1AC – Harvard
Marijuana should not be illegal in the United States
Marijuana prohibition is a unjust form of violent social control in the status
quo---US legalization through a reform frame is critical
Jelani Hayes 14, Media Intern at the Drug Policy Alliance, "Ending Marijuana Prohibition Must Take a
Historical Perspective", August 21, www.huffingtonpost.com/jelani-hayes/marijuana-prohibitionhistory_b_5697152.html
When the New York Times called for the federal government to repeal its prohibition of marijuana and let the
states decide its fate -- for medicinal or recreational use, production, and sale -- it did not rely solely on issues of
the here and now, such as economics, science, public safety, and current levels of racial disparities in arrests and incarceration
rates (all of which are important considerations). Instead, through the publication of seven pieces, the editorial board
provided a more comprehensive argument in support of their stance, connecting today's legalization movement to
the past's criminalization crusade. For the New York Times, history matters -- as it should for the legalization
campaign nationwide.¶ Underlying marijuana prohibition is a familiar philosophy: to preserve social order
and white supremacy and secure profits for an influential few, it is permissible, even advisable, to construct profitbearing institutions of social control. Historically, this philosophy has been advanced by governmental action,
guided by special interests. The traditional tactics: manufacturing mass fear, criminalizing the target or
demoting them to a sub-citizen status, and profiting from their subjugation.¶ Cannabis prohibition did all three.
The Times editorial board dedicated an entire article to explaining this phenomenon. Part 3 of the series begins, "The federal law
that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere
of hysteria in the 1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and
African-Americans , who were associated with marijuana use at the time. This racially freighted history
lives on in current federal policy , which is so driven by myth and propaganda that it is almost impervious
to reason." This limited analysis refers to the refer madness hysteria and xenophobia that infiltrated President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's administration.¶ Additionally, business interests play a part in keeping cannabis illegal . Some
pharmaceutical companies, drug-prevention nonprofits, law enforcement agencies, and the private prison
industry have an economic interest in criminalization, what is known as the drug control industrial
complex. It pays big to help fight the war on drugs, and marijuana prohibition is a crucial facet of that effort. The Nation has
recently called these interests "The Real Reason Pot is Still Illegal."¶ The United States should legalize marijuana . It
should also end the drug war, which would be a tremendous and beautiful accomplishment, but it would not be enough.¶
The war on drugs is a mechanism of social control -- not unlike African slavery, Jim Crow, alcohol
Prohibition, or the systematic relegation of immigrants to an illegal status or substandard existence . Different in
their nature and severity, all of these institutions were tools used to control and profit from the criminalization,
regulation, and dehumanization of minority communities. Legalizing marijuana will not alone rid society of the tendency to
turn fear into hatred, hatred into regulation, and regulation into profit. To address this cycle, we must put cannabis
prohibition (and the drug war) in its historical context and connect the dots where appropriate.¶ Already we
have seen that the reality of legalization does not alone ensure justice or equality. As law professor and best selling author of The
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander points out, thousands of black men remain in
jail or prison in Colorado (where licit weed has been on the market since January) while white men make money from the now legal
marijuana market -- selling the drug just as the incarcerated men had done. She warns that legalization without reparation is not
sufficient, drawing the parallel to what happened to black Americans post-Reconstruction. "And after a brief period of
reconstruction a new caste system was imposed -- Jim Crow -- and another extraordinary movement arose and brought the old Jim
Crow to its knees...Americans said, OK, we'll stop now. We'll take down the whites-only signs, we'll stop doing that," she said. "But
there were not reparations for slavery, not for Jim Crow, and scarcely an acknowledgement of the harm done except for Martin
Luther King Day, one day out of the year. And I feel like, here we go again."¶ Alexander's historical perspective is
warranted because despite the size and intensity of marijuana prohibition, of the drug war in its entirety,
its purpose is not unlike that of Jim Crow or other structural forms of social control and oppression. The
drug war was never about drugs. Therefore, our solution to it can't be either.¶ We must frame the campaigns for
cannabis legalization across the states as civil rights movements -- as institutional reform efforts -- so
that the public might demand justice oriented outcomes from the campaigns. We must also make the public
aware of the dangerous relationship between profit and criminalization so that they can identity the
potential dangerous within the relationship between profit and legalization. We must make legalization about
more than raising tax revenue, increasing civil liberties, and lowering arrests rates for possession (all of
which are important and positive outcomes of legalization, nonetheless).¶ In order to undue the damage -- to the extent that
that is possible -- that the criminalization of marijuana specifically and the war on drugs more broadly have caused, we must pay
reparations and retroactively apply reformed drug laws. More importantly, we must undermine the philosophies that
allow for the construction of institutional harm, and we must be able to identify them when they creep up
again and be ready to take action against them, to arm our minds and our bodies against the next wave of social
oppression -- whatever and wherever it may be and to whomever it may be applied.¶ This is my plea to make history matter so that it
doesn't repeat itself -- again, and again, and again.
The legal regime controlling marijuana is unjust – hundreds of thousands
each year are arrested, convicted, prosecuted, and ultimately confined in a
prison industrial complex that is growing out of control
BW 12, Brown Watch, News for People of Color, "War on Drugs is a War on Black & Brown Men - 75
Years of Racial Control: Happy Birthday Marijuana Prohibition", October 2, www.brownwatch.com/genocide-watch/2012/10/2/war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-black-brown-men-75-years-ofracial.html
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and
swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relatisons with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”- Harry
Anslinger, first Drug Czar. From [HERE] As
we approach the 75th anniversary of marijuana prohibition in the United States
is important to remember why marijuana was deemed illicit in the first place, and why we as
Americans must open our eyes to the insidious strategy behind 75 years of failed policy and ruined lives.
Marijuana laws were designed not to control marijuana, but to control the Mexican immigrants who had brought
this native plant with them to the U.S. Fears over loss of jobs and of the Mexicans themselves led cities to look for ways to keep a close
eye on the newcomers. In 1914, El Paso Texas became the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to ban the sale and possession of marijuana. This ban gave
police the right to search, detain and question Mexican immigrants without reason, except the suspicion that they
on October 1, it
were in possession of marijuana. Folklore started to erupt about the effect that marijuana had on those who used it. As Harry Anslinger stated, “Reefer
makes darkies think they're as good as white men.Ӧ Fast
forward to 2012. Marijuana is still an illicit substance and the
laws are still being used to justify the search, detainment and questioning of populations deemed
“untrustworthy” and “suspicious” by modern society, namely the poor and young men of color. A prime example is New York’s
Stop and Frisk program, which stopped nearly 700,000 people in 2011. Hailed as a strategy for removing guns and violent crime from the streets,
this method of stopping and questioning “suspicious” individuals, highlights the racial inequities associated with drug laws.
