Depictions of Racialized Incarceration and Policing: Acquiescence, Challenges, and Vision

by Ayshe Woodward

The purpose of this essay is to bring together the texts, class discussions, conference workshops, videos, and my own reflections in a coherent way. It is a scary essay for me to write, because often I don't feel like I have the words or personal experience to be authorized to expound on such a sensitive topic. At the same time, I welcome the challenge. This class has already flipped my understanding of ideology and action on its head, and I appreciate the space to explore what that means to me, and to try to organize my thoughts.

Appropriately, most of the material for this class is focused on race. I find myself trying to relate and understand through my own sexuality and gender, since those are things that I understand better. I know that they are very different things and experiencing one doesn't mean that you understand the other. I don’t know what it is like to be of a criminalized hue. But as a masculine lesbian, I have experience with discrimination, oppression, and police harassment, and a sense of how larger society has certain expectations of people wearing certain physical traits. My question is, then, do the multiple ways that we each experience the oppression of the state offer common ground for coalitions and/or solidarity without a spectacle/spectator relationship? I’m not sure. I know that being gay does not necessarily lead to an understanding of other forms of oppression, but I think that, personally, it helps me to frame experiences that are not my own in a way that makes sense to me.

My only concern is that I do not want to inadvertently divert the discussion of race to something that is within my personal comfort zone. I see this happen in class discussions. For example, the day that we discussed communication, somehow the discussion turned from activism and how speech can be co-opted to abstract theorizing about language. Wasn't this a class about race and incarceration?

In another class discussion, someone raised the question of the class dynamics, who has power in the classroom, and how we censor ourselves. The response was to the tune of "well, this isn’t about you (us), it’s about the prison industrial complex and what we’re going to do about it". I agree and I think this is the problem with all of this theorizing discourse sometimes-- it separates us from reality and uses energy that could be used in action. However, without thinking critically about our intent and actions, the effects of our actions may not be as meaningful and effective and may serve to reinforce those systems we are trying to tear down.

States of Confinement is a blend of academic and activist voices, reflecting a range of reformist, abolitionist and revolutionary ideologies. The first section focuses on executions, and invariably the writers take an anti-capital punishment stance that recognizes the problems of the entire criminal justice system, but ultimately prescribes little more than abolition of the death penalty.

Robert Meeropol, for example, concludes his piece by warning against an isolated anti-capital punishment movement, but also discredits the notion of a movement that is too broad because it will narrow support for anti-capital punishment work. This reflects abolitionist intent when it comes to the death penalty, but it is unclear what Meeropol's broader goal is for the entire criminal justice system, and he makes no mention of challenging the state itself.

In "Sentencing Children to Death", Steven Hawkins focuses exclusively on children, arguing that they cannot be blamed for their crimes because really their crimes reflect societal problems. He plays on the common notion that children are innocent and malleable and in need of protection, and concludes by recommending ending death penalty, but only for children. By failing to stress the racist way that the death penalty is applied to all ages, not just children, he prescribes a narrow, reform-minded approach.

Much of the current buzz against the death penalty is based on constructions of innocence. These arguments seem based less on moral opposition than on the fact that the death penalty requires perfection, and it therefore must be stopped in order to prevent innocent people from being killed. For example, the whole movement to free Mumia seems predicated on the belief that he is innocent. In "The Ordeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal", Daniel R. Williams makes the connection with today's death penalty and yesterday's lynching, but he does not go far beyond recommending the abolition of the death penalty. Little is said about what to do with people who are actually guilty of the crimes for which they are sentenced to death.

I went to a workshop at the Critical Resistance Conference called "Live from Death Row". It began with three or four white activists explaining the basics of the most familiar anti-capital punishment arguments. Then two death row inmates called in, one at a time, to tell their story. While I appreciated that they had the space to tell their own story, the format of a hundred or so mostly white people listening to black prisoners on death row felt a little strange. Both prisoners based their anti-death penalty stance on their own innocence. I wonder if the audience would have been as interested in their stories if they were "guilty". If we agree that the death penalty should be abolished based on constructions of innocence, what do we imply about the rightly accused?

