Over the past couple of days, a column by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the New York Times has made the rounds on social media. In it, Coates basically makes the case that racism is endemic to American democracy. He followed up that column with a post on his blog expanding on his premise this morning. He writes:

“Racism was created by policy. It will likely only be ultimately destroyed by policy. That is hard to take. If Forrest Whitaker sticks out in that deli for reasons of individual mortal sin, we can castigate the guy who frisked him and move on. But if he — and others like him — stick out for reasons of policy, for decisions that we, as a state, have made, then we have a problem. Then we have to do something beyond being nice to each other.”

These words owe an intellectual debt to one of the best thinkers about American racism that the United States has ever produced: Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture). Carmichael has long been a touchstone for me and I return to his writing often. In a speech that he gave in July 1967 in London at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, he outlines the difference between individual and institutional racism. Early on in his speech, he says:

“I’m a political activist. I don’t deal with the individual, I think it’s a cop out when people talk about the individual. What we’re talking about around the United States today, and I believe around the Third World, is the system of international white supremacy coupled with international capitalism. We’re out to smash that system.”

Carmichael is essentially making the point that to focus on the individual obscures the structural nature of oppression. We need to keep our eyes squarely on the root causes of oppression in order to have any chance to uproot and transform it.

Below I will quote extensively from the speech because I believe that what he has to say is as relevant today as it was in 1967 and since we’re apparently talking about racism (for at least one more day), I think that his words are instructive:

So I’m not going to talk about the individual. For one thing it will be seen that the black man’s alienation is not an individual question, it is a question of socio-diagnostics. The Negro problem does not resolve itself into the problem of individual Negroes living among white men, but rather of Negroes as a class that is exploited, enslaved, and despised by the colonialist, capitalist society, which is only accidentally white. But since it is accidentally white, that’s what we talk about — white Western society.

The other reason why I won’t talk about the individual is that whenever you raise questions about racial problems to white Western society, each white man says: “Well, don’t blame me, I’m only one person and I really don’t feel that way. Actually I have nothing against you, I see you as an equal. You’re just as good as I am — almost.” I want to clear that up — to point out the difference between individual racism and institutionalized racism.

The first type, individual racism, consist of overt acts by individuals, and usually the immediate result is the death of the victim, or the traumatic and violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded on T.V. cameras and can frequently be observed in the process.

The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts, but it is no less destructive of human life. It’s part of the overall operation of established and respected forces in the society, so it doesn’t receive the condemnation that the first type does.

Let me give you an example of the first type. When unidentified white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the world. But when in that same city, Birmingham, Alabama, not five but five hundred black babies die each year because of lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutionalized racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood, and it is stoned, burned or routed out, that latter is an overt act of individual racism, and many people condemn that, at least in words. But it is institutionalized racism that keeps the black people locked in dilapidated slums, tenements, where they must live out their daily lives subject to the prey of exploitative slum landlords, merchants, loan sharks and the restrictive practices of real-estate agents. We’re talking now about the U.S., but I think you can apply a little of it to London. But the society either pretends it does not know of institutionalized racism, or is incapable of doing anything meaningful about the conditions of institutionalized racism. And the resistance to doing anything meaningful about institutionalized racism stems from the fact that Western society enjoys its luxury from institutionalized racism, and therefore, were it to end institutionalized racism, it would in fact destroy itself.

Carmichael’s words speak for themselves so they need no additional commentary from me. One only needs to look at today’s job numbers to understand of what he speaks.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, you should watch this report about a roundtable at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation that included Carmichael:

“In the summer of 1967, the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation brought together in London critical theorists, political activists, poets, Marxists, anarchists, existential psychiatrists, and a broad spectrum of other leftist and countercultural figures, among them C. L. R. James, Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, Angela Davis, Lucien Goldmann, and Gregory Bateson. Organized by David Cooper and R. D. Laing, both of whom were prominent figures in the 1960s anti-psychiatry movement that counted Foucault and Deleuze among its most recognizable adherents, the conference was devoted to a wide-ranging engagement with a diverse range of leftist issues, including debates on the future of capitalism, the role of violence in modern dissent, the possibility of revolution and liberation, and nascent forms of radical ecology and environmentalism. The intended purpose of the conference was to bring together leading leftist figures in an effort to create, as its organizers hoped, “a genuine revolutionary consciousness by fusing ideology and action on the levels of the individual and of mass society.”1 (Source: Brian Thill)

Every week, I get an email or some inquiry from someone who wants confirmation about a particular “fact” related to mass incarceration. I thought that I would tackle two “facts” that are in fact urban legends.