From 2002 to 2011, African American and Hispanic residents made up close to 90% of people stopped. This is
not limited to New York. In California, African-Americans are 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, 12 times more likely to go to prison with
a felony marijuana charge, and 3 times more likely to go to prison with a marijuana possession charge. ¶ The
strategy of using marijuana
laws to stop, detain and imprison poor and minority populations must stop NOW. In the past 75 years we
have seen mounting evidence of the benign nature of the marijuana plant, and its tremendous potential for
medical development. But the rampant misinformation about the effects of marijuana USE is dwarfed by
the lifetime of suffering that a marijuana CONVICTION can bring. In 2010, there were 853,839 marijuana
arrests in the U.S., 750,591 of those were for possession. A drug conviction in America is the gift that
keeps on giving. Affected individuals must face a lifetime of stigma that can prevent employment, home
ownership, education, voting and the ability to be a parent. The issue of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs is featured
in the new documentary, The House I Live In. In the film, Richard L. Miller, author of Drug Warriors and Their Prey, From Police Power to Police
State, presents a very sinister take on the method behind the Drug War madness. Miller suggests that drug
laws, such as those for
marijuana are part of a process of annihilation aimed at poor and minority populations. Miller poses that
drug laws are designed to identify, ostracize, confiscate, concentrate, and annihilate these populations by
assigning the label of drug user, criminal, or addict, seizing property, taking away freedom and
institutionalizing entire communities in our ever growing prison system.¶ We can stop this from happening. Marijuana
was deemed illegal without acknowledging science or the will of the people. 75 years later, 50% of the population supports
marijuana legalization, and families are still being torn apart and lives destroyed over the criminal sanctions associated with
its use. The most vulnerable members of our society are also the targets of a prison industrial complex out of
control and getting bigger every day. Someone is arrested for marijuana in the U.S. every 38 seconds, we have no time to
waste, tax and regulate now.¶ Oregon, Colorado and Washington are all considering a more sensible and humane approach to marijuana as all three
have tax and regulate initiatives on their ballots this November. This
is a unique opportunity for citizens to cast a vote heard round the
against the atrocities and human suffering that result
world, to stand up not only for the freedom to consume marijuana, but
from the criminalization of it.
Legalization of marijuana is a useful starting point to end the drug war--policy debates allow radical transformation that benefits minorities more
than the privileged
Neill Franklin 14, Executive Director of Law, Enforcement Against Prohibition, "3 Reasons Marijuana
Legalization in Colorado Is Good for People for Color", 1/23, www.huffingtonpost.com/neillfranklin/marijuana-legalization-race-racism-minorities_b_4651456.html
For the first time, President Obama acknowledged this week that the prohibition of marijuana is unfairly enforced against AfricanAmericans and Latinos, and for that reason, he says, legalization in Colorado and Washington should go
forward. Without explicitly endorsing the laws, he told the New Yorker, "it's important for [them] to go forward because it's important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people
have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished."¶ ¶ As the president acknowledged, marijuana prohibition targets black and brown
people (even though marijuana users are equally or more likely to be white). Ending prohibition through passing legalization laws , as Colorado and
Washington have, will reduce this racial disparity .¶ The war on drugs, as we all know, has led to mass criminalization and
incarceration for people of color. The legalization of marijuana , which took effect for the first time in the country in Colorado on January 1, is
one step toward ending that war. While the new law won't eradicate systemic racism in our criminal
justice system completely, it is one of the most effective thing s we can do to address it . Here are three concrete ways that
Colorado's law is good for people of color.¶ 1. The new law means there will be no more arrests for
marijuana possession in Colorado.¶ Under Colorado's new law, residents 21 or older can produce, possess, use and sell up to an ounce of marijuana at a time. This change will
have a real and measurable impact on people of color in Colorado, where the racial disparities in
marijuana possession arrests have been reprehensible . In the last ten years, Colorado police arrested blacks for marijuana possession at more than three times
the rate they arrested whites, even though whites used marijuana at higher rates. As noted by the NAACP in its endorsement of the legalization law, it's particularly bad in Denver, where almost one-third of the
These arrests can have devastating and longlasting consequences. An arrest record can affect the ability to get a job, housing, student loans and public benefits. As law professor Michelle Alexander describes, people
(largely black and brown) who acquire a criminal record simply for being caught with marijuana are
relegated to a permanent second-class status. When we make marijuana legal, we stop those arrests from
happening.¶ 2. Unlike under decriminalization , the new law means there will be no more arrests for mere
marijuana possession in Colorado, period.¶ In the Jan. 6 article "#Breaking Black: Why Colorado's weed laws may backfire for black Americans," Goldie Taylor
mistakenly suggests that Colorado's new legalization law may "further tip the scales in favor of a privileged class
already largely safe from criminalization." Much of the stubborn "this-changes-nothing" belief about the
new law stems from confusion between decriminalization and legalization . There is a profound difference
between the hodgepodge of laws known collectively as "decriminalization" passed in several states over the past 30 years, and
Colorado's unprecedented legalization law. Decriminalization usually refers to a change in the law which removes
criminal but not civil penalties for marijuana possession, allowing police to issue civil fines (similar to speeding tickets), or require
drug education or expensive treatment programs in lieu of being arrested.¶ Because of the ambiguity in some states with
decriminalization, cops still arrest users with small amounts of marijuana due to technicalities, such as having illegal
paraphernalia, or for having marijuana in "public view" after asking them to empty their pockets. One only need look as far as the infamous stop-and-frisk
law in New York, where marijuana is decriminalized, to see how these ambiguities might be abused to the
detriment of people of color.¶ In Colorado, however, the marijuana industry is now legal and aboveground. People therefore have a right to possess and use marijuana products, although as with alcohol, there are restrictions relating to
things like age, driving, and public use. Police won't be able to racially profile by claiming they smelled marijuana or saw it in plain
view.¶ 3. We will reduce real problems associated with the illicit market .¶ As marijuana users shift to making purchases at regulated stores,
we'll start to see improvement in problems that were blamed on marijuana but are in fact consequences of
its prohibition. The violence related to the street-corner drug trade will begin to fall as the illicit market is slowly replaced by
people arrested for private adult possession marijuana are black, though they make up only 11% of the population.¶
well-guarded stores with cameras and security systems. And consumers will now know what they're getting; instead of buying whatever's in a baggie, they have the benefit of choosing from a wide variety of
marijuana products at the price level and potency they desire.¶ Goldie Taylor made the dubious claim that since marijuana prices were initially high in Colorado's new stores, the creation of a legal market won't
affect the existing illicit market. But despite sensational headlines, prices for marijuana are just like anything else. They respond to levels of supply and demand. In the first couple weeks, prices were high because
only a small fraction of marijuana businesses in Colorado opened, and what looked like every user in the state was in line to make a purchase on the day the historic law took effect. As the novelty-fueled demand
levels off and the rest of the stores across the state begin to open, increasing supply, prices will drop. For their money, purchasers can conveniently buy a product they know is tested and unadulterated. And for
those who don't want to buy at a store, Colorado residents over 21 are permitted to grow up to six marijuana plants at home.
