of 18 El Salvador (CISPES), which was seeking to stop death squads 19 funded by our tax dollars. Cointelpro also violently dismantled 20 radical groups and formations such as the Black Panther Party, the 21 American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican independence move- 22 ment, as well as various antiwar and anti-intervention militants. 23 The political prisoners currently contained in U.S. penal sites 24 present us with difficult questions and challenges as critical 25 thinkers and actors: What is our relationship to the “imprisoned 26 intellectual”? Who or what is she or he? Who or what are we in 27 relation to visionary, risk-taking struggle? That is, what is our 28 relation to visionary struggles for justice that are neither consumed 29 by rage nor performance radicalism, struggles not shrugged off 30 as insurmountable, but embraced as worthy of theoretical and 31 organizational commitments? Perhaps such struggles bring into 32 question all vanguard sites and formations, whether academic or 33 activist. Given that communication is likely just another way of 34 speaking about ourselves, we might as well start responding to the 35 queries by scrutinizing the site(s) we currently occupy. 36 37 Academic and Activist Markets 38 39 Academia often prides itself on being a site in which love, rage, 40 or their symbiotic relationship do not dare to assert themselves,
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to proclaim and set a standard for communication, community, 1 intellectual inquiry, or ethical and political action. Remember 2 Barbara Harlow’s quote above. So, neither love nor rage, just cool 3 professionalism and scholarly competence rule here, although 4 other tendencies or trajectories appear to raise the question (that 5 many progressive political prisoners struggle to answer) of what a 6 democratic community, premised on compassion, liberation, and 7 a truly just sharing of power, consists of. 8 Most do not answer that question by saying “academia.” The 9 academy is not geared toward immediacy or urgency (or radical 10 democracy), but seems dedicated to a construction of dispassionate 11 objectivity, a discipline to detail, and painstaking rigor of sustained 12 investigation and study. These obviously are not inherently negative 13 traits. In fact, they are sorely needed in much of our social justice 14 work. They are only part of intellectual development, though; 15 activism as a complementary partner to academic productivity can 16 mitigate against depictions of the incarcerated as “aliens,” vulnerable 17 to dissection or dismissal. Here, especially, political prisoners as 18 “imprisoned intellectuals” find themselves in peculiar situations. At 19 the university, they can be encased in window displays—bartered 20 and sold in the academic market as the objects of inquiry for studies 21 in political resistance or pathology. Showcased in the scholarly 22 text, trade book, master’s thesis, doctoral dissertation, a course, 23 conference paper, or anthology, their currency accrues, but often 24 only to be managed by others. 25 Much as love and rage can balance and converge, so, too, can 26 academia and activism. Although generally disparaged in its radical 27 forms in the academy, activism prides itself on love and rage, 28 immediacy and responsiveness. It embraces these human responses 29 to life and pain as much as academia might distance itself from 30 them. Activism’s pride of place in this gathering, then, would be 31 the claim to ethical and political responses to life and suffering, 32 to confrontation with domination and control (or what Abu-Jamal 33 described as the state’s determination of who lives or dies—on 34 death row, in poverty, wars, and epidemics). 35 Activism is as multidimensional in its appearances as the academy; 36 as academia’s alter ego, or problematic twin, it also reflects the best 37 and worst tendencies of the marketplace. When structured by the 38 market, activism is not inherently infused with responsible behavior 39 or compassion. In its push for productivity—more rallies, demos, 40
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1 conferences, meetings—it can lose sight of effective strategies, 2 community, and the importance of young activists exercising deci- 3 sion-making power. To value one’s presence, that is, just showing up 4 for work, class, or demonstrations, over one’s preparedness to fully 5 participate in transformational acts is a feature of the crass market 6 (where volume or quantity of a product registers more than quality 7 or utility). Likewise, expectations for unquestioning obedience to 8 managerial elites—whether radical instructor or organizer—are 9 also features of the market found in activism and academia. 10 Thus, beyond confronting the social crises and military and 11 ideological wars enacted by the state, we are disturbed, destabi- 12 lized, and therefore challenged by the commodification of our own 13 educational sites and political movements. The marketplace—as 14 the dominant metaphor and construct—influences our conscious- 15 ness and regulates our lives to shape both academia and activism. 16 Conformity and compliance, rebellion and resistance, are often 17 channeled through and structured by markets that turn intellect and 18 action into objects for trade and barter in competition for status 19 and acquisition, while making our ideals (freedom and justice) and 20 their representatives (prisoners of resistance) into commodities. 21 Through books, videos, and CDs, political representations are 22 purchased and circulated with the intent of creating greater demand 23 not only for the “product,” but also for social justice, release 24 campaigns, opposition to expanding police and military powers, and 25 executions and state violence. For the imprisoned, the possibility 26 of release, or at least remembrance, mitigates their social death in 27 prison (or physical death, as in the cases of MOVE’s Merle Africa 28 and former Black Panther Albert Nuh Washington). Academics and 29 activists use the market to highlight the human rights abuses and 30 conditions of the imprisoned, the 2.5 million people locked in 31 U.S. penal institutions, and the perpetuation of torture and slavery 32 through the Thirteenth Amendment. 33 The irony is that commodification is another form of contain- 34 ment. Although Harlow advocates the “activist counterapproach” 35 to consumption, not all activism provides an alternative. Some of 36 it reinscribes the competition, opportunism, disciplinary mecha- 37 nisms, and demands for institutional loyalty that characterize the 38 marketplace. Activism or activists, like academia and academics, 39 have their own forms of commerce. At their weakest and most 40
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problematic points, they share, in their respective sites, careerism, 1 appropriation, and the assertion of “authoritative” voices. 2 For instance, the “political prisoner-as-icon” can be deployed 3 to minimize or silence external and internal critiques. Editors, 4 translators, and advocates can wield iconic power as surrogates 5 (and in surreal fashion use that proxy against the incarcerated 6 themselves). The structural position that the nonincarcerated 7 possess, a quite valuable commodity, permits the appropriation of 8 voice and new forms of dependencies. Perhaps, the imprisoned use 9 self-censorship not only as a shield against their guards (as Marilyn 10 2 Buck describes in On Self-Censorship), but also as armor against 11 their allies. Political prisoners have strategies to counter “free” 12 progressives, given that in the social death of the prisoner rebel, 13 the state is not the only entity that has the ability to capitalize on 14 or cannibalize captive bodies. If indeed the political prisoner or 15 imprisoned intellectual can be either “freed” or frozen in academic 16 and/or activist discourse and productivity, then it is essential that 17 academics-activists and students-scholars directly communicate 18 with political prisoners, as openly as possible given the structural 19 disparities. 20 21 Conclusion: Conference (or Classroom) as Community 22 23 There are many opportunities to break from consumerism, perfor- 24 mance, and spectacle to build community. We approached the prison 25 conference as a “mall”—a place to “hang out” and to encounter 26 performance and spectacle through visceral accounts of racism, war, 27 resistance, violence, and loss. Alternatively, we can approach the 28 gathering as “community”—both potential and real. The gathering 29 was organized on our need for each other. We are interdependent as 30 academics and activists, and/or hybrids in effecting peace and social 31 change. We choose to dispense with various forms of academic and 32 activist elitism, diva protocol, and disciplinary claims to either 33 intellectual or revolutionary authenticity. I hope that with grace 34 and humor we can acknowledge our strengths and limitations. In 35 the spirit of inquiry undisciplined by a market-driven academy or 36 commodity activism, we work with love and rage. 37 As academics and activists, we share a desire for learning, 38 for encounters that lead to greater ethical and political agency, 39 40
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1 a passion for freedom (for some, a passion so relentless that it 2 mirrors the risks of imprisoned dissidents). Daily, more political 3 resisters and prisoners emerge in opposition to U.S. wars, mass 4 detentions and deportations, and diminished civil liberties. The 5 conference afforded an opportunity to engage in dialogue on shared 6 leadership and political analyses that confront state violence, as 7 well as to discuss and learn about the contributions and contradic- 8 tions of political prisoners. We can learn from and build on their 9 calls to intellect, emotion, and efficacy, ranging from Abu-Jamal’s 10 signature on “love and rage” to slain intellectual-warrior George 11 Jackson’s (1972) reflection in Blood in My Eye: “As a slave, the 12 social phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is, of 13 course, revolution.” “Revolution,” Jackson continued, “should be 3 14 love-inspired.” 15 16 Notes 17 1. For information on FBI Cointelpro illegalities, see Ward Churchill 18 and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, rev. ed. (Boston, South 19 End Press, 2002); and Ernesto Vigil, Crusade for Justice (Madison: 20 University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). 21 2. Marilyn Buck, “On Self-Censorship” (Berkeley, CA: Parenthesis Writing 22 Series/Small Press Distribution, n.d.). 23 3. George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (New York: Random House, 1972). 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
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JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 213213 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 14 5 6 Activist Scholars or Radical Subjects? 7 8 (coauthored with Edmund T. Gordon) 9 10 11 12 In the introduction to his 2008 anthology, Engaging Contradictions: 13 Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, Charles Hale 14 discusses the prickly issue of “shared political sensibilities” among 15 scholars involved in activist research, claiming (or asserting) “a 16 shared commitment to basic principles of social justice that is 17 attentive to the inequalities of race, gender, class and sexuality and 18 aligned with struggles to confront and eliminate them.” He further 19 posits a strong, necessary connection between the authors’ progres- 20 sive politics and their chosen activist methodologies. Authors in 21 this volume also reference the contradictions of “institutionalizing” 22 activist research within academic institutions that situate and 23 discipline. 24 Clearly, Engaging Contradictions contributors have a shared desire 25 to translate academic skills and positions into vehicles of passion for 26 transformative social change and human liberation. However, the 27 tentativeness that runs through the collection regarding this desire 28 stems in part from the self-policing (against [nonelite] radicalism) 29 that results from our participation in corporate academe. Such 30 sites are at best liberal-reformist in their institutional politics 31 and at worst complicit with the global military-industrial, and 32 consumer-commercial, complex that enforces and/or regulates 33 the marginalization and impoverishment of the majority of the 34 world. 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Activist Scholars or 37 Radical Subjects?” afterword coauthored with Edmund T. Gordon, Engaging 38 Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, ed. Charles 39 Hale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 367–374. 40 215
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1 Reform might be the best that some can realistically hope to 2 accomplish through engaged scholarship (of course, some engaged 3 scholarship is explicitly reformist). Yet most of the authors here 4 would agree that as world citizens and as activist scholars who work 5 as academics, we search for a transformative political agenda. 6 Shared desire for change is likely to be shaped by some affinity 7 (no matter how tepid) for revolutionary struggle. Seeking collectivi- 8 ties—that is, communities shaped by egalitarian sociality that reject 9 dominance and concentrations of power—a revolutionary is guided 10 by love (as Ché Guevara famously stated). Love and outrage over 11 injustices are motivations and sustaining emotions in revolutionary 12 collectivities. The guerrero del amor becomes a warrior lover who 13 understands struggle and battle as expressions of commitment, 14 loyalty, sharing of self—a selflessness that is not sacrifice but 15 fulfillment through collectivity. The unfolding of self within the 16 collective, just as the self develops in its individuality, is likely to 17 be the foundation for radical subjectivity. 18 Love functions as a counternarrative and alternate reality to 19 narcissism. By narcissism we mean the self-absorption, competitive- 20 ness, and careerism characteristic of the “normal” academic. We 21 are arguing for activist scholarship not as therapeutic but rather 22 as a radical, potentially revolutionary, alternative to the corporate 23 university. Thus, in considering an alternative, we have to examine 24 three issues for struggle raised by Hale and volume contributors. 25 First, is it possible to open up our institutions in order to create 26 “more supportive space for the particular kind of research that 27 we do”? Second, do the rewards and operating principles of these 28 institutions force us into “elitism and hierarchy” expressed as 29 narcissism and conformity? Third, will our mere presence and 30 participation within elitist institutions make us complicit in the 31 subjugation of subaltern communities? Concerning “supportive 32 space” in the academy, higher education depends on the continued 33 support of elites, given that it is a leading sector of the global 34 North whose governing principles include the management and 35 control of disenfranchised communities. Institutions of higher 36 education have a vested interest in keeping scholarship “objective” 37 (mystifying), “nonpolitical” (nonsubversive), and “academic” (elitist) 38 and in continuing to reserve the most advanced technical training 39 for that small portion of the world’s population who will manage 40 the rest, as well as consume or control its resources and political
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economies. Unless elite educational institutions are transformed, 1 activist research will never reside within the academic mainstream 2 as an entity that produces a revolutionary, or even radical, coun- 3 ternarrative and practice. 4 Antonio Gramsci writes that academics are the organic intel- 5 lectuals of the bourgeoisie. As noted in many of the preceding 6 chapters, incentives offered by the academy reward those whose 7 knowledge production contributes to elite power. This plays into our 8 narcissistic conformity. That same system diminishes the production 9 of potentially transgressive political knowledge by questioning its 10 “objective” status or “scientific” value. (Dis)incentives channel the 11 dissemination of potentially radical knowledge into journals and 12 books where its usefulness to the dominated becomes increasingly 13 marginal and its commodification creates currency for antiradicals. 14 Our continued participation in these institutions strengthens them 15 by allowing them to make hegemonic claims to fostering “academic 16 freedom,” a “marketplace of ideas,” and rational neutrality, but we 17 are not inherently handmaidens to the reproduction of control. 18 19 The Academic Arena: 20 Appearance, Discourse, Performance 21 22 We insert into the academy at three points: appearance, commu- 23 nication or discourse, and performance on the staged arena of 24 academic life. Progressives maintain the continuity of systems of 25 dominance at the first two points of entry and have the potential 26 for disrupting them at the third point: that is, we can exit the 27 staged arena. We can be organic intellectuals of formations other 28 than the academy—that is, relevant radical subjects—if, and only 29 if, we reject the sites of entry and performance as final destination 30 points for activist politics for social justice. 31 Let us consider the implications of the three points of our entry 32 (and the possible point for our departure). First, there is physical 33 entry into the academy itself. The notion that mere appearance of 34 progressives in institutionalized learning constitutes a disruption of 35 the normative reproduction or the continuity of repression seems 36 shortsighted. Just to have women, queers, and people of color in 37 academe is insufficient, in and of itself, for social change. Second, 38 there is the entry point of communication and political rhetoric 39 through academic discourse. The view that writing or teaching in 40
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1 a “radical” vein, or building progressive units within the academy, 2 transforms educational institutions also seems myopic. Neither 3 entry nor communication is sufficient to incite transformation. 4 Radical ideas can easily be commodified to accommodate hegemonic 5 institutions in their claims of impartiality that mask their facility 6 to reproduce or enable dominant social structures. 7 But the third entry point, of the staged arena, can actually func- 8 tion as an exit point from the academic machinery. Our work with 9 marginalized communities as a destination point for our intellectual 10 and political selves requires that we connect to radical collectives 11 embedded in communities struggling for social justice. They exist 12 identifiably as marginalized minority formations seeking radical 13 change in ways similar and dissimilar to the formations of radical 14 academics. As does the larger society, the academy functions as an 15 identifiable aggregate that harbors collectives that are conservative, 16 liberal, or radical (the last being marginal). Radical-minded groups 17 are not trapped in their respective spheres if they seek like groups 18 in other sites. We are handmaidens to the bourgeoisie until we exit 19 the academic arena in search of these radical collectivities. 20 All of those who define work as academics by progressive 21 agendas will not necessarily exit. Those who define their teaching 22 and publications of critical thinking (antiracist, feminist, queer, 23 Marxist, anti-imperialist) as inherently radical are likely not to exit. 24 The predictable stressors of the “safe” environment of conservative- 25 liberal academe foster less aversion than radical praxes emanating 26 from sites that elites do not control. 27 Skepticism regarding the intellectual powers and leadership of 28 radical sectors within nonacademic communities is an equal-oppor- 29 tunity affair among ideologically embattled academics. Progressive 30 academics, while besieged in the institution may also fight against 31 radicals linked to collectivities. Dialogic warfare waged by progres- 32 sives to control political discourse and meaning suggests that radicals 33 loyal to the academy are not necessarily radical subjects. 34 Radical academics may point to the hegemony of the institu- 35 tion, and its dominant intellectuals, without challenging their 36 own power and investment in these structures. Their “outsider” 37 status mystifies the power and privileges of progressive activist 38 scholars. Once truly outside the academy, academic-bound radicals 39 may be unmasked as “insiders” aligned with institutional power. 40 Stable identity constructs as “transformative” or “activist” scholars
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crumble—except for those who can reconstitute themselves as 1 practitioners outside the academic arena. Those who can do so are 2 no longer merely “outsiders” belonging to or within the academy. 3 In the shell game that is academe, they are able to break a losing 4 streak in a rigged game by locating the mark: the mark only 5 materializes outside. Leaving the academy and embedding ourselves 6 in collectivities, we act beyond conventional society. This is one of 7 the true hallmarks of the radical subject, a sign that distinguishes 8 him or her from the activist scholar. 9 With the academy as stage or arena, academics politically 10 perform themselves. Even given the power differentials within the 11 academy, we all share some of the spoils of war. Alexander Kojève’s 12 Introduction to the Reading of Hegel posits a master-slave dynamic in 13 which the slave is actually the more powerful, since the master is 14 1 dependent on his or her labor. Academic-bound radicals, as slaves, 15 despite their marginalization engender new thinking and analyses 16 and through their very criticisms of the prevailing order function to 17 revitalize that order. Some may recognize this “power” and become 18 loath to relinquish the prerogative of a “slave.” 19 The performative shapes the interdependency of academic 20 radicals, liberals, and conservatives. One performs an ideological 21 subject position. In the academy, conservatives and liberals dominate 22 the contextual arena and the material ability to stage performance, 23 providing structure to both props and script. Radical subjects, 24 to construct and control the presentation of their own politics, 25 need a departure, an exit from the arena. If they refuse to exit, 26 academic-bound radicals reject radical subjectivity and validate 27 the reproduction of hierarchies in which we function as powerful 28 “outsiders.” Consequently, academic-bound radicals more easily 29 share the arena with liberals and conservatives than with radical 30 subjects as activists. 31 32 The Radical Subject 33 34 Perhaps only the academic-bound radical or activist researcher 35 possesses a coherent public persona in the academy. In contradistinc- 36 tion, radical subjects may have little or no coherence in the academic 37 arena, and this encourages their search for an exit. Inside the arena, 38 such subjects operate not from a stance of political or moral superi- 39 ority but from the position of a fractured self. While academic-bound 40
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1 radicals posit a coherence that is intelligible (only?) in the academic 2 arena, fractured subjects suggest a coherence shaped by political 3 literacy emanating from communities confronting crisis and conflict. 4 Both the academic-bound radical as “coherent” subject and the radical 5 subject as the fractured self share similar fears and weaknesses: loss 6 of status and respectability, diminishment of social stability and 7 material resources. The fractured self can guard against its potential 8 losses by entering on levels one and two mentioned above, appearance 9 and communication: show up to work, teach class, publish, convene 10 conferences, build programs. But entry will not protect it from other 11 feats: those of irrelevancy and bad faith. Furthermore, the radical subject 12 is not a revolutionary subject given his or her refusal to accept the losses from 13 nonparticipation in repressive institutions. 14 Despite its political limitations, the fractured self of the radical 15 subject desires what the academy cannot provide: relevancy and 16 accountability to collectivities resisting domination. The radical 17 subject rejects the arena provided by the academy to perform 18 as center-stage spectacle or sideshow attraction. The desire for 19 recognition and legitimization in a context other than that built 20 by the academy is what fractures and pushes the radical subject 21 outside, off stage. Radical subjects seeking activism outside the 22 academy do not try to create a space inside as a final destination 23 point or as an identity marker for radicalism. 24 We have argued that whereas the academic-bound radical enters 25 the stage of performance and public recognition as another desti- 26 nation (after appearance and labor), the fractured self as radical 27 subject exits. Therefore, we contest the viability of elite structures 28 to reproduce themselves while reproducing repression and claiming 29 our allegiance in performance. We do not contest our obligations 30 (contractual agreements for material and emotional remuneration) 31 to appear and communicate—to show up, teach, write, conference, 32 workshop, build programs. We contest only the performance of the 33 loyal outsider in Kojève’s master-slave dynamic. 34 Earlier we stated that our mere presence allowed elite institu- 35 tions to make claims for themselves as encompassing diversity 36 (of gender, color, ideology, sexuality) and therefore as being 37 comprehensive and liberal in scope. We identified three categories 38 in order not to conflate them, so that presence and communication 39 are not inherently synonymous with performance. We have little 40 control over the meanings given to our appearances or our words
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within the academy; we have agency only over our departure from 1 the academic staging of our radicalisms. 2 The institution has the power to fix us in ways that valorize 3 it. Still, to appear is not necessarily the same as to conform. To 4 practice a radical activism, we seek an appropriate staging ground 5 unavailable within the academy. The fractured subject is mobile, 6 not stationary or stagnant. 7 Exploring political action unauthorized by the institution, we 8 may find a level of “performance” that institutions will be forced to 9 ignore because they cannot interpret activism within a totalizing, 10 assimilating narrative. Imagine transport as mobility, mobility as 11 potentiality. To be able to walk in and walk out, and to return, is 12 a freedom wielded by the radical subject (to be able to act freely 13 is an agency wielded by the revolutionary subject). There is likely 14 to be a price to pay for this exercise of agency and independence. 15 While most enter the staged arena, the radical subject may depart. 16 It is in the departure from managed performance that fractured 17 subjects—and their present and future collaborations with collec- 18 tives of affinity, shared passions, revolutionary aspirations—can 19 be located. 20 We seek spaces that constitute their own sites of struggle. So we 21 leave academia to make connections with collectivities within which 22 our very elitism is challenged and devalued. As radical rather than 23 revolutionary subjects, we accept our engagement with academic 24 institutions while asserting our responsibility to be more than mere 25 performers. Hence we offer ourselves, and encourage our students, 26 to labor for justice. 27 The meaning of our productivity cannot be determined by 28 academia alone. Seeking the exit door, we search for meaning, 29 value, and political relevance given that our institutions are inca- 30 pable of providing the conditions for radicalism as anything other 31 than performance. Resistance to violent and premature social and 32 biological death requires that we as activist researchers change into 33 radical subjects 34 35 Note 36 37 1. See Alexander Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Ithaca, NY: 38 Cornell University Press, 1980). 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 221221 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 15 5 6 Campaigns Against “Blackness” 7 8 9 10 Introduction: The New Black Candidate 11 12 You are not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face 13 reality. 14 1 —Malcolm X 15 16 As U.S. global hegemony falters, and economic debacles and failed 17 military policies multiply, Americans witness the rise of successful 18 black male candidates seeking high office. That the diminishment 19 of U.S. prestige and power transpires with the “blackening” of 20 American electoral leadership suggests difficult challenges in facing 21 critiques of racial division and exclusion. Election campaigns that 22 promise to restore legitimacy to the practice and perception of U.S. 23 imperial dominance illustrate how viable candidates—regardless 24 2 of their experiential or ideological multiculturalism —avow a 25 monoculturalism that embraces Judeo-Christian individualism and 26 capitalism; unsustainable consumerism; underregulated corporate 27 finance—prior to the global recession; and the validation of what 28 President Dwight D. Eisenhower labeled the “military-indus- 29 trial complex,” now expanded to include the “prison-industrial 30 complex.” 31 As electoral competitors invoke “American idealism” to disavow 32 the nuanced realities of U.S. abuses of power, they reinvigorate the 33 disciplinary narratives of antiblack racism. Perhaps this partly explains 34 why, despite unprecedented racial obfuscation in public discourse, 35 within a nation that historically vilified them as the greatest threat to 36 37 Originally published in a slightly different form as “‘Campaigns Against 38 Blackness’: Criminality, Incivility and Election to Executive Office,” Critical 39 Sociology 36, no. 1 (2009): 1–20. 40 223
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1 white racial purity and mastery, black men increasingly are considered 2 worthy of national or state executive office. Despite the prominence 3 of Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Obama advisers 4 (first lady) Michelle Obama, (cabinet appointee) Valerie Jarrett, 5 and (UN representative) Susan Rice, males continue to dominate 6 the public presence of black politicians. Perhaps only the dismal 7 failure of George W. Bush’s policies—in May 2008, the President 8 had an approval rating of about 28 percent—could have brought the 9 nation to a trajectory so seemingly distant from—yet nonetheless 10 evocative of—its old terrors and traumas shaped by racist fear and 11 desire. Perhaps, the collective memory and resentment of being 12 manipulated by racist stereotypes—such as filicidal Susan Smith’s 13 false accusations about a black man abducting her white infants—have 14 helped to create a more discerning voter. More likely, generations of 15 civil and human rights activism have placed the United States on the 16 path toward inclusive democracy; however, election cycles continue 3 17 to reinvigorate racial biases for electoral gains. 18 Cultural diversity and educational progress do not necessarily 19 lead political campaigns to undervalue the role of racism in swaying 20 the electorate. As their appeal broadens to attract and embrace 21 “all” Americans, some black candidates press the reset button for 22 the collective racial psyche. As the antithesis to and for the “every 23 American,” criminalized blacks remain specters haunting the American 24 dream. In order to “protect and serve,” or at least garner the votes of 25 the valorized mainstream, successful black politicians would have to 26 vanquish such spirits that potentially overshadow their candidacies. 27 In the unspoken racial contract on the campaign trail, valiant 28 whites receive absolution from charges of racism by voting black. 29 Voting against their historical domination of electoral politics as a 30 racial bloc, they absolve themselves as progressives—and are absolved 31 by their candidates—of the social stigma of the “cracker” (a pejorative 32 affectionately used in 1988 by George W. Bush to introduce his father’s 33 campaign strategist, Lee Atwater, at a Republican event—apparently, 4 34 racial conservatives feel a lesser need for absolution). 35 Consequently, and conveniently, a mutually beneficial relationship 36 between the new black political class and the white electorate asserts 37 itself as an antiracist phenomenon. The candidate and his campaign 38 staff, or cabinet-in-waiting, establish themselves as the “good” black 39 people worthy of mainstream America’s trust, partly or particularly 40 because they are not accountable to an impoverished black mass
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decimated by white supremacy and capitalism. Supporters valorize 1 themselves as the “good” white people because they will vote for the 2 “good” black people unaccountable to oppressed blacks. Of course, 3 political content and programmatic intent register in the forms 4 of debates, position papers, and proposed and pending legislation 5 focusing on jobs, health care, renewable energy, unpopular wars. 6 However, the unspoken racial transaction remains key in overcoming 7 white racial polarization in the voting booth. Through electoral 8 politics, both the new black political class and the mainstream white 9 voter can shed past racial stigma and elevate their social status as 10 pragmatic politicians and citizens who have moved beyond old antago- 11 nisms. In fact, in their electoral opposition to “bad” whites—that 12 is, those, particularly the less well educated, who will not vote for 13 black candidates—affluent whites redefine “racial purity”: the good 14 white is color-blind. In repudiating as divisive blacks who challenge 15 the skewing of material and moral wealth toward whites, black 16 elites redefine racial authenticity: the good black expresses no racial 17 solidarity. In addition, nonvoting among racially stigmatized groups 18 generally is perceived as political immaturity rather than as political 19 choice, as reflective of apathy rather than analysis. Still, amid the 20 emergent affinity/identity politics of the new black candidate and 21 the new white voter, hierarchies persist. 22 The American franchise stands on shifting standards tethered 23 to racial domination. A black political presence or absence as a 24 power bloc is commonly perceived as destabilizing or debasing 25 American civic culture. For example, voting-while-black elicits 26 racial profiling at the polls. Yet, whites voting black manifests as 27 an antiracist act. Nonblacks who vote for blacks are seen as relin- 28 quishing narrow self-interest for the greater good. Yet, blacks who 29 vote for other blacks can be portrayed as pursuing racial solidarity 30 and power based on insecurity, ethnic pride or narcissism, and 31 narrow self-interest. Same candidate preference, distinct racially 32 constructed populations, different attributions of political ethics 33 and civic virtue. From the conventional perspective, voting white 34 is so normative that blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and 35 Middle Easterners who do so are not seen as “transcending” racial 36 divisions; whereas whites who do so became the focus of National 37 Public Radio reports during the 2008 presidential campaigns. 38 Race is wedded to class politics. A product of ivy-league universi- 39 ties, no matter how humble his origins, the new black candidate 40
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1 reflects new social stratifications in which class privilege and racial 2 etiquette, in the form of an uncompromised civility toward the 3 mainstream, trump demands for “speaking truth to power.” Now, both 4 black conservatives and pragmatic black liberals shoulder the burden 5 of chastising those without institutional power: progressive radicals, 6 the alienated, “too-black” ideologues or culturalists demanding 7 antiracist accountability from the mainstream majority and its chosen 8 political class. 9 In shifting class and racial identities, blackness remains fixed 10 as negation (of civil society, of prosperity, of law and order, and 11 of patriotism). Thus on the campaign trail, it is to be avoided or 12 disciplined, or in the case of the candidate’s persona, transcended. 13 Under white supremacy, only nonwhites collectively struggle with the 14 “brand” of the criminal or uncivil; hence, only they collectively possess 15 the trait of defective citizenry. Barack Obama’s June 2008 Father’s 5 16 Day speech provides an illustration. The candidate addressed the 17 black congregation of Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, focusing 18 on the antifamilial “deadbeat dad,” generally portrayed in society as 19 a black phenomenon. Obama could have broadened the scope of his 20 political sermon to gently reprimand white fathers at a historically 21 white congregation. In addition to alienating white voters, this option 22 would have led to a missed opportunity for the candidate to sharply 23 distinguish himself from other black fathers, including his own Kenyan 24 father. Admonishing white families, he would not have been able to 25 demonstrate that the new black candidate represents the mainstream 26 through its shared disdain for subaltern culture. The vulnerability of 27 the autobiographical narrative of the absent father is real. So too is 28 political gain through the reification of racial caricatures. 29 30 Running for Office: 31 Sexism and Racism in Multicultural America 32 33 Running for office, black men (stereotyped) and white women 34 as the most disconcerting member of the American political 35 body—bring a new level of spectacle and scrutiny to elections. The 36 2008 Democratic presidential primary contests between Senators 37 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the 2006 Massachusetts 38 gubernatorial race between Democrat Deval Patrick and Republican 39 Lt. Governor Kerry Healey illustrate not only the resilience of 40 racist constructions embedded in notions of black criminality and