This leads to ideas about hierarchies of prisoners, which we discussed in class. Constructions of guilt and innocence, as well as political versus non-political prisoners shape the way that the public feels about the criminal justice system, and whether they are motivated to take action. At the opening event of the conference, the audience was asked to stand up in the following order: first those who had been political prisoners, then anyone who had been in prison, then friends and family of prisoners, then anyone who’s been bugged by the police, and finally everyone who has ever seen COPS or a similar television show. By the end, of course, everyone was standing, and the point was to show that we are all affected by what many refer to as the prison industrial complex. I think it effectively illustrated this point, but I was struck by the way that it explicitly placed greatest value or importance on those who had been political prisoners. It seems like all prisoners in United States are political to some extent, especially prisoners of color.

The movie, Snitch, and the 360degrees website are examples of liberal mainstream representations of prisoners. A critique of race and of the state itself is noticeably absent from both. Snitch focuses on the role that new legislation has had in increasing sentences, particularly for small-time drug offenders. While it definitely criticizes increased legislative power-- ie mandatory minimum, and excessive sentencing--but does not imply that such excesses are inherent to the structure of state. Snitch is also critical of the practice of police forcing people to "snitch" in order to reduce their sentence.

As for the 360degrees website, again, there is no focus on race. Both Snitch and 360degrees include stories of prisoners of different races and socio-economic strata, but do not emphasize that the burden of the prison system's excesses falls disproportionately on poor people of color. The 360degrees website feels perilously close to a form of voyeuristic entertainment. The biographies are all very brief and lack any critical perspectives on the prison system, not to mention the state. The format reads almost like a soap opera: "As you listen to the stories, you can explore each speaker's personal space by navigating 360 degrees-up, down, and around-prison cells, offices, judges' chambers, and living rooms."

There are two quizzes for visitors to the site to find out a) your theory on criminal justice and b) to find out you yourself are a criminal. Interestingly, when my results from the criminal justice theory quiz came back, I was warned that my theory does not work because offenders need to be punished, and that the practical implications of my theory were "daunting". Next to the text was a picture of a Native American man holding a rifle and the caption read, "Apache chief Geronomi and his tribe were arrested and imprisoned in 1886." There was no discussion of why he was pictured there, why he was arrested, nor any mention of the way that Native Americans and other people of color have been criminalized and policed throughout history.

The second quiz is effective in demonstrating that most people have committed some sort of crime for which they could be locked up. However, the fact that people exhibiting certain physical characteristics are more likely than others to be arrested for those crimes is not mentioned. In her essay, "From the Convict Lease System to the Super-Max Prison", Angela Davis points out that a black person more likely to go to prison than a person who has committed a crime. Luana Ross also discusses how guilt and innocence is shaped by physicality in Inventing the Savage. She explains that women who fit into society's gender-role expectations are rewarded with leniency in the courtroom: "women are punished as much for gender-role violations as for illegal behavior". Black and indigenous women are particularly unlikely to meet these gender expectations.

Matthew J. Mancini gives some history of the United States' criminal justice system in Ones Dies, Get Another. In class, we discussed how his viewpoint is distinctly that of a liberal academic. As such, he does not prescribe an alternative to the state or even to the prison system. At several points, Mancini differentiates convict leasing from slavery, and concludes that conflict leasing was overall "worse than slavery during a convict's sentence". Two questions arise from his conclusion: a) If convict leasing is not slavery, then what is it? and b) Does calling convict labor "worse" than slavery discount actual slave conditions?

In class, most agreed that Mancini constructs the convict lease system as an isolated anomaly in US history; he frames it within specific dates and then fails to describe how the same practices and dynamics bled outside of that frame. I was confused about this argument, because it seems to me that he does touch on this in his discussion of abolition: "The abolition of convict leasing is in a sense a key link in a meaningless chain, marking the transition from one distinct form of prison management to another, but it is always, despite such transitions, the same chain." He also notes that reform is part of the prison's program, which seems to prescribe abolition as the only real solution, since reform will only bring more of the same. However, Mancini is drawing from Foucault in this anti-progressive argument, and, like Foucault, he fails to draw meaningful attention to the importance of race in United States penal history. Rather than focus on race, Foucault and even Mancini seem to maintain it as a peripheral issue.