Supporting marijuana legalization in this advocacy community engages the
logic of decriminalization and mass incarceration more generally;
reframing legalization as a question of justice positions it as a viable
alternative to the “war on drugs” frame and galvanizes with struggles for
reform of the prison system itself
Katherine Tate 14, Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine, Something's in the Air: Race, Crime, and
the Legalization of Marijuana, pg. 9
legalization of personal- use marijuana is the only alternative to draconian
laws drawn up in the "war on drugs" regime of the past three decades. It is well established that concern and paranoia
For increasing numbers of Americans,
over petty "crack" cocaine arrests for sales, possession, and use drove the mass warehousing of California's prisons and jail populations to become the
largest in the United States (Lusane 1991: Provine 2007: Reinerman and Levine 1997: Weatherspoon 1998: Weaver 2007). Miller (2008) contends that
the U.S. federal system of crime control has left minority citizens less able to challenge unfair sentencing
laws. Noting that marijuana possession constituted nearly 8 of 10 drug- related arrests in the 1990s. Michelle Alexander
(2010) insists that this period of "unprecedented punitiveness" resulted "in prison sentences (rather than dismissal,
community service, or probation)" to the degree that "in two short decades, between 1980 and 2000 the number of
people incarcerated in our nation's prisons and jails soared from roughly 300.000 to more than 2 million.
By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans—or one in every 31 adults— were behind bars, on
probation, or parole" (Alexander 2010. 59). Pushed by drug prosecutions, the rising rate of incarceration reached
unprecedented levels in the 1990s. Today's movement toward more prisons, mandatory minimums and reinstatement of the death
penalty logically followed the racially exploitative "law and order" campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s (Murakawa 2008). Conservative American
politicians use the mythical Black or Hispanic male drug dealer, like the Black female welfare queen, to drum up votes. A widespread consensus in
reported government statistics, advocacy studies, and policy think tanks suggests that African
Americans bear the brunt of law-andorder management of U.S. marijuana laws because of how marijuana use is racialized . Political scientist Doris
Provine contends that the U.S. government increased its punitive response toward drug use as a response to
racial fears and stereotypes. She writes: "[d]rugs remain, symbolically, a menace to white, middle-class
values" (2007. 89). Both politicians and media have used this issue to construct a crisis and sustain punitive state drug laws. The war on
drugs, she concludes, has greatly harmed minority citizens through their imprisonment, contributing to deep
inequalities in education, housing, health care, and equal opportunities to advance economically . The facts of
use. sales, and possession, confirmed by academic and critical legal studies literature, are strikingly different from how the national and local media
choose to present them. One study focusing on marijuana initiate found "among Blacks, the annual incidence rate (per 1.000 potential new users)
increased from 8.0 in 1966 to 16.7 in 1968. reached a peak at about the same time as "Whites" (19.4 in 1976). then remained high throughout the late
1970s. Following the low rates in the 1980s, rates among Blacks rose again in the early 1990s, reached a peak in 1997 and 1998 (19.2 and 19.1.
respectively), then dropped to 14.0 in 1999. Similar to the general pattern for Whites and Blacks. Hispanics' annual incidence rate rose during late
1970s and 1990s, with a peak in 1998 (17.8)" (National Survey on Drug Use 1999). Individuals
and groups in civil society, advocacy
communities , and state legislatures must put forth a serious struggle among activists and potential coalition partners
who can understand the need for reform as a matter of civil rights and justice , and not the morality of
marijuana consumption. Supporting decriminalization potentially can be the training ground for a new generation of
leadership in addressing the larger problem of mass incarceration and social and political isolation associated with it. For Black
people and their allies who long for the days— against all odds—of political education, voter mobilization, legal reform, group solidarity,
challenge to the political parties, and political empowerment, expressed in the modern civil rights movement, the matter of
decriminalization is ripe for galvanizing a collaboration at the grassroots. Too many Blacks have assumed that the "War on
Drugs" ended with the dissipation of the "crack" emergency, when, in sum, marijuana's criminalization—rather than incarceration—of Black people has
been more perennial. If Michelle Alexander (2010) is correct in arguing that mass
incarceration has effectively reasserted Jim
Crow second-class citizenship (or no citizenship) rights on African American people, then they must get off the sidelines of the
legalization of cannabis or decriminalization struggle and stop allowing others to fight what is essentially their battle. This has long been the case in the
challenge to the crushing "prison industrial complex." Whites and others, for the most part, have been the leaders in reform efforts concerning such
things as mandatory minimums, the old 100:1 gram of cocaine-to-crack formula, and health care for geriatric or HIV AIDS patients in prisons, while we
have seen Calvin "Snoop- Dogg"' Broadus become more influential than the congressional Black Caucus to our young. When ordinary people change
their thinking and consciousness and begin to demystify small, personal- use marijuana, then the leaders will eventually come around without reticence
The marijuana debate needs to be reframed to remove all penalties against its use (Scherlen 2012). This
is our exit strategy: decriminalization reform is the only path to reversing the dismal trends minorities face in America.
or fear.