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incivility but the unstable political stature of white women in 1 pursuit of executive office. 2 When black men compete with and defeat white women for 3 access to offices historically reserved for white men, some imagine 4 that white racism is also defeated while others maintain that sexism 5 6 is reinscribed. A structural feature of U.S. politics, sexism worked 6 against both Clinton and Healey. However, white racism worked 7 for them. In their respective losses to black candidates, Clinton 8 and Healey, as white women, were “disciplined” by the majority 9 of voters—not just by the black voters they were willing and able 10 to alienate in their pursuit of dissipating white votes. Substantial 11 numbers of whites abandoned both racist fears promoted through 12 campaign rhetoric and the “establishment” politics of women 13 7 “insiders” who were prominent officials. 14 In the two campaigns discussed here, Clinton and Healey as main- 15 stream standard bearers, or “masculinized” white female candidates, 16 attempted to demonstrate their leadership capabilities by presenting 17 themselves as the “tougher” candidates regarding criminality and 18 the breakdown of security and social order. As the heirs-apparent 19 to their male mentors, respectively President Bill Clinton and 2008 20 presidential candidate in the GOP primaries, former Massachusetts 21 Governor Mitt Romney, Clinton and Healey disparaged their black 22 male opponents for being unqualified interlopers (“affirmative 23 action babies”) possessing limited executive office experience, and 24 as “soft” on threats to U.S. domestic and national security. Race 25 and gender intersect within the candidates’”security” narratives to 26 target those bodies constructed as political outsiders —low-income 27 blacks, immigrants, and Muslims. 28 Despite the prevalence of corporate corruption, the candidates in 29 the 2006 and 2008 elections for executive office did not campaign 30 against white-collar crime, criminality or malfeasance by public 31 officials. Political speeches and campaign websites did not present 32 institutional antisocial behavior such as profiteering by private 33 contractors, disseminating false information on Iraqi weapons of mass 34 destruction to start a war, authorizing illegal wiretaps of U.S. citizens, 35 and torturing detainees as pervasive and antidemocratic features of 36 state policies. Linking Republican presidential candidate John McCain 37 to the Bush administration, Democrats portrayed these as aberrations 38 stemming from the incumbent president; not as emanating from ills 39 entrenched in the state bureaucracy. 40
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1 A descriptor such as pathological is usually reserved to generalize 2 blackness and poverty. None of the campaigns acknowledged racism 3 and economic opportunism and exploitation to be a pervasive 4 antidemocratic tendency in U.S. domestic and foreign policies. The 5 white female candidates did not, because they could benefit from the 6 racial-bias of white voters they did not wish to alienate; the black 7 candidates did not for fear of being perceived as disloyal “whiners”—a 8 pejorative that resonated with the attacks on affirmative action—and 9 alienating white mainstream voters. Marketing themselves as agents 10 for social change, all of the candidates avoided confrontations with 11 the religious, class, and ethnic chauvinism of the American media 12 and electorate. The campaigns located threats in stigmatized dark 13 bodies; bodies that few politicians wished to champion; bodies rarely 8 14 understood to be citizen and voter. 15 Responding to accusations by their female opponents of being 16 “weak,” “feminized” black male candidates worked to demonstrate 17 that they too were “tough on crime” and incivility garbed in 18 some form of blackness, radical politics, or both. The end result 19 was the distancing by both parties from difficult discussions 20 concerning unpopular causes and human rights abuses; and the 21 verbal disciplining of those who attempted to raise the taboo issue 22 of U.S.-fostered injustices at home and abroad. 23 Historically, whites would never embrace on ballot a black man 24 over a white woman. Yet, in 2006 and 2008, they joined overwhelming 25 numbers of multiracial voters to do so. This sign of democratic 26 progress holds internal contradictions concerning gender and race. 27 The campaigns reflected racial-sexual politics that pitted white men 28 seeking “progressive change” through black male surrogates against 29 white men seeking the continuance of their legacies through their 30 female representatives’ ascent to executive office. In both the Obama 31 and Patrick campaigns, did white male elites supporting the black 32 Harvard alums repudiate their symbolic heroic roles of protectors of 33 white females from black males? Voters likely rejected the symbolic 34 white woman sullied by her fall from pedestal-anchored icon into an 35 ambitious, unscrupulous politician. 36 Rather than pawns in the 2006 and 2008 elections, black men and 37 women running for office minimized or erased their specificities 38 and desires in order to foster the generic party politician. Despite 39 the text on their campaign websites, each camp understood that to 40 publicly embrace antiracism—if you were black—or feminism—if
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you were female—would be to step into an ideological bog that 1 hampers the ability to garner votes. (Discussions of heterosexism 2 were generally reduced to marriage/civil union as a civil rights issue; 3 none of the major party candidates supported the right to marry for 4 gay/lesbian/transgendered citizens.) 5 Loyalists to party machines, Healey and Clinton were neither 6 damsels in distress nor reformers. The women became hybrid fem- 7 masculines, surrogates for “old school” male dominance that had 8 nurtured their ascent into institutional power. Willing to publicly 9 decry the sexism of their black male opponents, such candidates 10 found it best to keep private any insights into the white patriarchal 11 institutions within which they—and their opposition—operated. 12 Their own ambivalence toward ideological feminism would likely 13 prove a political liability, either confusing women voters who 14 identified with them as feminist role models or alienating men 15 who identified with them as champions of white “rights” (under 16 white supremacy). 17 The women candidates’ political capital derived from their direct 18 and intimate, in some cases familial, associations with structures 19 dominated by influential white men. As insiders with financial and 20 political connections superior to those of their black male rivals, 21 they derided upstarts who would become usurpers. Elite white 22 women, appended to the policies of elite white men, played hardball 23 politics in “scorched earth” campaigns in which race would be an 24 unacknowledged but key strategy. White female warriors have ques- 25 tionable racial and feminine value when attacking black males whose 26 campaigns are run by elite white males. Racial value is measured by 27 one’s ability and willingness to service the needs of one’s racial group; 28 when that group politically or ideologically splinters, the need and 29 value of that service diminishes. Feminine value is determined by 30 one’s ability to fulfill the desire or need of masculine culture to have 31 a distinct and flattering contrast. That value is difficult to maintain 32 once one begins to perform publicly and combatively as “one of the 33 guys.” As she enters patriarchal political theaters, the white female’s 34 worth as feminine icon to be championed plummets. The catch-22 35 is that this icon is hardly characterized as competent for executive 36 office. The racial divide further complicates this scenario. Histori- 37 cally, whites never extended the attribution of female vulnerability 38 worthy of male protection to blacks. To do so would legitimize the 39 prosecution of white males, from slave masters to senators, for 40
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1 their abuse of black females. Today, the caricature of emasculating, 2 aberrational black females (depicted in “The Moynihan Report”) 3 morphs onto white female politicians who as pugilists attempted to 4 discipline and vanquish their black male opponents. In the course of 5 their campaigns, they became increasingly viewed and portrayed with 6 contempt. What became perceived as their excesses in racist rhetoric 7 and their excessive political ambitions fueled public ridicule of their 8 candidacies and character. 9 Despite the recycling of old alienations and the emergence of 10 novel estrangements, both the Obama/Clinton and Patrick/Healey 11 campaigns represented something new in American politics: the 12 possibility of either the first white woman or the first black man to 13 be elected to executive offices for centuries exclusively held only 14 by white men. Along with these historic “firsts,” both campaigns 15 reconfigured racial and gender politics to echo familiar narratives. 16 (Of course, the inability of black women, such as former presidential 17 contenders Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Cynthia McKinney 18 and Senator Carole Moseley Braun, to mount viable campaigns for 19 executive office warrants scrutiny.) 20 21 Obama/Clinton 2008 22 23 Remember who we are as Democrats. We are the party of 24 Jefferson and Jackson, of Roosevelt and Kennedy. 25 —Barack Obama following his May 2008 26 North Carolina victory over Hillary Clinton 27 28 It should be evident that the above presidents invoked by candidate 29 Barack Obama were either hostile to or indifferent towards blacks. 30 To various degrees, all accommodated white supremacy. Andrew 31 Jackson and Thomas Jefferson were prominent slaveholders; 32 Jefferson—the first president to introduce a black family into the 33 White House—was particularly virulent in his racism. Franklin 34 Delano Roosevelt had to be prodded by his wife Eleanor, and John 35 F. Kennedy by his brother Robert, before each President would 36 authorize legislation to destabilize American apartheid. Responding 37 to candidate Obama’s 2008 exhortation to remember, we might 38 ask: “Exactly who are we as Democrats in this lineage?” On the 39 campaign trail, amid calls for unity, it is tedious, painstaking, and 40 divisive to address racial-economic stratification with specific
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policies to redress past and present injustices. Often candidates in 1 pursuit of executive office, choose the path of least resistance. 2 The first major stumble on the road to the White House occurred 3 for Barack Obama in April 2008, when the issue of race or racism 4 became, for most whites, a confrontation with an unacceptable and 5 uncivil blackness: Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 6 The candidate delivered his “A More Perfect Union” address in 7 Philadelphia’s Constitutional Hall in response to media fixation 8 on spliced and decontextualized sound bites of Wright’s sermons 9 from previous years. Captured on tape, Wright’s denunciations of 10 U.S. domestic and foreign policies—most controversial were the 11 accusations of U.S. biological warfare against blacks and statements 12 that 9/11 was a response to U.S. terrorism abroad—looped the 13 national airways. Soon after, sound bites from Obama’s “A More 14 Perfect Union” dominated YouTube (the generational and educational 15 divisions in the electorate shaped preferred informational technolo- 16 gies). “A More Perfect Union” seemed to briefly bury the issue of 17 “racial divisions”—specifically black rage against ongoing racial 18 injustice—and reassure Main Street, or at least its more stable and 19 prosperous property owners, that the candidate was loyal to them. 20 However, weeks before the April 23 Pennsylvania primary, 21 Obama’s closed-session statements at a California meeting (publi- 22 cized by a blogger) about “bitter” whites who “cling to guns and 23 religion” and will not vote for “others” diminished the candidate’s 24 populist appeal among whites, particularly lower-middle and 25 working-class voters. Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 26 nearly ten points (she had polled a 20-point lead prior to her 27 fabricated accounts of wartime heroism dodging bullets on a 28 tarmac in Bosnia under sniper fire). On May 13 she would win 29 West Virginia—a predominately white and working-class state—by 30 a landslide forty points, with a Kentucky victory later that month. 31 Both states featured higher percentages of undereducated and 32 impoverished white voters than the national norm. 33 Obama’s supposed gaffe about bitter whites presumably led 34 to Clinton’s rise in the polls (as the media would spin it); yet 35 it is unclear if this demographic of lower-income, less formally 36 educated whites, who aligned with Clinton in Ohio prior to 37 “Bittergate,” would have voted for Obama in any case. Nonethe- 38 less, the candidate’s “misspeak” had increased resonance in light of 39 noncandidate Wright’s “incivility.” In sharp contrast to Rev. Martin 40
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1 Luther King Jr.—for whom all three presidential contenders, 2 Obama, Clinton, and Republican Senator John McCain claimed 3 an affinity—Wright’s political sermonizing suggested the style 9 4 and substance of Malcolm X. His “chickens coming home to 5 roost” reference to 9/11—without attribution to Malcolm X’s 6 infamous pronouncement following the assassination of President 7 Kennedy—sharply contrasted with King’s rhetorical style as 8 emulated by Obama—at least the March on Washington, “I Have a 9 Dream” King, prior to his reflections on the postmarch bombing 10 of the Birmingham Church that killed four black girls. Obama’s 11 speeches ignored King’s last sermons in opposition to U.S. milita- 12 rism and imperialism. Understandably so from a politician’s point 13 of view: the New York Times had condemned Rev. King for stating 14 that God would “break” this mighty empire given its militarist and 10 15 racist transgressions. 16 Few viewed Wright, a former U.S. Marine and medical attendant 17 to President Lyndon Johnson, as offering a radical analysis about 18 structural repression. Many citizens disparaged Wright’s anger and 19 “paranoia” in citing U.S. state-sponsored violence and suggesting 11 20 that these policies produced the September 11, 2001 terrorists. 21 Widespread ridicule and condemnation of Wright failed to refer- 22 ence Fort Benning, Georgia’s “School of the Americas” training of 23 Central American death squads, the Iran-Contra scandal, Central 24 Intelligence Agency covert operations supporting terrorist counter- 25 revolutionaries in Southern Africa and Latin America, and violations 26 of the Bolin Amendment. Complicated realities disappear in amnesic 27 campaign discourse and media reporting disappeared from public 28 view realities that would have framed Wright’s castigations. 29 Wright resurrected “black rage” (widely read as antiwhite inci- 30 vility) on April 28, at the National Press Club, when he criticized 31 Obama as a “politician who would say anything to get elected.” 32 (Obama’s June speech before Jewish leaders advocating an undivided 12 33 Jerusalem would provide some legitimacy to this accusation.) 34 Wright’s televised appearance, largely categorized and dismissed as 35 a self-aggrandizing “performance,” seemed to indicate that Clinton 36 would win the nomination. However, after formally denouncing 37 Wright, Obama progressed toward his party’s nomination. 38 He did not escape the criticisms of independent black journalists 39 though. In its April 30–May 5, 2008 Black Agenda Report (BAR), 40
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Executive Editor Glen Ford observed in “Obama’s Race Neutral 1 Strategy Unravels of Its Own Contradictions” that: 2 3 For people like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, mass Black incarceration 4 and slavery are seamlessly linked, part of the continuity of racial 5 oppression in the U.S. Most African Americans see the world the 6 way Rev. Wright does—that’s why he’s among the top five rated 7 preacher-speakers in Black America. This Black American world- 8 view, excruciatingly aware of the nation’s origins in genocide and 9 slavery, is wholly incompatible with the American mythology 10 13 championed by Barack Obama. 11 12 Race neutrality is the dominant template in American mainstream 13 discourse. As “neutral” and, hence, “objective,” one would not 14 debate how racism or white supremacy shaped federal and state 15 government responses to the Army Corps of Engineers’ faulty 16 levies that allowed posthurricane flooding. One would simply 17 deny the realities as racially fashioned phenomena. Concerning 18 New Orleans, far more than whites, blacks view the abandonment 19 of the impoverished, the “shoot-to-kill” edicts for survivors, the 20 dispersal of populations with no right to return, gentrification 21 speculation accompanied by the demolition of public housing as 22 racist or “racial.” As did Bush cabinet appointees Condoleezza 23 Rice and Colin Powell in 2005—Barack Obama denied that state 24 behavior was racist toward black survivors of broken/breached 25 levees. Thus, Obama’s campaign speech mirrored that of rival 26 McCain, who criticized a Bush bureaucracy that could “not get 27 bottled water to babies.” “Race-neutral” language is presidential 28 language. The Obama campaign website under the heading “Katrina” 29 criticizes the Bush administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude.” 30 Generally, antiracist discourse, as political discourse, is perceived as 31 “uncivil” when directed at the government or the mainstream voter. 32 Although the Bush administration had lost credibility following 33 FEMA’s mismanagement of and the administration’s early indif- 34 ference to the humanitarian crisis, major party campaigns found 35 it imprudent to publicly scrutinize or theorize on the role of race 36 in the government’s lack of accountability to citizens. 37 Antiracist speech sometimes proves useful in electoral strategies, 38 although narratives are increasingly complex. Consider the Sean 39 Bell tragedy. Following the April 16 Pennsylvania debate, a New 40
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1 York City judge issued the verdict in the killing of Sean Bell, an 2 African American, by black and white off-duty police officers. In 3 November 2006, police fired fifty shots at Bell, while he was seated 4 behind the wheel of his car and in the company of friends who had 5 attended his bachelor party at an afterhours club. The unarmed 6 black men were allegedly trying to flee armed unidentified police 7 after a verbal dispute in the club. The judge acquitted all NYPD 8 officers of all charges. Campaigning in Indiana weeks before the 9 May 6 primary (he would win North Carolina by a significant 10 margin and lose Indiana to Clinton by less than two percentage 11 points), Obama responded to a reporter’s query about the verdict. 12 The media widely circulated the following statement: “We’re a 13 nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down. Resorting 14 to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that 15 is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive.” There were 16 few reports that New Yorkers planned to respond to the acquittal 17 with violence; although boycotts and nonviolent demonstrations 18 were anticipated. 19 The full text of Obama’s comments is more nuanced than the 20 sound bite that sounded purely disciplinary: 21 22 Well, look, obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said 23 at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it 24 looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has 25 made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the 26 verdict that came down. The most important thing for people 27 who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how 28 do we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don’t 29 happen again. Resorting to violence to express displeasure 30 over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and 31 counterproductive. 32 33 The abbreviated text that appeared in the press was strongly 34 criticized by BAR and other progressive black publications for both 35 its rhetorical preemptive strike against “rioters” and civil unrest 36 that never materialized, and its absence of a condemnation of 37 violence by state employees. Critics claimed that Obama’s “law and 38 order” statement was addressed to black New Yorkers but delivered 14 39 to a white audience. The press immediately juxtaposed the Illinois 40
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senator’s brief comments with the more thoughtful and politically 1 astute written statement released by New York Senator Clinton: 2 3 This tragedy has deeply saddened New Yorkers—and all Ameri- 4 cans. My thoughts are with Nicole and her children and the rest 5 of Sean’s family during this difficult time. The court has given 6 its verdict, and now we await the conclusion of a Department 7 of Justice civil rights investigation. We must also embrace this 8 opportunity to take steps—in our communities, in our law 9 enforcement agencies, and in our government—to make sure 10 this does not happen again. 11 12 Clinton’s language of condolence, enumeration of a legal process— 13 court decrees, further investigation, possible appeals—channel 14 potential frustration and possible civil disobedience into law-abiding 15 behavior without chastising the outraged or grieving. The use of the 16 possessive plural “our,” which also encompasses the perpetrators of 17 police brutality, creates a unifying whole in which dissenting voices 18 portraying the police as “our enemies in blue” are neutralized. Clinton 19 more skillfully met the same phenomenon of antiblack state violence 20 by articulating it as reprehensible while solidifying (black) obedience 21 to state power as “law and order.” 22 The issue of political violence within the nation would become 23 central in the debates. During the 2008 presidential campaigns, 24 incivility and criminality migrated from the black to the white body 25 during the CBS-sponsored April 16 Democratic primary debate 26 between Obama and Clinton. ABC news anchor and former Clinton 27 White House staffer George Stephanopoulos, after raising the issue 28 of Obama’s ties to Jeremiah Wright, questioned the candidate about 29 domestic terrorism via his association with Bill Ayers. Hailing from 30 one of the most privileged sectors of white America, Ayers had been 31 active in the Students for a Democratic Society before joining the 32 Weather Underground in the early 1970s. While running for the 33 Illinois State Assembly, Obama had attended a fund-raiser at the 34 Ayers home; he had also in the past served on an educational board 35 with Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois–Chicago; his wife 36 Bernadine Dohrn, another former Weather Underground leader, is a 37 law professor at Northwestern University. Political and racial strife 38 and controversy are familiar to Chicago. Massive antiwar demonstra- 39 tions at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC), led by 40
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1 uncivil whites such as Abbie Hoffman, were violently suppressed 2 by Mayor Richard Daley’s police. The following year, Black Panther 3 Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by 4 a multiracial FBI–Chicago Police Department detail in a predawn 5 December raid. 6 Taking a cue from debate moderators, Hilary Clinton stressed the 7 connection between Obama and terrorists. Obama responded that 8 President Clinton had given clemency to several members of the 9 Weathermen who, unlike Ayers, were convicted and imprisoned for 10 crimes. In fact, in January 2001, on his last day in office, Bill Clinton 11 granted a pardon to his younger brother (a convicted drug dealer) and 12 clemency to Puerto Rican independence militarists as well as Linda 13 Evans and Susan Rosenberg, two white women incarcerated for their 14 support of antiracist, anti-imperialist organizations. Clinton’s leniency 15 encompassed white and Latino political prisoners, as well as wealthy 16 white criminals such as Marc Rich whose family funded millions into 17 Bill Clinton’s foundation initiatives; yet the former “black” president 18 offered no forgiveness to black political prisoners. 19 The primary debate and ensuing media sound bites offered little 20 context for the era of social unrest represented by Ayers. Few 21 commentaries, with the exception of independent journalist Amy 22 Goodman’s Democracy Now! investigated the reasons for radical 23 resistance to state violence or the government’s continued warfare 24 against political dissidents. The focus on the disaffected, affluent 25 white rebel Bill Ayers obscured activism and state repression against 15 26 nonelite political actors. The attention given to Ayers ignored the 27 murderous aspects of the FBI’s counterintelligence program and 28 CIA-engineered warfare, and resistance to that terror. As Obama 29 distanced from Ayers, the opportunities for national discussions 30 and debates to place state violence and terrorism into a historical 31 context and analytical framework receded. 32 Later during the general election, McCain would echo Hillary 33 Clinton. As had Clinton with Democrats, McCain resonated with 34 most voters as the stronger “law and order” candidate when compared 35 to Barack Obama. Recycling Clinton’s rhetoric during the primaries, 36 McCain entered into the controversy: “He [Obama] became friends 37 with Ayers and spent time with him while the guy was unrepentant 38 over his activities as a member of a terrorist organization, the Weath- 39 ermen. Does he condemn them? Would he condemn someone who 40 says they’re unrepentant and wished that they had bombed more?” In
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fact, Barack Obama did condemn Ayers and Weather Underground 1 actions as reprehensible; he did so while remaining silent about human 2 rights violations embedded in U.S. policies. His campaign reminded 3 voters that the candidate was eight-years-old when the Weathermen 4 engaged in violent acts to end the U.S. war in Vietnam. The Obama 5 campaign did not counter its critics with the information that Ayers’s 6 comments expressing a lack of remorse were taped months prior to 7 promote his memoir but the book review was published on September 8 11, 2001. Nor did the campaign attempt to contextualize Ayers’s 9 statements about violent dissent. 10 Ayers had provided a context that could have been evaluated and 11 debated before being condemned. He had stated that some 2,000 12 Vietnamese were dying a day—the war would leave more than 55,000 13 Americans and 2,000,000 Vietnamese dead—and that he wished he 14 could have done more to stop the killings and bombings (concerning 15 Laos and Cambodia, some sources attribute one U.S. bomb every 16 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years). Weathermen were quick to 17 cite that only their members had died from their bombs. A botched 18 bomb-making attempt in New York City’s West Village demolished a 19 brownstone and killed three members of the organization, which may 20 suggest that careful planning might not have been the only reason for 21 the low number of Weather casualties. 22 Understandably, Obama effectively distanced himself from Bill 23 Ayers and Jeremiah Wright in order to win the Democratic primary 24 and later the national election. Both men, in very different ways and 25 within radically different structures, denounced racist militarism as 26 terrorism. The Weather Underground and the prophetic wing of the 27 black church, respectively, condemned state violence abroad and at 28 home. Mainstream citizenry would, of course, choose the nation 29 over its radical, activist critics. Obama would, of course, side with 30 mainstream voters. 31 In election cycles, a narrative that develops context in order to 32 highlight deadly and illegal U.S. policies is often viewed as a distrac- 33 tion and a liability. The dominant topics in conventional campaigns are 34 the economy, “bread-and-butter” issues, and national security. Playing 35 “catch up,” Obama spokesmen’s pointed rebuttals to critics recognized 36 no political logic for progressive or radical or revolutionary acts 37 against state violence; only legislative acts, the agency of the political 38 class, had currency. Without the appearance of state violence in our 39 discourse, the presence of resistance becomes viewed as irrational. 40
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1 Political agency disciplined by revolutionary struggle is perceived as 2 criminality, or political and social insanity. Thus, only the politician is 3 understood as the rational harbinger of “change”; and the conventional 4 wisdom remains that she or he need only say what they will do for 5 us—once we have elected them into executive office. 6 7 Patrick/Healey 2006 8 9 Sometimes I wonder if we get so discouraged that we cannot even 10 imagine what a whole, functioning, peaceful national community 11 could be like. But just imagine: 12 Imagine a nation where young people find love and compan- 13 ionship in a neighborhood instead of a gang. . . . Imagine a nation 14 that addresses the causes of crime and violence, instead of just 15 warehousing offenders so they come out more dangerous than 16 they were when they went in. . . . 17 Imagine a nation at peace, vigilant but without fear, whose 18 position as a force for good in the world is restored. . . . This 19 election is not just about who we want but about who we are. 20 I want a president who understands that. That’s why I am with 21 Barack Obama. 22 —Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick 23 24 “Superdelegate” Deval Patrick proved a key Obama adviser during 25 the primaries. Patrick’s hard-fought 2006 electoral ordeal provides 26 insightful instruction into campaign racial mandates. Both Harvard 27 Law graduates mirror each other in political trajectories, language, 28 and reform agendas. Likely Governor Patrick’s experiences of 29 racial and sexual dynamics in his 2006 race proved useful to his 30 presidential counterpart. In the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial 31 campaign, the Republican candidate, Lt. Governor Kerry Healey 32 made convicted rapist Ben LaGuer’s name notorious in Massachu- 33 setts, linking it to that of Democrat Deval Patrick. Patrick’s past 34 support for fair-trial advocacy for the prisoner seemed a perfect 35 opportunity for his opponents to recycle the Republicans’ 1988 36 Willie Horton strategy to secure the presidency for George H. 37 W. Bush. Devised by Republican National Committee leader Lee 38 Atwater to portray Democratic Massachusetts Governor Michael 39 Dukakis as “soft on crime” and indifferent to (interracial) rape of 40 (white) women, the Horton strategy centered on the case of a black
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convicted murderer who brutally assaulted a white couple, raping 1 the woman while on a prison work furlough in Massachusetts. 2 Racially driven negative campaigning, which some attributed to 3 Karl Rove, a Lee Atwater mentee, invigorated the incumbent Lt. 4 Governor’s campaign. Even when competing candidates are white, 5 public fears remain filtered through a racial lens. For example, 6 Bush’s 1988 use of black convicted rapist Willie Horton in campaign 7 commercials against Dukakis—Atwater infamously stated that he 8 would make Willie Horton Dukakis’s running mate—was followed 9 in 1992 by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s use of black convicts 10 as photographic/visual opportunities to demonstrate his anticrime 11 credentials qualifying him to displace a sitting president—one who 12 16 had famously broken his campaign promise to not raise taxes. 13 The resurrection of Willie Horton in the form of Ben LaGuer 14 became a fatal, strategic error for Republicans in Massachusetts in 15 2006, though. Perhaps having witnessed firsthand their governor’s 16 defeat by the Bush campaign’s smear tactics (which included 17 circulating false rumors that the governor’s wife, Kitty Dukakis, 18 had burned the American flag while participating in radical student 19 protests in the 1960s), Massachusetts voters were too jaded for 20 similar racist strategies nearly two decades later. Consequently, when 21 Healey attempted to depict Patrick as a sympathizer of rapists—in 22 fact, as coming himself from a family of rapists—she derailed her 23 campaign. 24 Journalist Eric Goldscheider notes the complexities and 25 contradictions surrounding Ben LaGuer’s 1983 arrest, trial, and 26 conviction, focusing on inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case that 27 17 rarely circulated in the media. The fifty-nine-year-old working- 28 class white survivor (she died in 1999 from causes unrelated to 29 the assault) had been institutionalized over an extended period 30 for mental illness. No witnesses, confession, or credible material 31 evidence were introduced in the 1983 trial that convicted LaGuer; 32 nor was the survivor’s mental and emotional health brought to 33 the attention of jurors, some of whom used racial slurs to discuss 34 the defendant. Only police and the victim’s coached testimony 35 linked LaGuer to the assault for nearly twenty years. In 2002, 36 disputed DNA results, which Patrick helped to pay for, would 37 provide the only physical evidence indicating LaGuer’s guilt. Those 38 results would later be put into controversy given the charges of 39 contaminated and tampered with evidence. 40
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1 Incarcerated for decades, as a young black Latino rapist of a 2 middle-aged white woman, LaGuer nonetheless managed to mobilize 3 an array of influential male supporters. James C. Rehnquist, the 4 son of the late chief justice, is his current attorney. Elie Wiesel, 5 William Styron, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Noam Chomsky, and John 6 Silber have all supported LaGuer at some time over the years. While 7 imprisoned, he earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from Boston 8 University and a prestigious Pen Award. Understandably, civil rights 9 attorney Deval Patrick would find LaGuer’s case compelling and join 10 such a distinguished group of fair-trial supporters. Under political 11 pressure to win an election, gubernatorial candidate Patrick though 12 would pronounce LaGuer “guilty as charged.” Yet the chronicle of 13 events researched by Goldscheider and others suggests that Patrick’s 14 pronouncement was opportunistic. A brief summation of the politi- 15 cization of the case during the 2006 election follows. 16 In 1983, a young police officer, Dean Mazzarella, arrived at the 17 scene of the crime in Leominster, Massachusetts, and later accompa- 18 nied the victim in the ambulance to the hospital. On September 28, 19 2006, Leominster Mayor Dean Mazzarella informed the media that 20 he believed that if elected governor Deval Patrick would grant Ben 21 LaGuer preferential treatment. Repeatedly through the media and 22 talk radio, Mayor Mazzarella attacked LaGuer and Deval Patrick’s 23 past support for a review of the LaGuer case. Talk radio descrip- 24 tions of the victim’s brutalization steadily fed the animus against 25 candidate Patrick, who had initially and erroneously informed the 26 media that he had offered no tangible support to LaGuer. 27 When Mazzarella demanded a meeting with Patrick, the candidate 28 complied. (Later as governor, Patrick appointed Mazzarella to a 29 special commission on Massachusetts towns and cities.) When the 30 victim’s daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband Robert Barry demanded 31 an official apology, Patrick called to offer his sympathy for the pain 32 caused by the recent publicity. Robert Barry publicly rebuked him for 33 not having a stronger disavowal of LaGuer. Afterward, Barry invited 34 television crews into their home to continue his denunciations of 35 Patrick. Later, at a press conference with Elizabeth Barry suffering 36 from Lou Gehrig’s disease and confined in a wheelchair, the Barrys 37 endorsed Kerry Healey. Although Patrick responded to the negative 38 publicity by stating that “justice has been served” in the LaGuer case, 39 that was not enough to quiet the opposition’s and the media or public 40 fixation on the prisoner and his former fair-trial advocate.