Joy James brought up in class the fact that United States society itself serves as a penal colony for blacks, and that it therefore does not require a specific carceral site. All white people serve a policing function because of their color. Slavery, black codes, the convict lease system, Jim Crow laws, and the current prison industrial complex have all served to control and criminalize blacks. The abolition of one or the other at different points in history has always led to some other system that serves the same function.

In his conclusion, Mancini seeks to destroy the myth that convict leasing was abolished as a result of humanitarian sentiment, public pressure and the media. Through an economic and political analysis, he seeks to demonstrate that convict leasing was abandoned only after it had ceased to be profitable and at a time when it was convenient given political rivalries. Given his understanding of the roots of abolition, what routes does Mancini leave open for reform? In class someone raised the following question: If reform only occurs when it is economically and politically practical, is it possible to engage in reform that is outside of a power quest or a search for money? I would be interested to hear Mancini's answer.

Marc Mauer’s Race to Incarcerate is also rooted in liberal ideology, and in this case in a very un-self conscious way. He is extremely vague when talking about liberal politics itself; he takes this model as a given, and seems oblivious to alternatives. He concludes by urging the public and policy makers to lobby to change drug policy. In doing so, he suggests that specific policies, not a racist system or a state that itself engenders inequality, are responsible for today’s state of affairs.

To be fair, Mauer does mention that a reactive and punitive model for responding to social problems is not pre-ordained. In a brief paragraph he suggests that some communities have successfully utilized more pro-active models. He does not really question the validity of state hegemony and violence, but is critical of the way that it is applied.

Mancini and Mauer both ground themselves in conventional liberal politics and thereby presume allegiance to the state. The do not question whether there is an inherent problem with the state. But if prisons ARE the state, then how do you abolish them without abolishing the state? One could make a parallel to the intent behind the abolition of slavery. At that time, as now, most did not seek to abolish the state and its inherent power relations. The result is that those power relations have remained fundamentally unchanged.

Luana Ross offers a more radical model than Mauer’s or Mancini’s in Inventing the Savage. She notes the multiple sites of imprisonment-- schools, orphanages, prisons, and reservations–that have contained indigenous people over the years. This is similar to what Mancini describes in his final chapter about abolition. Reform occurs but the fundamental power structures remain the same though they take on different shapes.

However, unlike Mancini and Mauer, Ross intends for the reader to think beyond the nation state. She outlines an alternative vision of the state based on traditional Navajo models of distributive justice and peacemaking. It is unclear how far she intends for this model to be taken, though, and whether she sees it as applicable only to indigenous people or to all people. Her somewhat backhanded dismissal of the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) role and their validity in mobilizing Native Americans undercuts her otherwise radical/revolutionary stance. As we discussed in class, she seems to encourage individual resistance to the state, but dismisses non-state sanctioned collective resistance to the state.

Inventing the Savage is based largely on interviews with women inmates at a specific prison in Montana. The stories provide them with humanity and agency because they are given a forum to tell their own story. It is clear from their stories that their experience on the inside is all too similar to their experience on the outside. The patriarchal, abusive family dynamics that many of these women are accustomed to are reproduced in prison.

In class we discussed the function of the success story at the end of the text, and whether it glosses over the underside of indigenous women's experiences with incarceration in order to avoid leaving the reader demoralized in the end. As mentioned above, Ross seems to base her models of resistance on the individual rather than communities. A success story at the end may not be inherently bad, but it may be more helpful to others if it provided a model for collective mobility rather than how one individual succeeded against the odds. As it is, the story may lead readers to wonder why some succeed and others do not, and what is wrong with those who don't?

Blu Magazine offers another model of revolutionary ideology. Though it seems to be based on political intent rather than identity, the contents and images are mostly about people of color, particularly black people. At the same time that it does seem geared toward black people and does not seem to specifically make an effort to cross boundaries or "cross over", it also does not seem to explicitly or implicitly exclude anyone based on their race.