Advocating non-reformist reforms is an important component of
decarceration work---advocacy is positioned in solidarity with the efforts of
anti-prison activists working for marijuana legalization; it challenges the
historical framework of racialization and dehumanization --- advocating
institutional change practices the ideals of revolution --- framing our
justification as one of justice positions legalization the is part of the logical
trajectory of historical abolitionism
Julia Sudbury 8, Metz Professor of Ethnic Studies at Mills College. She is a leading activist scholar in
the prison abolitionist movement. She was a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national abolitionist
organization. “Rethinking Global Justice: Black Women Resist the Transnational Prison-Industrial
Complex”, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 10, Issue 4
In the past decade, anti-prison activists have begun to address the gender complexity and variation that exists within and outside of the prison population. Black transgender
and gender non-conforming prisoners and prison activists have pointed out that not all of those imprisoned in women's prisons identify or live as women, and that not all those
who identify and live as women are housed in women's prisons. As a result of advocacy by these activists, CCWP and other organizations that previously focused on women only,
have begun to recognize and address the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming prisoners in women's prisons. Non-conformity to gender categories in the context of
a total institution organized on the basis of a rigid gender binary renders transgender and gender non-conforming prisoners of color vulnerable to brutal forms of gender
policing.17 By foregrounding the leadership and concerns of transgender and gender non-conforming people of color, prisoner advocacy groups such as the Prisoners HIV and
AIDS Action Network (PASAN) in Canada, the Trans/Gender Variant in Prison Committee (TIP), the Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project and the Sylvia
Rivera Law Project in the U.S. push the mainstream transgender movement and the wider anti-prison movement to embrace an anti-racist politic of radical gender liberation.18
Chronic overcrowding has led to worsening conditions for prisoners. As a result of the unprecedented growth in sentenced populations, prison authorities have packed three or
four prisoners into cells designed for two, and have taken over recreation rooms, gyms, and rooms designed for programming and turned them into cells, housing prisoners on
bunk beds or on the floor. These new conditions have created challenges for activists, who have found themselves expending time and resources in pressuring prison authorities
anti-prison activists are faced
with the limitations of reformist strategies. Gains temporarily won are swiftly undermined, new “women-centered”
to provide every prisoner a bed, or to provide access to basic education programs. As prison populations continue to swell,
prison regimes are replaced with a focus on cost-efficiency and minimal programming and even changes enforced by legal cases like Shumate vs. Wilson are subject to backlash
Of even greater concern is the well-documented tendency of prison regimes to co-opt reforms
and respond to demands for changes in conditions by further expanding prison budgets. The vulnerability
of prison reform efforts to cooption has led Angela Y. Davis to call for “non-reformist reforms,” reforms
that do not lead to bigger and “better” prisons. 20 Despite the limited long-term impact of human rights
advocacy and reforms, building bridges between prisoners, activists, and family members is an important step toward
challenging the racialized dehumanization that undergirds the logic of incarceration . In this way, human rights
advocacy carried out in solidarity with prisoner activists is an important component of a radical antiprison agenda . Ultimately , however, anti-prison activists aim not to create more humane , culturally sensitive, womencentered prisons, but to dismantle prisons and enable formerly criminalized people to access services and
resources outside the penal system. After three decades of prison expansion, more and more people are living with criminal convictions and histories of
and resistance. 19
incarceration. In the U.S., nearly 650,000 people are released from state and federal prisons to the community each year. 21 Organizations of formerly incarcerated people focus
on creating opportunities for former prisoners to survive after release, and on eliminating barriers to reentry, including extensive discrimination against former felons. The wide
As a class, former prisoners
can legally be disenfranchised and denied rights available to other citizens . While reentry has garnered official attention, with
array of “post-incarceration sentences” that felons are subjected to has led activists to declare a “new civil rights movement.” 22
President Bush proposing a $300 million reentry initiative in his 2004 State of the Union address, anti-prison activists have critiqued this initiative for focusing on faith-based
mentoring, job training, and housing without addressing the endemic discrimination against former prisoners or addressing the conditions in the communities which receive
former prisoners, including racism, poverty, and gender violence. Organizations of ex-prisoners working to oppose discrimination against former prisoners and felons include
All of Us Or None, the Nu Policy Leadership Group, Sister Outsider and the National Network for Women Prisoners in the U.S., and Justice 4 Women in Canada. All of Us Or
None is described by members as “a national organizing initiative of prisoners, former prisoners and felons, to combat the many forms of discrimination that we face as the
result of felony convictions.” 23 Founded by anti-imperialist and former political prisoner Linda Evans, and former prisoner and anti-prison activist Dorsey Nunn, and
sponsored by the Northern California–based Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, All of Us Or None works to mobilize former prisoners nationwide and in Toronto,
Canada. The organization's name, from a poem by Marxist playwright Bertold Brecht, invokes the need for solidarity across racial, class, and gender lines in creating a unified
movement of former prisoners. Black women play a leading role in the organization, alongside other people of color. All of Us Or None focuses its lobbying and campaign work
at city, county, and state levels, calling on local authorities to end discrimination based on felony convictions in public housing, benefits, and employment, to opt out of lifetime
welfare and food stamp bans for felons, and to “ban the box” requiring disclosure of past convictions on applications for public employment. In addition, the organization calls
for guaranteed housing, job training, drug and alcohol treatment, and public assistance for all newly released prisoners. 24 In the context of the war on drugs, many people with
felony convictions also struggle with addictions. The recovery movement, which is made up of 12-step programs, treatment programs, community recovery centers, and
indigenous healing programs run by and for people in recovery from addiction, offers an alternative response to problem drug use through programs focusing on spirituality,
healing, and fellowship. However, the recovery movement's focus on individual transformation and accountability for past acts diverges from many anti-prison activists' focus on
the harms done to criminalized communities by interlocking systems of dominance. As a result, anti-prison spaces seldom engage with the recovery movement, or tap the radical
potential of its membership. Breaking with this trend, All of Us Or None has initiated a grassroots organizing effort to reach out to people in 12-step programs with felony
Building on the strengths of
identity politics, these organizations suggest that those who have experienced the prison-industrial
complex first-hand may be best placed to provide leadership in dismantling it. As former prisoners have
taken on a wide range of leadership positions across the movement, there has been a shift away from
leadership by white middle-class progressives, and a move to promote the voices of those directly affected
by the prison-industrial complex. Politicians who promote punitive “tough-on-crime” policies rely on racialized controlling images of “the criminal” to
convictions. This work is part of their wider organizing efforts that aim to mobilize former prisoners as agents of social change.
inspire fear and induce compliance among voters. Once dehumanized and depicted as dangerous and beyond rehabilitation, removing people from communities appears the
Activists who pursue decarceration challenge stereotypical images of the “criminal”
by making visible the human stories of prisoners , with the goal of demonstrating the inadequacy of
incarceration as a response to the complex interaction of factors that produce harmful acts . Decarceration
usually involves targeting a specific prison population that the public sees as low-risk and arguing for an
end to the use of imprisonment for this population. Decarcerative strategies often involve the promotion
of alternatives to incarceration that are less expensive and more effective than prison and jail. For example,
only logical means of creating safety.