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While Patrick was attacked for his past support for LaGuer, 1 Healey was heralded as the champion of the rights of victims—visu- 2 ally rendered as lower-middle or working-class whites afflicted by 3 black predators. Neither campaign addressed the reality of blacks 4 victimized by racial bias in the criminal justice system. The National 5 Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 6 attorney and Clinton appointee for civil rights was very familiar 7 with racial and class bias in the judicial system; yet Patrick did not 8 challenge assertions that discussions or critiques of racial bias in 9 sentencing and prosecution were either irrelevant or an apologia 10 for black criminality. 11 When the Boston Globe published Deval Patrick’s 1998 letter, 12 written on behalf of LaGuer’s petition for parole and resubmitted 13 at a 2000 hearing, media revealed that the Democratic candidate 14 had written a $5,000 check in support of LaGuer’s quest for DNA 15 testing. Patrick had earlier denied providing funds. For most, that 16 DNA testing, with allegedly contaminated samples, confirmed 17 LaGuer’s role in the assault. The Patrick gubernatorial campaign 18 appeared to unravel under the weight of condemnation surrounding 19 this case. 20 Other infomercials decrying Patrick’s affinity for criminals were 21 aired. The Healey campaign unveiled a television advertisement 22 chastising Patrick, who while working as a NAACP attorney, had 23 successfully represented a white Floridian on death row for killing 24 a police officer, reducing his sentence to life in prison. That ad 25 misfired though as Massachusetts attorneys and the Massachusetts 26 Bar roundly condemned Healey—who is not an attorney—for the 27 “guilt by association” attack. 28 Unlike Hillary Clinton, Healey had not polled well among white 29 women. Perceiving the political vulnerability of her opponent, she 30 devised a new attack ad. In it, she revived the black rapist trope 31 that Ida B. Wells had campaigned against in 1892, and that the Bush 32 campaign had refurbished in 1988. Through radio and television 33 outlets augmented by talk radio, Patrick was portrayed as indifferent 34 to rape. Unlike the smear campaigns against Democratic contenders 35 in 1988, Patrick’s race forced him into a close proximity with the 36 stereotyped sexual predator that Dukakis would never have. The 37 white governor-presidential candidate wields a representational 38 distance from the black convict that eludes a black candidate. Just 39 in case the voters were not clear about Patrick’s vulnerability by 40
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1 association, Healey campaign volunteers organized a pseudo-vigi- 2 lante group, the self-proclaimed “Inmates for Deval.” 3 After running the ad that focused on Patrick’s misleading state- 4 ments about his relationship with LaGuer, the Healey campaign 5 pulled ahead of Patrick among white male voters. Yet she continued 6 to trail among white women. Seeking to close that gender gap, the 7 Republicans released an advertisement that inadvertently destroyed 8 her campaign. The advertisement used Patrick’s statement made 9 before 2006 that LaGuer “is eloquent and he is thoughtful” in a 10 television commercial in which a nervous woman walks through 11 a dimly lit parking garage with the voice over, “Have you ever 12 heard a woman compliment a rapist? Deval Patrick—he should be 13 ashamed, not governor.” 14 The ad was released simultaneously with a Boston Herald article 15 that Patrick had helped shield his brother-in-law from registering as 16 a sex offender when he moved to Massachusetts. The marital rape 17 of Patrick’s sister took place twenty years earlier; the couple had 18 sought counseling and reunited; the case was allegedly sealed. Until 19 the Boston Herald report, their children were unaware that their 20 father had been briefly incarcerated for raping their mother. Patrick 21 immediately held a press conference to passionately denounce the 22 Healey campaign tactics as “pathetic”: “This is the politics of Kerry 18 23 Healey and it disgusts me and it has to stop.” 24 During the following weeks, the majority of polled voters 25 expressed a negative view of the lieutenant governor. On election 26 day in 2006, Deval Patrick became the first black governor of 19 27 the State of Massachusetts and the second in the nation. Later 28 the senior campaign adviser to Barack Obama, Governor Deval 29 Patrick would state: “Senator Obama and I are longtime friends and 20 30 allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language.” 31 Those shared ideas, language, and alliances would entail how to 32 differentiate the new black candidate from criminalized blackness 33 and how to distance from critiques of antiblack racism that could 34 produce a white backlash. 35 36 Conclusion: Election Cycles and Racial Mandates 37 38 Election cycles are continuous. Somewhere, someplace, some 39 district attorney, city council member, mayor, private citizen, or 40 public official is seeking office. Those candidates who position
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themselves as “law and order” advocates may also find that they 1 have signed onto campaigns against racially fashioned criminality 2 and incivility. The majority of the over 2,000,000 incarcerated 3 Americans (1 in 100 adults—the highest incarceration rate in the 4 world) are black or brown; most are imprisoned for nonviolent 5 drug offenses, although whites commit the majority of economic 6 and drug offenses. The most economically and politically disenfran- 7 chised sectors are those most in need of—and the least likely to 8 receive—protection and assistance. The socially, economically, and 9 politically dispossessed are stigmatized by race. Driving or flying, 10 shopping or voting while black or brown reflect the heightened 11 surveillance and policing of bodies within the discriminatory 12 practices of U.S. democracy. Our political campaigns for executive 13 office do not depart from this template of antiblack animus. 14 Americans have the opportunity to demand that political 15 campaigns confront criminality and incivility as they factually 16 appear, not within racial stereotypes but in society without pros- 17 ecutions biased by race and class, and within government abuses 18 of civil and human rights and corporate finance betrayals of public 19 21 trust. American citizens may also choose to confront black 20 candidates that exploit racial phobias. Seeking a “more perfect 21 union” as informed and enlightened citizenry requires challenges to 22 racial repression coded as “law and order” mandates. Voters may yet 23 demand a greater democracy. That they would do so independent 24 of campaigns to resist racist and genocidal logic seems an unlikely 25 22 American prospect. 26 27 Notes 28 29 1. Quoted in the May 2008 Warfield CAAAS, Jester Hall display tribute 30 to Sean Bell, killed by New York police. 2. For discussions of “multicultural white supremacy,” see Jared Sexton, 31 Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism 32 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Dylan Rodrí- 33 guez, Forced Passages (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 34 2007). 35 3. Repudiations of white supremacy in popular culture and academia also 36 increased the new black candidates’ appeal. With its largely affluent, 37 white female viewers, The Oprah Winfrey Show commanded such clout 38 that 2000 presidential rivals George W. Bush and Al Gore appeared on the show to solicit votes. Winfrey was an early and active supporter 39 of Barack Obama who strengthened his presidential candidacy with 40
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1 appearances on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live. These comedy shows playfully 2 satirized him while ridiculing conservative racial bias, magnetizing 3 youth toward the Democratic nominee. For decades, critical studies 4 and Africana studies have influenced campus and popular culture as 5 the college-educated became less comfortable with blatant racism and 6 race-based voting, biases apparently or allegedly more firmly rooted 7 among poorer, undereducated “Hillary Democrats” and conservative 8 Republicans. 9 4. See Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (PBS—Frontline, 2008), accessed December 29, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ 10 atwater/view/. 11 5. See Barack Obama’s “Father’s Day Speech,” CNNPolitics, delivered in 12 Chicago, IL, June 15, 2008, accessed December 28, 20011, http:// 13 www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/27/obama.fathers.day/index. 14 html. 15 6. In a May 7, 2008 Lehrer Newshour segment on “race and the media,” 16 Keith Woods, Dean of the Faculty of the Pointer Institute School 17 of Journalism in Florida, and Kathleen Hall Jameson, University of Pennsylvania’s Anaheim School of Journalism, analyzed the primary 18 campaigns. Woods argued that in most reporting of the 2008 Demo- 19 cratic primaries the labels themselves corrupted analysis as phrases 20 such as “lunch bucket Democrats, soccer moms and Nascar dads” 21 became euphemisms for whites, and the discourse about “Latinos, 22 Asians, native Americans virtually disappeared.” According to Woods, 23 racial reductionism assumed an unsophisticated electorate where 24 white working-class voters who do not vote for Obama are “bigots” 25 and blacks who do are “mindless sheep.” Stating that Obama and Clinton were running to be president, 26 not respectively the “first” African American or woman president, 27 Jameson noted voting divisions by race, geography (rural vs. urban), 28 age, and gender. Dismissing media jargon, she maintained that 29 campaign coverage use of terms such as postracial or media claims 30 that the Wright controversy burst the “post-racial moment” enabled 31 people to talk freely about race and class, “something we know 32 nothing about.” See the online Lehrer Newshour, accessed December 33 15, 2008, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june08/ race_05–07.html. 34 7. In both elections, the media extensively explored the issues of “race” 35 and “gender.” It did not, however, extensively address the construc- 36 tion of criminality and incivility as forms of “blackness” designated 37 for discipline, and how such punitive constructions might affect the 38 gendered conflicts between the candidates. That the male candidates 39 were able to sufficiently shake off racist stereotypes surrounding their 40 personal character in order to defeat their white female opponents
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does not necessarily indicate the demise of narratives marrying 1 blackness to criminality, sexual deviancy, and social incivility. Gender struggles also take place within racially charged arenas regardless 2 of which sex seeks high office (an exception to this would be 3 transgendered candidates). 4 8. One notable exception is Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 5 postprimary endorsement of Barack Obama. Powell criticized 6 the Republican Party for inaccurately portraying the candidate 7 as Muslim, stating that GOP attacks were insulting to Muslim 8 Americans. Powell maintained that any Muslim American boy should 9 be able to grow up dreaming of becoming president of the United States. This condemnation of bigotry, from a conservative military 10 careerist, would logically also apply to Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric 11 questioning Obama’s Christianity, and Obama’s distancing from 12 Muslim Americans and Palestinian human rights. See Meet the Press, 13 “Powell Endorses Obama for President: Republican Ex-secretary of 14 State Calls Democrat ‘Transformational Figure,’” updated October 15 19, 2008, accessed December 16, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn. 16 com/id/27265369/ns/meet_the_press/t/powell-endorses-obama- 17 president. 9. With the admonishment that “those people loved their President,” 18 Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, in part to remove a 19 powerful rival, censored Malcolm X, and within a year expelled him 20 from the Nation of Islam. Kennedy Administration foreign policy 21 forays included: the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts against Fidel 22 Castro, the destabilization of elected democracies in Latin America, 23 the expansion of the U.S. military in Vietnam, and CIA involvement 24 in the assassination of freedom fighter and the first elected leader of 25 the Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. 10. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” 26 was delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 30, 1967. 27 For a complete transcript, see Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley, 2008, 28 accessed May 13, 2008, http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacifi- 29 caviet/riversidetranscript.html. 30 11. The following more complete excerpt from Wright was rarely 31 disseminated to the general public: “Based on this Tuskegee experi- 32 ment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I 33 believe our government is capable of doing anything. In fact . . . what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-ques- 34 tion, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold 35 him those biological weapons that he was using against his own 36 people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare 37 to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we 38 sold them, yes, I believe we are capable [of engineering AIDS].” 39 Wright also denounced the war and occupation in Nicaragua as illegal 40
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1 and immoral, and past U.S. support for the apartheid government in South Africa. Without the assertion of a connection between 2 U.S. policies and AIDS, prominent academics and intellectuals such 3 as MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky have documented U.S. 4 support for state terrorism. When Obama denounced Wright—who 5 declared that the media attacks on him were actually directed at the 6 black church’s prophetic role—he rejected a black radical tradition. 7 The candidate astutely argued that this “racial” “nonissue” was framed 8 and fanned by the media to the disadvantage of discussions of the 9 economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 12. In “Obama clarifies united J’lem comment,” Jerusalem Post Washington 10 correspondent Hilary Leila Krieger writes: “‘Jerusalem will remain 11 the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,’ Obama declared 12 Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7000-plus attendees at the 13 American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. But a 14 campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes ‘Jerusalem 15 is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between 16 the two parties’ as part of ‘an agreement that they both can live 17 with.’” Krieger quotes Jewish conservatives’ disappointment in the candidate’s shifting position. the Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2008, 18 accessed September 3, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/ 19 Satellite?cid=1212659672984&pagename= JPost. 20 13. Ford continues: “Obama is as quick as any smug corporate commen- 21 tator to dismiss as the ravings of extremists and those who ‘prey on 22 hate’ the very idea that U.S. imperialism is an historical and current 23 fact. Chickens cannot possibly come home to roost in terroristic 24 revenge as a response to American crimes against humanity, since 25 ‘good’ nations by definition are incapable of such crimes.” Glen Ford, “Obama’s Race Neutral Strategy Unravels of Its Own Contradictions,” 26 Black Agenda Report, April 30–May 5, 2008, accessed May 11, 2008, 27 http://www.blackagendareport.com/. 28 14. BAR editor Ford dismissively described Iowa, which launched 29 Obama’s presidential career, as a state that is 98 percent white yet 30 incarcerates blacks at thirteen times the rate of whites. According 31 to “Blacks in Iowa Prison: Disproportionate Numbers, but Possible 32 Solutions Questionable,” which used statistics from the Sentencing 33 Project, the 2007 rate of incarceration for Blacks was “13.6 times that of whites”; blacks constitute “2.3% of Iowa’s population but 34 25% of its prison population.” D. Boone, “Blacks in Iowa Prison: 35 Disproportionate Numbers, but Possible Solutions Questionable,” 36 Iowa Independent, October 4, 2007, accessed May 13, 2008, http:// 37 www.iowaindependent.com/ showDiary.do?diaryld=1224. 38 15. In January 2007, the U.S. government arrested former Black Panther 39 Party members on charges related to the 1971 killing of San Fran- 40 cisco police officer Sgt. John Young, and conspiracy for illegal acts
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committed between 1968 and 1973. The attorney general’s office 1 reopened this “cold case” file even though a California judge had dismissed charges against the defendants decades ago given that police 2 had tortured several of the men in order to obtain confessions. See 3 Committee for Defense of Human Rights, 2008, accessed December 4 15, 2008, http://www.freethe8.org. 5 16. The 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the 6 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act signed by 7 President Bill Clinton disproportionately affected impoverished 8 communities. Both Democratic and Republican administrations 9 have garnered public support with prosecutions directed against racial minorities. See U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 3355: 10 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Library of 11 Congress: THOMAS, 1994), accessed May 14, 2008, http://thomas. 12 loc.gov/cgibin/query/z?c103:H.R.3355.ENR; U.S. Senate, S.735: 13 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Library of 14 Congress: THOMAS, 1996), accessed May 14, 2008, http://thomas. 15 loc.gov/cgibin/query/z?c104:S.735.ENR. 16 17. Eric Goldscheider’s “LaGuer Reconsidered,” provides the following 17 detailed account of the case. Early state malfeasance seems to stem from the now deceased lead detective, Ronald Carignan, whose 18 unorthodox procedures were later supported by the district attorney. 19 Ben LaGuer was arrested on July 15, 1983. Without physical evidence 20 or a confession, police decided the guilt of LaGuer, who shares the 21 same race and ethnicity but not physical description of a man who 22 may have been the perpetrator. LaGuer lived next door to the victim 23 when the crime occurred; yet, another black Puerto Rican had also 24 lived in the building and associated with the survivor; he had a history 25 of mental illness and sexual assault but has to this date never been interviewed by detectives. The grand jury indictment was based on 26 disinformation provided by Carignan who informed the grand jury 27 that the crime had occurred in LaGuer’s apartment; it in fact had 28 occurred in the victim’s apartment. The detective claimed that the 29 victim was unable to appear at the hearing although she had already 30 been released from the hospital. So, the detective became the sole 31 spokesman for narrating the events of the crime. He stated that the 32 victim identified LaGuer as her assailant to the police; although she 33 later denied this, she did identify LaGuer as her attacker during the trial. Carignan testified that he recovered only one partial 34 fingerprint from the scene of a crime that took place over eight 35 hours; yet, in November 2001, a report emerged showing that four 36 full fingerprints were retrieved from the base of a telephone whose 37 cord had been used to bind the victim’s wrists. The prints did not 38 belong to LaGuer and were subsequently lost (or destroyed) by the 39 District Attorney’s office. The detective, who kept the rape kit and 40
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1 items confiscated from LaGuer’s apartment in his car trunk during his summer vacation, allegedly mixed underclothes he had taken from 2 LaGuer’s apartment with evidence collected at the crime scene. This 3 compromised evidence would later be introduced at the 1989 trial 4 to convict LaGuer. The same evidence was used in 2002 as “reliable” 5 samples for DNA testing which claimed to prove “conclusively” 6 LaGuer’s guilt. Eric Goldscheider, “LaGuer Reconsidered,” Valley 7 Advocate, August 17, 2006, accessed September 3, 2009, http://www. 8 eric-goldscheider.com/id128.html. 9 Also see Joy James, “The Case of Ben Laguer and the 2006 Massa- chusetts Gubernatorial Election,” in The State of White Supremacy, 10 ed. Moonkie-Jung et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 11 2011). 12 18. Although Governor Deval Patrick would tell the public that Kerry 13 Healey was better than the campaign she ran, members of the 14 Harvard Theatre Review Board, for the first time in the organization’s 15 history, denied a solicited nominee and past supporter a place at 16 their prestigious table, allegedly because of Healey’s race-baiting 17 gubernatorial campaign. 19. Currently Deval Patrick is one of three black male governors since 18 Reconstruction: the first was Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder, 19 elected in 1990; the third is New York Governor David Patterson, 20 appointed in 2008. 21 20. This quote appears in Jon Keller, “President Obama: The Preview?” 22 Wall Street Journal, May 3–4, 2008, A9. The “language” refers to 23 borrowed lines that led to Hillary Clinton’s “change by Xerox” 24 quip at the March 2008 primary debate with Barack Obama at the 25 University of Texas, Austin. Critiquing both Governor Patrick and Senator Obama, Keller notes that 56 percentof the state’s voters 26 disapproved of the governor’s performance. Keller makes no mention 27 of the historic context: a black governor elected through his ability 28 to distance from a radical (progressive or liberal) black base, and 29 so appeal to the majority of voters; the defeat of racist manipula- 30 tions as the electorate chose a liberal black male politician over a 31 conservative white female politician; and the new black candidate’s 32 victory cemented by an imperturbable civility in the face of antiblack 33 racism. 21. Third Party candidate Ralph Nader and former Democratic presi- 34 dential candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich argued for state 35 malfeasance as a punishable offense. In their marginalized campaigns, 36 both called for the impeachments of President George W. Bush and 37 Vice President Dick Cheney given their deception and lies concerning 38 Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the mass deaths following the 39 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation. In April 2008, the Supreme Court 40 upheld Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law—the most stringent in the
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nation—despite the absence of noticeable voter fraud in that state. 1 These preemptive strikes against electoral crime adversely impact minorities and lower-income communities, those least likely to have 2 state-issued photo identification cards, driver’s licenses, passports. 3 Potential criminality preemptively punished reflects racial campaigns. 4 The Democratic National Committee’s 2000 failure to vigorously 5 contest voting irregularities in Florida—in which faulty felon lists 6 and felon disenfranchisement helped guarantee a Republican victory 7 (via the Supreme Court)—was followed in 2004 by its refusal to 8 confront racially driven voter intimidation in Ohio. See Minority 9 Staff, Special Investigations Division, U.S. House of Representa- tives, “Income and Racial Disparities in the Undercount in the 2000 10 Presidential Election” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, July 9, 11 2001); Greg Palast, “Vanishing Votes,” the Nation, April 29, 2004. 12 22. For a comparative study of antiblack racism/genocide within Brazilian 13 and U.S. democracy, see João Costa Vargas, Never Meant to Survive: 14 Genocide and Utopias in Black Diaspora Communities (Lanham, MD: 15 Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 249249 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 16 5 6 Sovereign Kinship and the President-Elect 7 8 9 This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told 10 for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about 11 a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the 12 millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard 13 in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 14 years old. 15 She was born just a generation past slavery; a time 16 when . . . someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons— 17 because she was a woman and because of the color of her 18 skin. . . . 19 In this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast 20 her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best 21 of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can 22 change. 23 —Barack Obama, November 4, 2008 24 25 26 A centenarian black woman as representative of America’s new 27 multiracial consciousness is a powerfully poignant depiction of 28 democracy born in a former slave state. Barack Obama’s narrative 29 in his “This Is Your Victory” speech displays popular sovereignty 30 emerging from the biography of a subordinated citizen-in-waiting 31 (albeit an elite one, given that Mrs. Cooper came from a privileged 32 black family). Political elites and politicians, however, wield 33 a sovereign kinship that does not easily share power with the 34 populace. 35 36 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Sovereign Kinship and 37 the President Elect,” in Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The 38 Rise of Black America’s New Leadership, ed. Manning Marable and Kristen 39 Clarke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 183–194. 40 251
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1 There is evolving multiracial and gender-inclusive popular sover- 2 eignty, as represented by Ann Nixon Cooper; and there is emergent 3 multiracial sovereign kinship, as represented by the president-elect. 4 The story woven around Ann Nixon Cooper filtered one hundred 5 years of U.S. American history, culminating in the election of its 6 first black president. Its symbolism sweeps past distinct differences 7 between voters and the political class they install in a representa- 8 tive (rather than a direct) democracy. This symbolism deflects 9 attention from the contradictions of inequalities and dominance 10 in a democratic nation. 11 Sovereignty is the ability to determine political destinies, 12 one’s own and those of others. Popular sovereignty is the myth 13 and matter of modern democracy. In a representative democracy 14 dominated by a two-party system, wealth and remoteness infuse the 15 national political class. The sovereignty of the poor, the colored, the 1 16 female, the queer, the ideologically independent—as nonelites and 17 non-“mainstream”—is rooted in their agency and autonomy, their 18 ability to lead politicians rather than follow them. Although their 19 more talented and ambitious members may join the ruling elites, 20 historically disenfranchised outsiders to the political realm have had 21 no inherent kinship with the dominant political class. Possessing 22 no sovereign powers stemming from an autonomous political 23 base, they control no governmental, police, military, or economic 24 institutions; through such structures, traditional sovereign kinship 25 exercises its aspirations and will. 26 Politically marginalized groups might fare less well in a direct 27 democracy; but in such a system, recognizing themselves as the 28 true agents for change, they may more often seek sovereignty to 29 resist both repression and the political class that represents them. 30 Historically excluded from voting, blacks organized economic 31 boycotts to end lynching and segregation. Their contributions to 32 democracy worked beyond electoral politics from which they were 33 often barred. The end result is that U.S. representative democracy 34 has become more “participatory,” as defined by a more diverse 35 electorate and its desire to elect representatives who reflect that 36 diversity. Out-groups remain hopeful that elected officials will 37 function as their advocates rather than pursue conventional power 38 shaped by a two-party system and sovereign elites. 39 Yet, in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated its sovereign 40 kinship against the majority vote. The political class designed
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the Electoral College to override the popular vote. However, 1 by installing George W. Bush as president, the Supreme Court 2 intervened in the Florida recount to determine the electoral vote. 3 The failure of the defeated party to contest this suggests that 4 these battles for high office are intrasovereign affairs. Even if the 5 “improbable journey” of the president-elect seems at odds with 6 that interpretation, one should note how singular and symbolic 7 representation of blackness remains within federal government. 8 Among its three branches, only the Supreme Court and executive 9 branch have surpassed the Senate in racial segregation. 10 Polymorphous politicians seek to represent all things good to all 11 people voting. Their purpose is to consolidate and exercise power. 12 As “centrists” synthesizing two powerfully entrenched parties, 13 they can ignore critical third parties while skillfully transferring 14 agency to a kinship of political insiders. Electoral politics is a 15 marvelous route by which sovereign kin pose as “outsiders.” On 16 the campaign trail, they become “regular” folks—intimates with 17 Joe six-packs and plumbers, churchgoers, hockey moms, beer 18 guzzlers, and misguided bowlers. The difference between grassroots 19 activism and Astroturf organizing is that the primary role of 20 activists is to determine policy—not to elect politicians. Activists 21 seek sovereignty, not representatives of it. The mobilization of the 22 “grass roots” or “Astroturf”—Internet-based communication that 23 simulates or stands in for a mass movement—permits voters to 24 relinquish or transfer agency to elected officials. A less controlled 25 democracy ensues from mass participation that is not reduced 26 to mass rallies, technological social networking, national days of 27 service, or mobilizations to buttress state policies. The seductive 28 appeal of U.S. democracy lies in its ability to make the electoral 29 changing of the guard synonymous with political power in the mind 30 of the citizen. The power of seduction depends on the desire to 31 surrender; in the absence of that, it is just political rape. 32 Voters can select from among the political class to replace 33 sovereign kin. The tyranny of the majority—portrayed by a homog- 34 enized mainstream that provided the “darkest hours” for Ann Nixon 35 Cooper’s kin—has often been directed or manipulated by its repre- 36 sentative political class. With social and ethnic minorities within its 37 ranks, the multicultural majority in making history on November 4, 38 2008, appears to have vanquished racial tyranny. America can and 39 2 does change. Its dependence on political elites and restrictive right 40
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1 to rule may not. Rather than enable independent political parties 2 and populist self-rule, sovereign kin promote a more diverse or 3 multiracial political class. 4 As a member of this political class, the president-elect becomes 5 progenitor and founding father of a millennial multiracial democ- 6 racy. That impressive feat is not necessarily synonymous with 7 “power to the people.” Of the varied independent or outsider spaces 8 to be corralled under one flag, the president-elect represents the 9 one that, more than class, gender, sexuality, or political ideology, 10 became the defining mark for the failure and promise of American 11 democracy—race. The phenomenon of the 2008 election may not 12 be the electoral victory understood as a triumph over racism, but 13 the sovereign kinship and the sovereign whiteness that permitted 14 this achievement. Lacking poverty, queerness, femaleness, and 15 ideological independence, Barack Obama’s form of blackness 16 became an asset, an embraceable opportunity traceable through 3 17 improbable political bloodlines. 18 19 A Genealogy of the Political Class: 20 A Forty-Five-Year March on and to Washington 21 22 Barack Obama debated Hillary Clinton at the flagship university. But 23 he did not campaign in the home place of the men who contributed 24 most significantly to his becoming America’s first black president- 25 elect. (Refusing to credit them, he instead invoked Kennedy and 26 Reagan.) Perhaps in 2008 Obama knew he could lose a red state 27 not quite ready for purple, yet sweep the Electoral College. Texas 28 had not gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon 4 29 Baines Johnson’s election in 1964. The conservative state prides 30 itself on having been the residence of three presidents: Johnson 31 (1963–1968), George H. W. Bush (1988–1992), and George W. 32 Bush (2000–2008). The first president led the nation deeper into an 33 unpopular war with genocidal results: 58,226 Americans died while 34 contributing to the deaths of more than two million Vietnamese. 35 The United States escalated the war in Vietnam based on Johnson’s 36 deception about a fabricated August 4, 1964, attack on U.S. naval 37 destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson built up John 38 F. Kennedy’s war and, in turn, was surpassed in mass casualties by 39 President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 40 who expanded the war with secret bombings of Cambodia. Although
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Johnson’s interventionism squandered American wealth and lives, 1 that did not stop two other Texans from emulating him. 2 Unlike his foreign policy violations of the human rights and 3 national sovereignty of nations resisting colonizers, Johnson’s 4 domestic policies promoted democracy and economic opportunities 5 for the formerly enslaved. His presidential alter ego propelled the 6 1960s civil rights agenda and antipoverty programs. He witnessed 7 the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin 8 Luther King Jr.: two sovereigns and one agitator who disturbed 9 his equilibrium. Nonetheless, while King built the moral pillars, 10 Johnson installed the legal foundation—as he strong-armed the 11 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act through 12 Congress—for a foreseeable Obama victory. Liberal sovereigns and 13 progressive activists created new expressions of democratic rule, 14 incorporating fictive kin to create a future multiracial political 15 elite. This elite though would emerge at the expense of a broad- 16 based pacifist insurgency against repression. 17 Rev. King would stand beside President Johnson as he signed key 18 legislation that transformed the political and electoral landscape. He 19 had also stood behind this sovereign leader as he deflected television 20 cameras from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 21 activist Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic National Conven- 22 tion (DNC). As a member of the multiracial Mississippi Freedom 23 Party (MFDP) delegation, attempting to unseat Mississippi’s official 24 white supremacist delegates, Hamer’s impassioned demand, “Is this 25 America?” seared the airwaves, leaving little room for centrists and 26 accommodating political operatives such as the president’s media 27 spokesman, a young Bill Moyers; his vice presidential running mate, 28 the seasoned Hubert Humphrey; and the venerated Christian leader, 29 King. The three would work to force Hamer and the MFDP delegation 30 into a compromise, with full recognition that the alternative progres- 31 sives demanding a full franchise lacked the sovereign power to win a 32 presidential election but possessed enough transformative power to 33 destabilize a major party at the polls. 34 Johnson was so consumed by a devastating and unpopular war that 35 he declined to run for a second term. He would not be the last Texan 36 to leave the Oval Office disgraced in wartime by low approval ratings. 37 Johnson had sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private interests in 38 order to pay for the war in Vietnam. Bush-the-son would theoretically 39 buy the mortgage lenders back in a $750 billion bailout, ballooning 40
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1 the national debt, after squandering a trillion-dollar surplus inherited 2 from President Bill Clinton. Invading a country his father had stormed 3 a decade earlier to vanquish a foreign enemy that the elder Bush as 4 director of the Central Intelligence Agency had helped to install, 5 Bush-the-son pronounced “mission accomplished” in 2003. That 6 defeated country held no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to 7 al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, or the September 11, 2001, attacks on 8 the United States. The invasion of Iraq would help make the United 9 States an internationally recognized human rights violator and debtor 10 nation, as war costs spiraled to more than a $1 billion a month. It 11 would also give in 2007 a novice public servant but shrewd politician 12 a major peace platform by which to differentiate himself from his 13 fellow senators and presidential rivals. Senators Hillary Clinton and 14 John McCain had voted for what would become an unpopular war 15 leading to mass death and genocide. 16 Between the 1960s retirement and political murders of national 17 leaders and the 2009 retreat by Bush-the-son to Dallas—a city that 18 gained notoriety when Kennedy was shot in his motorcade—Bush- 19 the-father defeated a Democratic rival by running one of the most 20 racist campaigns in the post–Civil Rights Movement era. George H. 21 W. Bush allowed Republican National Committee chair Lee Atwater 22 to make good on his 1988 campaign promise to position convicted 23 black rapist Willie Horton as the running mate of presidential 24 candidate Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Although Bush 25 deployed the “southern strategy”—where whites vote against their 26 economic interests based on their social fears and antiblack animus, 27 he was routed in 1996 by a husband whose wife’s future presidential 28 campaign would be supported by xenophobes and racists among 29 “hard-working whites” and “Hillary Democrats.” 30 Racism’s psychosexual politics was increasingly becoming an 31 inside joke for sovereign whiteness. The most incendiary racial 32 baggage tied to the candidate who would be president were (1) 33 President Johnson’s former medical attendant, a black marine 34 and Vietnam veteran turned pastor who castigated U.S. racism 35 and imperialism; and (2) false allegations of the politician being 36 both the national and international bête noire. With the economic 37 downturn, the public became disinterested in racial and political 38 outcasts, including an affluent white radical who used mass casual- 39 ties in Vietnam to justify Weather Underground domestic bombings 40 against government targets. The southern strategy had become an
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unpredictable regional phenomenon. An electorate going bankrupt 1 can distinguish between Willie Horton and Jeremiah Wright and 2 find both increasingly irrelevant to their pressing economic crises. 3 The violent criminality attributed to the domestic bête noire, 4 5 now extended to the Muslims, and the political incivility of the 5 preacher were less pressing concerns for mainstream America. 6 Neither the Clinton nor McCain campaigns could foist a faux 7 running mate onto a black candidate who had already established 8 kinship ties with DNC leadership. 9 10 DNC Conventions and the Familial Party 11 12 After he won the Iowa caucus, America began to take Barack 13 Obama seriously as he continued to campaign against an unpopular 14 war that led the nation toward moral and economic bankruptcy. 15 When he won the North Carolina primary, despite the Clinton 16 surge, it became evident that the notion of race-based sovereignty 17 and familial ties were forever splintered by the autobiography of 18 the candidate: white mother, black African father, devoted maternal 19 white grandmother, loyal Ivy League–educated, Southside Chicago 20 girl-turned-political wife. Read by millions, Barack Obama’s The 21 Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheri- 22 tance made consistent claims, echoed insistently on the campaign 23 trail: “nowhere but in America” and “my life is an American story.” In 24 gratitude to the nation, the candidate increasingly dismissed charges 25 of antiblack racism against its racial majority and its institutions. 26 Thus, he revealed himself as self-made, aligned with traditional 27 political power rather than sovereign blackness (the existence of 28 the latter is generally doubted). Mixed-race black, unwed mother, 29 abandoned by father—pariah became parvenu through sovereign 30 kinship. Winning more primaries and the delegate count, Obama 31 traveled to Denver to accept the nomination at a skillfully organized 32 DNC. 33 In Denver, DNC sovereign kin staged a party that surpassed 34 all previous conventions. Before cameras, the Democrats posed 35 as a functional and disciplined family, generations beyond the 36 1968 Chicago riots and 1972 hawk-and-dove infighting over the 37 war that contributed to their defeat and the election, twice, of 38 Richard Nixon. In 2008, unity and goodwill were such that no 39 discernible fractures shaped by ideology, gender, race, or sexuality 40
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1 (class seemed to have disappeared) showed. On the convention 2 platform, the future first lady, Michelle Obama, who had earlier 3 stated her uncertainty about voting for the former first lady as 4 nominee given the attacks against her partner, thanked Clinton 5 for the eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling. One-third of 6 those eighteen million voters were male and perhaps not all were 7 pro–women’s rights; some were against gay and lesbian rights; a 8 small number publicly indicated that they could never vote for 9 “a black.” That all became irrelevant as Michelle Obama’s speech 10 displayed a humility and gratitude—as well as a pride in being 11 American—absent from Hillary Clinton’s cautious concession. 12 Having sovereign whiteness, Clinton did not need to demonstrate 13 patriotism or belonging when she emphatically stated that she 14 would vote for Obama while releasing her delegates to vote their 15 conscience. The following evening, with extemporaneous remarks 16 fired by the rousing ovation for the former president, Bill Clinton’s 17 eloquence overshadowed her reticence to instruct everyone to vote 18 for the president-elect. 19 A predecessor of Ann Cooper Nixon appeared in Hillary Clinton’s 20 concession. Calling out Harriet Tubman as an expression of populist 21 belonging, Senator Clinton, though, did not mention Tubman’s 22 specific history in radical politics. Illiterate in antiracist history, 23 most Americans could perceive Tubman as a symbol yet remain 24 unfamiliar with her improbable journey. Just as with Ann Nixon 25 Cooper, there was the burden of slavery (although with closer 26 proximity to violent trauma). While Cooper survived discrimina- 27 tion and hardships long enough to vote for the first black president, 28 Tubman stole and liberated herself. Electing sovereign kin and 29 opposing sovereign powers are both political acts. Yet only the latter 30 is an expression of defiance against injustice through independence 31 from institutional power. Tubman’s national political life began as 32 an outlaw freeing slaves, what her detractors and the law defined 6 33 as looting property. A conductor on the “underground railroad” 34 and supporter of the insurrectionist John Brown (with his sons, 35 the white abolitionist was executed at Harper’s Ferry for violent 36 opposition to slavery), Tubman saw her reputation augmented as a 37 distinguished militarist and spy who fought with the Union Army 38 with 200,000 other African Americans to defeat the Confederacy. 39 Thus, Clinton could name her, a black woman who also organized 40 in the suffrage movement, but not cite Tubman’s political lineage,
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as would be done for the white suffragette Susan B. Anthony. To 1 present her with specificity, as more than a symbol, would enable 2 the rebel to appear as a sovereign, in control of her own life and 3 those lives entrusted in her care—even as they wandered, hunted 4 in the wilderness. At the 2008 DNC convention, Tubman would 5 be the first but not last black (female) political figure stripped of 6 agency in opposition to a repressive American democracy. 7 The democratic presidential nominee chose the forty-fifth anniver- 8 sary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and March on Washington as 9 the backdrop to showcase the new multicultural Democratic Party. 10 The final night of the Democratic convention was held on August 28, 11 the anniversary of the 1963 march and the great, hopeful sermon of 12 Reverend King, whose oratory had helped Johnson in his presidential 13 bid. Perhaps seeking inspiration and electoral uplift without the 14 weight of antiracist activism, Obama invoked “the preacher” in his 15 2008 acceptance speech. Rendering King nameless, he embraced him 16 as an abstraction. The label “the preacher” is conveniently worn by 17 white evangelical conservatives and black liberationist pastors alike. 18 With black liberationists as one-dimensional illustrations, with no 19 acknowledgment of their opposition to state violence, King joined 20 Tubman as symbolic representation of a multiracial democracy 21 embodied in the Democratic Party. Denver’s football stadium hosted a 22 political pageant that appropriated political activists who had enabled 23 that historic moment to unfold in time. 24 During the 2008 democratic primaries, Martin Luther King Jr. had 25 become a touchstone; he was portrayed as a key relation for Obama 26 and Clinton. April of that year marked the fortieth anniversary of his 27 assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support 28 striking sanitation workers. The presidential inauguration would 29 take place the day after the national holiday commemorating King’s 30 birth. During the primary debates, Obama insisted that activism 31 abolished American apartheid. Clinton maintained that the govern- 32 ment, through the Johnson administration, was the enabler of King’s 33 legacy and the demise of segregation. When asked which of the two 34 Democratic candidates King would have endorsed, Obama replied, 35 “Neither.” Yet, that did not prevent the candidates from appending 36 “the preacher” to their campaigns. 37 Whereas King failed to lead a dominant political class to which 38 he did not belong, Obama forty years later successfully morphed 39 into it as fictive kin. King’s diminishing popularity stemmed from 40
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1 his resistance to the Vietnam War, which he described as imperialist, 2 and his critiques of racism and capitalism. His prophetic voice 3 became an anathema to those pursuing imperial powers, and the 7 4 New York Times castigated King for his opposition. Obama’s growing 5 popularity and endorsements stemmed from his advocacy of a 6 unified state and the restoration of its imperial might (to be used 7 only for good). Both men understood and acquiesced to America’s 8 selective notion of elite leadership and sovereign kinship. Only King 9 would later repudiate the sovereign elite in favor of another form of 10 kinship. That kinship was partly forged in antiblack repression and 11 terror and partly forged in a spirit or spirituality for liberation. 12 It is unclear if the president-elect, in choosing the anniversary 13 of the March on Washington for his acceptance speech, was aware 14 that the march, largely organized by labor activists such as A. Phillip 15 Randolph, took place on the anniversary of the 1955 lynching of 16 Emmett Till, a black teen from Chicago visiting Mississippi, who 17 allegedly whistled at a white woman on a dare. A fourteen-year-old 18 boy from Obama’s adoptive hometown, Till’s torture, murder, and 19 open-casket funeral would galvanize the Civil Rights Movement that 20 produced Martin Luther King Jr., as an international human rights 8 21 icon. From the floor of the Denver stadium, only Jesse Jackson Sr., 22 also a Chicago adoptee, publicly recalled the Till tragedy in his August 23 28 interview with PBS NewsHour correspondent and anchor Gwen 9 10 24 Ifill. Few may have heard or remember Jackson’s reflections as they 25 uncovered Emmett from anonymity and Americans from amnesia. 26 While Emmett’s lynching was given limited recognition at the 27 DNC, the “four little black girls,” immortalized as a nameless 28 collective, received none. In 1963, bombings followed the historic 29 march. The one placed in Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist 30 church killed children activists. Lacking sovereign kinship, these 31 black girls’ names, like Emmett’s, would not be spoken from a 32 stage in which the contemporaneously slain, sovereigns such as 33 President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy would be 34 honored. Yet, Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole 35 Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14), and the other teens 36 who would die in the Birmingham riots following the bombing, 37 contributed dearly to this multiracial democracy. Few Americans 38 would have any idea of the price paid so that two little black 39 girls could join their parents on the Denver platform to present 40 themselves to an approving American electorate.