1. Myth: Prisons use third grade test scores to determine future number of prison beds needed. Fact: Not True.

This urban legend will not die mainly because there is in fact a correlation between educational attainment and incarceration… Reporter Bill Graves tried to get to the bottom of the mythhere.

In the Atlantic, John Hudson offers provocative take: “So while the idea that prison planners are reading your children’s test scores is false, maybe it shouldn’t be.”

2. Myth: There are more black men in prison than in college. Fact: Not True.

I have no idea where this myth came from but it is and has been persistent & is pernicious. It is simply FALSE. Below is a useful chart that illustrates the fallacy.

Here’s another illustration based on point in time data:

Read more about this myth here

So now that you know, please help us to bury these talking points.

I came across a copy of Hands Off!! A Quarterly Forum of Bay Area Women Against Rape from Fall 1981. It was fascinating to read in part because it is unfathomable that any of the articles would appear in a newsletter of today’s mainstream anti-sexual assault or domestic violence organizations. It highlights the difference between an anti-violence movement and what we have today which is a social service field. Throughout the publication, there is an explicit effort to downplay involvement and cooperation with law enforcement. Times have surely changed… Regular readers are well aware of my thoughts about the anti gender-based violence “movement’s” embrace of the carceral state. The article below featuring information about the Black Women’s Anti-Violence Project underscores the reality that community accountability approaches for addressing harm are not new.

It’s 11:30 p.m. — the crisis line rings. A panicky Elaine C. explains as small, shrieking voices confirm the scene: someone’s beaten her, raped her. She’s badly bruised, bleeding, hurting all over.

Embarrassed witnesses turn away; friends sympathize, but can’t see a way to help. Nowhere to turn.

But Elaine’s seen a number — 652-0339 — the Black Women’s Anti-Violence Project, organized by Black women for Black women who experience rape, incest or beatings. She called.

The Problem

Combating violence against Black women is a complicated matter. A Black woman’s initial response to violence, generally, is to turn to police systems — an historical enemy. For a Black woman, calling the police amounts to compounding the violence, confronting authorities that rarely help, confuse issues and generally aggravate an already bad situation.

But now there is an alternative: The Black Women’s Anti-Violence Project (BWAVP), a group of East Bay women who believe it takes Black women — with knowledge of community resources and response strategies — to help other Black women.

Mary Mathis, project co-founder, explained: “There are enemies in our communities. Black women are not one of them. And we cannot afford to cast Black men as an enemy, either. Black women are the only people with legitimate motives, perspective and information to address the rising incidence of violence against us.”

Mathis continued: “The daily Black experience confirms and contributes to growing fears, resentments, frustration and rage. Oftentimes that emotion wells over into violence generally targeting those even more vulnerable: Black women and Black children.”

But there is another important reason to stop the violence that goes beyond even the critical concern for individual safety and family unity.

“Violence against Black women serves the broad purpose of supremacists thought: as long as Black men and Black women battle one another, a People remain divided. A People, so preoccupied, cannot focus attention on their true enemy. So a divided people, in essential terms, is a conquered People. We must face this; we must stop this,” Mathis concluded.

Services

BWAVP assists Black women survivors of incest, rape and battery in three ways: (1) by offering counseling that meets personal needs for support, self-validation and objective insight; (2) by presenting self-protection and self-help workshops as a means of ending the violent embrace; and (3) by directing women to specific resources serving targeted needs.

The Project crisis line connects callers with trained Black women ready to deal with current violence and help identify ways to prevent future violence.

“Many of our Project volunteers are survivors of rape, incest or beatings who found ways to protect themselves. We’ve organized to share strategies with women who aren’t aware of ways to protect themselves,” commented Joyce Penalver, Project co-founder.

BWAVP offers callers a complete picture of community services and resources, but certain involvements, such as police system involvements, are downplayed.

“The Project emphasizes strategies to heighten community awareness of the impact of rape, incest, and battery and to refocus this aggression on its true target,” stated Joyletta Alice, Project co-founder. “It would be self-sabotage and patently ridiculous to encourage involvements serving non-productive purposes.”

BWAVP provides free, confidential information and services to Black women of all ages, communities, and lifestyles. The goal is to unite Black women around a shared concern: violence against our person.

BWAVP is recruiting Black women interested in acting for the benefit of all Black women. Call 652-0339 for service information, counseling and details on how to get involved.