Proposition 36, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, which passed in California in 2000 and allowed first- and second-time non-violent drug offenders charged with
Drug law reform is a key
area of decarcerative work . Organizations and campaigns that promote drug law reform include Drop the Rock, a
coalition of youth, former prisoners, criminal justice reformers, artists, civil and labor leaders working to repeal New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws. The campaign
combines racial justice, economic, and public safety arguments by demonstrating that the laws have
created a pipeline of prisoners of color from New York City to newly built prisons in rural, mainly white areas represented Republican senators,
resulting in a transfer of funding and electoral influence from communities of color to upstate rural communities. 26 Ultimately , the campaign calls for
an end to mandatory minimum sentencing and the reinstatement of judges' sentencing discretion, a
reduction in sentence lengths for drug-related offenses and the expansion of alternatives, including drug treatment,
job training, and education. Former drug war prisoners play a leadership role in decarcerative efforts in the field of
possession to receive substance abuse treatment instead of prison, channels approximately 35,000 people into treatment annually. 25
drug policy reform. Kemba Smith, an African–American woman who was sentenced to serve 24.5 years as a result of her relationship with an abusive partner who
was involved in the drug industry, is one potent voice in opposition to the war on drugs. While she was incarcerated, Smith became an active advocate for herself and other
victims of the war on drugs, securing interviews and feature articles in national media. Ultimately, Smith's case came to represent the failure of mandatory minimums, and in
2000, following a nation-wide campaign, she and fellow drug war prisoner Dorothy Gaines were granted clemency by outgoing President Clinton. After her release, Smith
founded the Justice for People of Color Project (JPCP), which aims to empower young people of color to participate in drug policy reform and to promote a reallocation of public
expenditures from incarceration to education. While women like Kemba Smith and Dorothy Gaines have become the human face of the drug war, prison invisibilizes and
renders anonymous hundreds of thousands of drug war prisoners. The organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) challenges this process of erasure and
dehumanization through its “Faces of FAMM” project. The project invites people in federal and state prisons serving mandatory minimum sentences to submit their cases to a
database and provides online access to their stories and photographs. 27 The “Faces of FAMM” project highlights cases where sentencing injustices are particularly visible in
order to galvanize public support for sentencing reform. At the same time, it dismantles popular representations of the war on drugs as a necessary protection against dangerous
drug dealers and traffickers, demonstrating that most drug war prisoners are serving long sentences for low-level, non-violent drug-related activities or for being intimately
Decarcerative work is not limited to
law reform.
connected to someone involved in these activities.
drug
Free Battered Women's (FBW) campaign
for the release of incarcerated survivors is another example of decarcerative work. The organization supports women and transgender prisoners incarcerated for killing or
assaulting an abuser in challenging their convictions by demonstrating that they acted in self-defense. Most recently, FBW secured the release of Flozelle Woodmore, an
African–American woman serving a life sentence at CCWF for shooting her violent partner as an 18 year old. Released in August 2007, after five parole board recommendations
for her release were rejected by Governors Davis and then Schwarzenegger, Woodmore's determined pursuit of justice made visible and ultimately challenged the racialized
politics of gubernatorial parole releases. 28 While the number of women imprisoned for killing or assaulting an abuser is small—FBW submitted 34 petitions for clemency at its
inception in 1991, and continues to fight 23 cases—FBW's campaign for the release of all incarcerated survivors challenges the mass incarceration of gender-oppressed prisoners
on a far larger scale. FBW argues that experiences of intimate partner violence and abuse contribute to the criminalized activities that lead many women and transgender people
into conflict with the law, including those imprisoned on drug or property charges, and calls for the release of all incarcerated survivors. Starting with a population generally
viewed with sympathy—survivors of intimate partner violence—FBW generates a radical critique of both state and interpersonal violence, arguing that “the violence and control
used by the state against people in prison mirrors the dynamics of battering that many incarcerated survivors have experienced in their intimate relationships and/or as
In theorizing the intersections of racialized state violence and gendered interpersonal violence,
FBW lays the groundwork for a broader abolitionist agenda that refutes the legitimacy of incarceration as
a response to deep-rooted social inequalities based on interlocking systems of oppression . By gradually shrinking
children.” 29
the prison system, Black women activists involved in decarcerative work hope to erode the public's reliance on the idea of imprisonment as a commonsense response to a wide
range of social ills. At the other end of anti-expansionist work are activists who take a more confrontational approach. By starving correctional budgets of funds to continue
building more prisons and jails, they hope to force politicians to embrace less expensive and more effective alternatives to incarceration. Prison moratorium organizing aims to
stop construction of new prisons and jails. Unlike campaigns against prison privatization, which oppose prison-profiteering by private corporations, and seek to return
imprisonment to the public sector, prison moratorium work opposes all new prison construction, public or private. In New York, the Brooklyn-based Prison Moratorium Project
(PMP), co-founded by former prisoner Eddie Ellis and led by young women and gender non-conforming people of color, does this work through popular education and mass
campaigns against prison expansion. Focusing on youth as a force for social change, New York's PMP uses compilations of progressive hip hop and rap artists to spread a critical
analysis of the prison-industrial complex and its impact on people of color. PMP's strategies have been effective; for example, in 2002 the organization, as part of the Justice 4
Youth Coalition, succeeded in lobbying the New York Department of Juvenile Justice to redirect $53 million designated for expansion in Brooklyn and the Bronx. 30 PMP has
also worked to make visible the connections between underfunding, policing of schools, and youth incarceration through their campaign “Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” By
demonstrating how zero tolerance policies and increased policing and use of surveillance technology in schools, combined with underfunded classrooms and overstretched
teachers, has led to the criminalization of young people of color and the production of adult prisoners, PMP argues for a reprioritization of public spending from the criminal
justice system to schools and alternatives to incarceration. 31 Moratorium work often involves campaigns to prevent the construction of a specific prison or jail. In Toronto, for
example, the Prisoner Justice Action Committee formed the “81 Reasons” campaign, a multiracial collaboration of experienced anti-prison activists, youth and student
organizers, in response to proposals to build a youth “superjail” in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto. 32 The campaign combined popular education on injustices in the juvenile