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Conclusion: Hagar’s Kin and Black Sovereign Relations 1 2 [In the Hebrew Testament, as the African owned by Abraham 3 and the barren Sarah,] Hagar’s predicament involved slavery, 4 poverty, ethnicity, sexual and economic exploitation, surro- 5 gacy, rape, domestic violence, homelessness, motherhood, 6 single-parenting and radical encounters with God. . . . Paul [in 7 Galatians 4:21–5:1] relegated her and her progeny to a position 8 outside of and antagonistic to the great promise Paul says Christ 9 brought. . . . Hagar and her descendents represent the outsider 10 position par excellence. 11 —Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness 12 13 14 At the 1964 Democratic convention, dispossessed activists risked 15 their lives to dispute the claims and qualifications of political elites. 16 Former sharecropper, forcibly sterilized, Fannie Lou Hamer was 17 crippled by a savage beating when jailed for trying to vote. She 18 was fired from her job, and kicked out of her home because of her 19 organizing for a greater democracy. Without radical activists such 20 as Hamer, there would be no franchise for Ann Nixon Cooper and 21 millions of others, and no black president-elect. Positioned by the 22 political class, along with SNCC, as divisive and antagonistic to the 23 promise of an American democracy manifested through Democratic 24 Party victories, Hamer would not be validated by any president. 25 Ideological arborists severed Tubman, King, and Hamer from the 26 political tree, only to selectively graft branches for politicians 27 seeking symbols to stir a populace. 28 In 1964, President Johnson was so unsettled by a crippled but 29 not yet beaten black woman exercising political power through 30 antiracist and black sovereign relations that he called a press 31 conference to draw away cameras, hoping that Hamer would not 32 touch the screens of American households. At the 1964 Democratic 33 Convention, Hamer demanded that America oust, not forgive, an 34 unrepentant white supremacy and its official delegation. Her ability 35 to galvanize America—not reassure it of its moral standing—by 36 exposing violent repression through personal and collective narra- 37 tives threatened the power of politicians. Forty-four years after 38 Hamer disturbed America, Ann Nixon Cooper, in a mesmerizing 39 presidential victory speech, comforted us. 40
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1 Repudiating in part the compromise that left the MFDP unable 2 to unseat white racism, in 1972, Democratic presidential nominee 3 Senator George McGovern and other party reformers ensured that 4 the DNC would never repeat 1964 or mirror the Republican Party. 5 (Current demographics and diminishing numbers have led some 6 to mock the GOP as “the party of [old] white men.”) However, 7 disciplining intraparty independence before his stunning defeat to 8 Richard Nixon, McGovern with other liberals worked to destabilize 9 Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and her supporters. 10 The Chisholm campaign sought political power without loyalty to 11 sovereign elites. Again, the independent leadership and free politics 12 of another black woman “maverick” proved problematic to party 13 regulars. 14 In order to defeat Hubert Humphrey, his real rival, McGovern 15 needed Chisholm’s delegates, whom she refused to release. Although 16 they had initially supported Chisholm’s candidacy as empowering all 17 women, white feminists insisted that the black woman defer to the 18 white male standard bearer. (In 2008, white feminists would not 19 insist that the white woman candidate relinquish her delegates to 20 the black male standard bearer.) As the first black woman elected 21 to Congress and one of its most progressive members, Chisholm 22 recognized that she would be outside of sovereign kinship. Yet, 23 when fellow black Congressman Ron Dellums defected from her 24 camp to endorse McGovern at the convention and urge that her 25 delegates do likewise, the betrayal stunned Chisholm. She had 26 assumed that Dellums shared her desire for independent black 27 sovereignty. Documentary footage shows the congresswoman in 28 tears saying, “tell Ron to come home” and that she is not angry. 29 Years later, Chisholm’s bid for redistributive economic and 30 political power would be rendered into a symbolic tale serving 31 simultaneously multiculturalism and white supremacy. In Chisholm’s 32 2005 New York Times obituary, Gloria Steinem selectively quoted the 33 congresswoman to write that Chisholm had run for president to 34 prove that any girl could attain the highest elected office. In fact, 35 Chisholm had stated, decades earlier, that she ran so that any black 36 or Puerto Rican girl would have presidential aspirations. Perhaps 37 Chisholm would not have endorsed either Clinton or Obama. No 38 matter. Few seemed to remember her candidacy during the 2008 39 Democratic primaries, in which pundits heralded the “first black” 40 and the “first woman” as presidential contenders in the Democratic
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Party who inspired American voters, failing to note the first black 1 woman to run for president on a major ticket. Unlike Clinton 2 and Obama, Chisholm was an outspoken supporter of feminism. 3 Unlike Clinton and the president-elect, she lacked ties to the 4 Democratic machine and sovereign whiteness. Although offering 5 limitless opportunities for political agency and moral and social 6 transformation, there is little political wealth and personal gain in 7 belonging to outcast struggles. Hence, belief in the value of black 8 sovereign relations is difficult to sustain. 9 Still, certain facts remain. Activism and creativity, not elected 10 or appointed officials, establish the conditions for political cultures 11 that expanded democracy and civil and human rights. Historically, 12 compromises with sovereign whiteness and sovereign kinship 13 11 have denied impoverished children and families a viable future. 14 For centuries, popular and political cultures recycled antiblack 15 stereotypes to create an apartheid-based democracy. Today, public 16 and private agencies continue to disproportionately discipline and 17 disenfranchise black life. Black women are selectively monitored 18 for drug use in prenatal and delivery care; black families receive 19 minimal public assistance in housing, health care, food subsidies, 20 and counseling; black children are disproportionately held in foster 21 homes and detention centers under the most substandard condi- 22 tions. Yet, mainstream democracy, like mainstream Christianity, asks 23 much from subordinated social sectors, providing few guarantees 24 of restorative justice. 25 December 2008 news featured poverty and genocide: the 40 26 percent rise in murder rates by and of young black males in the 27 United States; hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths as Israel 28 bombed Gaza (with weapons financed by the United States) as 29 a way to “signify” to Hamas. Simultaneous news focused on the 30 millions planning to converge on Washington, DC, for the historic 31 January 2009 inauguration, and the hundreds of parties and balls to 32 follow. The spectacle of American democracy’s unique beauty and 33 might overshadows mundane and traumatic suffering. Any popular 34 sovereignty that emerges to keep faith with our highest aspirations 35 for sustainable life will have to create its own compelling expres- 36 sions of transformative agency. 37 Having created the conditions for a centrist-liberal black presi- 38 dent-elect, progressive activists will have to determine how best 39 to influence a multiracial democracy. Popular sovereignty may yet 40
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1 offer a popular narrative of a great, independent democracy, one 2 in which even the most dispossessed see themselves as directly 3 participating in citizenship and social justice. Such possibilities rest 4 in the wisdom of slave-turned-liberator Frederick Douglass: power 5 concedes nothing without demand and struggle. 6 7 Notes 8 1. American progress remains framed by the compassion or cruelty of 9 Judeo-Christianity as symbolic template. With California’s electoral 10 votes, Barack Obama surpassed John McCain just as California 11 voters passed Proposition 8, which banned gay and lesbian marriage. 12 The same white voters who touched their screens for a black 13 president—one who simultaneously opposed both the proposition 14 and nontraditional marriage—later used racial epithets to denounce 15 blacks who, alongside the majority of Californian voters, supported 16 the ban. Such voters refrained from racist language in public rallies against the president-elect after he selected white evangelical pastor 17 Rick Warren, a key opponent to gay, lesbian, and transgendered 18 rights and women’s reproductive choices, to give the invocation 19 at the inauguration; yet used such language against nonelite blacks 20 who opposed gay/lesbian marriage. (Days after the announcement 21 of Warren’s selection, Pope Benedict XVI pronounced that gender 22 theory and gay marriage threatened “human ecology,” asserting that 23 feminism and homosexuality would bring death to the species. ) 24 2. A black presence in the sovereign American body is not new. Public knowledge of Lynne Cheney’s family tree, which includes 25 the president-elect’s family, led to campaign quips about Obama 26 declining to hunt with her husband Vice President Dick Cheney. 27 Madeleine Albright’s adoptive parent was Bush Secretary of State 28 Condoleezza Rice’s professor and mentor in Eastern European 29 Studies at the University of Denver. The former Clinton secretary of 30 state has publicly joked about her admonition to Rice in the 1980s, 31 on learning that she was a Republican: “Condi, how could you? We 32 have the same father!” As the political class increasingly recognizes blacks as kinsmen and kinswomen, the independent black sovereign 33 increasingly appears antiquated. 34 3. On the campaign trail, paternity manifests in religion (God the Father), 35 and dead or ancestral presidents (political sires). Unsurprisingly 36 the American archetype for both remains symbolized by white 37 male authority. Invoking both establishes belonging to a ruling 38 elite. Emulating Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama announced his 39 presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, missing a televised 40 “state of the black union forum” sponsored by Tavis Smiley, which
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included Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West, and James Cone, who 1 discussed Obama’s candidacy and absence. Smiley read Obama’s note of regret citing scheduling conflicts, yet panelists and some audience 2 members seemed dissatisfied. 3 There is an analogy with the value of texts. In December 2008, 4 Americans were told that the copy of the Bible last used in Lincoln’s 5 1861 swearing-in, would be used for the president-elect at his January 6 2009 inauguration. In 1864, African Americans presented Lincoln a 7 Bible following his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite 8 Lincoln’s uncertainty about the presence of free blacks in the United 9 States, and the 1864 Bible being cherished by those most intimate with the burdens of fighting for freedom, Obama chose to appear 10 with the l861 Bible, the only Lincoln Bible that possessed gravitas 11 of state power. 12 4. The connections between the black president-elect and a southern 13 president were noted during the campaign. In an October e-mail 14 encouraging Texas democrats to vote and provide assistance to the 15 Travis County Democratic Party, Luci Baines Johnson wrote, 16 Dear Fellow Democrat: 2008 marks the centennial celebration of my 17 father’s birthday. If Lyndon Johnson were still with us today, I know 18 that he would be proud to cast his vote this year for Barack Obama for 19 President, Rick Noriega for U.S. Senate, Lloyd Doggett for Congress, 20 and every Democrat all the way down the ballot. Among his many 21 accomplishments in office, President Johnson fought alongside Rev. 22 Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders of the 1960s to pass landmark legislation that helped extend the American dream to everyone 23 in our country. At the time, it was a historic struggle against the status 24 quo. Today, Senator Barack Obama gives us all hope that America is once 25 again ready to turn the page on the status quo and tackle the challenges 26 of the 21st century. In 2008 we are closer than ever to achieving my 27 father’s vision—and ours—of a better tomorrow for our children and 28 for our nation. But none of this can happen without you. 29 E-mail, author’s papers. 30 5. See “Powell Endorses Obama for President: Republican ex-Secretary of 31 State Calls Democrat ‘Transformational Figure,’” accessed December 32 16, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27265369. Both Clinton 33 Democrats and Sarah Palin Republicans challenged Obama’s Christian authenticity. In response, the candidate distanced himself from 34 Muslim Americans and Palestinian human rights. The point of 35 asserting that Barack Hussein Obama was not Muslim was to reassure 36 the sovereign whiteness as electorate that any Muslin American boy 37 could not grow up to be president of the United States. 38 6. The perceived complicated relationship of blacks to property bears 39 serious scrutiny. The historical legacy of criminalizing blackness 40
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1 and equating it with a strong threat to property endures to this day. For example, in 2005, following the breaking of substandard New 2 Orleans levees in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush 3 and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco issued “shoot-to-kill” edicts 4 for mostly impoverished black survivors; the government mandated 5 “zero tolerance,” even for those who were, in the words of 2008 6 presidential contender John McCain, trying to “get bottled water to 7 babies.” 8 7. Martin Luther King Jr., “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam,” 9 speech given at New York’s Riverside Church on April 30, 1967. The Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project 10 offers a full transcript of the sermon at http://www.lib.berkeley. 11 edu/MRC/pacificaviet/riversidetranscript.html, accessed September 12 28, 2012. 13 8. Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open coffin in a public funeral for 14 her son’s decomposing body. White Mississippi officials had packed 15 the casket with lye to accelerate its deterioration as it traveled 16 back to Chicago. The mother demanded that the funeral home defy 17 Southern officials’ orders for a closed-casket funeral. The tens of thousands of mourners that passed before it and the millions more 18 that saw the image in the black press (such as Jet magazine) sparked 19 the southern Civil Rights Movement. Months later in Montgomery, 20 Alabama, when Rosa Parks, Joanne Robinson, and E. D. Nixon asked 21 a twenty-six-year-old reverend with a doctorate in theology from 22 Boston University to be spokesman for the bus boycott they were 23 organizing, Martin Luther King Jr., agreed. 24 9. Jesse Jackson Sr., wrote the foreword to Mamie Till-Mobley’s memoir, 25 coauthored by Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003). 26 10. This had its own sad irony, given that weeks earlier, not realizing 27 that his microphone for a televised interview was still on, Jackson 28 remarked, in cruder language, that he wanted to castrate Obama for 29 dismissive treatment of the concerns of nonelite blacks. 30 11. During the 2008 campaign, to the consternation of Democratic Party 31 loyalists and the confusion of many progressives, Barack Obama 32 repeatedly cited Ronald Reagan—whose administration exploited 33 racist stereotypes for political gains—as a presidential role model. The original southern strategy was crafted by Lee Atwater for 34 Reagan, whose campaign used Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of 35 murdered civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, 36 and James Chaney, as a rallying cry for the restoration of white 37 rights. 38 On the September 28, 2005, broadcast of Bill Bennett’s Morning in 39 America, Reagan’s secretary of education, responding to a caller’s 40 concerns about law and order, observed, “If you wanted to reduce
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crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose, you could abort 1 every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible 2 thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.” Logically, the crime 3 rate would diminish if all babies were aborted, particularly white 4 ones given that most crime is committed by whites; yet, Bennett 5 criminalizes only black kinship with a death sentence for families; 6 his genocidal mandate received little national condemnation. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 267267 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 17 5 6 The Dead Zone 7 8 9 10 In traditional African thought, there is no concept of history 11 moving forward towards a future climax . . . the future does not 12 exist beyond a few months, the future cannot be expected to 13 usher in a golden age, or a radically different state of affairs. 14 —John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophies 15 16 The further the Negro gets from his historical antecedents in 17 time, the more tenuous become his conceptual ties, the emptier 18 his social connections, the more superficial his visions. His one 19 great and present hope is to know and understand his African- 20 American realities in the United States more profoundly. Failing 21 that, and failing to create a new synthesis in history and the 22 humanities, and a new social theory, he will suffer the historical 23 fate of intellectual subterfuge. 24 —Harold Cruise, quoted in James Turner, 25 “Africana Studies and Epistemology” 26 27 All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of 28 us are brave. 29 —Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith, 30 All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, 31 but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies 32 33 34 Originally published in a slightly different form as “The Dead Zone: Stum- 35 bling at the Crossroads of Party Politics, Genocide and Postracial Racism,” South Atlantic Quarterly 108, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 459–481. 36 This essay is based on a paper presented at Cornell University on 37 March 4, 2008, and updated following the November 4, 2008 election 38 of Barack Obama as president-elect. My thanks to Grant Farred for his 39 editorial insight. 40
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1 Introduction: At the Crossroads, Charging Genocide 2 3 The genocide of Darfur shames the conscience of us all. 4 —Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24, 2008 5 6 A critique of political thinking in Africana thought sits at the 7 crossroads. At this intersection, passing trajectories meet. Moving 8 in opposite directions, they send contradictory messages concerning 9 democracy, racism, and political violence. 10 One trajectory pursues the accomplishments of Africana intel- 11 lectual, artistic, economic, and political elites. That trajectory 12 culminates in the campaign of Barack Obama—the first black 13 presidential candidate in a major U.S. party and the first black 14 president-elect since the founding of this slave nation turned 15 faltering empire. The other trajectory tracks the misery of the local 16 and global black masses. It also traces minority group repression by 17 global capitalism, as well as the potential and real possibilities of 18 racial genocide in democracies through state violence and neglect. 19 The intersection of these two diverging lines produces a conceptual 1 20 dead zone, one that is marked by the absence of analysis engaging 21 antiblack racism and genocide in Western democracies and the 22 resilience of elite thinkers to disavow such analyses. Even though 23 it holds the challenges of transformative thought and action, this 24 arena is dead to conventional thought because the nexus at which 25 black achievement meets black genocide appears as a conceptual 26 void. Thus it is avoided. In Western democracies, rarely are “black 27 achievement” (e.g., the Obama campaign and election) and “black 28 genocide” (e.g., the racially fashioned prison industry and foster 29 care system) discussed in the same breath. This essay explores issues 30 at the edge of conventional thought in order to expand critical 31 thinking. 32 William Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress’s 1951 petition 33 to the United Nations, We Charge Genocide, is notable for drawing 34 international attention to crimes against African Americans such 35 as mob lynchings and police brutality, economic exploitation and 36 electoral theft, and substandard schooling, housing, and medical 2 37 care. Yet We Charge Genocide offers neither a discussion of the 38 political and economic achievements of black Americans, nor a 39 discussion of how black elites, like their white counterparts and 40 mainstream America, may either oppose or ignore (and thereby
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3 be complicit in) antiblack genocide. Nor does the document 1 mention “autogenocide” or violence internal to black communities 2 4 (in fact, its sexism and misogyny prevent it from doing so). From 3 its progressive, radical standpoint, it is incapable of theorizing the 4 nexus, the convergence, and then the separation of black elites and 5 the disposable dispossessed. 6 National and international Africana elites occupy influential 7 posts in prestigious universities and colleges (whose billion-dollar 8 endowments rival the gross national product of some nations). Yet 9 even within these halls of security, or perhaps because of them, our 10 critiques of state violence are rare. Often we criticize the policies 11 of political parties or leaders. Also criticized are sectors ostracized 12 in civil society such as the poor, unwed mothers, absentee fathers, 13 prisoners, and criminals. Clearly, black achievement and pathology 14 or victimization routinely commingle in political thought. For 15 instance, black liberals or radicals note the role of legislation and 16 punitive policies in the disruption or amelioration of collective 17 black life and well-being. Black conservatives and neoconserva- 18 tives highlight moral failings on the part of individual blacks and 19 generalize a collective social pathology; they view these as the 20 consequences of a black proclivity toward entitlement, immorality, 21 and (sexual) predation. (Supposedly, these are traits that only 22 5 black conservatives or neoliberals have managed to escape; black 23 conservatives offer few opportunities to dissect and depart from 24 white conservatives, as their unoriginal parallel racial views dictate 25 that blacks mirror neoconservative whites.) 26 Since the postbellum origins of the “talented tenth,” elites 27 have disproportionately shaped Africana thought and have offered 28 themselves as role models dispensing cautionary, constructive, 29 or caustic advice and guidance to impoverished, “dysfunctional,” 30 or criminal(ized) blacks. Historically in Africana thought, black 31 achievers disseminate commentary critical or supportive of black 32 underachievers, citing reasons for their and our failings. Rarely 33 do the criticisms by nonelites of the affluent influence a nation. 34 Equally rare are radical or structural critiques that enter conven- 35 tional thought and speech. More often, state performance of 36 racial neutrality is scrutinized, and claims for racial diversity 37 that overshadow calls for racial equality are rejected as coherent 38 radical critique that leads to sustained resistance. The dead zone 39 has a gravitational pull that slows down radical critiques just as it 40
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1 slows down time. Thus, “change that we can believe in” is presumed 2 to come disproportionately from elites who have no structural 3 critiques of capitalism, white supremacy, or heteronormative 4 patriarchy, nor any time line on which to chart struggles against 5 the predatory structures. 6 Consider that few traditional media outlets have labeled the 7 invasion and occupation of Iraq as “racist.” That discussion of racial 8 predation in foreign policy was virtually dead in the fall 2008 U.S. 9 presidential debates between Republican contender John McCain 10 and his Democratic rival. Theoretically, McCain could still garner 11 white votes if he were to introduce the American citizenry to 12 general racism and the specific anti-Arab and anti-Muslim animus 13 embedded in U.S. foreign policy—a surreal scenario, given this 14 particular candidate and the attack campaign he chose to run with 15 Sarah Palin. Candidate Obama could give a stirring speech on the 16 topic and, likely, subsequently slide down and out of the polls 17 into political retirement. How he deploys his moral authority as 18 president remains to be seen—although Obama’s silence during 19 the December 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza that left 1,300 dead 20 registers as a moral absence. 21 Consider the public’s response to Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s severe 22 denunciations of the United States. First from his pulpit and 23 later from a media podium, Obama’s former pastor derided no 24 particular policy or official but an entire nation and its state 25 apparatuses. Before his coerced retirement, Wright served as 26 a marine and then in the medical corps for President Lyndon 27 Johnson and later as reverend of one of Chicago’s most influential 28 (celebrity) churches that addressed black poverty. Wright may be 29 one example where black achievement intersects with black misery 30 and genocide to produce an analysis from the dead zone. Obama’s 31 denunciations of Wright—without addressing the valid content in 32 his diatribes—exemplify how to avoid being dragged down into a 33 zone in confrontation with white supremacy. 34 Traditional media and pundits are more outraged by the assertion 35 of U.S. racism culminating in genocide than by the terrifying loss of 36 and damage to (civilian) life. What infuriates the mainstream is the 37 attribution of genocide to their democracy. Millions such as McCain 38 and Palin’s “pro-Americans” reject criticisms that their democratic 39 support—through representatives, deregulation of human rights, 40 xenophobia, and ignorance—fosters racial genocide. Despite the
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official lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, no one will 1 be impeached or forced to resign from office. Add to this outrage 2 the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, the death and maiming of 3 nearly one million people, and the displacement of millions more as 4 internal and external refugees. Mainstream Americans can forgive 5 a wealthy, conservative white man for condemning this practice 6 but will curse a black man and deride his party for its audacity to 7 condemn U.S. human rights violations. 8 The party spokesperson must have no historical antecedents 9 rooted in racial repression to remind a state of its foundation 10 in white supremacy. There must be no context that points to a 11 larger systemic crisis in humanity, no dead zone to drag the nation 12 into a place where its certainty in itself as “exceptional” might 13 collapse alongside its idealized identity. Not being McCain but 14 instead a carrier of racially fashioned historical antecedents such as 15 enslavement and antiblack genocide, Obama by necessity engages 16 in “intellectual subterfuge”: speak in generalities, announce the 17 ideological conflicts that led to a cultural crisis as over, and posit 18 new challenges to be collectively met by a nation that has not relin- 19 quished racial supremacy or imperial yearning. With the historical 20 antecedents of the conqueror, McCain will never charge the United 21 States with racial genocide. With the historical antecedents of the 22 conquered and as the ultimate symbol of black achievement, Obama 23 will never charge the United States with genocide. Such rhetoric 24 would end his political life. And, many would argue, what would 25 be the point? If the dead zone appears to share the traits of the 26 twilight zone, then this indeed would be a futile, politically suicidal 27 gesture. If, however, this speech act stimulated us to think critically 28 and politically in a world marked by violence and deception, then 29 this could work as a precondition for an imaginable future. But if 30 the pragmatic present constitutes the realistic future, why bother 31 to dream outside the framework of American fantasy? 32 Of course, political leaders, their parties, voters, the opposition, 33 and nonvoters discuss genocide. That painful topic is also studied 34 and debated in Africana thought, academia, media, and policy 35 forums. Yet the topic of genocide is usually restricted to foreign 36 policies and foreign countries or past histories from which we have 37 evolved. When it comes to contemporary expressions of repression, 38 histories are forgotten or curtailed, while the current context is 39 vaguely rendered. For example, in the United States, calls for 40
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1 reparations to offset enslavement and apartheid are thought of 2 as revisiting the past and as “divisive” and “counterproductive” to 3 “going forward.” Those who forget that past centuries of enslave- 4 ment and colonialism shape contemporary Africana crises reject 5 Harold Cruise while embracing John Mbiti: when it comes to black 6 disenfranchisement and exploitation, only the present day (villain) 7 matters. 8 Among nonvictims, genocide is an inflammatory subject because 9 there is no ideological or moral justification for the continuance 10 of a state that countenances genocide. The citizenry complicit in it 11 is considered to be aberrant to the civilized world. The charge of 12 genocide is the touchstone for allegiance or rebellion. A genocidal 13 state is not only immoral and unlawful, but it has regressed to 14 savagery. According to international law and the U.S. Constitution, 15 it must be disciplined and restored to the “rule of law.” 16 Few speak of U.S. policies as genocidal because the dominant 17 tendency is to analyze national policies as the byproduct of specific 18 administrations or political parties not as the consequence of a state 19 apparatus built on and seeped in racial animus. In the land of the First 20 Amendment, one is free to argue that, irrespective of the political 21 party, the state manifests an antiblack (or anti-Indigenous) animus 22 that promotes premature social and physical death for its most 23 marginalized peoples. However, in a land in which (neo)liberalism 24 and (neo)conservatism dominate intellectual thought, that argument 25 opens one up to being caricatured as paranoid or a buffoon—a 26 Jeremiah Wright with footnotes. The trajectories in Africana thought 27 are clearly delineated as they intersect and clash, and are repudiated 28 as they take leave of each other. Prominent Africana writers such 29 as Orlando Patterson and William Julius Wilson embody black 30 achievement and shoulder a discourse that normalizes and validates 31 the state by ignoring the context and its murderous excesses. One 32 can critique legislation, party politics, and elected leaders and the 33 legislative promises or debacles they sponsor without ever uttering 6 34 the incendiary word genocide. Harvard scholars have published tracts 35 on the word nigger, tracing the etymology and reflecting on emotional 36 connotations. Yet genocide, which has a much more fearful impact on 37 national consciousness and material well-being, is less rigorously 38 analyzed as part of the black condition. 39 If you don’t name it and shun the language, then you veil the 40 phenomenon. What is also obscured is state violence, as conven-
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tional language maintains that only dictatorships, not democracies, 1 practice racial genocide. Convention assumes that electoral democ- 2 racies have a failsafe mechanism—an enlightened and empowered 3 citizenry—that prevents their participation (except as liberators) 4 in genocidal practices. It is thus not surprising that those most 5 targeted by historical and contemporary state excesses are those 6 most likely to crash into its apparatuses: racially fashioned policing 7 and the prison industrial complex, homelessness, substandard 8 schools and housing, foster care for children marred by indiffer- 9 ence, inadequate oversight and resources, the poverty draft into 10 an immoral war, and “shoot-to-kill” edicts for (black) survivors of 11 New Orleans’s substandard levees designed by the Army Corps of 12 7 Engineers. It’s no wonder that some stumble at the intersection 13 where elites undertheorize contradictory conditions marked by 14 class and opportunity (or opportunism, more properly phrased) 15 as they are carried off by the trajectory of black achievement and 16 greater America’s expanding embrace. 17 In the United States, we are routinely asked to fall and genuflect 18 at the crossroads: to acknowledge the positive in U.S. and global 19 “race relations” without dwelling on the negative—the continuance 20 of racial repression and disenfranchisement. But 2008 is the first time 21 that we may likely involuntarily stumble from our own frustrated 22 desires and longings. For the ascendancy of a liberal black to the U.S. 23 presidency must mean something profound, if democracy’s future is 24 to culminate in a “golden age” and blackness is to have a place at the 25 table. If antiblack genocide remains a feature of that utopian democ- 26 racy, the profound becomes profoundly disappointing—although, of 27 course, not for everyone in a democratic state. Racial genocide has 28 been a historical fixture in Western democracies as citizens amassed 29 existential wealth (white privileges) and material wealth (capital and 30 militarism) through antiblack policies. But those realities tend to be 31 muted in public discourse, where blacks and other people of color 32 are invited to sit at the table of accumulation as national and global 33 narratives note progress. 34 Before the Democratic National Convention in August 2008 35 that would officially name him the Democratic standard-bearer 36 for president, Obama engaged in a whirlwind campaign tour. His 37 speech on July 24, delivered in Berlin, was historic and moving, 38 and it drew a multiracial mass of200,000. Obama charged those 39 gathered and viewers around the world to build a global “more 40
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1 perfect union” (reprising his March speech in Philadelphia on race, 2 in which he “cleaned up” his political gaffe about white bigotry and 3 antiblack voters). The presidential candidate repeatedly challenged 4 witnesses to act on behalf of humanity’s needs and political agency: 5 “Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the 6 blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning 8 7 to the words ‘never again’ in Darfur?’” Obama also referenced 8 the site at which he delivered his address as a historical context 9 that pointed toward the challenges of the future, the wall dividing 10 east and west, the significance of reconciliation and reconstruction 11 (among the Germans, within the former Soviet bloc, and within 12 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and between the North 13 and the South). 14 Given the targeted audience “globally” and in the United States— 15 the Obama campaign toured Europe and the Middle East, not 9 16 Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean —implicit in his address 17 was the defining metaphor of World War II, the “last good war.” The 18 Obama speech referenced the camps and contemporary genocide. 19 Germany, of course, is synonymous with genocide. Yet there was a 20 broader context that remained unexplored. With the exceptions of 21 its world wars, Nazism, and Stalinism, European imperial powers 22 have played out their genocidal intent on the geographies they 23 colonized and racially fashioned. The genocides that resulted were 24 distilled into World War II and Nazi Germany. Those crimes against 25 humanity led to the UN convention banning genocide: 26 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following 27 acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a 28 national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 29 30 (a) Killing members of the group; 31 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the 32 group; 33 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calcu- 34 lated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in 35 part; 36 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the 37 group; 38 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another 10 39 group. 40
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Proving “intent” is the challenge. Antidiscrimination cases are 1 difficult for plaintiffs to win because they must prove intent, that 2 is, that the violator intentionally discriminated against you because 3 of gender, race, sexuality, or religion. This takes place in a legal 4 framework. One must prove motive, even though the end result 5 should be determinative. Noting that not only blacks are harmed 6 by antiblack genocide, João H. Costa Vargas argues in Never Meant 7 to Survive: Genocide and Utopias in Black Diaspora Communities for a 8 radical critique: 9 10 The ongoing marginalization and premature, preventable death 11 of disproportionate numbers of Black persons in the African 12 Diaspora create the very conditions for the revolutionary trans- 13 formation of our societies. Anti-Black genocide generates the 14 imperatives of liberation and revolution. We either begin to 15 address, redress, and do away with what make possible the 16 multiple facets of anti-Black genocide, or We succumb to the 17 dehumanizing values that produce and become reproduced by 18 the systematic and persistent disregard for the lives of Afro- 19 11 descended individuals and their communities. 20 21 Because it is not the consequences that are punished but the intent 22 12 to harm, the burden of proof is placed on the victims. 23 President Ronald Reagan signed and enacted the genocide 24 treaty in 1988 (after it was amended by the U.S. Senate allegedly 25 in order to restrict its usage by Native American and African 26 American human rights advocates). Genocide is still considered to 27 be a phenomenon practiced by uncivilized, rogue states (i.e., non- 28 Western democracies); it is rarely thought of as applicable to the 29 13 United States. Seeking its “golden age,” the “postracial” America 30 obscures repressive realities; thus, it mutes and deflects a general 31 awareness of the full impact of racism on the lives of people. Sever 32 U.S. racism from its logical conclusion—genocide—and matters 33 14 become even more confusing and sadly satirical. 34 35 Electing a Black President in Postracial America 36 37 The anticipatory moment of relishing the “defeat” of racism through 38 a U.S. presidential election (followed globally, given U.S. imperial 39 40
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1 ambitions) renders Barack Obama the iconic harbinger of a hopeful 2 future. White candidates making the same antiwar speeches have 3 not amassed multiethnic followings throughout the world. Yet, 4 Obama delivers a mixed message, shaped by either racial codes 5 or racial indifference. In a 2008 speech seeking to shore up a 6 primary victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, he said, 15 7 “We are the party of [Thomas] Jefferson.” With his mixed-race 8 child-mistress and enslaved progeny bastards at home and rabid 9 antiblack policies in the nation’s capital and abroad, President 10 Jefferson teeters. Despite his insistence in Notes on the State of 11 Virginia that blacks are biologically inferior and unfit for democracy 12 (while Native Americans are only culturally inferior and, hence, 13 with proper training could be potential citizens), his political DNA 16 14 has established a black legacy. With a mixed-race “bastardized” 15 heritage and Ivy League education, Obama stands firm: knowing 16 Jefferson’s racial pathologies, he avoids denouncing them by exiting 17 the dead zone to embrace (presumably without satire) the founding 18 father and his followers. 19 It is unclear how the twenty-first century’s new multicultural 20 legacy will distance itself from Jefferson’s eighteenth-century 21 genocidal politics since multiculturalism refuses to name them. Is 22 the Jeffersonian legacy of racial domination amid racial commin- 23 gling failing, or is it our legacy of radical antiracist resistance that 24 falters? If the state has relinquished its genocidal policies, then 25 blacks should logically support it, since it promises the “future” 26 golden age of freedom from material want, fear, and repression. 27 If the state continues to practice antiblack racism, then what is 28 logical, as opposed to self-serving, in support of it, and what is 29 the moral relevancy of Africana thought that avoids this crisis? 30 Multicultural white supremacy can transform election-worthy 31 blacks into Jefferson’s romanticized “Native Americans”—the ideal 32 non-European politically conditioned to further the interests of 33 white elites. If this is the case, we’ve come full circle, despite the 34 specifics of policy proposals to bring about change. The Jeffersonian 35 ideological fervor and mandate for superior and inferior races 36 are unchallenged while progressive legislation is put forward by 37 multiracial liberal candidates. “Civil rights” becomes the conceptual 38 framework and lingua franca for redressing wrongs. It is a linguistic 39 taboo to name racial genocide; of course, if you cannot speak it, 40 you cannot abolish it—this, the most extreme, logical expression
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of racial repression. Progressive legislation is important, of course. 1 But how can it be sustained if it refuses to articulate context, to 2 point to the crossroads and its dead zone that we repeatedly revisit? 3 Civil rights, as opposed to human rights or antiracist legislation, 4 can be whittled away by successive administrations because the 5 default mechanism of white supremacy remains in place. How is 6 such legislation, or its promissory note, a “postracial” America, 7 sustainable if the general consciousness of the citizenry refuses and 8 fails to comprehend antiracist struggles? 9 Electioneering rather than sustainability is the driving force 10 in party politics. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, both 11 Clinton and Obama supported liberal agendas protecting “minority” 12 interests. Their campaign websites are studies in the use of language 13 to channel political literacy while garnering votes. Clinton offered 14 no rubric for “civil rights” under her “Issues” icon, although there 15 was a category for women. Under the subject of strengthening 16 democracy, her website requested that people submit online forms 17 to her “voter protection team” if they had “seen or heard of any 18 issues with voting or people trying to keep others from voting.” 19 17 The site was also in Spanish. In turn, on his website under 20 “Issues,” Obama has a civil rights category. His progressive agenda 21 included acts to strengthen civil rights enforcement, criminalize 22 job discrimination, expand the scope of hate crimes statutes, end 23 deceptive voting practices, end racial profiling, reduce crime 24 recidivism by providing “ex-offender” support, eliminate sentencing 25 18 disparities, and expand the use of drug courts. Obama’s hope for 26 reconciliation of various social sectors into a functional democracy, 27 a more perfect union, resides in some part in the ability to revive 28 the civil rights project, or at least its symbolism, in which “content 29 of character” rather than “color of skin” measures civic virtue. In a 30 September 28, 2007 speech in Washington, DC, at the historically 31 black Howard University, Obama introduced his “Plan to Strengthen 32 Civil Rights”: 33 34 The teenagers and college students who left their homes to 35 march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the 36 mothers who walked instead of taking the bus after a long day 37 of doing somebody else’s laundry and cleaning somebody else’s 38 kitchen—they didn’t brave fire hoses and billy clubs so that their 39 grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would still wonder 40