Blu's voice is definitely activist-oriented. An article by Delbert Africa of MOVE criticized academia and theorizing: " We in MOVE lead by example, not by a bunch of multi-syllabled words… It's been too long that people who claim to be about freedom, claim to be about righting the wrongs imposed by this system, have sat around and theorized about the feasibility of working with, and in support of, MOVE." This sentiment is less explicitly revealed by the content of the magazine, which is distinctly action-based, and focused on activists, activist groups and musicians who identify as revolutionary.

I entered the world of activism through my own identity and the oppression that I felt early on as a gender-ambiguous lesbian. Currently I do a lot of workshops in high schools and colleges and with social service providers and other groups. I am usually the only "out", visibly queer person in the room. I become the expert on and the voice of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. The language that I use is different from the language that I use with my friends and co-workers. I definitely soften my more subversive side in an attempt to encourage acceptance and understanding. Whether that's necessary given reality, or whether it compromises what I stand for, I'm not sure.

Do you distance yourself from your people when you are the translator? I think that this is inevitable. In the same way that I shape my message to the particular group that I am speaking to, somebody commented in class that his anti-PIC organization caters their message to their audience. In my opinion, these tactics are necessary in order to capture attention, but also dilute the message.

I think that coalitions are a necessary and useful vehicle, but clearly are not appropriate all the time. For example, I think that a lot of groups can get together when a problem affects multiple groups-- like about hate crimes or police brutality. Also, most people have multiple identities and allegiances, and coalitions are a way to bring them together for a common cause. My problem with coalitions arises when ideologically opposing sides agree on something. This is exemplified by Mauer in his discussion of indeterminate sentences laws, and by James in her discussion of the "conservative origins and liberal intent" of affirmative action. Such "coalitions" in my opinion represent what Richard Delgado would call a pull to the right. Anti-pornography feminists and right-wing conservatives have also agreed on some things on the past, but the result has largely targeted gays and other already marginalized groups rather than protecting women.

While I think that coalitions are at times necessary, I also appreciate the value of creating spaces that are identity-based. In class, a student of color expressed her frustration with trying to talk about race and incarceration with white people. As I understood it, she felt like white people were coming at it from a whole different perspective, and she felt the need to talk about these issues with "her people". I think that the desire to be around "your people" is completely valid. I know that I appreciate queer-only spaces in certain circumstances and I know what it’s like to get tired of explaining myself. At the same time, I think that multi-racial, multi-sexual orientation etc. conversations and organizing is necessary, especially given the fact that so many of us as individuals reflect multiple identities.

My struggle is how to be an effective ally and be in solidarity with the struggles of people who face certain oppressions that I do not. While I care deeply about many issues, the ones I have taken up most actively have been ones that affect my life most directly. I think that it is important for us each to use our own voice to speak up about issues that touch our lives. I feel like I have authority to speak about queer issues, at least as they affect my life, in a way that I do not to speak things that do not as directly affect my daily existence. I think that by recognizing the interconnectedness of systems of oppression we can relate to each other in a way that at least limits the spectator/spectacle relationship.

Prior to taking this class I had taken the state as we know it as a given and my activism reflects that, as it primarily works within pre-existing structures. It is difficult for me to see outside of this existing framework and how my activism could be useful if it didn't fit into it. I work with lgbt high school students and we are laying the groundwork to introduce a civil rights bill for lgbt students in Rhode Island public schools. How can I do this in a way that does not reinforce the state? Does working to change laws reinforce the same structures that oppress us? In class, Professor James described the congratulatory moment when you expand the law. These gains are important but insufficient, because the law is still the very thing that polices you. I appreciate that taking this class has expanded my understanding and challenged my ideas of activism, though I am still not sure where I stand.

I have mentioned several workshops that I attended at the conference throughout this paper. Now I want to separately discuss two connected workshops I attended that focused primarily on queer youth of color. One was a general, personal-story based workshop, and the other was about how New York City has closed down one of the central meeting places for lgbt youth. They were both amazing. I work with queer youth, and it’s rare to get such a diverse panel together of different races, socio-economic statuses, and gender identities.