system, including the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Aboriginal youth, with an exercise in popular democracy that invited young people to decide themselves how
they would spend the $81 million slated for the jail. Campaigners mobilized public concerns about spending cuts in other areas, including health care and education, to create
pressure on the provincial government to look into less expensive and less punitive alternatives to incarceration for youth. While this campaign did not ultimately prevent the
construction of the youth jail, the size of the proposed facility was reduced. More importantly, the campaign built a grassroots multiracial antiprison youth movement and raised
public awareness of the social and economic costs of incarceration. Moratorium campaigns face tough opposition from advocates who believe that building prisons stimulates
economic development for struggling rural towns. Prisons are “sold” to rural towns that have suffered economic decline in the face of global competition, closures of local
factories, and decline of small farms. In the context of economic stagnation, prisons are touted as providing stable, well-paying, unionized jobs, providing property and sales
taxes and boosting real estate markets. The California Prison Moratorium Project has worked to challenge these assertions by documenting the actual economic, environmental,
We consider prisons to be a form of
environmental injustice. They are normally built in economically depressed communities that eagerly
anticipate economic prosperity. Like any toxic industry, prisons affect the quality of local schools, roads,
water, air, land, and natural habitats. 33 California PMP opposes prison construction at a local level by building multiracial coalitions of local residents,
and social impact of prison construction in California's Central Valley prison towns. According to California PMP:
farm workers, labor organizers, anti-prison activists, and former prisoners and their families to reject the visions of prison as a panacea for economic decline. 34 In the
Californian context, where most new prisons are built in predominantly Latino/a communities and absorb land and water previously used for agriculture, PMP facilitates
communication and solidarity between Latino/a farm worker communities, and urban Black and Latino/a prisoners in promoting alternative forms of economic development
that do not rely on mass incarceration. Scholar-activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore's research on the political economy of prisons in California has been critical in providing evidence
of the detrimental impact of prisons on local residents and the environment. 35 As an active member of CPMP, Gilmore's work is deeply rooted in anti-prison activism and in
Many
anti-prison activists view campaigns for decarceration or moratorium as building blocks toward the
ultimate goal of abolition. These practical actions promise short and medium-term successes that are
essential markers on the road to long-term transformation. However, abolitionists believe that like
slavery, the prison-industrial complex is a system of racialized state violence that cannot be “fixed.” The
contemporary prison abolitionist movement in the U.S. and Canada dates to the 1970s, when political
prisoners like Angela Y. Davis and Assata Shakur, in conjunction with other radical activists and scholars
in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, began to call for the dismantling of prisons. 38 The explosion in political prisoners, fuelled
turn informs the work of other activists, demonstrating the important relationship between Black women's activist scholarship and the anti-prison movement. 36
by the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and targeting of Black liberation, American Indian and Puerto Rican independence movements in the U.S. and First
Nations resistance in Canada as “threats” to national security, fed into an understanding of the role of the prison in perpetuating state repression against insurgent communities.
These
“common” prisoners, predominantly working-class people of color imprisoned for everyday acts of survival, challenged the state's legitimacy
by declaring imprisonment a form of cruel and unusual punishment and confronting the brute force of
state power. 40 By adopting the term “abolition” activists drew deliberate links between the dismantling of
prisons and the abolition of slavery. Through historical excavations, the “new abolitionists” identified the abolition of
prisons as the logical completion of the unfinished liberation marked by the 13th Amendment to the United
States Constitution, which regulated, rather than ended, slavery . 41 Organizations that actively promote dialogue about what abolition means and
39 The new anti-prison politics were also shaped by a decade of prisoner litigation and radical prison uprisings, including the brutally crushed Attica Rebellion.
how it can translate into concrete action include Critical Resistance (CR), New York's Prison Moratorium Project, Justice Now, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Free
Battered Women, and the Prison Activist Resource Center in the U.S. and the Prisoner Justice Action Committee (Toronto), the Prisoners' Justice Day Committee (Vancouver)
and Joint Action in Canada. CR was founded in 1998 by a group of Bay Area activists including former political prisoner and scholar-activist Angela Y. Davis.
Voting affirmative avoids the downsides of overly technical approaches to
transformation and the failures of impractical rejectionism – it is
insufficient to advocate what should be done if it would be impossible to
implement or only possible after revolution --- voting to affirm the
transformational possibility of the Aff challenges existing power relations
and pushes society towards structural change without requiring an
impossible revolution.
MacEwan 99 - Professor Emeritus of Economics, College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts
Boston, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Social Policy Neo-liberalism Or Democracy?: Economic
Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives, 1999.
In proposing 'economic alternatives’, my goal is to conceive of alternatives that are practical in the sense that they could
actually be implemented within the existing socio-economic framework and that are significant in the sense that
they would bring about, or at least have the potential to bring about, substantial changes in the social organization
and power. This is not an easily attainable goal. On the one hand, arguments about economic development are usually
confined to a relatively narrow set of alternatives. The choice among the different options is little more than a
technical exercise because they do not involve significant differences in social structure or in the relative power and well-being
of different groups. The entire discussion is based on the assumption that basic structures of social organization
and economic power cannot be changed . For example, rural development programmes in low-income countries often
focus on alternative technologies, methods of agricultural extension work and the ways in which infrastructure can be improved;
they accept as given the existing land tenure arrangements. Another example is the debate in the 1980s over how low-income
countries should meet their foreign debt obligations; the debate was based on the premise that the debt would in fact be repaid, and
it then focused on such issues as methods of debt rescheduling, terms of new loans and the degree of support from the international
lending agencies. These sorts of disputes involve disagreements over how a social economic system should be
managed. They are not disputes over the nature of the system. On the other hand, when discussions of
alternatives do question the nature of the social system , they often become thoroughly impractical .