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1 at the beginning of the twenty-first century whether their vote 2 would be counted; whether their civil rights would be protected 3 by their government; whether justice would be equal and oppor- 19 4 tunity would be theirs. . . . We have more work to do. 5 6 The candidate evokes the movement, the trauma, the sacrifice, 20 7 and the commitments to justice. Then he calls for more: vote. 8 Because Obama is the solution. Do not simply “vote” in the civil 9 rights abstract—vote for him. The work to be done follows only 10 those avenues delineated within legal strategies: no protests, civil 11 disobedience, or lawbreaking in their various social and political 12 forms. The campaign defines the “problem” to be overcome as a 21 13 litany of injustices, which in the absence of specific language can 14 hardly be considered by the general public to be traceable to white 15 supremacy or predatory capitalism. Social problems and injustices 16 were delineated by the campaign, and promises were made to 22 17 solve those problems. Again, no context was given about how 18 racism and disenfranchisement became structural components of 19 our collective past, present, and future lives, and no mention was 20 made of Cruise’s “historical antecedents.” If mainstream, traditional 21 (white) voters desired antecedents and context, then these would 22 have been provided in order to garner their votes. But to provide 23 antiracist discourse in the absence of an expressed desire for it or in 24 the face of strong antipathy toward it would have effectively killed 25 the presidential campaign of the first major party black candidate. 26 Winners stay out of the dead zone so that they do not falter or fail 27 with the majority. Losers are another story. Of course, the victims 28 of genocide, such as communities in the Democratic Republic of the 29 Congo, suffer the greatest losses. 30 Continuing to confront the role of racial repression in genocide 31 becomes more complicated with the political desire and emerging 32 language for a “postracial” America. Of course, this penultimate 33 golden age can also be racist. Postracial is not antiracist; rather, it 34 is a desire to be perceived as nonracist, to not be awed by moral 35 and political failings. Postracial is supposedly a reference for being 36 beyond antiblack racism and beyond “black racism” (given the lack 37 of institutional power that blacks hold over whites and nonblacks, 38 “black racism” is more accurately defined as chauvinism). Postracial 39 is not synonymous with postwhite supremacy. Whiteness retains 40 its hegemonic normativity. The ability to decide to “go beyond
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race,” which in conventional language is not leaving whiteness 1 behind but leaving behind a blackness repressed by whiteness, is a 2 power that most nonwhites do not wield. Those elite blacks who 3 decide that discussions of white supremacy are anachronistic derive 4 their authoritative voice from the institutional power of white 5 patronage; they have no independence outside of that context to 6 issue such a call, for it is not borne out in public or social policy 7 23 or practice. 8 The postracial politics of the 2008 campaign was shaped in part 9 by the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. During Clinton’s 10 and Obama’s jockeying in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Reverend 11 Martin Luther King Jr. remained the premier symbol for a successful 12 national transition toward a postapartheid state now understood 13 to be “postracialist.” As Clinton and Obama sparred, each claimed 14 to be the heir to King’s legacy and their opponent to be a poser. 15 Invoking (inter)national transformation of race relations, which they 16 interpreted as based in elected officials or “grassroots” organizations, 17 neither referenced civil disobedience and uncivil and criminal acts 18 against apartheid and discrimination. Their observances suggested 19 the evolutionary movement toward a final destination, marked by 20 the progress from the apartheid and Jim Crow eras that preceded the 21 activism for black and Africana studies in the 1960s and the electoral 22 clout that has helped to create Barack Obama. 23 The racial-sexual constructs put forward in the postmovement 24 era acknowledge an entrenched black and Africana presence, but 25 one bound by its entertainment value to whites. In a February 21, 26 2008, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Daniel Henninger writes, “The 27 Democratic Party is undergoing the greatest seismic shift since 28 24 Bill Clinton came out of Arkansas in 1992.” Henninger lists the 29 names and ages of male black Democratic politicians that he views 30 as “cut more or less from the same mold”: Illinois Senator Barack 31 Obama; Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick; Newark Mayor 32 Cory Booker; Washington, DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty; and Harold 33 Ford Jr., a Tennessee politician. In a bipartisan spirit, Henninger 34 also lists prominent black Republicans: former Maryland Lieutenant 35 Governor Michael Steele and former Oklahoma Congressman J. C. 36 Watts complete his list. 37 These leaders follow in the wake of the “postracial” politics that 38 Henninger dates to The Cosby Show and its fictive heteronormative 39 25 upper-class family. The all-American black Huxtables supposedly 40
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1 ushered in the “postracial” politics that mark our present-day 2 encounters. President Reagan also cited the popularity of the show 3 with whites as indicating that the Civil Rights Movement was no 4 longer needed. Henninger, a Clinton supporter, seems to applaud 5 Obama, and his cohort group, as having moved blackness out 6 of the “other” category of pathology and racial resentment. He 7 writes: “Right now, Barack Obama is the most famous symbolic man 8 in America, and in one area of the nation’s life where symbolism 26 9 still matters. Is this enough to make someone president? No.” 10 The piece concludes by suggesting the true heirs of the King 11 legacy: “Barack Obama may be taking his country to a new place on 27 12 racial politics. His party’s politics looks like a higher mountain.” 13 For Henninger, the Democratic Party was synonymous with its 14 (then-)dominant leadership, the Clintons. Barack and Michelle 15 Obama, as a high-powered, highly successful American family who 16 “worked” for their wealth while placing their children’s needs as 17 central, are likely to be considered the “new” Huxtables by some 28 18 Americans. That appeal could help to derail old party politics. 19 One hundred eighty degrees removed from the Wall Street 20 Journal is the Black Agenda Report (BAR). The journal’s managing 21 editor, Bruce Dixon, writes in the February 20–26, 2008, issue: 22 “In this year of symbolic optimism, when a Black man is a leading 23 contender in the presidential race, as well as being a leading 24 recipient of contributions from Wall Street, from big insurance and 25 from military contractors, the need to measure and describe life 26 as it is actually lived by millions of African Americans has never 29 27 been greater.” Dixon references the economy and racially driven 28 policing and incarceration as they reflect the most impoverished 29 sectors (again a 180-degree turn from blackness or racial politics 30 embodied in the fictive Huxtables, the ultimate black achievement 31 narrative): “As recently as 1964, a majority of all U.S. prisoners 32 were white men. But since 1988, the year Vice President George 33 H. W. Bush rode to the White House stoking white fears with an ad 34 campaign featuring convicted Black killer and rapist Willie Horton, 35 the black one-eighth of America’s population has furnished the 30 36 majority of new admissions to its prisons and jails.” Here, incar- 37 ceration is not an afterthought or footnote but rather the “criminal 38 justice complex” is woven into the national political economy 39 and its racial politics. (The Washington, DC–based Sentencing 40 Project notes that the majority of drug consumers are white but
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the majority of those incarcerated are black or Latino because of 1 31 disparities in racial profiling, policing, and sentencing.) 2 The indicator of black well-being and, thus, the meaning of 3 politics are measured, in BAR’s estimation, by the most disenfran- 4 chised. As a result, readers encounter BAR’s continuing criticisms 5 of Obama due to the politician’s presentation of racial politics 6 (including his rhetorical embrace of Ronald Reagan, a bipartisan 7 move also criticized by Hillary Clinton) and his literal embrace 8 of white men, identified by BAR as the most racially reactionary 9 and conservative sector of American society. However, BAR does 10 not mention that black women are the fastest-growing population 11 among the incarcerated and the sector of society most at risk for 12 HIV/AIDS. (When NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill moderated the 2004 vice 13 presidential debates, she posed questions about black women and 14 HIV/AIDS to both Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John 15 32 Edwards; both candidates were ill-informed on the issue.) 16 The postracial politics of the presidential election, like the 17 postracial politics of the academy, will not be easily tethered to 18 a black liberation agenda. “Intellectual subterfuge” might permit 19 us to attempt to peacefully coexist with the invisible woman, that 20 is, to continue to profit from her presence in labor or service to 21 more dominant sectors. The Huxtables have provided a reassuring 22 fictional future that has more attraction than futuristic novelist 23 and MacArthur Grant recipient Octavia Butler’s damaged and 24 dangerous heroines. The Huxtables posit the lack of imagination 25 on the political landscape and so facilitate (white) “normalcy” 26 as oppositional to (colored) “pathology” projected onto an alien 27 blackness embedded in criminals, radicals, and anarchist-activists. 28 The political trajectories toward being mainstreamed suggest the 29 promise of the climax, one that in time will reward centuries of 30 struggle, even if the promise might be imaginary. It doesn’t matter 31 how brave we are. In the absence of conventional time that works 32 for us, it matters only that a community of scholars and activists 33 provides a container that holds us as we seek to confront bondage 34 without the promise of liberation. What seems most important 35 is our immediate experience to expand moments of possible 36 freedom through interrogation and critique of the conceptual, 37 political frameworks that constitute our constructive “past” and 38 promised “future” and foster the invisibilities that constitute our 39 blind spots. 40
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1 Conclusion: The Future of Africana Studies 2 3 Inspired by the multidimensional concept of genocide suggested 4 by Patterson and his collaborators in 1951, I [argue] . . . the 5 necessity of coming to terms with the deadly, often state- and 6 society-sanctioned, yet seldom overt contemporary campaigns 7 against peoples of African descent. Approached from various 8 angles, genocide allows us to understand seemingly disparate 9 phenomena as they relate to each other, contributing to the 10 continued oppression and death of Black people in Africa and its 11 diaspora. . . . [We require] a heuristic framework around which 12 we cannot only recognize but also combat the multiple forms that 13 anti-Black genocide has acquired in late capitalist polities. 14 —João H. Costa Vargas, “Genocide in the African Diaspora” 15 16 Remove the knife from the five-year-old’s throat. The universe 17 will take care of itself. 18 —Kofi Busia, Omega Institute, July 28, 2008 19 20 In The Black Jacobins, C. L. R. James remarks of historians, “They 33 21 write so well because they see so little.” What is often unspoken 22 and so unseen is the pervasiveness of violence. If genocide is 23 taken off the table for discussion, then there is no immediacy in 24 the struggle. Here’s the point: time does not exist, but genocidal 25 violence does. The golden age is American mythology. There is 26 no evolutionary future, only the immediate struggle. Resisting 27 violence is a mandate. If our writing suffers because we see more 28 than we can articulate, that’s fine. At least we tried. Residing in 29 the dead zone, at the nexus where the fight from violence meets 30 the deeper immersion within it, our only achievement will be to 31 stop fetishizing achievement and romanticizing or condemning 32 dysfunction and despair. The crossroads’ dead zone becomes a 33 threshold, a potential site for working for emancipation. 34 Crossing back and forth over the threshold, thought is freed 35 from a prevalent cultural drug, U.S. exceptionalism. Globally 36 exported as the deification of democracy abstracted from context, 37 U.S. exceptionalism is justified by some by money and militarism; 38 the more thoughtful point to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill 39 of Rights. Yet either rationalization posits the religious belief that 34 40 democracy is an evolutionary trek toward freedom. Given the
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Thirteenth Amendment, the convict lease system, and the modern 1 prison industrial complex, the United States has never known 2 35 democracy severed from captivity. Yet democracy is rarely contex- 3 tualized within systems (e.g., socialism, capitalism, consumerism, 4 or [multiracial] white supremacy). As a freestanding idealization, 5 it issues its own mandate: history must usher in its own golden 6 age. Thus, the training of a truncated political imagination begins. 7 U.S. exceptionalism positions party politics and the transcendent 8 political leader to overshadow the agency of genocidal survivors 9 and political resistance. Is there anything more exceptional than 10 a nation of white supremacy deigning to elect a black man as its 11 chief executive? 12 Hence, at the place where black achievement intersects with 13 black genocide, there is a void that elicits little analytical interest 14 among academic achievers. Most ignore the presence of the intersec- 15 tion, looking past the void with its supposedly obscure or muted 16 signals—there are no yellow, orange, or red flares to indicate national 17 black security threats—of state violence or state-incited genocide 18 in Western democracies. Thinkers see only what is intellectually 19 compatible with our paradigms, shaped and filtered by the dominant 20 ideologies of the “dominant culture” (the latter phrase used by 21 36 Jeremiah Wright elicited derision within mainstream media). 22 In Africana thought, some ask: How could a black or Africana 23 man ascend to the U.S. presidency while antiblack racism and 24 genocide flourish? Despite or because of George W. Bush’s 2000 25 presidency as a bequest from the U.S. Supreme Court following 26 felon disenfranchisement, racially driven intimidation at the polls, 27 and faulty voting machinery for impoverished neighborhoods, 28 people more clearly see the process of electing a progressive black 29 president in the United States. Most seem befuddled by the process 30 through which antiblack racism leads to genocide. In an era in 31 which a black man can be elected president in a non-African nation 32 founded on slavery and white supremacy, what is the meaning of 33 black genocide embedded in domestic and foreign policies, and how 34 37 might multiracial white supremacy mask that meaning? 35 American exceptionalism has infiltrated Africana thought. This 36 semantic infiltration shapes a discourse of entitlement. Americans 37 and African Americans, including the newly arrived immigrants 38 from Africa and the diaspora, are entitled to a future that appears to 39 look like the future that whites sought to craft under capitalism and 40
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1 racism and sexism—the “American dream.” In a democratic state, 2 the entitled are those (deserving) Americans and blacks, whose 3 coronation occurs through the electoral process. John Mbiti could 4 point out that such a concept of time (and space) is localized and 5 not universal (quantum physics and Vedanta philosophy concur). 6 Harold Cruise could warn that for African Americans to forget 7 historical antecedents—steeped in genocidal policies implemented 8 by a democratic state—would mean essentially the loss of our souls 9 if not our minds. But neither of these arguments has much impact 10 on politics in contemporary Africana thought. 11 The academy’s neoliberal mandate underscores black and Africana 12 studies as well as other critical studies (ethnic, women and gender, 13 queer, community engagement). Africana thought that circulates 14 as intellectual property is largely produced and disseminated 15 in university or college programs and departments, part of the 16 government or corporate sectors, or all of the above. Given the 17 endowments of elite colleges and universities, Congress has increas- 18 ingly questioned whether such schools deserve tax-exempt status. 19 Of course, state universities are extensions of the government and 20 are regulated as such. Africana studies and thought may function as 21 political parties in an academic environment with our own versions 22 of the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National 23 Committee, and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which 24 attempts to emulate the past victories of archconservatives and 25 reactionaries in the Grand Old Party. 26 Academics embedded in “political parties” (that is, political 27 agents operating only within the confines of systems dominated 28 by elites) often do not reject achievement or Mbiti’s “concept of 29 history moving forward towards a future climax.” In the absence of 30 an intellectual promise or progress culminating in tangible libera- 31 tion, there is no apparent (political) purpose or mission statement 32 for Africana thought, outside of gathering more data for those 33 dedicated to alleviating suffering, intellectual investigations, or 34 “opportunities” and career advancement. Grappling with the issue 35 of black genocide outside of a liberal framework is seen as the kiss 36 of death for career-minded academics. 37 The real and symbolic battles waged during the 2008 primaries 38 have spun out symbolic gestures and performances that captivate 39 a global audience and inspire loyal followers. Yet how do the loyal- 40
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ists—the new political class—perceive and respond to antiblack 1 genocide in all of its nuanced and blatant manifestations? 2 Sacrifices and struggles to create, institutionalize, and preserve 3 Africana studies would promise, one hopes, a future, stable ground 4 for further movement toward liberation. Yet we might be living 5 in a sci-fi novel, one in which—as in the works of Butler, whose 6 stumble on a Bay Area curb yielded yet another ancestor—we 7 find the convergence of the scientific and the imaginative, of the 8 empirical and the theoretical. All have the possibility of fashioning 9 freedom. Resisting party politics and postracial racism, Africana 10 thought may (re)invent itself, acknowledging a past that cannot be 11 fully celebrated, a present that cannot be adequately explained in 12 conventional terms, and a future that cannot be fully trusted to 13 promise anything like a utopia. Dystopia? As Butler’s work suggests, 14 dystopia is entirely possible. Yet in terms of liberation in the pursuit 15 of (re)invention, we shall find that it is impossible to adequately 16 contextualize any of this if, as Some of Us Are Brave asserts, the invis- 17 38 ible woman sitting squarely in the crossroads remains unseen. 18 Admittedly, this essay stumbles. The intersection is unlit. The 19 center, corners, curbs, and crossing lines are shadowed. In those 20 shadows reside presidential party politics and genocidal policies. In 21 full circle, “historical antecedents” offer both departure and arrival 22 points as we repeatedly cross our own past while projecting a real 23 and imagined future as critical thought radically invents meaningful 24 engagement. 25 26 Notes 27 28 1. These divergent lines intersect out of necessity. There is a shared 29 condition of “blackness” as alienated and suspect in a white-domi- nated state and society. The intersection is often jarring, for there 30 is no shared ideological narrative or political will to confront this 31 alienation. I do not assume that the reader agrees that U.S. policies 32 have historically promoted racial genocide. Perhaps, as a friend 33 and colleague has observed, only the “extreme Left” would use this 34 terminology. Even the Kerner Commission report on civil rights 35 and civil disturbances and riots, a report that would be considered 36 “radical” by today’s political norms, did not issue that charge. This 37 failure of recognition could be critiqued as part of the ideology of nationalism or as an expression of genocide itself: if it does not exist, 38 then we are innocents. 39 40
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1 2. William Patterson, ed., We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government 2 Against the Negro People (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951). 3 3. For analyses of U.S. conditions relevant to the UN definition of 4 genocide, see: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The 5 Re-enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War 6 II (New York: Doubleday, 2008); Dorothy E. Roberts, The Shattered 7 Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Dylan 8 Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. 9 Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); João H. Costa Vargas, Never Meant to Survive: Genocide and Utopias in 10 Black Diaspora Communities (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 11 2008); and Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History 12 of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the 13 Present (New York: Harlem Moon, 2008). 14 To those who disdain or refuse the term genocide, despite the 15 compatibility of black conditions with the standards of the UN 16 Convention on the Prevention and Elimination of Genocide, one 17 must ask, “What language would you use?” 4. For use of the term tragedy fatigue see Phil Mercer, “Abuse Rife at 18 Aboriginal Camps,” BBC, May 16, 2006, accessed June 1, 2006, 19 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4984986.stm. 20 5. Contradictory behavior of notables and celebrities who lecture on 21 the morality of the black mass but themselves have moral failings 22 reported in the press has been noted. 23 6. In Pavlovian moves for the electorate, U.S. presidents and lawmakers 24 have directed the focus on genocide onto international enemies, 25 using epithets such as “Hitler,” “Stalin,” or the “evil empire” during the Reagan administration, and the “axis of evil” in the G. W. Bush 26 administration’s battles with North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. 27 7. For additional information on these areas of social decline, see South 28 End Press Collective, What Lies Beneath: Race, Katrina, and the State of 29 the Nation (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007); Prison Policy 30 Initiative, accessed October 28, 2008, http://www.prisonpolicy. 31 org; and Dorothy E. Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare 32 (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 33 8. “Obama’s Speech in Berlin,” transcript, New York Times, July 24, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24text-obama. 34 html. See also “Transcript: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race,” National 35 Public Radio, March 18, 2008, accessed July 30, 2008, http://www. 36 npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88478467. 37 9. That mainstream news outlets such as the New York Times found the 38 Republican presidential candidate’s early tour of Latin America 39 puzzling and anticlimactic reveals how the global citizen remains 40 weighted with hierarchies of value.
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10. United Nations, “Convention on the Prevention and Elimination of 1 Genocide,” A/Res260 A (III), December 9, 1948, accessed November 7, 2008, http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/resins.htm. 2 11. Vargas, Never Meant to Survive, x. 3 12. Amari Sekou, a doctoral student, noted the following in a July 2008 4 e-mail: “Given that UN documents are fairly inaccessible to people, 5 the naming process of genocide, the evaluation of the investigation 6 of it, and the adjudication or punishment of it belong largely in the 7 hands of non-African elites.” Sekou critiques the need to be validated 8 by institutions and authorities that exclude nonelites: “The use of the 9 UN definition produces an air of officialness.” 13. Genocide is more clearly seen and more often addressed in the 10 African context, even if, as in the case of Rwanda, after the fact. 11 In racially fashioned global consciousness, Africa depicts a visceral 12 portrait of the trek off the golden path into hellish quagmire. 13 Celebratory democratic moments, such as the presidential elections 14 of Nelson Mandela (1992, 1996) and Thabo Mbecki (2000, 2004) 15 in South Africa may deflect from black mass poverty, misery, and 16 violence that remain entrenched. Propaganda informs that genocide 17 preceded the African National Congress’s entry into government but did not follow the ruling party into office. 18 14. Following the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, 19 the United Nations designated rape as a “war crime.” In Sudan, rapes 20 of girls, women, and boys and their mutilations or branding are part 21 of ethnic cleansing. 22 By expanding the scope for struggle rather than shrinking it in an 23 attempt to manage crises, the chaotic, unstructured nature of violence 24 reveals itself to a fuller extent. The UN “manages” genocide by having 25 an “acceptable” number of dead and displaced before rhetorical intervention is made; military intervention with UN peacekeepers, 26 if it happens at all, tends to occur well after the start of violence. 27 Exactly how does one count genocide? Situate antiblack genocide in 28 the global economy of arms trade speculation (e.g., China in Africa), 29 the destruction of global food markets, theft of natural resources and 30 labor, and the expansion of repressive penal industries? 31 15. “This primary season may not be over, but when it is we will have 32 to remember who we are as Democrats, that we are the party of 33 Jefferson and Jackson, of Roosevelt and Kennedy, and that we are at our best when we lead with principle, when we lead with conviction, 34 when we summon an entire nation to a common purpose and a higher 35 purpose.” “Transcript: Senator Obama’s Remarks in N.C.,” New York 36 Times, May 6, 2008, accessed May 8, 2008, http://www.nytimes. 37 com/2008/05/06/us/politics/06text-obama.html. 38 16. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Washington, DC: 39 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905). 40
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1 17. Hillary Clinton website, accessed November 4, 2008, http://clinton. senate.gov/issues/women/ and http://clinton.senate.gov/issues/ 2 civil. 3 18. Barack Obama website, “Civil Rights,” accessed November 6, 2008, 4 http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/civil_rights. 5 19. “Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: Howard University Convocation” 6 (speech delivered at Howard University, Washington, DC, September 7 28, 2007), accessed November 5, 2008, http://www.barackobama. 8 com/2007/09/28/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_26.php. 9 20. If party politics simplify narratives and “reality” is spun for electoral advantage and economic gain, then despite their differences ideo- 10 logues tow the same party line. Even the Republican and Democratic 11 Party elites have more in common than disenfranchised groups 12 seeking admittance. The Democratic National Committee’s failure to 13 contest voting irregularities in 2000 in Florida and in 2004 in Ohio 14 and a report that one out of seven black votes is routinely thrown 15 out suggest that increasing the voting rolls has more to do with 16 increasing (or, for Republicans, decreasing) the electoral advantage 17 of a particular party, not the expansion of black rights under white supremacy. 18 21. Obama’s campaign website highlighted progressive issues: “Pay Ineq- 19 uity Continues. . . . Hate Crimes on the Rise. . . . Efforts Continue 20 to Suppress the Vote. . . . Disparities Continue to Plague [the] 21 Criminal Justice System.” See Barack Obama website, http://www. 22 barackobama.com. 23 22. Obama’s campaign website listed problems and solutions; pledging 24 that the candidate would if elected president: strengthen civil rights; 25 “combat employment discrimination”; “expand hate crimes statutes”; and “end” deceptive voting practices and voter intimidation and racial 26 profiling. Barack Obama website, “Civil Rights.” 27 23. Racial and class biases are instrumental in U.S. arrests, sentencing, 28 and executions; the majority of offenders are white but the majority 29 of the incarcerated are not. 30 24. Daniel Henninger, “Obama and Race,” Wall Street Journal, February 31 21, 2008. 32 25. Ibid. 33 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 34 28. Michelle Obama’s more moderate language and visual images increas- 35 ingly evoke Claire Huxtable, whose demeanor is more suitable for a 36 black first lady. Zillah Eisenstein has written extensively on race, 37 feminism, and Michelle Obama. 38 29. Bruce Dixon, “African America—Mass Incarceration,” Black Agenda 39 Report, February 20–26, 2008. 40 30. Ibid.
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31. See the online Sentencing Project reports, http://www.sentencing- 1 project.org. 32. “Text of Cheney-Edwards Debate: Vice President and N.C. Senator 2 Clash in Cleveland,” CBS News, October 5, 2004, accessed October 3 10, 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/05/politics/ 4 main647570.shtml. 5 33. James, The Black Jacobins, x. 6 34. Christianity materialized as an instrument in imperialism as has 7 democracy. 8 35. See “Democracy and Captivity” chapter in this volume. 9 36. Wright’s angry “paranoia” and incivility is rarely viewed as a radical analysis of structural repression in U.S. imperial and racial policies. 10 Citing U.S.-sponsored terrorism as a possible trigger for retaliatory 11 violence is a reference to state violence: the Central Intelligence 12 Agency torture manuals and assassinations; School of the Americas’ 13 training of death squad leaders; covert funding of counterrevolu- 14 tionary paramilitaries and human rights violators. 15 37. For a discussion of “multicultural white supremacy,” see the work of 16 Jared Sexton. 17 38. Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black 18 Women’s Studies (New York: Feminist Press, 1982). 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 291291 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 18 5 6 Racism, Genocide, and Resistance 7 8 9 10 Genocide in the War Zones 11 12 Racism killed Malice Green, and if racism itself is not destroyed, 13 it will destroy our nation. It got Malice Green at night. It will 14 get you in the morning. 15 —Rev. Adams’s 1992 funeral eulogy for Malice Green, 16 beaten to death by Detroit police 17 18 19 Outside of a few communities, people rarely speak about racist 20 state murders in a language that allows one to understand and 21 mourn losses. Atrocities can inspire a truth telling competent 22 to critique and condemn racist violence. This truth telling most 23 often happens in eulogies at funerals and memorials. The rest of 24 the time, we usually hear and speak the semiliteracy of convention 25 shaping the dominant discourse on “race.” This literacy arises from 26 severing racism from its logical culmination in genocide, and the 27 referent for human atrocities to holocaust(s) commodified for mass 28 consumption. Resisting racist destruction and genocide requires 29 demystifying contemporary racism, genocide, and fascism, and 30 organizing to implement international rights conventions in the 31 United States. 32 33 Originally published in a slightly different form as “Racism, Genocide, and 34 Resistance: The Politics of Language and International Law,” in Marxism in the 35 Postmodern Age: Confronting the New World Order, ed. Antonio Callari, Stephen Cullenberg, and Carole Biewener (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 36 115–125. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Fred Hampton, Anna 37 Mae Aquash, Eleanor Bumpers, Yvonne Smallwood, Malice Green, Michael 38 Stewart, Ducle September, Chris Hani, and the countless remembered and 39 forgotten who died fighting racist violence. 40 293
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1 African and Native American activists have long organized 2 against genocide and human rights violations in U.S. domestic 3 and foreign policy. In 1951, the African American–ed Civil Rights 4 Congress petitioned the United Nations. With its document, 5 We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People, 6 it interpreted and promoted the language and implementation 7 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Elimination of 8 Genocide: 9 10 It is sometimes incorrectly thought that genocide means the 11 complete and definitive destruction of a race or people. The 12 Genocide Convention, however, adopted by the General Assembly 13 of the United Nations on November 9, 1948, defines genocide 14 as any killings on the basis of race, or in its specific words, as 15 “killing members of the group.” Any intent to destroy, in whole or 16 in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group is genocide 17 according to the Convention. Thus, the Convention states, 18 “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” 19 is genocide as well as “killing members of the group.” 20 We maintain, therefore, that the oppressed Negro citizens of 21 the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long 22 the target of violence suffer from genocide as the result of the 1 23 consistent, conscious, policies of every branch of government. 24 25 U.S. domestic genocidal policies, mirroring foreign policies 26 of racial imperialism, have historically focused on Native and 27 African Americans. The Senate delayed ratification of the Genocide 28 Convention to 1986 because Congress feared Native and African 29 Americans’ use of the Convention against the United States in 2 30 international courts. Currently, the International Indian Treaty 31 Council and the Freedom Now Party use the UN Convention 32 on Genocide to petition the UN and educate communities about 33 U.S. domestic repression: upward of 100 U.S. political prisoners, 34 the disproportionate imprisonment of African, Latin, and Native 35 Americans, and the torture in U.S. prisons. Activists and writers 36 also argue for the enforcement of the Convention, which prohibits 37 involuntary sterilization of a targeted population. This occurs under 38 the guise of “population control,” as sexism and racism shape U.S. 39 genocide to focus on Puerto Rican, African, and Native American 40
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women: For example, the U.S. Indian Health Service (IHS) of the 1 Bureau of Indian Affairs has involuntarily sterilized approximately 2 40 percent of all Native American women. Children are not exempt 3 from state racist policies: in 1990, the IHS inoculated Inuit children 4 with HIV-related hepatitis-B vaccine, which the World Health 5 Organization had banned; in 1993, the HIV-correlated hepatitis-A 6 vaccine was tested on Native Americans of the northern plains 7 3 reservations. 8 Implemented into law in 1988 with restrictive amendments, 9 the Convention on Genocide theoretically criminalizes and outlaws 10 such policies creating or inciting genocide. In practice, the United 11 States has consistently positioned itself as an outlaw state; its crimes 12 against humanity, targeting African and Native Americans for the 13 most severe repression, shape the daily life of these populations. 14 With African American infant mortality doubled that of whites, 15 by the mid-1980s, life expectancy for whites had increased (from 16 75.4 years to 75.4), while life expectancy for African Americans 17 4 had decreased (from 69.7 to 69.4 years). Native American life 18 expectancy on reservations is forty-five and forty-eight years for 19 5 men and women, respectively. Manning Marable’s grim assessment 20 of the possible impact of state policies on city residents applies to 21 those who live on reservations: 22 23 The direction of America’s political economy and social hierarchy 24 is veering toward a kind of subtle apocalypse which promises 25 to obliterate the lowest stratum of the Black and Latino poor. 26 For the Right will not be satisfied with institutionalization of 27 bureaucratic walls that surround and maintain the ghetto. The 28 genocidal logic of the situation could demand, in the not too 29 distant future, the rejection of the ghetto’s right to survival in 30 6 the new capitalist order. 31 32 Conventional language’s catchall term, racism, which is virtually 33 meaningless when severed from genocide, is more obscurantist 34 than analytical. Most language mystifies racism to disconnect it 35 from institutional white supremacy and genocide and privatize it 36 as personal behavior and speech. Dismembered language distracts 37 from the impact of racist state policies, since how we talk about 38 racism determines what we do about genocide. 39 40
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1 Racist Discourse, “White Rights,” and White Supremacy 2 3 How do you get to be the sort of victor who claims to be the 4 vanquished also? 5 —Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy 6 7 The race discourses of various ideologies distance racism from 8 genocide. The result of this distancing is that issues of identity 9 replace institutional analysis. Racialized identity and speech are 10 endemic to the United States. Yet, a focus on these alone deflects 11 from the political and economic aspects of structural racism and 12 white supremacy: Whether or not anything is publicly said, policies 13 perpetuate dominance and genocide. 14 Racism has come to be understood as “a form of discourse . . . that 7 15 can be effectively blocked by means of linguistic taboos.” Perversely, 16 as racial epithets become taboo, so does antiracist terminology: 17 “race” supplants “racist”; “multiculturalism” and “race relations” 18 supplant “antiracism” in the language of conservatives and progres- 19 sives alike; reformist policies such as affirmative action (“quotas”) 20 are denounced as “polarizing” and “antidemocratic.” 21 The absence of racial epithets notwithstanding, supremacist 22 language and racial mythology inspired the electoral campaigns 23 of neo-Nazi David Duke and former presidents Ronald Reagan 24 and George Bush. All shared the rhetoric of European neofascist 25 movements, that is, the language of “white rights” and the redress of 26 “white victimization.” Neofascists’ denunciation of “white victimiza- 27 tion,” allegedly stemming from “black racism” and equity programs, 28 proves frighteningly compatible with the language of conservatives, 29 moderates, and progressives. “White rights” provides the ideological 30 ground for neoconservatives to advocate, and neoliberals to ignore, 31 genocidal policies. The ascent from rightist to leftist racism is not 32 as steep as one would like to imagine. 33 For example, in the “Whiteness” issue of the Village Voice, Slavoj 34 Zizek offers an interpretation of Malcolm X that could allow for 35 some to argue against whites actively accepting responsibility for 36 white supremacy: “Only by acknowledging that, ultimately, they 37 can do nothing, that the emancipation of African Americans must 38 be their own deed, only by renouncing the false self-blame of 39 whites, which conceals its exact opposite, patronizing arrogance, 40 can whites actually do something for African American emancipa-
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8 tion.” Yet African Americans are not a politically monolith group; 1 outside a multiracial coalition they could not mount a successful 2 struggle against white supremacy. From the abolitionists (such as 3 John Brown) to the freedom riders to the activists in solidarity 4 with the Panthers and other antiracist militants, the struggle has 5 always been interracial with whites playing a critical role, although 6 also criticized for attempting to usurp leadership roles. In the same 7 Voice issue, Tikkun’s editor Michael Lerner wrote “Jews Are Not 8 White”; without differentiating between Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or 9 Ethiopian Jews, or referring to the complicity of non-WASPS in 10 white supremacy, he argues that multiculturalism has become 11 12 the tool of an elite of minority intellectuals seeking to establish 13 themselves inside an intellectual world that has too long excluded 14 them. . . . Jews must respond with an equally determined 15 insistence that we are not white, and that those who claim we are 16 and exclude our history and literature from the newly emerging 17 9 multicultural canon are our oppressors. 18 19 Here, few other than Aryans qualify as members of a mythic construc- 20 tion of “whiteness.” In the face of “blackness” or presence of blacks, 21 Jews would not self-identify as black, although propaganda of Euro- 22 pean Jews as “deficient” in whiteness fuels anti-Semitism, which is 23 not identical to racism, or antiblack racism. White supremacy accom- 24 modates non-Aryan “whites” in Israel and Palestine, Southern Africa, 25 and throughout the Americas. The mystification of racism promotes 26 a conventional language that, with increasing aggressiveness, argues 27 for white rights under white supremacy. The fundamental state and 28 white right is not to be held responsible for racial oppression. The 29 ultimate white right is to claim to be victimized by those resisting 30 being targeted for genocide. 31 Ethnic “minorities” lack institutional or state power to dominate 32 dominant ethnic groups. Racism is not real and alleged ethnic 33 chauvinism. Oppressive state hierarchies exist so the critical 34 distinction between chauvinism and racism must be maintained. 35 Transforming odious ethnic chauvinism into a colorized version of 36 white supremacy—which is the only global racialized oppression 37 known for half a millennium—trivializes white supremacy. 38 Colonized groups are granted the equal opportunity of being 39 labeled “ethnic oppressors” or “reverse racists” when a false equality 40