Some of the information that they covered was all too familiar to me. To review some of the numbers, more than 90 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth regularly hear homophobic remarks in their schools, and more than two-thirds experience verbal, sexual, and physical harassment and assault. As a result, drop-out rates are skyrocketing. Lgbt youth whose families are low-income and/or of color and live in highly policed, under-funded schools are likely to become targets for arrest. Among adolescents receiving services at a NYC agency for lgbt youth, two out of five have been physically assaulted on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and more than three-fifths of this homophobic violence occurred in their home. The result is that lgb youth make up a disproportionate percent (35%) of NYC’s homeless youth. There is a severe lack of pro-gay and pro-trans assisted living programs for homeless lgbt youth. 100 percent of lgbt youth in foster care have experienced homophobic verbal abuse in their group homes, and 70 percent of these youth have experienced homophobic physical violence in their group homes (ACS Task Force on lgbt Youth).

Job discrimination is prevalent among lgbt youth of color, particularly transgendered youth of color, who are barred from practically every employment venue. Many are forced to rely on street economies such as survival sex and drugs. According to the Hetrick Martin Institute, over half of gay and bisexual men who are forced to leave their homes because of homophobia engage in sex work to support themselves. While there are no statistics for transgendered youth’s involvement in sex work, their inability to attain other types of employment suggest that the rates are even higher than those for gay and lesbian youth. As we all know, sex workers are routinely harassed and arrested by the police.

Three of the six panelists were transgendered, and two of those three were involved in sex work. The one transgendered woman who is not engaged in sex work has been targeted by the police and arrested for prostitution while distributing safe sex supplies to these workers. They assume that because she is transgendered, she is a prostitute. The prostitutes said that the cops do not target the "real" women who work in the same area, but specifically seek out the transgendered ones. In their interactions on the street and in jails/prisons, officers intentionally disrespect their gender identity. This includes calling a male-to-female (mtf) transsexual "sir", forcing them to use the men’s bathroom and locking them up in men’s cells. They also pointed out that most of the sex workers in the area are of color, while most of the police officers are white. In addition, the neighborhoods in the West Village area are becoming increasingly gentrified, and communities have been hiring security guards to police transgendered sex workers.

The second workshop focused on the concept of public space and used one case to show how poor people, people of color, and queers are policed and kept out. Historically, the West Village is one of the few neighborhoods where lgbt folks have been able to build community in New York City. In particular, the Christopher Street piers have served as the only "safe" space for many homeless and low-income lgbt youth. Many youth have traditionally been networked into medical, mental health, housing, and employment through the piers community. Recently, Governor Pataki has designated the piers as a place to build private, for-profit institutions. Additionally, block organizations are organizing to "clean the streets" and pressuring police to crack down on groups that they feel lower their property value. Police and security have responded by fencing off most of the pier area, and with regular sweeps of lgbt youth of color and homeless youth on the piers, in the Village, and in the meat-packing district. The youth on the panel have also reported a sharp increase of police harassment and arrest in these areas.

Depictions of racialized incarceration and policing reflect a wide range of ideologies, the difference between which I don't think I could have distinguished prior to taking this class. The texts, class lectures and discussions, conference, and films have created a new space in my mind for questioning the validity of the state and for integrating those questions into my own activism.

Blu Magazine. Issue #9.

Davis, Angela. "From the Convict Lease System to the Super-Max Prison". States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Hawkins, Steven. "Sentencing Children to Death". States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

James, Joy. "The Dysfunctional and the Disappearing: Democracy, Race and Imprisonment". Social Identities. Volume 6, Number 4, 2000.

James, Joy, Ed. States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Mancini, Matthew J. One Dies, Get Another. South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

Mauer, Marc. Race to Incarcerate. New York, The New Press, 1999.

Meeropol, Robert. "Testimony". States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Ross, Luana. Inventing the Savage. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1998. P79

Williams, Daniel R. "The Ordeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal". States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

www.360degrees.org

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