Impractical ideas have their uses, and there are very good reasons to question the basic structures of society in the lowincome countries of the world (to say nothing of the basic structures in the wealthy countries). But in order to bring about
change it is not sufficient to state what should be done . We need to begin with the question: What should
be done? But it is also necessary to figure out what can be done . However desirable sweeping change may
be, it is not enough to advocate revolution or particular programmes that have no chance of
implementation without revolution . If the goal is to alter the nature of the system and make a real difference in
people's lives , then we need to formulate and implement practical programmes that both improve economic conditions and
challenge the structure of social-political power. Programmes of this type are similar to what Andre Gone (1964) dubs 'non-reformist
reforms' or 'revolutionary reforms'. These are 'reforms which advance toward a radical transformation of society'
and can be contrasted with 'reformist reforms'. In Gorz's terms: A reformist reform is one which subordinates its objective to the
criteria of rationality and practicability of a given system and policy. Reformism rejects those objectives and demands - however
deep the need for them - which are incompatible with the preservation of the system. On the other hand, a not necessarily
reformist reform is one which is conceived not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a
given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs
and demands . ... a struggle for non-reformist reforms - for anti-capitalist reforms ... bases the possibility of attaining its
objective on the implementation of fundamental political and economic changes. These changes can be sudden, just as they can be
gradual. But in any case they assume a modification of the relations of power; they assume that the workers will take over powers or
assert a force (that is to say, a non-institutionalized force) strong enough to establish, maintain, and expand those tendencies within
the system which serve to weaken capitalism and to shake its joints. They assume structural reforms. (Gorz, 1964: 6-8) Gorz was
writing about the situation in the advanced capitalist countries - France of the 1960s, in particular - where political democracy
prevailed and revolutionary change, in the sense of a violent insurrection, was clearly not on the historical agenda. The basic idea,
however, is generally applicable in many of today's low-income countries where a substantial degree of political democracy exists
and where there is no immediate likelihood of revolutionary upheaval. Gorz's formulation is helpful in
establishing a set of criteria for democratic initiatives that would neither accept the system as it is and focus on
management nor define change in terms of impractical goals : • Democratic initiatives - or "reforms' or
'programmes' - must make a positive difference in people's lives. They should not demand that a sacrifice be
made in the name of some greater good; they must bring something good in themselves . Their goals are
defined by what should be. •Democratic initiatives must challenge the existing relations of power and authority
and in some way move society towards a more democratic structure. They need not overturn or destroy the
existing social structures. Yet in some manner they must pose a threat to the existing social and economic structures.
The essence of this threat is that these initiatives expand the realm of democracy and enhance democratic authority.
•Democratic initiatives must he possible in the sense that their implementation does not require a prior
revolutionary, structural reorganization of society . They may set in motion a process of change that
pushes society in the direction of dramatic structural reorganization - that is precisely their point. Yet,
because they are particular and partial and therefore are not themselves dependent on that reorganization, they
are possible .
Racial progress has occurred though legal change and more in the area of
drug laws is still possible---reject pessimism because it ignores specific
reforms that achieved lasting reductions in racial inequality
Michael Omi 13, and Howard Winant, Resistance is futile?: a response to Feagin and Elias, Ethnic and
Racial Studies Volume 36, Issue 6, p. 961-973, 2013 Special Issue: Symposium - Rethinking Racial
Formation Theory
In Feagin and Elias's account, white racist rule in the USA appears unalterable and permanent. There is little sense that the
‘white racial frame’ evoked by systemic racism theory changes in significant ways over historical time. They dismiss important
rearrangements and reforms as merely ‘a distraction from more ingrained structural oppressions and deep
lying inequalities that continue to define US society’ (Feagin and Elias 2012, p. 21). Feagin and Elias use a concept they call ‘surface flexibility’
to argue that white elites frame racial realities in ways that suggest change, but are merely engineered to reinforce the underlying structure of racial
oppression. Feagin and Elias say the phrase ‘racial democracy’ is an oxymoron – a word defined in the dictionary as a figure of speech that combines
contradictory terms. If they mean the USA is a contradictory and incomplete democracy in respect to race and racism issues, we agree. If they mean
we disagree . The USA is a racially despotic country in many
many respects a racial democracy, capable of being influenced towards more or
less inclusive and redistributive economic policies , social policies, or for that matter, imperial policies. What is distinctive about our own
that people of colour have no democratic rights or political power in the USA,
ways, but in our view it is also in
epoch in the USA (post-Second World War to the present) with respect to race and racism? ¶ Over the past decades there has been a steady drumbeat of
efforts to contain and neutralize civil rights, to restrict racial democracy, and to maintain or even increase racial inequality. Racial disparities in
different institutional sites – employment, health, education – persist and in many cases have increased. Indeed, the post-2008 period has seen a
dramatic increase in racial inequality. The subprime home mortgage crisis, for example, was a major racial event. Black and brown people were
disproportionately affected by predatory lending practices; many lost their homes as a result; race-based wealth disparities widened tremendously. It
would be easy to conclude, as Feagin and Elias do, that white racial dominance has been continuous and
unchanging throughout US history . But such a perspective misses the dramatic twists and turns in racial
politics that have occurred since the Second World War and the civil rights era.¶ Feagin and Elias claim that we
overly inflate the significance of the changes wrought by the civil rights movement, and that we ‘overlook the
serious reversals of racial justice and persistence of huge racial inequalities’ (Feagin and Elias 2012, p. 21) that followed
in its wake. We do not . In Racial Formation we wrote about ‘racial reaction’ in a chapter of that name, and elsewhere in the book as well. Feagin
and Elias devote little attention to our arguments there; perhaps because they are in substantial agreement with us. While we argue that the right
wing was able to ‘rearticulate’ race and racism issues to roll back some of the gains of the civil rights
movement, we also believe that there are limits to what the right could achieve in the post-civil rights political
landscape.¶ So we agree that the present prospects for racial justice are demoralizing at best. But we do not think
that is the whole story. US racial conditions have changed over the post-Second World War period, in ways that Feagin and
Elias tend to downplay or neglect. Some of the major reforms of the 1960s have proved irreversible ; they have set
powerful democratic forces in motion . These racial (trans)formations were the results of unprecedented political mobilizations, led by
the black movement, but not confined to blacks alone. Consider the desegregation of the armed forces, as well as key civil rights
movement victories of the 1960s: the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Naturalization Act (Hart- Celler), as well as
important court decisions like Loving v. Virginia that declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional . While we have
the greatest respect for the late Derrick Bell, we do not believe that his ‘interest convergence hypothesis’ effectively explains all these developments.