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1 projects illusions of domination that deflect from real structures 2 of oppression. This false illusion of domination, by fictionalizing 3 state racism and complicitous populations, rationalizes an otherwise 4 illogical concept: red, black, brown, or yellow “racists” or racial 5 oppressors within a white supremacist state. Only when racism is 6 severed from genocide does one argue that oppressed ethnic groups 7 can implement policies creating racism and anti-Semitism. Here, 8 denigrating structural critiques elevates debates of ethnic identity 9 and innocence to degrade struggles against domestic genocide. 10 11 Memory and Meaning 12 13 The present political chaos is connected with the decay of 14 language. 15 —George Orwell, Politics and the English Language 16 17 However impossible it is to talk about racism meaningfully without 18 discussing genocide, it is equally impossible to speak with moral 19 opprobrium of genocide without reference to fascism. Genocide’s 20 meaning stems from the tribunals following the Nazi atrocities 21 of World War II. Constructed as the antithesis and anathema to 22 Western democracy and civilization, the concept has great political 23 and ethical weight, which has rarely been brought to bear on the 24 United States. The label “fascist” is even more infrequently applied 25 to U.S. policies. Like most states, the U.S. denies that its policies 26 are racist, with genocidal or neofascist consequences. However, 27 it uses both terms in interventionist rhetoric to mobilize civilian 28 support (e.g., for the bombings of Panama and Iraq, George Bush 29 referred to Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein as Hitler-like 30 personas or “fascists”). 31 The term “fascism” is usually limited to specific historical events 32 in Europe, leaving unexamined the phenomenon of fascism and 33 neofascist aspects in state racism. Describing “fascism” as “a system 34 of political, economic, social and cultural organization,” Noam 35 Chomsky rejects conventional restrictions: 36 37 If we want to talk about [fascism] reasonably we have to disas- 38 sociate it from concentration camps and gas chambers. There 39 was a fascism before there were extermination camps. . . . From 40 a socio-cultural point of view, fascism meant an attack on the
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ideals of the Enlightenment . . . on the idea that people had 1 natural rights, that they were fundamentally equal, that it was 2 an infringement of essential human rights if systems of authority 3 10 subordinated some to others. 4 5 Chomsky’s argument demystifies fascism as a distant evil; yet 6 it does not acknowledge that the Enlightenment ideals of the 7 civilized, rational mind were (are) themselves premised on racism. 8 The European Enlightenment’s construction of the Western liberal 9 individual as the standard for civilized humanity concurred with 10 its reconstructing those enslaved or colonized by Europeans 11 with an essentialist inferiority. This worldview placed and places 12 “the colonized beyond the liberal equation of universal freedom 13 and equality by rendering them in racist terms as qualitatively 14 different. . . . Racism was, in short, basic to the creation of 15 11 liberalism and the identity of the European.” The Enlightenment 16 legacy dulls recognition of the pervasiveness of racism’s influence, 17 just as the language of denial and rhetorical opposition hinder 18 radical resistance to racism. 19 Given the racialization of the value of human life as an Enlight- 20 enment legacy in Europe and European settler states, and the 21 narcissism of white supremacy, the presence of humanity, and 22 abhorrence over its loss, is based on “whiteness,” constructed 23 as European. (This is reflected in Western European and U.S. 24 indifference to the genocide of Bosnian Muslims as the “Other” 25 Europeans.) It is difficult then to assess the conventional meanings 26 of genocide within the context of state and social constructions of 27 Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies as the referent for memory and 28 meaning concerning racist atrocities. 29 The 1993 dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 30 Washington, DC legitimizes the historical reality of Nazi Germany’s 31 genocidal policies against Jews, which an estimated one-fifth of 32 12 the U.S. population denies. Yet, the Museum, the state, and 33 corporate donors promote a consciousness in which this tragedy, 34 abstracted from historical, concurrent, and contemporary geno- 35 cides, manifests as the only real expression of genocide. No national 36 poll is likely to be conducted to see what percentage believes 37 Indigenous and African holocausts happen(ed) in the Americas. 38 The national museum, dedicated to preventing future holocausts, 39 with no mention of American genocides or U.S. national racism 40
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1 and anti-Semitism, valorizes the U.S. government and ignores its 2 genocidal policies. It calls us to awaken to, or to be anesthetized 3 by, the horrors of holocausts as past “events,” occurring outside of 4 this nation, which is now reconstructed as the protector against 5 genocide. The contradictions of the U.S. national museum suggest 6 that the spectator was never intended to be an actor: 7 8 [The museum narrative] suggests an outcome that isn’t really 9 possible. . . . It strains toward completeness and closure and 10 understanding; these dramatic reassurances are evoked, but never 11 satisfied. Except to the extent that the museum hints at a moral 12 to the story: American democracy. Press materials explain, “the 13 charter of the Museum is to remind visitors of the importance of 14 democratic values and to underscore our national commitment 15 to human rights.” On the way out of the exhibit one practically 16 walks into a wall bearing the seal of the United States. Arched 17 over the eagle and “E Pluribus Unum” are the words “For the 13 18 dead and the living we must bear witness.” 19 20 Bear witness to what? The German holocaust is presented as “a 21 discourse, a representation forever being deconstructed, a spectacle, 22 an industry” that promises comforting closure to and containment 23 of human barbarism and tragedy: “The Nazis came to power, 14 24 committed atrocities, and were defeated. The end.” Whoever 25 tells this particular story omits information on collaborators and 15 26 contemporaneous European genocides. Collective memory of 27 selective holocausts, remembered in fragmented fashion, reveals 28 the depoliticizing aspects of race language: The language of the 29 horrified spectator is not necessarily the language of the antiracist 30 activist. “Identification” through viewing a spectacle, no matter how 31 horrific, does not necessarily lead to analysis, moral commitment, 32 or political organizing. Ongoing genocidal practices diminish before 33 the symbolic, as national memory is shaped more by marketing 34 than by regret for racist policies and philosophies that (inevitably) 35 culminate in genocide. 36 State-constructed memory and meaning obstruct confronting 37 racism as “genocide.” Calls to consciousness, relying on mystified 38 and Eurocentric constructions of humanity and suffering, are 39 conditioned by the surrealism and hypocrisy of regret. With the 40 loss of European life as the only common and binding referent
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for atrocities, no conventional language denounces the genocide 1 of Native and African Americans as inherently meaningful and 2 significant, with its own moral and political value. To the extent 3 that resistance is tied to this language, Native, African, and Euro- 4 pean American writers use the German Nazi atrocities (as the 5 recognized referents for “holocaust” and “fascism”) to make U.S. 6 genocidal practices “meaningful.” 7 8 Law and Resistance 9 10 First the law dies and then people die. 11 —1993 sign in Solingen, Germany, protesting neo-Nazi 12 murders of five Turkish girls and women; and parliament’s 13 amending the constitution to restrict asylum for foreigners 14 15 To prevent atrocities, we are told, we have law. U.S. constitutional 16 law gave us slavery, broken Indigenous treaties, suppression of 17 political dissent, codified sexism and homophobia, and opened 18 doors for monopoly capitalism. In addition, constitutional law, as an 19 Enlightenment project, exists within a worldview that posits “law’s 20 innocence,” as law first “marks out the areas” within which racism is 21 16 allowed to operate legally, and then rationalizes its operation. 22 The limitations of constitutional law stem from its malleability 23 by dominant elites and structures that define rights and their 24 enforcement, and a universalizing Western worldview excluding 25 the contributions to law of traditional Native American and African 26 cosmologies. These limitations also shape the frailties of interna- 27 tional law. However, the language of UN conventions provides 28 specific norms to address the classism, racism, and sexism of U.S. 29 constitutional law, oppressive policies, and obscurantist language. 30 Understanding that law in itself is insufficient for political change, 31 activists organize for the implementation of international human 32 rights conventions, working for the language of the conventions as 33 an educational and political strategy to resist genocidal policies, by 34 expanding and redefining the conventional concept of rights and 35 entitlements within the United States. 36 Although the conservative nature of the U.S. Supreme Court 37 makes the enforcement of conventions unlikely, according to the U.S. 38 Constitution’s “supremacy clause,” treaties are part of the “supreme 39 law of the land,” and preempt national law (just as federal law prevails 40
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1 over state laws). Calling for the enactment of treaties challenges U.S. 2 foreign and domestic policies. For example, the Convention on the 3 Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid supersedes 4 the weak Congressional bills and prevents further U.S. support for 5 the destabilization of Southern Africa. The Geneva Conventions 6 (1949) and Nuremberg Principles war crimes or “crimes against 7 humanity,” covering the treatment of military, civilians, and political 8 prisoners during times of war, would criminalize CIA-directed/U.S.- 9 funded contra wars and internal, domestic wars waged against U.S. 10 activists. 11 When the United States signed the UN Charter it agreed to 12 uphold: “equal rights and self-determination of peoples . . . higher 13 standards of living, full employment . . . universal respect for, 14 and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for 17 15 all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” If 16 accountable to that Charter, the United States would discontinue in 17 the 1990s its policies of the 1980s, during which it spent approxi- 18 mately $1 billion a year on the Pentagon and engaged in covert 19 operations to destabilize governments and liberation movements. 20 Also, if international law prevailed, there would be a conventional 21 understanding of the criminality of the U.S.-dominated financial 22 institutions, which structure economic exploitation so that, for 23 example, each year African, Caribbean, and Latin American nations 24 transfer $20 billion or more to their historic colonizers, more than 25 they receive in aid and loans; 14 percent of the world’s popula- 26 tion consume 70 percent of its resources; and an estimated half 18 27 million young children die. The Charter would remand domestic 28 “austerity” programs in which millions live below a whimsically 29 set poverty line, and over 1 million are estimated to be homeless; 30 African Americans are poorer today than twenty-one generations 31 ago; two out of three adults in poverty are women; and women 32 of color are twice as likely to be poor as white women. The 33 enforcement of human rights law would decrease the number of 34 war zones. 35 The Charter and other conventions also prohibit state repression, 36 illegal surveillance and imprisonment, increasing police powers 37 through the U.S. preventive detention law, the 1984 Bail Reform 38 Act, and the criminalization of radical political dissent. It also 39 makes illegal “The Federal Violence Initiative,” which criminalizes 40 an entire population. Approved by the National Mental Health
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Advisory Council, the “Initiative” is federally funded “to identify 1 at least 100,000 inner city children whose alleged biochemical and 2 genetic defects will make them violent in later life. . . . Treatment 3 will consist of behavior modification in the family, special ‘day 4 19 camps,’ and drugs.” 5 Various organizations seek the enforcement of the conventions 6 and Charter as the language of rights in the United States. At the 7 1985 UN Conference on the Decade on Women in Kenya, the 8 Women’s Coalition for Nairobi, organized by U.S. Women for 9 Racial and Economic Equality, obtained over 2,000 U.S. delegates’ 10 signatures on a petition calling for the U.S. government to obey 11 the UN conventions and Charter. The petition demanded nuclear 12 disarmament; equal pay and full employment; full rights for 13 undocumented workers; “quality of life measures” to eliminate 14 economic, racial, and sexual violence and discrimination; quality 15 reproductive choice and child care; and aid to women in indepen- 16 dence struggles in Southern Africa and the Middle East. In 1986, 17 Marcia Walker, Mayor Pro-Tem, and Kathleen P. Salisbury, City 18 Clerk, signed ordinance No. 2807 of the Burlington, Iowa City 19 Council to bring the city’s human rights ordinance into compli- 20 ance with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 21 20 Racial Discrimination. In 1993, New York Assemblyman’s Roger 22 Greene formed an independent party, “The Children First Party,” 23 based on the UN conventions on the rights of children, to focus 24 on legislation dealing with children’s needs and rights. Also, in 25 1993 the New York–based Center for Constitutional Rights used 26 international law in arguing its case for Diana Ortiz, the U.S. nun 27 tortured and raped by U.S.-funded death squads in Guatemala. 28 29 30 Conclusion 31 32 Racism in U.S. foreign and domestic policy culminates in genocide. 33 The inability of conventional language to confront the devaluing 34 and destruction of human life based on white supremacy creates 35 a silence around U.S. “race wars” and struggles for survival and 36 liberation. The reduction of “racism” to speech, social manners, or 37 the incivility of aberrational minorities ignores state racist violence 38 and the massive increase in white supremacist hate group activities. 39 Rendering racism an abstraction and its attendants, genocide and 40
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1 fascism, social fictions, racialized language’s obscurantism tran- 2 scends ideology and ethnic, class, and gender identity. By rejecting 3 this language, activists create, with international human rights 4 conventions, a literacy in political and moral language adequate 5 to convey and confront the devastation of genocidal policies. 6 Demystifying racialized speech and organizing to implement human 7 rights treaties as “law,” simultaneously enforceable for national and 8 international communities, might be our most important forms of 9 resistance to racism as genocide. 10 11 Notes 12 1. William Patterson, We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against 13 the Negro People—A Petition to the United Nations (New York: Civil 14 Rights Congress. 1951), xi. 15 2. Francis A. Boyle. “The Hypocrisy and Racism Behind the Formulation 16 of U.S. Human Rights Foreign Policy,” Social Justice 16, no. 1 (1989): 17 71–93. 18 3. Ward Churchill, “Crimes Against Humanity,” Z Magazine 6, no. 3 19 (March 1993), 24. 20 4. National Urban League, 1998 State of Black America (New York: National Urban League, 1988). 21 5. Churchill, “Crimes Against Humanity,” 46. 22 6. Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: 23 South End Press, 1982), 253. 24 7. Carl Freedman, “Louisiana Duce: Notes Toward a Systematic Analysis of 25 Postmodern Fascism in America.” Rethinking Marxism 5, no. 1 (Spring 26 1992): 19–31. 27 8. Slavoj Zizek, “The ‘Theft of Enjoyment,’” Village Voice, May 18, 1993, 28 31 9. Michael Lerner, “Jews Are Not White,” Village Voice, May 18, 1993, 29 34. 30 10. David Barsamian, “Information Control and the State: An Interview 31 with Noam Chomsky,” Radical America 22, no. 2–3 (1993): 27–39. 32 11. Peter Fitzpatrick, “Racism and the Innocence of Law,” Anatomy 33 of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of 34 Minnesota Press, 1990), 249. 35 12. Alisa Solomon, “An American Tragedy? The Holocaust Museum Shapes 36 Up for Domestic Consumption,” Village Voice, May 11, 1993. 13. Ibid., 35. 37 14. Christopher Simpson, Blowback: The First Full Account of America’s 38 Recruitment of Nazis, and Its Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign 39 Policy (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988), 36. 40
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15. Solomon, “An American Tragedy?” 36. 1 16. Fitzpatrick, “Racism and the Innocence of Law,” 250–251. 17. Article 55, United Nations Charter. 2 18. UNICEF, State of the World (New York: United Nations, 1988). 3 19. Center for the Study of Psychiatry, The Federal Violence Initiative 4 (Bethesda, MD: Center for Study of Psychiatry, 1992). 5 20. Boyle, “The Hypocrisy of Racism.” 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 305305 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 19 5 6 All Power to the People! 7 8 Arendt’s Communicative Power in a Racial Democracy 9 10 Introduction: The Search for (Color-Blind) Power 11 12 Hannah Arendt’s innovative, liberal political thought provides 13 insights into the complexities and contradictions of the world’s 14 premier democracy, its racialized practices and policies, and its 15 mythologized status. Derived from personal experience as well as 16 political practice and theory, Arendt’s theory of power posits that 17 it is neither force, domination, nor oppression; power is collective 18 action for a common ideal rooted in freedom. A German Jew who 19 survived Nazi genocidal campaigns during World War II, Arendt 20 fought in the French Resistance and saw her mentors and friends 21 Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger come to their own realizations 22 about power, community, and violence: Jaspers was persecuted 23 by the Nazis; Heidegger became one. Her adopted country, the 24 United States, offered Arendt the space and platform to advocate 25 for the return of a mythologized democracy, the Athenian polis, in 26 order to valorize and solidify American democracy (a bourgeois 27 democracy, one which functions as empire). Yet, this revival reifying 28 rigidly distinct spheres of governance/domination fails to include 29 a sustained critique of institutional racism and racialized exclusion 30 and domination in her host nation. 31 Arendt’s theory of power as communication rather than domina- 32 tion is based on the division of space into the non- or prepolitical 33 1 private realm and the political public realm. Such a division 34 engenders power as communication, according to Arendt, for the 35 36 Originally published in a slightly a different form as “‘All Power to the 37 People!’: Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Communicative Power in a Racialized 38 Democracy,” in Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy, ed. Robert Berna- 39 sconi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 249–267. 40
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1 private realm “frees” inhabitants of the public realm from labor and 2 work, biological and material necessity. She appears not to see that 3 her idealized political state, the Aristotelian polis, subverted and 4 undermined power and politics by oppressing the household. With 5 the polis of ancient Greece as her model for democratic power, 6 Arendt ignores the fact that enslavement and economic exploitation 7 and forced relegation to the “powerless” private realm enabled 8 an Athenian elite (of propertied males) to practice democracy. 9 Subjugation constructed a restrictive public space dedicated to the 10 ideal of power as communication, reason, and persuasion, a site 11 advocating freedom but built on oppression. The practice of power 12 as communication by an elite citizenry predicated on the enslave- 13 ment and exploitation of the majority (women, children, men) is 14 the historical reality of the United States. This historical legacy (of 15 genocide, slavery, and imperialism) has profound implications for 16 political power, freedom, and community. Although Arendt shares 17 with the Black Panther Party, a black antiracist Marxist militant 18 organization created in 1966, a populist mandate—all power should 19 reside with the people—she is much more restrictive about who 2 20 constitutes “the people.” 21 Binary opposition to designate superiority/inferiority and 22 normalcy/deviancy as biologically inscribed is common in a 23 racialized democracy; political speech routinely attributes crimi- 24 nality, deviancy, corruption, and pathology to “the nonwhite” 25 or non-European. The ultimate political binary is that of the 26 civilized/savage. In binary opposition, antiblack racism has played 27 a critical historical role in rationalizing economic, social, and 28 political hierarchies. Arendt’s binary divisions, adopted from 29 the polis, mask racism (which was not the foundation of slavery 30 in ancient Greece) by concealing the private realm of domestic 31 service, field labor, and child rearing as the designated work for 32 racialized peoples (and women). Reproducing the split between 33 the public and private realms as necessary for the manifestation 34 of true power, her uncritical embrace of polarities and hierarchies 35 promotes elitism based on subordination. With racism as such a 36 persistent and pervasive feature of American democracy, polarities 37 and hierarchies become “naturalized.” The dualism to which she 38 subscribes dismisses the political significance of the “private realm” 39 and the bodies contained and policed there, allowing the personified 40 public body to appear as both representative and universal (with
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little mention of the homogeneity of its appearance—propertied 1 males racialized as white). The political person—naturalized and 2 universalized as affluent, masculine European (or some approxima- 3 tion thereof)—shapes Arendt’s color and gender-blind analyses. 4 Her model is premised on an inequality marked by assumptions of 5 biologically determined superiority/inferiority; this model impedes 6 critiques of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, racial domination, 7 and state violence. 8 State violence (through the laws, the police, the military) 9 practiced in the “private” realm shapes the practice and sites of 10 power in the public realm but also incites communicative power 11 and democratic action among those resisting oppression and exclu- 12 sion from governing. The practice of voting disenfranchisement 13 of African Americans through bureaucracy (poll tax), violence 14 (imprisonment), and terror (lynching and/or police brutality) 15 also suggests that the private realm was never truly understood in 16 the United States as a site void of the practice of politics. Hence, 17 political and state interventions in the private realm (really realms, 18 given the multiple sites of political exile household, factory, field, 19 prison—which overlap and reside within each other) by governing 20 elites to quell rebellions, from Nat Turner to the Black Panther 21 Party, were not merely law-enforcement responses to criminality. 22 Although the state represented them as such to claim that it 23 has/had no political trials, political prisoners, or political execu- 24 3 tions, these were political maneuvers to reinforce and segregate 25 political space and governance. Native and African Americans have 26 historically been immersed in distinctions between domination 27 and democratic power for freedom and community (see the slave 28 narratives of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, or the memoirs of 29 antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells). Collective responses to enslave- 30 ment, segregation, and imprisonment were infused by discussions 31 and practices concerning violence, power, and liberation during 32 the time of Arendt’s writings on civil disobedience, violence, and 33 revolution in the 1960s. 34 Any of these events, seriously studied for the exercise and 35 contradictions of power and violence, might have profoundly altered 36 Arendt’s allegiance to the state and her belief in its rehabilitation. 37 None of these events merited much attention or consideration 38 from her, perhaps because these political agents had already been 39 delegated prepolitica1 or criminalized roles, and their places of 40
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1 power and communicative interaction—rural Southern black 2 communities, impoverished urban black neighborhoods, and 3 prisons whose populations would become increasingly racially 4 determined—had been designated as nonpolitical sites. 5 Action within the private realm to challenge public power 6 and domination exercised (by U.S. law and police) in the public 7 realm to manage or control the private realm and dissent are 8 phenomena shaped by race and repression. Ignoring the historical 9 and contemporary specificities of this democracy and its racialized 10 state violence and dominance allows Arendt to construct a theory 11 of power that floats freely above a foundation mired in racially 12 fashioned domination. A clearer vision requires that one review 13 what Arendt’s political thought omits: major trajectories shaping 14 the understanding and practice of power in the United States. 15 During the Civil War, which initially was not fought to abolish 16 slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the 17 Emancipation Proclamation) codified rather than ended slavery, 18 proclaiming it legal for those duly convicted of a crime. Following 19 the Civil War, when private ownership of humans was banned, the 20 Thirteenth Amendment’s legalization of slavery for those convicted 21 of crimes fueled the convict lease system—that is, the state owned 22 humans. Under this joint venture between the state and private 23 industry, African Americans were criminalized (crimes included 24 economic competition with whites and exercising political power, 25 along with theft or harm to people) and worked to death at faster rates 26 than they had been under slavery. The prison replaced the plantation, 27 and public ownership of racialized humans meant a renewal supply of 28 labor through police sweeps. Over the decades, Slave Codes became 29 Black Codes and, later, the basis for Jim Crow segregation, refining 30 binary divisions and the dichotomy between dominance and power 31 embedded in a racial state. Government policies/legislation and social 32 practices worked to politically and economically disenfranchise a 33 racialized domestic realm (populated by Native, African, and Latin 34 Americans) and a racialized foreign realm qua domestic realm popu- 35 lated by Indigenous peoples, Africans, Latin Americans, and Asians 36 (hence the appearance of a metaparadigm in which U.S. foreign and 37 domestic policies seem to mirror each other in terms of the treatment 38 of the non-European as colonized/dependent Other). 39 Diminished power became naturalized as part of the American 40 political landscape because of the foundation on which the (Athenian
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polis) American democracy was built: self-governance predicated 1 on the rule of other humans (constructed as inherently inferior). 2 Democratic power, which extended to collective control of the 3 state, was never intended for all of the people. Responding to the 4 trajectory of racism that stems from slavery through the convict 5 prison lease system through Jim Crow back into the prison indus- 6 trial complex, despite desegregation legislation and integrationist 7 policies, suggests that the militant assertion “All Power to the 8 People!”—for the Panthers, governing power to the racialized 9 mass, the “lumpen,” workers, laborers, the unemployed, and the 10 criminally employed—sought to destroy that trajectory. Arendt’s 11 liberalism, which appears not to have considered that the Athenian 12 polis and its progeny might in fact be Trojan horses, rejected 13 such antiracist radicalism. Challenging the fundamental flaw of 14 democracy, as we know it, antiracist radicals (among whom the 15 Panthers of the late 1960s and early 1970s came to epitomize the 16 uncompromised defiance of the racially determined “household” or 17 private realm) demanded liberation through revolutionary change 18 in U.S. domestic and foreign policies. 19 This struggle to expand and realize communicative power 20 and construct a nonracial democracy is as old as the nation- 21 state. Arendt’s personal observations of racism in the United 22 States during the 1950s and 1960s, the decades of the Southern 23 Civil Rights Movement and the rise of black power movements, 24 centered on Jim Crow segregation and racist terror. The Civil 25 Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s transformed American 26 politics and inspired mobilization among and between various 27 sectors of the politically and socially disenfranchised: women, 28 gays and lesbians, people with disabilities, Chicanos/ Latinos, 29 Native Americans formed movements; and the poor, immigrants, 30 and the criminalized organized. Arendt’s pronouncements about 31 the Civil Rights Movement were “ambivalent” at best. Criticizing 32 desegregation activism in the battles for school integration in Little 33 Rock, Arkansas, while condemning racism in general, she failed to 34 discern a racial phenomenon other than social racism, which she 35 decried. However, disenfranchisement on a continuum, hidden 36 behind “private” sentiments of racial ideology and preference, 37 creates a facade of universal democracy. This facade obscures racial 38 dominance and state violence as political acts against the political 39 power of the private realm. Racism is political, not merely social; 40
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1 as a political phenomenon in the United States, it was never fully 2 analyzed by Arendt. 3 Arendt’s lack of attention to the phenomenon of racial ruling 4 within the United States reflects her relegation of the racialized and 5 criminalized to the outer realms. Understanding the limitations to 6 the manifestation of power valorized by Arendt requires an under- 7 standing of the racial dominance and violence embedded within 8 U.S. democracy. It is critical to examine the political implications 9 of the racist nature of policing and incarceration. Arendt warned 4 10 about the military-industrial complex of her time, but given her 11 insufficient attention to racial dominance, she could not anticipate 12 the continuance of slavery through the prison-industrial complex. 13 Prison, the most excluded realm within the private sphere, is also 14 a space where power and domination appear in their most extreme 15 forms. 16 At the turn of the twenty-first century, two million people, some 17 70 percent of them African, Latino/Chicano, Native American, 18 or Asian American, lived behind bars in U.S. prisons, jails, and 19 detention centers, three times the number documented twenty 20 years earlier. Although some might argue that this nether realm is 21 populated by those who “chose” it by demonstrating their incapacity 22 for “human togetherness” (Arendt’s term discussed below), surely 23 we must note the “coincidence” that the construction of a popula- 24 tion unfit for self-governance and communicative power remains 25 racially determined. Although they comprise only 12.5 percent 26 of the U.S. general population, African Americans comprise 50 27 percent of the U.S. prison population. In a democracy in which 28 nearly one in every twenty-five adults goes to jail each year, one 29 in three black males is tied to the criminal-justice system (and, in 30 states that strip the franchise from felons, they potentially cannot 31 vote). What would it mean for a democracy to create a private 32 realm of bodies to be ruled, and to racially mark them? Consider 33 the following: One is eight times more likely to be sentenced to 34 prison if one is black than if one is white for a similar offense. 35 Defendants receive multiple times the sentencing for use or sale 36 of crack—considered a black urban drug—as opposed to powder 37 cocaine—considered a white suburban indulgence. Although the 38 majority of drug offenders are whites, most defendants sentenced 39 to prison for drug use and sale are African Americans and Latinos; 40 although the proceeds from the “drug war” are mostly concentrated
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in European and European American banks and finance, the wars 1 against drugs, both domestic and foreign, target the non-European 2 (American). Logically, one might deduct that such wars function 3 not merely on the level of criminal justice or law enforcement 4 5 but on the level of political inclusion or exclusion. By racially 5 fashioning the “criminal” or “public enemy,” one determines the 6 parameters of political community and communicative power 7 and who is capable or worthy of it. Racial profiling and policing 8 ranges from the infraction (driving while black or brown) and 9 “voting while black or brown” in the 2000 presidential election 10 to xenophobia and anti-Muslim/Arab racist assaults following the 11 September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the 12 Pentagon. The idealized polis or democratic state is the ultimate 13 gated community as the sequestered space of democratic power. 14 The final exclusion from political community is, of course, 15 through death. State executions are racially determined in part 16 (50 percent of those now on death row are people of color, from 17 minority groups representing only 20 percent of the U.S. popula- 18 6 tion). From 1977 to 1986, 90 percent of prisoners executed were 19 convicted of killing whites, although the number of black victims 20 was approximately equal; in fact, one is four times more likely to 21 be sentenced to death for being convicted of killing a white person 22 7 than of killing a black person. (Ironically, there appears to be a 23 diminishment of the “3/5th human being” status which the U.S. 24 Constitution granted to enslaved blacks.) 25 It is not that Arendt ignored racism. While condemning it, 26 she tended either to generalize or to selectively examine it. Her 27 examinations, which include torture and economic profiteering from 28 racism, exempt the United States, as in her discussion of imperialism 29 and totalitarian terror. For example, she sees totalitarian terror as 30 a twentieth-century phenomenon and as relatively new in political 31 history. Her assertion that totalitarian terror is a relatively new form 32 of government oppression is odd. Genocide is not unique to the 33 twentieth century, assuming that one would agree that genocide is a 34 byproduct of totalitarian terror. As a form of state racial terror, it is 35 a relatively stable feature in history through European and American 36 imperialism. Arendt notes in “Imperialism,” in The Origins of Totalitari- 37 anism, the late-nineteenth-century genocide of 20 million Congolese 38 by the Belgian government. The genocide of the Native populations of 39 the Americas by Europeans and Americans also predates the twentieth 40
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1 century and reflects the roots of twentieth-century totalitarianism 2 and terror in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century imperialism and 8 3 genocide. In “On Violence,” Arendt suggests that the legacy of 4 Europe’s imperial, racial wars and conquests offers a cautionary 5 tale: “The much-feared boomerang effect of the ‘government of 6 subject races’ . . . on the home government during the imperialist era 7 meant that rule by violence in faraway lands would end by affecting 8 the government of England, that the last ‘subject race’ would be 9 9 the English themselves.” What transpires when the new “race” (as 10 socially constructed) is a hybrid construction of and for the prop- 11 ertied “American”—an American whose racially influenced notions 12 of dominance are masked in the guise of economic or national(ist) 13 superiority or “1aw-abiding” conformity and citizenry? 14 Arendt’s discussions of anti-Semitism create a somewhat abstract 15 totalitarian terror as she fails to explore fully how Nazi terrorism 16 was based on racist ideology (reportedly, both Nazis and Afrikaners, 17 creators of apartheid in southern Africa, cited U.S. development of 18 reservations to imprison, impoverish, and starve Native Americans 19 as a model to emulate). Racism transforms subjects into either 20 rulers or the ruled. Racism is a fundamental component of terror, 21 and so of violence. Hence, colonized peoples, Native Americans 22 and African-Americans, have disproportionately been the targets 23 of excessive violence and terror emanating from the state and its 24 racialized (white) majority. With racial violence and exclusion, 25 the reduction of (human) subjects to (animal) objects transforms 26 repression into “work” much like politics is transformed into 10 27 making and work. We can appreciate Arendt’s arguments for 28 power and against domination, while noting that being “color-blind” 29 or closed to an analysis of U.S. racial ruling renders aspects of her 30 thought overly abstract and indifferent to racial control. 31 32 Communicative Power 33 34 Arendt argues that power is communal rather than coercive. It 35 cannot be exercised over someone; it can only be practiced with 36 others. Dependent on community, it is a collective enterprise, one 37 rooted in noncoercive relationships for the common good. Power 38 as community and relationship becomes the goal or end rather 39 than the means for some other objective. Arendt does not discount 40 the role that specific goals or objectives play in inspiring political
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associations; rather, she maintains that transcending all specific or 1 limited ends is the ideal. 2 Arendt’s theory of political power contradicts the notion of power 3 11 as control posited by Max Weber. For her, the contemporary 4 “human condition” is one of disappearing political power, person, 5 and space; it is one of disappearing humanity as words and deeds 6 become characterized by violence and domination rather than by 7 reason and persuasion. Confusion about the “nature” of power stems 8 from “a firm conviction that the most crucial political issue is, and 9 always has been, the question of Who rules Whom?” She continues, 10 “It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of 11 dominion that the original data concerning human affairs appear, or, 12 12 rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity.” The current confusion, 13 argues Arendt, stems from Western political philosophers who have 14 historically misunderstood their enterprise by adhering too rigidly to 15 the “Platonic approach.” That is, they overemphasized the search for 16 ideal forms and eternal truths, confused politics with ruling (perhaps 17 opportunistically to ensure the “peace” needed for contemplation), 18 and located contemplation apart from the world of action and 19 experience. What many have failed to comprehend, she argues, is that 20 political community exists where “the revelatory quality of speech and 21 action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for 22 13 nor against them—that is, in sheer human togetherness.” 23 In place of the ancient Greek vocabulary of ruling, European 24 nation-state sovereignty, the Hebrew-Christian patriarchal tradition 25 of obedience to law, and John Stuart Mill’s psychology of the will 26 14 to dominate, Arendt offers another interpretation of politics 27 and power: “The Athenian city-state . . . had in mind a concept 28 of power and law whose essence did not rely on the command- 29 obedience relationship and which did not identify power and rule 30 or law and command. It was to these examples that the men of 31 the eighteenth-century revolutions turned when they ransacked 32 the archives of antiquity and constituted a form of government, a 33 republic, where the rule of law, resting on the power of the people, 34 would put an end to the rule of man over man, which they thought 35 15 was a ‘government fit for slaves.’” Yet, the eighteenth-century 36 American revolution worked to consolidate the economic power 37 of the ruling elite landowners; the Founders’ intent was to restrict 38 possibilities for economic democracy and for increasing the size 39 of the political electorate. For Arendt, power is found in citizens’ 40
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1 noncoerced consent. In a representative government, the people are 2 supposed to rule those who govern them. Without consent there 3 is neither power nor legitimate government. 4 Plurality expressed in the need and desire for communication 5 and collective action characterizes both a democratic nation and 6 the human condition, according to Arendt. Plurality, like friend- 7 ship, exists only between peers; without equality, commands 8 replace communication; then there is neither common ground for 9 communication nor anything (i.e., diversity and uniqueness) to 10 communicate. Plurality embodies both commonality and diversity; 11 for Arendt, political equality is contingent on admittance into the 12 political peerage or community. Those excluded are prevented from 13 practicing this power. The basis for racially determined exclusion 14 logically should be a central issue in this theory of politics and 15 power in which arbitrary exclusion based only on the ability to 16 exclude contradicts power as communication; in addition, exclusion 17 based on a “universal truth” of inferiority and inclusion based on 18 “superiority” contradicts Existenz philosophy. 19 Arendt cites a number of obstacles (which, given the construc- 20 tion of the public realm, preclude any mention of racism, sexism, 21 or impoverishment) that diminish human togetherness and power. 22 This diminution occurs when politics is misperceived as either 23 making (instrumentality) or being similar to warfare; when tyranny 24 curtails power; when the “myth of the strong man” distorts power’s 25 communal nature; and when violence supersedes communicative 26 action: “Whenever human togetherness is lost, as for instance 27 in modern warfare, where men go into action and use means of 28 violence in order to achieve certain objectives for their own side 29 and against the enemy . . . In these instances . . . speech becomes 30 indeed ‘mere talk,’ simply one more means toward the end, 31 whether it serves to deceive the enemy or to dazzle everybody 32 with propaganda. . . . In these instances action has lost the quality 16 33 through which it transcends mere productive activity.” 34 35 Tyranny and Violence 36 37 Tyranny is the antithesis of democracy. The tyranny of a racialized 38 democracy resides in its ability to use violence and domination 39 much more freely against marginalized sectors, whether Native 40 Americans on reservations or Palestinians in occupied territories.
