Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Abolitionist Imaginingsrelevant questions such as How do we protect ourselves, each other, andpractice justice without getting the state involved?CG: What kinds of political alternatives does the abolitionist movementoffer in the face of current prevailing “post-racial” and neoliberal ideology?DR: I can speak in a very incomplete way to what abolitionism can offerin terms of a radical racial, anti-racist politics. In my interpretation of it,the logic of an abolitionist position is that it is a direct and radical historicalconfrontation with the living legacies of anti-black racial slavery, racialcolonialism, white supremacist nation-building, as they’ve differentlyconverged in a nation-building project. So one of the most compellingpolitical alternatives abolition can offer is a pedagogical commitment tolearning and teaching how these systems are central to our everyday, historicalpresent. The fraudulence of a “post-racial” (or even “post-racist”)society is not hard to show—you can just go to the US government’s ownsocioeconomic and criminal justice data to demystify the bullshit—butwhat’s far more difficult is building a racial/anti-racist politics that is aboutliberation rather than reform and the abolition of genocide rather thangenocide management.BB: We are not post-racial; we have racism that occurs every fucking day.I think they should not be fooled by the hype: Who owns the media? It’snot people of color. I would say the media takes this and that and saysthis movement [Obama’s election] means we’re past race; this in itself is anew chapter of racism. It’s a way of saying, we don’t have to worry aboutthat anymore, even though we know that racism occurs every day in ourlives and all around us. Don’t be fooled by the bullshit. They’ll [the bigmoney that owns media] take any opportunity, they pay people millionsof dollars to figure out how to talk to us and convince us that things aredifferent than how they are. If racism had ended, there wouldn’t be morethan two million, gazillion, however many people of in prison; 60 to 70percent of them are people of color. Who gets jobs? Who has the highestunemployment rates? All the numbers are there: We are not past racism. Ittook us 500 and however many years to get us where we are; it’s not gonnachange in a day or in one election. We made a step maybe, which they’lltry and take away from us as soon as they can. But I mean what the fuckis the Tea Party about? It’s not about “tea”; it ain’t about “trans,” either.341