One immediately notices the importance placed on the fact that BWAVP volunteers are survivors of violence. This is seen as a value-added. Today, the anti-violence field has become so professionalized that some agencies actually discourage survivor disclosures. Also, the BWAVP welcomes survivors of sexual AND domestic violence. This seems quaint today but there was a time when women tried to address violence holistically. Today we have rape crisis centers and domestic violence organizations who operate separately and rarely intersect. In real life though, most of us do not experience violence in silos… The excerpt is so rich that I can go on for several more paragraphs analyzing it but I will stop here.

My friend, the brilliant Dr. Beth Richie, has written a wonderful book titled Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. The book addresses the anti-violence against women & girls movement’s embrace of the carceral state. You can watch Beth speaking last week at a conference at the University of Berkeley about these issues:

There is a screening of the new documentary Free Angela Davis & All Political Prisoners this evening. I will be speaking on a panel after the film. Details are here. The screening is free.

In keeping with the theme of the last few days, I wanted to share this excerpt that underscores Davis’s commitment to black women’s liberation.

“The battle for women’s liberation is especially critical with respect to the effort to build an effective black liberation movement. For there is no question about the fact that as a group, black women constitute the most oppressed sector of society.

Historically we were constrained not only to survive on an economic level as slaves, but our sexual status was that of a breeder of property for the white slave master as well as being the object of his perverse sexual desires. Our enemies have attempted to mesmerize us, to mesmerize black people, by propounding a whole assortment of myths with respect to the black woman. We are inveterate matriarchs, implying we have worked in collusion with the white oppressor to insure the emasculation of our men. Unfortunately, some black women have accepted these myths without questioning their origin and without being aware of the counter-revolutionary content and effect. They’re consequently falling into behind-the-scenes positions in the movement and refuse to be aggressive and take leadership in our struggle for fear of contributing to the oppression of the black male.

As black women, we must liberate ourselves and provide the impetus for the liberation of black men from this whole network of lies around the oppression of black women, which serve only to divide us, thus impeding the advance of our total liberation struggle…

Source: Angela Davis speaks from jail, Muhammad Speaks, 1970

Incident
by Countee Cullen

For Eric Walrond

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Batimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

[This was written in haste and I have a ton to do today. I felt that I had to write this post as an ally to black girls and young women who are consistently maligned, insulted, assaulted, pathologized and oppressed. Many of the young women who I have and currently work with and love are “teen mothers.” I want them to know that I have their back. I am sure that I will return to this topic again soon. For now, here’s what I have to say.]

I woke up today to see this photograph…

Evidently this billboard is part of New York City’s Human Resource Administration’s “Think Being a Teen Parent Won’t Cost You?” campaign. It’s hard to know even where to begin with this…

When I was in college, I read an account by a free black man named Solomon Northup who had been kidnapped and held as a slave for 12 years. In 12 Years A Slave, he described the closing scene of a New Orleans auction in 1841:

“…The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall [a Negro child] must go alone. Then Eliza [his mother] ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her — all the while her tears falling in the boy’s face like rain.

“Freeman [the dealer] damned her, calling her a blabbering, bawling wench, and ordered her to go to her place and behave herself, and be somebody. He would soon give her something to cry about, if she was not mighty careful, and that she might depend upon.

“The planter from Baton Rouge, with his new purchase, was ready to depart.

“‘Don’t cry, mama. I will be a good boy. Don’t cry,’ said Randall, looking back, as they passed out of the door.

“What has become of the lad, God knows. It was a mournful scene, indeed. I would have cried if I had dared.”

Read more »

NPR produced two excellent stories about the drug war’s contribution to the acceleration of mass incarceration. In particular, the story about the Rockefeller drug laws is great. Listen here.

I compiled this list to share on Wednesday at the Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners screening and roundtable.

Special thanks to my Facebook friends for their help in crowd sourcing this list. I tried to make sure that there is at least one thing that someone can do on here.

1. Fight against the proposed CPS School closures. Community members and local organizations are packing meetings citywide to express their opposition to closing more schools in already devastated neighborhoods. OnMarch 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. testify at a Citywide People’s School Board Meeting. First Unitarian Church, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave.

Join the Grassroots Education Movement on March 27 for a city wide rally to save public education. Contact [email protected] or 312-329-6227 for more information about both opportunities.

2. Learn about and advocate for restorative and transformative justice. OnMarch 16, there will be a Southside Restorative Justice Expo from 9 to 1:30 p.m. Details are here.

3. Join the Mental Health Movement which is fighting to save our existing mental health clinics from closure in Chicago.

4. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Support the Yes to Counselors, No to More Cops in Schools Campaign. Find out more here.

5. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Teach youth how to catalogue police harassment and overdiscipline at school. Encourage youth to join existing coalitions like Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to organize against harsh school discipline policies that lead to school pushout.

6. Support the young people from Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) as they organize to bring a needed trauma center to the Southside that will serve EVERYONE. Sign their petition here and organize with them here.

7. Close Dwight Prison Now – Tell your legislators (more information is forthcoming).

8. Learn about the history of policing, violence, and resistance. Attend a series of events starting March 18th. Details here.

9. Support the efforts of several community organizations to close the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) and re-direct the funds to community-based alternatives to detention and to programming that will support youth. Read their position paper.

10. Support youth-led efforts like the Street Youth Rise Up Campaign(organized by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project) which are documenting and organizing against institutional violence. Share their Bad Encounter Line report with others.

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Author’s Note: As I mentioned a few of weeks ago, I am using this blog to think through some of my experiences in working with young women of color for many years to address violence. This post is a first draft of some ideas. Please do not repost any part of this anywhere else (especially without permission). I’m still working through my ideas for a long essay that I am currently writing. This means that my thoughts are still inchoate and incomplete. I never know what I think about something until I write it down so the blog is serving that purpose for me right now. I do welcome any comments and suggestions from others who have worked through these issues with young women of color as well.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the personal experiences that led me to co-found the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT) with girls of color in my community in 2003. Today, I want to share what I learned about how some young women of color conceptualize street/public harassment. [*All names have been changed]

On my block
The streets that scare me at night
Are the same streets that are supposed to protect me during the day.
These are the streets of many young girls
Young girls who don’t know that they have entered the nest where predators lay.
This is my neighborhood
This world I didn’t belong to was right around me but it seemed so very far away
Why are the cops so busy harassing young boys instead of helping me when I call out RAPE!
This world was not mine because I was scared to show off my long legs and curvy figure like most of my sistahs
I was uncomfortable in my neighborhood…

Source: “These Streets….Are Mine” by Shay Armstead, 17, leadership core member of YWAT

Young women in East Rogers Park regularly complain about routine street harassment on three major thoroughfares: Morse Ave, Clark Street, and Howard Street. On any given day, one can find young and old men standing on Morse and Howard hanging out in front of local bodegas and liquor stores or in front of the EL stations. Others cruise the streets in their cars looking to ‘hook up’ with young women. Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT) members conducted their own research about street harassment in the summer of 2003. They administered surveys to over 160 young women in Rogers Park ages 10 to 19. Over 80% of their survey respondents reported that they experienced catcalls on a daily basis. Their findings illustrated the prevalence of street harassment in Rogers Park.

At its most basic level, street harassment is “the harassment of women in public places by men who are strangers to them” (Bowman 1993, 519). It is a form of sexual harassment that encompasses different behaviors, gestures, and comments. YWAT members identify suggestive comments and gestures, name-calling, re-naming (calling you a bitch or a ho), whistling, ‘hollering’, put downs, demands for sex, following, grabbing, and touching as examples of street harassment. In addition, it was important that the target of these actions was uncomfortable by the attention in order for them to be potentially considered as violence.

Fourteen year old Tania’s definition of street harassment mirrored those offered by many others: “I define street harassment by catcalling, and unwanted attention while you’re walking down the street. You just want to be left alone, but somebody just keeps on bothering you, and telling you ignorant stuff that you don’t want to hear.” Tania’s definition of street harassment involves particular acts that take place in a public setting. But her definition includes no mention of the gender of the harasser or the victim. The overwhelming majority of the young women who I’ve worked with and interviewed over the years maintain that young women are disproportionately victimized by male harassers. Tania does not feel the need in her definition to specify who is doing the harassing and who is being targeted because for her it is a given that men harass and that women are targets. There were only a couple of instances when young women did suggest that girls can be harassers and that young men can be the targets of street harassment. Nineteen year old Maya, a founding member of YWAT, was one of the few to offer the perspective that men are sometimes victims of street harassment:

“At first I did think it was just women, you know, guys are just there to harass, but of course, as I grew older and wiser, we have at our events, the men that did come, they came and they spoke out, we are getting harassed too, and it’s surprising to me at first, some women do harass guys, it was also an issue too, because you know we work with GLBTQ, and it was myself and another girl that went to meetings with YWEP (young women’s empowerment project) and there are gays, and those guys would get harassed just because of that, you know, so I think that population of men grew unexpectedly among YWAT, wow, there are a lot of guys that get harassed.”

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