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It is not fully clear how Arendt would distinguish between state 1 violence and state terror in connection to U.S. destabilization of 2 democratic movements within its borders and of “Third World” 3 17 governments. Yet, U.S. politics revolve around coeval manifesta- 4 tions of democracy and tyranny, of collective power expressed in 5 its electoral bodies and dominance through violence or terror. For 6 instance, tyranny within American democracy allowed the use of 7 police terror to destabilize antiracist dissent. Before his execution 8 by the Chicago Police Department and the FBI in December 9 18 1969 in a counterintelligence program operation (Cointelpro), 10 twenty-one-year-old Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, in call 11 and response, rallied organizers with the familiar Panther chant: 12 “All Power to the People! Brown Power to Brown People, Red 13 Power to Red People, White Power to White People, Black Power 14 19 to Black People.” 15 Arendt ignored the promise and pitfalls of radical antiracist 16 organizations such as the Black Panthers, the American Indian 17 Movement, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, and the Indepen- 18 dentistas (all groups argued for the right of self-defense from racial 19 and state violence, and some of their members bore arms). She 20 preferred to lump them generically into a category of rebellious 21 minorities, unsuited and perhaps, at least temporarily, unqualified 22 for the burden of full citizenship in this democratic state. The 23 rebels who truly interested her were the white, middle-class, 24 disaffected university and college students protesting the Vietnam 25 War (her students at the New School in New York City, the heirs 26 apparent to her romanticized polis). In “On Revolution,” Arendt 27 endorses physical resistance to oppression in the form of revolu- 28 tion. Yet, that resistance is never extended to radical antiracist 29 formations, so when antiracists withdrew their consent because 30 the government lost its legitimacy, she possessed no framework 31 to analyze the ensuing battle between the state and its subject 32 racialized minorities. She argues that people choose violence over 33 action because they idealize violence: the “implications of violence 34 inherent in all interpretations of the realm of human affairs as a 35 sphere of making” produced a glorification of violence as the only 36 means for “making” political change. Criticizing middle-class white 37 students for romanticizing violence, Arendt denounces the “strong 38 Marxist rhetoric of the New Left [which] coincides with the steady 39 growth of the entirely non-Marxian conviction, proclaimed by Mao 40
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20 1 Tse-tung, that ‘Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’” (The 2 Panthers sold Mao’s “Little Red Book” to finance the purchase 3 of guns for their patrols to monitor racist and brutal police in 4 Oakland; in fact, working-class Black Panthers sold the book, at a 5 considerable mark-up, to middle-class white students at University 6 of California, Berkeley.) 7 The outcome of all political action, because it embodies freedom, 8 is never completely predictable; consequently, it is unlike violence 9 as a tool or technique. Politics is characterized by freedom rather 10 than control; so, too, is violence, with its unpredictability. There 11 is no certainty of the intended outcome, writes Arendt, although 12 violence is generally employed to ensure intended results, it 13 remains arbitrary and uncontrollable. 14 There are instances when violence or war is the only logical 15 or rational choice; yet it is illogical and irrational to romanticize 16 violence, using it indiscriminately, and to institutionalize it within 17 the political community by confusing or equating it with power. 18 (This, of course, was one of the failings of the Panthers—their 19 tragic and destructive responses to violent state repression by the 20 FBI’s Cointelpro.) Arendt elaborates: 21 22 Violence, being instrumental by nature, is rational to the extent 23 that it is effective in reaching the end that must justify it. And 24 since when we act we never know with any certainty the eventual 25 consequences of what we are doing, violence can remain rational 26 only if it pursues short-term goals. Violence does not promote 27 causes, neither history, nor revolution, neither progress nor 28 reaction; but it can serve to dramatize grievances and bring them 29 to public attention. As Conor Cruise O’Brien (in a debate on the 30 legitimacy of violence in the Theatre of Ideas) once remarked, 31 quoting William O’Brien, the nineteenth-century Irish agrarian 32 and nationalist agitator, sometimes “violence is the only way of 33 ensuring a hearing for moderation.” To ask the impossible in 34 order to obtain the possible is not always counterproductive. And 35 indeed, violence, contrary to what its prophets try to tell us, is 21 36 more the weapon of reform than of revolution. 37 38 Arendt notes that if “goals are not achieved rapidly, the result will 39 be not merely defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence 40 into the whole body politic. Action is irreversible, and a return to the
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22 status quo in case of defeat is always unlikely.” According to Arendt, 1 student radicals did not recognize that the practice of violence 2 engenders a more violent world. She writes that student rebels’ 3 idealization of violence as the cornerstone of change is derived from a 4 faulty interpretation that views history as “a continuous chronological 5 process, whose progress, moreover, is inevitable, violence in the shape 6 of war and revolution may appear to constitute the only possible 7 23 interruption.” Presenting an intellectualized abstraction of why 8 people resort to violence for change, she contradicts her quotation 9 of O’Brien that “sometimes violence is the only way of ensuring a 10 hearing for moderation.” Of course, what must follow to ensure 11 not just a more violent world is action: “It is the function, however, 12 of all action, as distinguished from mere behavior, to interrupt 13 what otherwise would have proceeded automatically and therefore 14 24 predictably.” But if one does not consider the Other to be human 15 or civilized, there can be no negotiations, only domination, and the 16 prospect of more violence and terror erupting in response to violence 17 and terror (past and potential, real and imagined). 18 Tyrants who aspire to power as control and politics as ruling 19 may or may not use force; nonviolent tyrants “if they know their 20 25 business may well be ‘kindly and mild’ in everything.” Whether 21 violent or nonviolent, tyranny encourages citizens to preoccupy 22 themselves with manufacturing and the acquisition of property, 23 positions, or titles: All tyrants “have in common the banishment 24 of the citizens from the public realm and the insistence that they 25 mind their private business while only ‘the ruler should attend to 26 26 public affairs.’” Part of what is to be acquired and maintained is 27 the existential wealth of racial superiority. 28 Addressing material needs or desires, as well as fears, tyranny 29 “buys” one out of political freedom, power, and political commu- 30 nity. (If corporate capitalism’s and consumer culture’s obsession 31 with material wealth creates a citizenry more interested in status 32 and money than in developing identity and realizing humanity 33 through power, arguably capitalism undermines communicative 34 power and political community and would be the focus of an 35 extensive critique by Arendt.) States can combine violent and 36 nonviolent methods to deter the development of democratic 37 27 power, mingling persuasion and coercion. For Arendt, the great 38 danger of tyranny that combines power and violence (two distinct 39 phenomena that can appear together) is not so much the brutal, 40
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1 physical oppression of the people as it is the loss of community and 2 political efficacy of both citizenry and tyrant. Tyranny “prevents 3 the development of power, not only in a particular segment of 4 the public realm but in its entirety; it generates, in other words, 28 5 impotence. . . .” In addition to tyranny, Arendt was concerned 6 with a greater evil—terror. Terror is the extreme manifestation 7 of violence. Contrasting violence with terror, she states that 8 she would not characterize violence as “evil” and so implicitly 9 characterizes terror as such. For her, political terror is found 10 only within totalitarianism—specifically Nazism and Stalinism as 11 described in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Terror magnifies all the 12 destructive elements of violence and emerges when violence has 13 destroyed every form of political action, power, and resistance. Its 14 effectiveness depends on the destruction of all community, on the 15 “social atomization” or alienation of the individual citizens who fear 29 16 to speak or act collectively. 17 War technology accelerated the chain reaction or “snowball 18 effect” of violence, according to Arendt. Violence, once initiated, 19 is uncontrollable; nothing exemplifies this more than the image of 20 nuclear war, which points not only to the uncontrollable nature of 21 violence but to the finality of its destruction. Few have analyzed 22 the phenomenon of violence, though many have concentrated on 23 war and warfare, according to Arendt, and the neglect of the study 24 of violence has much to do with the perception of violence as so 25 ingrained in human affairs that violence itself became a “marginal 26 phenomenon.” “Anybody looking for some kind of sense in the 27 records of the past was almost bound to see violence as a marginal 28 phenomenon. Whether it is Clausewitz calling War ‘the continua- 29 tion of politics by other means’ or Engels defining violence as the 30 accelerator of economic development, the emphasis is on political 31 or economic continuity, on the continuity of a process that remains 30 32 determined by what preceded violent action.” Arendt quotes 33 Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov: “A thermonuclear war cannot be 34 considered a continuation of politics by other means” for it entails 31 35 universal suicide. 36 37 One World 38 39 For Arendt, international affairs provided the initial stage (she argues 40 this because she discounts [domestic] violence in the private realm)
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for the appearance of violence and provided the space for its final 1 appearance: “The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a 2 secret death wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct 3 of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic 4 and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact 5 that no substitute for this final arbiter in the international affairs 6 32 has yet appeared on the political scene.” She argues that Hobbes’s 7 statement that “Covenants, without the sword, are but words” is 8 likely to remain true “so long as national independence, namely, 9 freedom from foreign rule, and the sovereignty of the state, namely, 10 the claim to unchecked and unlimited power in foreign affairs, are 11 33 identified [as synonymous].” A nation may remain independent of 12 any other nation without retaining its sovereignty, which Arendt 13 defines as the refusal to defer to a higher authority (e.g., world 14 community). Sovereignty and independence are not synonyms; the 15 former fosters resistance to recognized arbiters. 16 Maintaining that the construction of power stems from communal 17 practice rather than dominance, and that community signifies 18 plurality, diversity, the many, her critique of nation-states’ refusal 19 to limit expansionism allows her to write that “sovereignty, the ideal 20 of uncompromising self-sufficiency and mastership, is contradictory 21 to the very condition of plurality . . . [no one] can be sovereign 22 34 because not one . . . [but many] inhabit the earth.” This plurality 23 and power in fact manifest in activism to counter the state’s refusal 24 to allow it to be disciplined by international law and human rights 25 conventions. 26 Since the United Nations and the World Court lack the “sword” 27 to enforce their decisions, violence remains a “natural element” 28 of international politics. The reduction of violence inherent in 29 international affairs is possible, writes Arendt, only if individual 30 nation-states acknowledge a higher authority than their own 31 sovereignty. Echoing Karl Jaspers, she maintains that “nations must 32 renounce sovereignty for the sake of a world federation.” The fear 33 of global destruction, she writes, produces an “intolerable position 34 of global responsibility,” one which Jaspers attempts to address 35 with a concept of world citizenship that bases the solidarity of 36 humanity on “mutual understanding and self-clarification on a 37 35 global level.” 38 Arendt’s appreciation of Immanuel Kant and Jaspers led her to 39 advocate strongly world community and world citizenry: Humanity 40
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1 and power find their fullest expression in world community based 2 on diversity, acceptance, and communication. Through its foreign 3 policy, the United States extends the private realm, of the less than 4 civilized, the subordinate, the politically unworthy, the nonpeer, 5 to the so-called Third World—the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin 6 America, and the Middle East. Not only to governments (many of 7 which are not democratic or are democracies in name only) but 8 to the disenfranchised confined to the private realms—the poor, 9 women, imprisoned radicals are deemed politically unworthy for 10 world citizenship. 11 Can democratic theorists afford to ignore the fact that the United 12 States undermines institutions that sustain world community? 13 Although the International Court of Justice and the United Nations 14 were created in response to World War II, the United States declares 15 itself to be bound by neither the International Court of Justice nor by 16 proclamations of the United Nations such as the Universal Declara- 36 17 tion of Human Rights. In theory, human rights protections exist for 18 everyone in the United States under the International Covenant on 19 Civil and Political Rights and the international convention’s ban on 20 racial discrimination, abuse, and torture. The United States continues 21 to exempt itself from international human rights obligations and place 22 itself above the law; the government can weaken treaties it ratifies 23 with reservations. The United States’ withdrawal from the Interna- 24 tional Tribunal on War Crimes in May 2002, and from the earlier 25 (September 2001) United Nations World Conference Against Racism 26 and Xenophobia in South Africa, heralded its aloof position toward 27 antiracist initiatives. It failed to sign on, as the European Union 28 did, to a statement designating the slave trade as a “crime against 29 humanity.” Yet within days, the United States would condemn the 30 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as “a crime against humanity,” 31 call on Americans to relinquish voluntarily their political rights, and 32 demand global solidarity in a world community united to isolate and 33 “destroy”—a word of finality and eschatology—terrorism. War is 34 pursued with diminishing democratic input in a military campaign 35 initially named “Infinite Justice” and overseen by the Pentagon, the 36 White House, and its new cabinet-level post for the “Defense of 37 Homeland Security.” 38 The challenge of extending all power to all of the people requires 39 a willingness to share democratic responsibilities while rejecting 40 promises of protection, comfort, and supremacy: “It is the obvious
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short-range advantages of tyranny, the advantages of stability, secu- 1 rity, and productivity, that one should beware, if only because they 2 pave the way to an inevitable loss of power, even though the actual 3 37 disaster may occur in a relatively distant future.” The possibility of 4 realizing “All Power to the People!”—not the police or ruling elites 5 but the international mass resisting force and violence from others 6 and among themselves—relies on a democracy that recognizes 7 permeable boundaries between public and private, self-governance 8 and subjugation as “We the People” seek “a more perfect union” as 9 desire for communal peace. 10 11 Notes 12 1. See Robert Bernasconi, “The Invisibility of Racial Minorities in the 13 Public Realm of Appearances,” in Phenomenology of the Political, eds. 14 Kevin Thompson and Lester Embree (Dordrecht, Netherlands: 15 Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), and “The Double Face of the 16 Political and Social: Hannah Arendt and America’s Racial Divisions,” 17 Research in Phenomenology 26 (1996): 3–24. 18 2. See Charles Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (Baltimore: 19 Black Classic Press, 1998). 3. Arendt failed to study U.S. repression against antiracism. See 20 Kenneth O’Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBI’s: Secret File and Black America, 21 1960–1972 (New York: Free Press, 1989). 22 4. Arendt cites the rhetoric from the military, government and Pentagon, 23 as jargon which arose when World War II was followed not by peace 24 but by the “Military-Industrial-Labor Complex.” Such jargon states, 25 “The priority of war-making potential as the principal structuring 26 force in society”; “economic systems, [as well as] political philosophies 27 and corpora juris serve and extend the war system, not vice versa”; “war itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary 28 modes of social organization conflict or conspire.” Hannah Arendt, 29 “On Violence,” in Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 30 Jovanovich, 1969, 1972), 111. 31 5. Arendt rejects any analysis of gender domination and gender violence. 32 Women, de facto white women, were the last group of the private 33 realm to be legally granted the vote in the United States; women, 34 while a small percentage of the imprisoned, have seen their incarcera- 35 tion rates dramatically increase. The patriarchal punishments of the private realm, within the family, have been relocated to bureaucracy, 36 where the state acts as surrogate father seeking paternal control. 37 Most of the women incarcerated in the United States are nonviolent 38 offenders convicted of economic crimes or drug use. The majority 39 are mothers, poor, and women of color. 40
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1 6. Over 65 percent of juvenile offenders sentenced to death since the 1976 reinstitution of the death penalty have been either black or 2 Latino; one of the few democratic nations to execute minors, the 3 United States has executed more youths than has any other industrial- 4 ized nation. 5 7. When the United States did not submit a 1995 report on its 6 compliance with the Convention Against Torture, nongovernmental 7 organizations issued a report. Morton Sklar, ed., Torture in the 8 United States: The Status of Compliance by the U.S. Government with the 9 International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Washington, DC: World Organiza- 10 tion Against Torture, 1998). The report notes the major areas of U.S. 11 noncompliance: the death penalty, prison conditions; treatment of 12 refugee detainees; physical and sexual abuse of women prisoners; 13 U.S. shelter for torturers who worked with the Central Intelligence 14 Agency; arms sales that support torture in foreign countries. 15 8. In an interview with B92, Belgrade radio, in September 2001, Noam 16 Chomsky observed, “The horrendous terrorist attacks on Tuesday are 17 something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the U.S., this is the first time since the War of 18 1812 that its national territory [as opposed to its colonies] has been 19 under attack. During these years the U.S. virtually exterminated 20 the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened 21 violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the 22 Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos). . . .” 23 9. Arendt, “On Violence,” 153. Arendt quotes Commager from “Can We 24 Limit Presidential Power?” The New Republic, April 6, 1968. 25 10. For studies of genocide against American Indigenous peoples, see Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (New York: Viking, 26 1983). 27 11. Jurgen Habermas writes, “Max Weber defined power (Macht) as 28 the possibility of forcing one’s own will on the behavior of others. 29 Arendt, on the contrary, understands power as the ability to agree on 30 a common course of action in unconstrained communication. Both 31 represent power as potency actualized in actions.” Jurgen Habermas, 32 “Hannah Arendt’s Communication Concept of Power,” Journal of Social 33 Research 44, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 4. Habermas maintains that The Origins of Totalitarianism and On 34 Revolution are the basis for Arendt’s theory of power; yet, he asserts, 35 because both totalitarianism and revolution are aberrations in Western 36 mass democracies they are insufficient bases for the construction of a 37 theory with broad application. Arendt’s theory of power, developed in 38 The Human Condition (1956), The Life of the Mind (1973), and Lectures 39 on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1983), argues power as community and 40
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community as goal and precondition for nonviolent human interac- 1 tion. 12. Arendt, “On Violence,” 142–143. See also Hannah Arendt, “Reflec- 2 tions on Violence,” New York Review of Books, February 27, 1969. 3 13. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago 4 Press, 1958), 180. 5 14. Countering John Stuart Mill’s assertion that civilization is based 6 on the desires to exercise power over others; and not have power 7 exercised over oneself, Arendt writes that “submission, an ardent 8 desire to obey and be ruled by some strong man, is at least as 9 prominent in human psychology as the will to power. . . . Conversely, a strong disinclination to obey is often accompanied by an equally 10 strong disinclination to dominate. . . . [The] purpose [of the ancient 11 slave economy] was to liberate citizens from the burden of household 12 affairs and to permit them to enter the public life of the community, 13 where all were equals; if it were true that nothing is sweeter than 14 to give commands and to rule others, the master would never have 15 left his household.” Arendt, “On Violence,” 138–139. Arendt quotes 16 from Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government (1861, 59, 65 17 [Arendt’s citation]). Given that Arendt is not addressing racism and desire, libidinal economies, her response to Mills is incomplete. 18 15. Arendt, “On Violence,” 139 19 16. Arendt, The Human Condition, 180 20 17. See the writings of Noam Chomsky for descriptions of deployment 21 of terror in U.S. policies. 22 18. The FBI illegal Cointelpro or counterintelligence program consisted 23 of wire taps, break-ins and assassinations to destabilize social justice 24 movements. In 1975, the Senate Select Committee to Study Govern- 25 mental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee,” named after Senator Frank Church [D-Idaho]) 26 held hearings on the FBI. 27 19. See the documentary Eyes on the Prize: A Nation of Law? (Boston: 28 Blackside, 1993); and Philip Foner, ed., The Black Panther Speaks (New 29 York: Da Capo Press, 1995). 30 20. Arendt, “On Violence,” 113. 31 21. Ibid., 176. 32 22. Ibid., 177. 33 23. Ibid., 132. 24. Ibid., 132–133. 34 25. Arendt, The Human Condition, 221. 35 26. Ibid. Arendt quotes “Aristotle, Athenian Constitution XV.5” (Arendt’s 36 citation). 37 27. For discussions of “conspicuous consumption” and “false needs,” see, 38 respectively, Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (Boston: 39 40
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1 Houghton 1899), and Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). 2 28. Arendt, The Human Condition, 202. 3 29. Arendt, “On Violence,” 154–155. Atomization “is maintained and 4 intensified through the ubiquity of the informer, who can be literally 5 omnipresent because he no longer is merely a professional agent in 6 the pay of the police but potentially every person one comes into 7 contact with.” Arendt maintains that the difference between “totali- 8 tarian domination, based on terror, and tyrannies and dictatorships, 9 established by violence” is that the former fearing all power and turns against enemies and friends. Arendt, “On Violence,” 154. 10 30. Ibid., 110–111. 11 31. Ibid., 111. Prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, bipartisan 12 authors of a 1988 Heritage Foundation report, Discriminate Deterrence, 13 argued that a “winnable” nuclear war was an unmarketable concept; 14 and that the “East/West” conflict must be deemphasized to allow U.S. 15 conflicts with the “Third World” to shape policy into the twenty-first 16 century. The United States had intervened militarily in the “Third 17 World” over thirty times since the end of World War II, including economic and military assistance for death squads in El Salvador, 18 genocide in Guatemala, contra terrorists in Nicaragua and Angola, 19 and occupations and dictatorships in the Middle East. 20 32. Arendt, “On Violence,” 107. 21 33. Ibid. 22 34. Arendt, The Human Condition, 234. 23 35. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & 24 World, 1963), 83. 25 36. On December 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “the advent of a world in 26 which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and 27 freedom from fear and want . . . as the highest aspiration of the 28 common people.” 29 37. Arendt, The Human Condition, 222. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
JJames_book_3.indbames_book_3.indb 326326 22/28/13/28/13 1:071:07 PMPM 1 2 3 4 5 Index 6 7 8 9 10 11 9/11. See September 11, 2001. n. 11, 283. See also Human Immu- 12 nodefi ciency Virus (HIV) abolition/abolitionists, 30–32, 44, Alabama, 72, 94; Birmingham, 68, 13 49–50, 54, 83, 120, 122–33, 70–72, 82, 94, 132–33, 146, 168, 14 134–41, 144, 156, 158–59, 171, 201, 232, 260, 279; bombing 15 193, 258, 297, 309 of Birmingham Sixteenth Street 16 Abu Ghraib. See under Iraq Baptist Church, 70–71, 168, 260; 17 Abu-Jamal, Mumia (Wesley Cook), x, “Dynamite Hill,” 68; Lowndes 18 94, 100, 111, 113 n. 3, 115 n. 16, County Freedom Democratic 19 129, 132, 138, 143, 149, 173, 194, Party, 73; Montgomery, 32, 69, 20 200, 207, 209, 212; Live from Death 72, 266 n. 8, 279; Scottsboro, 89 21 Row, 94, 129, 132 n. 2 Acoli, Sundiata (Clark Squire), 96, Allende, Salvadore, 200 22 100, 103–4, 115 n. 16, 149, 166, American Baptist Home Missionary 23 172, 202–3 Society (ABHMS), 48, 65 n. 2 24 Adams, John, 138 n. 13, 149 American Indian Movement (AIM), 25 affi rmative action, 58, 227–28, 296 25–26, 57, 62, 101, 159, 170–71, 26 Afghanistan, 130, 197, 246 n. 11 175, 201, 208, 317 27 Africa, 104, 126, 134; Africans, 9–11, Amin, Samir, 6 n. 1, 3 28 15, 20, 32, 103–4, 112, 114 n. 9, Amnesty International, 42, 45 n. 7, 29 122, 124–25, 127, 192, 245, 257, 66 n. 19, 88, 123, 201 30 261, 284, 294, 299, 302, 311; anarchism/anarchist, 168, 172, 201, 31 South Africa, 156 284 Africa, Merle, 210. See also MOVE ancestors: African and African-Amer- 32 Africa, Ramona, x, 62. See also MOVE ican, 6, 9, 12, 17–20, 22, 27, 30, 33 African National Congress (ANC), 111, 113, 124 34 178 n. 6, 289 n. 13 Anderson. S. E., 103 35 Africana Studies, 29, 243–44 n. 3, Anthony, Susan B., 259 36 281, 284–87 antislavery movement, 31, 127, 135, 37 Africanism, 9–11, 17, 19, 21–22 173. See also slavery 38 AIDS (Acquired Immune Defi ciency Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death 39 Syndrome), 43, 115 n. 15, 245–46 Penalty Act, 134, 247 n. 16 40
327
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1 antiwar movement, 60, 99, 134, 157, Black Liberation Army (BLA), 26, 93, 2 180–81 n. 22, 208, 235, 278 98, 100–1, 103, 112, 145, 151 n. 1, 3 apartheid, 69, 133, 156, 166, 178n, 171–72 4 230, 245–46 n. 11, 259, 274, 281, Black nationalism, 49, 65 n. 18, 76, 133 5 302, 310, 314 Black Panther Party (for Self- 6 Aptheker, Bettina, 82, 97, 169 Defense), 26, 39, 49, 62, 7 Aptheker, Herbert, 78, 97 65, 72–76, 78–79, 87, 90 8 Arendt, Hannah, 204, 307–26 n. 14, 91 n. 30, 93–102, 9 Aryan Nation: sisterhood, 102 105, 110–12, 129, 133, 138 10 Ashcroft, John (Attorney General), n. 18, 145, 147, 159, 151 11 141 n. 32, 166, 168, 180 n. 21, n. 1, 161–62, 164, 169–72, 12 202 179–80 n. 18, 201–2, 204–5, 13 Attica Prison (New York), 94, 120, 139 208, 210, 236, 246–47 n. 15, 14 n. 21, 182 n. 31, 190–91, 195 n. 9 15 297, 308–9, 311, 317–18; Atwater, Lee, 224, 238–39, 256, 266 Chicago Chapter, 101, 170, 16 Ayers, Bill, 235–37 17 236, 317; gender politics of, 74–75, 94–98; Los Angeles 18 Bail Reform Act, 302 19 Chapter, 73–74; New York Baker, Ella, 6, 19, 32, 39, 47–48, Chapter, 101, 112; Oakland 20 52, 64 n. 1, 140 n. 27. See also 21 Chapter, 73–74, 147 Student Nonviolent Coordinating 22 Black Radical Congress, 44 Committee (SNCC) 23 Booker, Cory (Mayor, Newark), 282 Bambara, Toni Cade, 37 24 Boston Globe, 241 Bandele, Asha: The Prisoner’s Wife, 25 Boston Herald, 241 189–90 26 Bottom, Anthony. See Muntaqim, Jalil 27 Baraldini, Sylvia, 62, 66 n. 19 Boyle, Robert, 203 28 Bari, Judi, 62 Bozeman, Maggie, 72 29 Barry, Elizabeth, 240 Bradshaw, Anthony X., 173 30 Barry, Robert, 240 Brandeis University (Massachusetts), 31 Bell, Sean, 233–35 69 32 Berrigan, Daniel, 174 Braun, Carol Moseley, 40, 230 33 Berrigan, Philip, 166, 174, 202–3 Bronx, 125, 199 34 bin Laden, Osama, 256 Brooklyn, 125, 262 35 Bin Wahad, Dhoruba (Richard Brown Berets, 317 36 Moore), 96, 102, 113–14 n. 5, Brown, Corrine, 40 37 159, 170 Brown, Elaine, 65 n. 13, 72, 95, 97, 38 Birmingham. See under Alabama 90 n. 14, 97 39 Black Agenda Report, 232–34, 282–83 Brown, H. Rap, 74 40 Black Codes, 128, 310. See also Brown, John, 50, 126–27, 138 n. 14, 41 slavery 144–45, 161, 173, 258, 297; 42 black liberation, 27–28, 31, 39, Harper’s Ferry, 50, 126, 144; John 43 47, 57, 65 n. 18, 70, 76, 79, 85, Brown/Anti-Klan Network, 138 44 96–99, 105, 129, 133, 148, 168, n. 14 45 259. See also Black Liberation Army Brown, Rita Bo, 173 46 (BLA); Black Panther Party (BPP); Brown University, xi, 201 47 COINTELPRO Buck, Marilyn, 62, 66 n. 19, 138 48
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n. 14, 145, 166, 168, 173, 178 Chicanos, 57, 83–84, 165, 311–12. 1 n. 5, 202–3, 211 See also Latinos 2 Bukhari-Alston, Safi ya, 101, 112, 171 Chile, 200 3 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 139 Chisholm, Shirley, 230, 262–63 4 n. 21, 295 Chomsky, Noam, 240, 245–46 n. 11, 5 Bush, George H. W. (President), 55, 298–99, 324 n. 8 6 133, 238, 253–54, 256, 282, 285, Christian, Barbara, 3 7 296 Christianity, 14, 25, 48, 64 n. 2, 157, 8 Bush, George W. (President), 103, 174, 182 n. 27, 192, 223, 245n, 9 224, 243 n. 3, 248 n. 21, 254 263, 264 n. 1, 291 n. 34, 315. See 10 11 Butler, Octavia, 283, 287 also Southern Christian Leadership 12 Conference (SCLC) 13 California, xi, 42, 70, 76–79, 80, Christmas, William, 79 14 120, 145, 191, 231, 264, 318; Los Cicciaro, Daniel, 151 n. 1 15 Angeles, 73–74, 77, 80; Marin civil disobedience, 94, 144–46 16 County, 78; Oakland, 73, 169; Civil Rights Congress of 1951, 173, 17 Proposition 8, 264; San Francisco, 270 18 80; Santa Clara County, 79, Youth Civil Rights Movement, 20, 32, 49, 19 Authority, 137 n. 6. See also San 57, 69–72, 131, 133, 169, 174, 20 Quentin Prison 178 n. 7, 260, 266 n. 8, 282, 311; 21 Cambodia, 190, 237, 254 bombing of Birmingham Sixteenth 22 capital punishment. See under prisons: Street Baptist Church (Bloody 23 death penalty/row Sunday), 70–72, 168, 260; March 24 capitalism, 28, 41, 51, 53–55, 58, 61, on Washington (1963), 70, 132, 25 69, 76, 82, 86–87, 107, 109–10, 144, 168, 232, 254, 259–60; 26 150, 157, 187, 223, 225, 260, 270, Montgomery Bus Boycott 32, 69, 27 272, 280, 285, 301, 319 72, 168, 266 n. 8 28 captivity, 105, 109, 119–41, 145, Civil War, 49, 116 n. 30, 119, 121, 29 155, 188, 285 126–28, 136 n. 4, 149, 159, 161, 30 Carignan, Ronald, 247–48 n. 17. See 179 n. 12, 310 31 also LaGuer, Ben Clark, Mark, 101, 147, 159, 170, 32 Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Toure), 236. See also under Black Panther 33 73 Party: Chicago Chapter 34 Carter, Alprentice (Bunchy), 74 class/classism, ix, 10, 27–29, 40, 51, 35 36 Castro, Fidel, 245 n. 9 57–58, 61, 68, 77, 84–86, 108, 37 Center for Constitutional Rights, 303 141 n. 5, 172, 187, 203, 210, 215, 38 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 226, 228, 237, 241, 243, 252, 254, 39 40, 148, 175, 199, 245n, 256, 258, 275, 291, 301, 304 40 180–81 n. 22, 199, 232, 236, 256, Cleaver, Eldridge, 95–97, 140 n. 28, 41 291 n. 36, 302, 324 n. 7. See also 172; Soul on Ice, 97 42 COINTELPRO Cleaver, Kathleen, 72, 95, 97, 181 43 Chaney, James, 72, 266 n. 11 Clinton Correctional Facility (New 44 Cheney, Dick, 248 n. 21, 264 n. 2, 283 Jersey), 98, 102 45 Chesimard, Joanne. See Shakur, Assata Clinton, Hillary, 29, 227, 230, 232, 46 Chicago, 101, 131, 170, 236, 317 235–36, 241, 257–58, 263, 281–82 47 48
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1 Clinton, William Jefferson (Bill), 29, Convention on the Suppression 2 134, 174, 236, 258, 282 and Punishment of the Crime of 3 Clutchette, John, 78 Apartheid, 302. See also apartheid; 4 COINTELPRO (FBI Counterintelli- United Nations 5 gence), 39, 80, 97–99, 101, 133, convict prison lease system, 119, 122, 6 148, 167, 170, 180–81 n. 22, 236, 128–29, 149, 159, 179 n. 12, 285, 7 280, 317, 325 n. 18; Senate Church 310–11 8 Committee Report (1976), 99, 114 Cook, Mark, 173 9 n. 8. See also Central Intelligence Cook, Wesley. See Abu-Jamal, Mumia 10 Agency (CIA); Federal Bureau of Cooper, Ann Nixon, 251–53, 258, 11 Investigation (FBI) 261 12 Collins, Addie Mae, 70–72, 168, 260 Cooper, Anna Julia, 30–31 13 Combahee River Collective, ix-x, Costa Vargas, João H., 277, 284 14 38–40, 49, 50–51, 55, 65 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 54–55, 65 n. 13 15 Committee in Solidarity with the crime, 33, 107, 125–27, 132, 134, 16 People of El Salvador (CISPES), 139 n. 21, 162, 164, 204; Federal 17 208 Crime Bill of 1984, 140 n. 29; 18 Committees of Correspondence, 78 Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets 19 Communism/communist, 69, 74, 77, Act, 133; International Tribunal on 20 84, 96, 99. See also Community War Crimes (1992), 322; Omnibus 21 Party USA (CPUSA) Crime Bill, 134; Violent Crime 22 Communist Manifesto, 69 Control and Law Enforcement Act 23 Communist Party USA (CPUSA), 26, of 1994, 247 24 69, 76–78, 89, 172–73, 75–78, crimes against humanity, 162, 174, 25 87, 97, 172; Che-Lumumba 204, 246 n. 13, 295, 302, 322 26 27 Club of Southern California, 76; Cruise, Harold, 269, 274, 280, 286 28 “Initiative to Unite and Renew the Cuba, 43, 96–99, 104–5, 114 n. 9, 29 Party,” 77–78 120, 130; Bay of Pigs, 76, 245 30 Congress. See under United States n. 9; Havana, 112 31 Congressional Black Caucus, 29, 80 32 Conner, Eugene “Bull” (Governor, Daley, Richard (Mayor, Chicago), 236 33 Alabama), 72 Darder, Antonia, ix-x 34 Connolly, Ward, 90 n. 18 Davis, Angela, x, 39, 67–92, 95–97, 35 conservatism, 15, 28, 41, 51, 53–55, 99, 119, 169, 171–72; Angela Davis: 36 61, 63, 76, 76, 100, 120, 218–19, An Autobiography, 67–68, 81; If They 37 225, 249, 259, 271, 283 Come in the Morning, 80, 82 38 Convention Against Torture, 43, 45 Davis, Sallye Bell, 69, 89 n. 8 39 n. 8, 324 n. 7. See also United death row/penalty. See under prisons 40 Nations (UN) Dellums, Ron, 263 41 Convention on the Elimination of All democracy, xii, 38, 58, 67, 75, 99, 42 Forms of Racial Discrimination, 119–41, 155–56, 162, 167, 200, 43 303. See also United Nations (UN) 205, 209, 224, 243, 251–55, 44 Convention on the Prevention and 259–261, 263–64, 270, 272, 275, 45 Elimination of Genocide, 276, 288 278–79, 284–85, 298, 300, 307–26 46 n. 3, 294–95. See also genocide; Democracy Now!, 236 47 United Nations (UN) Democratic Party, 29, 56, 135, 48
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259, 261, 263, 282; National 68, 87, 136–37 n. 6, 140 n. 29, 1 Committee, 248–49 n. 21, 286, 162, 216–18, 224; political, 74, 2 290n; National Convention 80, 95, 105. See also Africana 3 (1964), 116n, 255, 261–62; Studies 4 National Convention (1968), Einstein, Albert, 181 n. 22 5 235–36, 261; National Convention Eisenhower, Dwight D. (President), 6 (2008), 257–60, 275; presidential 229 7 campaign (2008), 223–38, El-Shabaaz, Malik. See Malcolm X 8 251–64, 266 n. 11, 278–79 El Salvador, 165n, 181 n. 22, 200, 9 Democratic Republic of Congo, 280 205, 326 n. 31 10 detention center, 42, 83, 130, 135–36 Elijah, Jill Soffi yah, 103, 203 11 n.1, 159, 167, 187, 200, 202–3, Emancipation Proclamation, 126–27, 12 212, 263, 312 265 n. 3, 310 13 Diallo, Amadou, 159 Engels, Friedrich, 69, 320 14 Dinguswa, Malik, 173 enslavement. See slavery 15 discredited knowledge, 9, 13–15, 21, Ervin, Lorenzo Komboa, 172 16 191 Escobar, Elizam, 174–75 17 Dixon, Bruce, 282 Eurocentrism, 3–4, 6 n. 1, 3, 18 Dorfman, Ariel, 200 9–11, 15, 17, 300. See also white 19 Douglass, Frederick, 50, 83, 127, supremacy. 20 171, 264, 309 Europe, 45, 70, 86, 166, 276, 21 Dred Scott Case, 126, 139 n. 20 298–99, 314; European Union, 22 drugs, 42, 109, 134, 149, 162, 243, 204, 322 23 24 263, 282–83; addiction, 106–7, Europeans, 4, 124, 299–300 25 172; Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Evans, Linda, 138 n. 14, 174, 236 26 140 n. 29; cocaine, 52, 140 n. 29, Everything but the Burden, 188 27 312; courts, 279; crack cocaine, 28 140 n. 29, 312; psychotropic, 109, Fanon, Frantz, 33, 108, 186; The 29 116 n. 26; Rockefeller Drug Laws, Wretched of the Earth, 160, 176, 183 30 138 n. 10; trade/sales, 139 n. 21, n. 34 31 157, 167, 190, 197; war on drugs, Farrakhan, Louis (Minister), 101 32 44, 133, 140 n. 29, 312–13 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 33 Drumgo, Fleeta, 78 39, 62, 75, 77, 79–80, 91 n. 30, 34 Du Bois, W. E. B., 30, 76, 121, 94, 97–99, 101, 103–4, 133, 35 128–29, 138 n. 16, 144, 161; Black 147–49, 167, 169–70, 180–81 36 Reconstruction, 121, 128, 161 n. 22, 205, 208, 236, 317–18, 325 37 Dukakis, Michael (Governor, Massa- n. 18. See also COINTELPRO 38 chusetts), 239–40, 242, 256 Federal Violence Initiative, 302–3 39 Dukakis, Kitty, 239 fascism, 196 n. 13, 293, 298–99, 40 Duke, David, 54–55, 297 301, 304; National Committees to 41 Combat Fascism, 180 n. 18 42 Earth First!, 62 Faulkner, Daniel, 113 n. 3, 115 n. 16 43 Ebert, Teresa, 59 feminism, 109, 228–29, 263, 264 44 Echols, Alice, 60–62; Daring to Be n.1: black, 25–35, 37–45, 47–66, 45 Bad, 60, 65 n. 16–18 83–87; cultural, 60–61; ludic, 46 education, 3–7, 10, 20, 31, 42, 48, 59–60; radical, 47–66, 83–87; 47 48
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1 feminism (continued), white, 61–63, Gordon, Edmund T., 215–21 2 85–86. See also women’s liberation Gramsci, Antonio, 153, 176 n. 1, 217 3 movement Griffi th, D. W., 128; Birth of A Nation, 4 Fenty, Adrian (Mayor, Washington, 128 5 DC), 281 Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 120, 136 n. 1 6 Fisk University (Nashville), 70 Guatemala, 200, 303, 326 n. 31 7 Florida, 86, 134–35, 166, 175, 249 guerrilla warfare, 49, 172, 8 n. 21, 253, 290 n. 20 Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, ix–x 9 Foerster, Werner (state trooper), 96, 10 98, 102, 114 n. 12, 115 n. 16 Habermas, Jurgen, 324 n. 11 11 Ford, Gerald (President), 102 Hahn, Thich Nhat, 145 12 Ford, Glen, 232–33 Hale, Charles, 215–16 13 Ford, Harold, Jr., 281 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 6, 19–20, 110, 14 Forman, James, 73–74 15 116 n. 30, 254, 261 Foucault, Michel, 137 n. 8, 139 n. 21, Hampton, Fred, 96, 101, 147, 159, 16 187–88, 190–91 17 170, 236, 295, 317. See also under foster care, 109, 137 n. 6, 263, 270, Black Panther Party: Chicago 18 275 19 Chapter France, 42, 69–71; Paris, 70 Harding, Vincent, 20 20 Frazier, E. Franklin, 81 21 Harper, James (state trooper), 98 Fu-Kiau, K. Kia, 15 22 Harris, Albert (Assistant Attorney 23 General, California), 79, 81 Gandhi, Mohatma Mohandas, 144–5, 24 Harrisburg Seven, 80. See also Black 153 25 Panther Party (BPP) gangs, 157, 164, 172, 238 26 Haskins, James, 173 27 García, Michael Hames, 157 Garner, Margaret, 16 Hayes Compromise, 128 28 Hayes, Rutherford (President), 128 29 Garrison, Henry Lloyd, 127 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 240 Healey, Kerry, 226–30, 238–43, 248 30 n. 18 31 gay. See LGBTQ Geneva Conventions, 165, 302 health care, 41, 105, 109, 115 n. 15, 32 121, 225, 263. See also Indian 33 genocide, x, 20, 159, 161, 173, 233, 256, 263, 270–78, 280, 284–87, Health Service (IHS) 34 Heidegger, Martin, 307 35 289 n. 12–14, 293–304, 308, Held, Richard, 62. See also Federal 36 313–14 Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 37 Germany, 42, 70, 276, 299, 301 38 Ghana, 144 Henninger, Daniel, 281–82 39 Gibbs, Joan P., 103 heterosexism, 7, 28, 75, 85, 109, 40 Gilbert, David, 138 n. 14, 181 n. 23 172, 229. See also homophobia, 41 Goldman, Emma, 166, 168 sexism 42 Goldscheider, Eric, 239–40, 247–48 Hill, Anita, 54–55 43 n. 17 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, 65 n. 2 44 Goldwater, Barry (R-AZ), 133, 146 HIV (Human Immunodefi ciency 45 Gonzalez, Alberto (Attorney Virus), 43, 295. See also Acquired 46 General), 103 Immune Defi ciency Syndrome 47 Goodman, Andrew, 72, 266 n. 11 (AIDS) 48
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holocaust, 300–1; U.S. National International Children’s Rights 1 Holocaust Memorial Museum, 299 Convention, 43. See also United 2 homophobia, 28, 30, 76, 85, 111, Nations (UN) 3 229, 313. See also heterosexism, International Covenant on Civil and 4 LGBTQ individuals Political Rights, 43, 204, 322. See 5 hooks, bell, 37, 54 also United Nations (UN) 6 Hoover, J. Edgar (FBI Director), 80, International Court of Justice, 204, 7 91 n. 26, 99, 133, 170. See also 322 8 COINTELPRO; Federal Bureau of International Criminal Court (ICC), 9 Investigation (FBI) 43 10 Horton, Willie, 238–39, 256–57 International Indian Treaty Council, 11 housing, 95, 115 n. 15, 121, 137 n. 6, 294 12 233, 263, 270, 275 International Tribunal on War Crimes, 13 Howard University, 279 204, 322 14 Huggins, Ericka, 80 Iran, 276, 288 n. 6 15 Huggins, John, 74 Iran-Contra Affair, 40, 232 16 Hull, Gloria, 50, 269. See also Iraq, 120, 130–31, 137 n. 9, 186, 17 Combahee River Collective 190, 194 n. 1, 199, 256, 272–73, 18 human rights, 29, 41–43, 76, 99, 288 n. 6, 298; Abu Ghraib, 120 19 121, 134, 143, 148, 159, 162, Ireland, 43 20 173–74, 176, 186, 201, 204, 210, Israel, 165, 246 n. 12, 263, 272, 297 21 224, 228, 237, 243, 255–56, 260, 22 263, 265n, 272–73, 276–77, 279, Jackson, Andrew (President), 230, 23 24 294, 299–304, 321–22; Universal 289 n. 15 25 Declaration of Human Rights, 204, Jackson, Frances, 78 26 205 n. 8, 322, 326 n. 36 Jackson, George, x, 78, 80–81, 27 Human Rights Watch, 122 94–96, 119–20, 161, 163, 169–71, 28 Hurricane Katrina, 133, 266 n. 6 175, 182 n. 31, 188–89, 191, 29 Hussein, Saddam, 245n, 298 195 n. 9, 212; Blood in My Eye, 30 78, 119, 196 n. 15, 212; Soledad 31 Ifi ll, Gwen, 260, 283 Brother, 78, 81, 94, 189 32 Illinois, 234–35, 264, 281; Chicago, Jackson, Georgia, 78, 193 33 101, 131, 170, 236, 317 Jackson, James, 78 34 immigrants/immigration, 27, 119, Jackson, Jonathan, 78–79, 169, 193 35 151 n. 1, 175, 227, 285, 311; Jackson, Jesse, 114 n. 12, 156, 260, 36 detention of, 130, 136, 165; 266 n. 10 37 Immigration Customs Enforcement Jackson, Penny, 78 38 (ICE), 187; Immigration and James, C. L. R., 284 39 Naturalization Services (INS), 159; Jameson, Kathleen Hall, 244 n. 6 40 Immigration Reform and Immi- Janus, 67–70, 89 41 grant Responsibility Act, 134 Jarrett, Valerie, 224 42 imperialism, 51, 76, 84, 150, 165 Jaspers, Karl, 307 43 n. 1, 232, 246 n. 13, 256, 291 Jefferson, Thomas (President), 138 44 n. 36, 294, 308, 313–14 n. 13, 149, 230, 278, 289 n. 15 45 incarceration. See prisons Jericho 98, 44 46 Indiana, 234 Jesus, 143–44, 156 47 48
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1 Jews, 297, 299 Lennon, John, 180 n. 22 2 ji Jaga, Geronimo (Elmer Pratt), 91 lesbians. See LGBTQ individuals 3 n. 30, 96, 159 Lexington Control Unit, 141 n. 31 4 Jim Crow laws, 68–69, 147, 151, Lew-Lee, Lee, 101 5 281, 310–11. See also segregation Liberator, 30–31 6 John Paul II (Pope), 104 limbo, 25–35 7 Johnson, Luci Baines, 265 n. 4 Lincoln, Abraham (President), 121, 8 Johnson, Lyndon B. (President), 90 126–27, 264–65 n. 3 9 n. 14, 133, 151 n. 2, 254–56, 259, Little, Joanne, 86 10 261, 265n, 272 LGBTQ individuals, 27, 34 n. 1, 37, 11 Jordan, Jose Solis, 174–75 51, 54, 75, 85, 134, 141, 172–74, 12 229, 311; rights of, 75–77, 258; 13 Kerner Commission, 29, 287 n. 1 Proposition 8, 264 n. 1 14 Kennedy, John F. (President), 71, Long, Terry, 173 15 133, 168, 199, 232, 245, 254–56, Lorde, Audre, 34 n. 1, 37 16 260, 289 n. 15 Louima, Abner, 159 17 Kennedy, Robert F. (Senator), 133, Luc Levasseur, Raymond, 173–74 18 177 n. 5, 255, 260 Lumumba, Patrice, 245 n. 9 19 Kennedy Jr., Robert F., 155–56, lynching, 7 n. 11, 32, 39, 43, 50, 20 177–78 n. 5 129, 131, 144, 151, 161, 174, 252, 21 Kenya, 303 260, 270, 309 22 King, Coretta Scott, 151 n. 2 23 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 20, 32, 70, Magee, Ruchell, 79, 90 n. 25 24 73, 82, 94, 111, 132–33, 140 Malcolm X, x, 73, 94, 96, 101, 145, 25 n. 27, 143–50, 153, 157, 168–70, 149, 163, 169, 171–73, 202, 223, 26 172, 174, 201, 231, 245 n. 10, 232, 245 n. 9, 296 27 28 255, 259–61, 266 n. 7–8, 281; “I Mancini, Matthew, 122; One Dies, Get 29 Have a Dream,” 70, 143; “Letter Another, 122 30 from Birmingham Jail,” 82, 94, Mandela, Nelson, 156, 166, 178 n. 6, 31 132, 146 289 n. 13 32 Kissinger, Henry (Secretary of State), Manhattan Community College, 97 33 190, 254 Marable, Manning, 99–100, 295 34 Kojève, Alexander, 219–21 March on Washington. See under Civil 35 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 7 n. 11, 68, Rights Movement 36 84–85, 128, 168. See also lynching Marcuse, Herbert, 69–70 37 Marion Prison, 141 n. 31 38 LaGuer, Ben, 239–42, 247–48 n. 17 Marin County: Courthouse, 78–79, 39 Laos, 237 169 40 Latin America, 134, 190, 200, 232, 41 245 n. 9, 276, 288 n. 9, 302, 322 Marley, Bob, 144 42 Latinos, 42, 52, 83, 119–20, 135–36 Marshall, Thurgood, 55, 147 43 n. 1, 140 n. 29, 149, 151, 162, Martinot, Steve, 160 44 190, 225, 236, 240, 244 n. 6, 283, Marx, Karl, 69; Communist Manifesto, 45 294–95, 310–12, 324 n. 6 69; Eleventh Feuerbach, 87 46 Law Enforcement Assistance Adminis- Marxism, 69. 76, 83–84, 172, 218, 47 tration (LEAA), 133 308, 317 48
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Massachusetts, 29, 69, 256, 281; Beloved, 16–19; “Home,” 185; Song 1 2006 gubernatorial campaign, of Solomon, 13, 16–19, 23 n. 20 2 226–27, 238–42 MOVE, 187, 194 n. 5, 210 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Moynihan, Daniel (D-NY), 82 4 (MIT), 29 Moynihan Report (The Negro Family: A 5 Mazolla, William (Judge), 140 n. 26 Call to Action), 81–82, 230 6 Mazzarella, Dean, 241 Muhammad, Elijah, 245 n. 9 7 Matos, Adolfo, 173 Muntaqim, Jalil (Anthony Bottom), 8 matriarchy, 82 149, 171 9 Mbiti, John, 13–14, 198, 269, 274, Muslims, 192, 227, 245 n. 8 10 11 286 Ms. 60–61 12 McCain, John, 227, 232, 234, 237, 13 256–57, 264 n. 1, 266 n. 6, Naar-Obed, Michelle, 174 Nader, Ralph, 59, 248 n. 21 14 272–73 15 McCarthyism, 77; McCarthy era, 69, Nashville, 70 Nation of Islam (NOI), 101, 169, 16 75, 144 17 McClain, James, 79 172, 245 n. 9, 257, 272, 299, 313 National Association for the Advance- 18 McGovern, George (D-SD), 263 19 McKinney, Cynthia (D-GA), 40, 230 ment of Colored People (NAACP), 77, 138 n. 16, 144, 149, 241 20 McNair, Denise, 70–72, 168, 260 21 Mealy, Rosemari, 103 National Black Feminist Organization, 50 22 Meeks, Carrie (D-FL), 40 23 Native Americans, 25–27, 52, 83–84, Melville, Herman: Moby Dick, 11 24 124–25, 136 n. 1, 159, 162–63, Memphis, Tennessee, 150–51, 259 25 165, 225, 277–78, 294–95, 301, military, 49–50, 108, 127, 134, 26 309–14, 316; Cherokee, 110; 154–56, 161, 171, 174–75, 177, 27 Indian Health Service (IHS), 295; 28 194, 197–99, 202, 204, 210, 252, Seminoles, 137 n. 7 302, 309, 322, 323 n. 4; contrac- 29 Nazism, 276, 298–99, 307, 314, 320 30 tors, 282; prisons, 137 n. 9 Negron, Antonio Comacho, 202 military industrial complex, 60, 215, 31 neoliberalism, 41, 53, 55 32 223, 312, 323 n. 4 neoradicalism, 53–55, 57, 59 Mississippi, 72–73, 116 n. 30, 131, 33 neoslave narratives, 99, 104, 119–41 34 255, 260 New Haven, Connecticut, 80 Mississippi Freedom Democratic 35 New Jersey, 96, 98, 102–4, 115 36 Party (MFDP), 116 n. 30, 255 n. 15, 148; Middlesex County, 114 37 Mitchell, Charlene, 78 n. 14; State Police, 104 38 Mitchell, John (Attorney General), 80 New Orleans, Louisiana, 80, 233, 266 39 Montgomery. See under Alabama n. 6, 275 40 Montgomery Bus Boycott. See under New York, 21, 69, 74, 80, 83, 86, 41 Civil Rights Movement 94, 98, 101, 105, 198, 303; Attica 42 Montgomery Improvement Asso- Prison, 120, 139 n. 21, 190; 43 ciation, 32. See also Civil Rights Bronx, 125, 199; Brooklyn, 125, 44 Movement 262; Harlem, 125; Manhattan, 45 Morgan, Robyn, 60 69–70, 79; New York City, 97, 46 Morrison, Toni, 5, 9–24, 185, 191; 125, 145, 150, 151 n. 1, 233–35, 47 48
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1 New York (continued), 237, 245n, Patterson, David (Governor, New 2 317; Riker’s Island Correctional Jersey), 151 n. 18 3 Institute for Women, 105, 107–10, Patterson, Orlando, 122, 274; Slavery 4 112, 125, 149; State Parole Board, and Social Death, 122, 179 n. 11 5 166; Upstate, 125, 149 Patterson, William, 173, 270 6 New York Police Department Peltier, Leonard, 175. See also Amer- 7 (NYPD), 101, 103, 159, 243 n. 1 ican Indian Movement (AIM) 8 Newton, Huey, x, 74, 82, 90 n. 14, Pennsylvania, 198, 231, 233 9 94–97, 101, 161, 169, 171–72 Philadelphia, 113 n. 3, 138, n. 18, 10 Nixon, E. D., 32, 266 n. 8 139–40 n. 26, 128, 231 11 Nixon, Richard (President), 80, 133, Pinochet, Augusto, 200 12 254, 257, 262 plantation, 121, 123, 129–30, 137 13 Noble, Gil, 114 n. 12 n. 8 14 North Carolina, 86, 230, 234, 257 policing, 33, 42, 57, 62, 80, 120, 15 Northwestern University, 235 129–35, 160, 188, 243, 275, 16 Norton, Eleanor Holmes (D-DC), 40 282–83, 312–13; brutality, 33, 17 41, 73, 76, 94, 102, 104–5, 111, 18 Obadele, Prince Imari A., 193 115 n. 15, 159, 169, 180 n. 18, 19 Obama, Barack (President), 224–38, 233–35, 270, 309 20 242–48, 251, 254–66, 269–83, political prisoners, 43, 58, 62, 66 21 289 n. 15, 290 n. 21–22 n. 19, 79, 82, 88–89, 94, 96, 99, 22 Obama, Michelle, 224, 258, 282, 290 103, 111–12, 131, 134, 138 n. 14, 23 n. 28 141 n. 30–32, 143–46, 151, 153- 24 O’Brien, Conor Cruise, 318–19 83, 200–1, 204, 208–9, 211–12, 25 Ohio, 134–35, 231, 249 n. 21, 290 236, 302 26 n. 20 poverty, 28, 33–34, 44, 67, 69, 27 28 Okasawa-Rey, Margaret, 50. See also 97, 104, 111, 115 n. 15, 134, 29 Combahee River Collective 140 n. 29, 147, 154, 209, 228, 30 Oklahoma City Bombing, 134 254–55, 261, 263, 272, 275, 302 31 O’Neil, William, 147. See also Federal Powell, Colin, 233, 245 n. 8 32 Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Pratt, Elmer. See ji Jaga, Geronimo 33 Organization of Afro-American Unity, prison industrial complex, x, 42, 58, 34 39 111, 159, 166, 223, 275, 285, 312 35 Ortiz, Diana, 303 prison intellectuals. See political 36 prisoners 37 Palestine, 43, 156, 263, 297, 316 prisons, 32, 41–43, 45n, 54, 81–83, 38 Palin, Sarah, 265 n. 5, 272 100, 102, 105, 107–9, 112, 115n, 39 Panama, 298 119–21, 125, 128–32, 134–41n, 40 Parenti, Christian, 140–41n 146, 149, 153–54, 159, 164, 167, 41 Parks, Rosa, 32, 131, 168, 266 n. 8 169, 172, 189, 200–3, 282, 294, 42 patriarchy, 28, 41–42, 51, 57, 62, 301, 312; Attica, 139n, 195n; 43 107, 150, 188, 272. See also sexism Bureau of Prisons, 201–2; death 44 Patrick, Deval (Governor, Massa- penalty/death row, 42, 44, 45n, 45 chusetts), 226–30, 238–43, 248 80, 91n, 112, 134, 136 n. 1, 46 n. 18–19, 281 159, 168, 187, 203, 209, 241, 47 Patriot Act. See USA Patriot Act. 313, 324 n. 6; Guantánamo Bay, 48
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Cuba, 120, 136 n. 1; maximum 210, 274, 309; Harper’s Ferry, 50, 1 security, 182 n. 31, 187; solitary 126, 144. See also Attica Prison; 2 confi nement, 79, 164, 168. See also resistance; revolution 3 Attica Prison; Clinton Correctional Reconstruction, 32, 50, 64 n. 2, 4 Facility; convict prison lease 128–29, 149, 161 5 system; Lexington Control Unit; Rehnquist, James C., 240 6 political prisoners; prison indus- religion, 14, 19, 265 n. 3, 231, 7 trial complex; Riker’s Island; San 277, 302; African, 198. See also 8 Quentin Prison; Soledad Prison Christianity 9 prisoners of war, 165, 172 Republic of New Afrika, 172 10 Puerto Ricans, 57, 84, 107–8, 165, Republican Party, 135, 146, 238–39, 11 182 n. 31, 294; Independence 242, 247 n. 16, 262, 290 n. 20; 12 Movement, 66 n. 20, 201–2, 208, National Committee, 256, 286; 13 236; Independentistas, 62, 159, 163, National Convention (1964), 14 174 133; National Convention (2000), 15 Puerto Rico, ix, 43, 174–75; Vieques 139–40 n. 26 16 Island; 155–56, 177 n. 5 reservations, 35 n. 8, 110, 123, 125, 17 racism, 3, 9, 11, 17, 21, 26–30, 137, 161, 171, 295, 314, 316, 322, 18 40–41, 51, 57, 60, 62–63, 70, 76, . See also Native Americans. 19 82–87, 104, 109–12, 124, 144, resistance, 8, 16, 20, 26, 39, 44, 58, 20 148, 158, 160, 172, 188–89, 211, 63, 68, 73, 82, 94, 97–98, 100–1, 21 223–24, 226–33, 242, 243–44 n. 3, 110, 112, 131–32, 144–46, 148, 22 23 248–49 n. 20–21, 254, 256–57, 154, 161–62, 164, 167, 169, 24 260, 262, 270, 272, 277–78, 280, 172–76, 191–93, 201, 203–4, 25 285–87, 307–8, 311, 313–14, 316; 208–11, 221, 236–37, 259–60, 26 and genocide, 293–305; judicial, 80; 271, 278, 285, 299, 301–4, 317, 27 320–21. See also radicalism in literature, 10–21 28 revolution/revolutionary, x, 39, 48, 29 radicalism, 31–32, 40–41, 47–66, 51–59, 79–80, 94, 100–101, 105, 30 87, 109, 157, 190, 208, 311; and 109, 119, 131, 138 n. 14, 147, 31 academia, 215–21 154, 161, 170–72, 175, 177 n. 4, 32 Randolph, A. Phillip, 260 189, 191, 212, 216–17, 220–21, 33 rape, 33, 43, 85–86, 107, 131, 148, 232, 277, 309, 315, 317–19; 34 159, 192–93, 195 n. 12, 199, Cuban, 76; Haitian, 137 n. 7; and 35 239–42, 241–42, 253, 261, 289, radical intellectuals, 87–89, 158, 36 303. See also Ben LaGuer; violence: 164, 166, 178 n. 9, 211; women, 37 sexual x, 32, 49, 62–63, 75, 93–97, 99, 38 Reagan, Ronald (President), 72, 102–5, 109, 112, 113–14 n. 5, 9 39 133, 140 n. 29, 146, 180–81 Rice, Condoleezza (Secretary of 40 n. 22, 190, 254, 266 n. 11, 277, State), 224, 233, 264 41 282–83, 288 n. 6, 296; (Governor, Rice, David. See we Langa, Mondo 42 California), 77, 80 Rice, Susan, 224 43 Reagon, Bernice Johnson, 7n, 19–20, Rich, Marc, 236 44 22, 194 n. 4 Riker’s Island Correctional Institute 45 rebellion, 39, 49–50, 53, 94, 112, for Women (New York), 105, 46 127, 131, 134, 145, 148, 176, 188, 107–10, 112 47 48
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1 Robeson, Paul, 180 n. 22 slavery, 10–11, 16, 19–21, 24 n. 34, 2 Rockefeller, Nelson (Governor, New 31–32, 42, 49–50, 57, 81–83, 3 York), 94, 139 n. 10, 191, 195 n. 9 94, 99–100, 102–104, 109–112, 4 Rodríguez, Dylan, 158, 176 n. 9 114 n. 9, 116 n. 30, 119–32, 5 Robertson, Carole, 70–72, 168, 260 134–39, 143–44, 147–49, 159, 6 Robinson, Joanne, 32, 266 n. 8 160–61, 163, 167, 172–73, 179 7 Roelofs, Joan, 58 n. 12, 188, 190, 198, 203–4, 210, 8 Romney, Mitt (Governor, Massachu- 212, 219–20, 229–30, 233, 251, 9 setts), 227 255, 258, 261, 264, 270, 273–74, 10 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (Presi- 278, 285, 299, 301, 308–13, 315, 11 dent), 230 323, 325; Fugitive Slave Act, 104; 12 Rosenberg, Susan, 62, 66 n. 19, 174, involuntary servitude, 83 13 236 Soledad Brothers, 39, 78–81, 88, 92 14 Rove, Karl, 239 15 n. 52, 95; Defense Committee, 78, 16 81, 169 Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit, Soledad Prison (California), 78 17 174 18 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 193–94 n. 2 San Quentin Prison, 79, 90–91 n. 25, South Carolina, 49, 106 19 161, 182 n. 31, 195 n. 9 20 Southern Christian Leadership Sanchez, Sonia, 37 Conference (SCLC), 39, 140 n. 27, 21 Schwerner, Michael, 72, 266 n. 11 172–73 22 School of the Americas, 175, 200, 23 Southern Negro Youth Conference, 69 232, 291 n. 36 24 Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), Scottsboro Nine, 69, 89 n. 2 25 133 Seale, Bobby, 73, 80, 94, 169 26 Squire, Clarke. See Acoli, Sundiata self-defense, 26, 50, 73–74, 86, 94, 27 106 127, 145, 147–49, 156, 159, Standing Deer, 175 28 Steele, Michael (Lieutenant Governor, 29 175, 201, 317 Sentencing Project, 42, 136 n. 1, 282 Maryland), 281 30 Steinem, Gloria, 60–61, 262 31 September 11, 2001, 166, 168, 186, 197–205, 232, 237, 256, 313, 322 Stewart, Maria W., 30–31, 127 32 Student Nonviolent Coordinating 33 segregation, 4, 68–69, 133, 252–53, 259, 309–11 Committee (SNCC), 19, 26, 39, 34 60, 73–74, 84, 97, 133, 140 n. 27, 35 sexism, 7, 26, 30, 40, 41, 51, 57, 149, 170, 255, 261 36 60, 63, 75–76, 81–82, 84–85, Students for a Democratic Society 37 109, 112, 171–72, 188, 226–29, 38 271, 286, 294, 301, 316. See also (SDS), 60, 174, 235 39 heterosexism; violence: sexual Styron, William, 240 40 Sexton, Jared, 160 Supreme Court: of California, 80; of 41 Shakur, Assata (Joanne Chesimard), x, United States, 54–55, 125–27, 139 42 39, 62, 72, 93–119, 132, 147–48, n. 20, 148, 280 n. 18, 249, n. 21, 43 171; Assata: An Autobiography, 252–53, 285, 301 44 97–103, 105–6, 132 Sweet Honey in the Rock, 19 45 Shakur, Mutulu, 149, 173 46 Shakur, Zayd, 96, 115 n. 16, 148 Talented Tenth, 30, 47–48, 59, 64 47 Silber, John, 240 n. 2, 271 48
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Tate, Greg: Everything but the Burden, n. 1, 139 n. 19, 144, 149, 154–56, 1 188 161–63, 165–68, 172, 179 n. 11, 2 Taylor, Karen D., 103 186, 188–90, 192, 198, 201–4, 3 taxes, 125, 197, 208, 239; poll, 140, 208, 224, 254, 256, 263, 265, 269, 4 309 272–73, 275–77, 285, 293–96, 5 Terrell, Mary Church, 138n 298, 300–3, 307–13, 321–22, 6 terrorism, 68, 168, 197–99, 231, 323, 324 n. 7–8, 326 n. 31; Army 7 235–37, 246, 291 n. 36, 314, 323; of, 175, 200; Bill of Rights, 284; 8 war on, 200–5 Congress of, 127, 129, 133; 9 Texas, 168, 254, 265 n. 4 Constitution of, 42, 73, 83, 119, 10 Third World Women’s Conference, 84 122, 124–25, 127, 179 n. 12, 11 Thomas, Clarence, 54–55 274, 284; Department of Defense, 12 Thoreau, Henry David, 153 194 n. 3; Department of Justice, 13 Till, Emmett, 72, 131, 260, 266 n. 8 201–2, 235; Fifteenth Amendment, 14 Till-Mobley, Mamie, 266 n. 8 128; First Amendment, 274; Four- 15 Timoney, John, 139 n. 26 teenth Amendment, 128; Navy, 16 Timoney Three, 139–40 n. 26 155–56; Senate, 54, 99, 167, 181, 17 Torres, Carlos, 202 253, 277, 295; Supreme Court of, 18 torture, 54, 102–3, 141 n. 31 54–55, 125–27, 139 n. 20, 148, 19 totalitarianism, 314, 320, 324 n. 11 280 n. 18, 249, n. 21, 252–53, 20 Toure, Kwame. See Stokely 285, 301; Thirteenth Amendment, 21 Carmichael 42, 83, 119, 122, 127–28, 136 22 Tse-tung, Mao, 317–18 n. 4, 149, 160, 179 n. 12, 203, 23 Tubman, Harriet, x, 6, 49–50, 94, 210, 285, 310; Twenty-Fourth, 140 24 103, 110, 116 n. 30, 127, 144, n. 27; three-fi fths clause, 125, 313 25 161, 258–59, 261 University of California at Berkeley, 26 Turner, Nat, 126, 161 78, 87, 140 n. 28, 318 27 28 University of California at Los Angles 29 United Church of Christ: Commission (UCLA), 77–78 30 for Racial Justice, 103 University of California Regents, 77 31 United Freedom Front (UFF), 174 University of California at San Diego, 32 United Nations (UN), 103, 162, 70, 90 n. 14 33 165, 173, 204, 270, 288 n. 3, 289 University of Havana, 97 34 n. 12, 14, 294, 301–3, 321, 22; USA Patriot Act, 134, 141 n. 32, 181 35 Charter, 302–3; Conference on n. 25, 202 36 the Decade on Women, 303; World 37 Conference Against Racism and Vesey, Denmark, 126 38 Xenophobia in South Africa, 204, Vieques Island, 155–56 39 316, 322; Vietnam War, 90 n. 14, 98, 157, 40 U.S. Women for Racial and Economic 177–78 n. 5, 190, 194 n. 5, 237, 41 Equality, 303 254–55, 260, 317; Gulf of Tonkin, 42 United States, ix, 11, 25, 32–33, 254 43 38, 40, 42–45, 49, 52, 63, 64n, violence, 121, 127, 129–30, 197, 44 66, 68, 70, 73, 79, 83, 88, 94, 316–20, 323, 326 n. 29; domestic, 45 98–100, 103–4, 111, 119–20, 43, 106, 133, 195 n. 12; political, 46 122, 124, 126–28, 134, 136–37 6, 50, 57, 99, 127, 107, 150, 47 48
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1 violence (continued), 235, 270; Wells, Ida B., 6–7, 31, 39, 50, 131, 2 racial, 70–72, 84–86, 130, 293, 138 n. 16, 144 3 314; revolutionary, 99; sexual, Wesley, Cynthia, 70–72, 168, 260 4 33–43, 85–86, 121, 131, 208; West, Cornel, 197, 264–65 n. 3 5 state, 33, 98, 120, 175, 205, 314. White, Fran, 34 n. 1 6 See also policing; torture White, John, 151 n. 1 7 Virginia, 124, 149, 278, 248 n. 19 white solipsism, 5–6 8 Viveiros, Camilo, 139–40 n. 26 white supremacy, 5–6, 9, 12, 22 9 voting, 224–25, 243–44, 258, 279, n. 7, 28, 30, 33, 41, 49, 55–56, 10 313; disenfranchisement, 72, 62, 107, 150, 160, 187, 189, 201, 11 125, 140 n. 27, 156, 252, 285, 225–26, 229–30, 233, 243 n. 2, 12 309; 2000 Presidential Election, 261–62, 272–73, 278–79, 280–81, 13 134–35, 248–49 n. 21, 285, 290 285, 290–91, 298–99, 303, 309, 14 n. 20, 22 322 15 Voting Rights Act (1965) 73, 133, Whitehorn, Laura, 138 n. 14, 174 16 255 Whitman, Christine Todd (Governor, 17 New Jersey), 103–4, 115 n. 15 18 Walker, Alice, 37 Wideman, John Edgar, 129–30 19 Walker, David, 30–31 Wilder, Douglas (Governor, Virginia), 20 Wall Street Journal, 281–82 248 n. 19 21 Washington, Albert Nuh, 210 Wilder, Julia, 72 22 Washington, Booker T., 31, 55 Wilderson, Frank III, 159–60 23 Washington, DC, 31, 42, 70, 132, Williams, Delores, 32, 261 24 144, 168, 198, 232, 254, 259–60, Wilson, William Julius, 274 25 263, 279, 281–82, 299 women’s liberation movement, 26 Waters, Maxine (D-CA), 40 27–28, 72, 57, 77, 86, 110 27 Watts, J. C. (R-OK), 281 Woods, Keith, 244 n. 6 28 We Charge Genocide, 270–71, 294 World War II, 68, 76, 132, 156, 170, 29 we Langa, Mondo (David Rice), 164, 173, 198, 204, 276, 298, 307, 322 30 180 n. 18 Wright, Jeremiah, 231–33, 235, 237, 31 Weather Underground, 60, 174, 244 n. 6, 245–46 n. 11, 257, 272, 32 235–37, 256 274, 284, 291 n. 36 33 Weathermen. See Weather 34 Underground Zinn, Howard, 140 n. 27 35 Weber, Max, 315, 324 n. 11 Zizek, Slavoj, 296–97 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
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