How does Lyndon Johnson's famous (and possibly apocryphal) lament upon signing the Civil Rights Act on 2 July 1964 – ‘We have lost the South for a
generation’ – count as ‘convergence’?¶ The US racial regime has been transformed in significant ways . As Antonio Gramsci
argues, hegemony proceeds through the incorporation of opposition (Gramsci 1971, p. 182). The civil rights reforms can be seen as a classic example of
this process; here the US racial regime – under movement pressure – was exercising its hegemony. But Gramsci insists that such reforms – which he
calls ‘passive revolutions’ – cannot be merely symbolic if they are to be effective: oppositions must win real gains in the process. Once again, we are in
the realm of politics, not absolute rule.¶ So yes, we think there were important
if partial victories that shifted the racial state
and transformed the significance of race in everyday life. And yes, we think that further victories can take place
both on the broad terrain of the state and on the more immediate level of social interaction: in daily interaction, in the human psyche
and across civil society . Indeed we have argued that in many ways the most important accomplishment of the antiracist movement of the 1960s in the USA was the politicization of the social. In the USA and indeed around the globe, race-based
movements demanded not only the inclusion of racially defined ‘others’ and the democratization of
structurally racist societies, but also the recognition and validation by both the state and civil society of
racially-defined experience and identity. These demands broadened and deepened democracy itself. They
facilitated not only the democratic gains made in the USA by the black movement and its allies, but also the political
advances towards equality, social justice and inclusion accomplished by other ‘new social movements’: second-wave feminism, gay liberation, and the
By no means do we think that the post-war movement upsurge
was an unmitigated success. Far from it: all the new social movements were subject to the same ‘rearticulation’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p.
environmentalist and anti-war movements among others.¶
xii) that produced the racial ideology of ‘colourblindness’ and its variants; indeed all these movements confronted their mirror images in the
mobilizations that arose from the political right to counter them. Yet even their incorporation and containment, even their confrontations with the
various ‘backlash’ phenomena of the past few decades, even
the need to develop the highly contradictory ideology of
‘colourblindness’, reveal the transformative character of the ‘politicization of the social’. While it is not possible here to explore
so extensive a subject, it is worth noting that it was the long-delayed eruption of racial subjectivity and self-awareness into the mainstream political
arena that set off this transformation, shaping both the democratic and anti-democratic social movements that are evident in US politics today. ¶ What
are the political implications of contemporary racial trends?¶ Feagin and Elias's use
of racial categories can be imprecise. This is
not their problem alone; anyone writing about race and racism needs to frame terms with care and precision,
and we undoubtedly get fuzzy too from time to time. The absence of a careful approach leads to ‘ racial
lumping’ and essentialisms of various kinds. This imprecision is heightened in polemic . In the Feagin and Elias
essay the term ‘whites’ at times refers to all whites, white elites, ‘dominant white actors’ and very
exceptionally, anti-racist whites, a category in which we presume they would place themselves. Although the terms ‘black’, ‘African
American’ and ‘Latino’ appear, the term ‘people of colour’ is emphasized, often in direct substitution for black reference points.¶ In the USA today it
is important not to frame race in a bipolar manner . The black/white paradigm made more sense in the
past than it does in the twenty-first century. The racial make-up of the nation has now changed
dramatically. Since the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, the USA has become more ‘coloured’. A ‘majority–minority’ national
demographic shift is well underway. Predicted to arrive by the mid-twenty-first century, the numerical eclipse of the white population is already in
evidence locally and regionally. In California, for example, non-Hispanic whites constitute only 39.7 per cent of the state's population. While the decline
in the white population cannot be correlated with any decline of white racial dominance, the dawning and deepening of racial multipolarity calls into
question a sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit black/white racial framework that is evident in Feagin and Elias's essay. Shifting racial
demographics and identities also raise general questions of race and racism in new ways that the ‘systemic racism’ approach is not prepared to
explain.3¶ Class questions and issues of panethnicizing trends, for example, call into question what we mean by race, racial identity and race
consciousness. No racially defined group is even remotely uniform; groups that we so glibly refer to as Asian American or Latino are particularly
heterogeneous. Some have achieved or exceeded socio-economic parity with whites, while others are subject to what we might call ‘engineered poverty’
in sweatshops, dirty and dangerous labour settings, or prisons. Tensions within panethnicized racial groups are notably present, and conflicts between
racially defined groups (‘black/brown’ conflict, for example) are evident in both urban and rural settings. A substantial current of social scientific
analysis now argues that Asians and Latinos are the ‘new white ethnics’, able to ‘work toward whiteness’4 at least in part, and that the black/white
bipolarity retains its distinct and foundational qualities as the mainstay of US racism (Alba and Nee 2005; Perlmann 2005; Portes and Rumbaut 2006;
Waters, Ueda and Marrow 2007).¶ We question that argument in light of the massive demographic shifts taking place in the USA. Globalization,
climate change and above all neoliberalism on a global scale, all drive migration. The country's economic capacity to absorb enormous numbers of
immigrants, low-wage workers and their families (including a new, globally based and very female, servant class) without generating the sort of
established subaltern groups we associate with the terms race and racism, may be more limited than it was when the ‘whitening’ of Europeans took
place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In other words this argument's key precedent, the absorption of white immigrants ‘of a different color’
(Jacobson 1998), may no longer apply. Indeed, we might think of the assimilationist model itself as a general theory of immigrant incorporation that
was based on a historically specific case study – one that might not hold for, or be replicated by, subsequent big waves of immigration. Feagin and
Elias's systemic racism model, while offering numerous important insights, does not inform concrete analysis of these issues. ¶ It is important going
forward to understand how groups are differentially racialized and relatively positioned in the US racial hierarchy: once again racism must be seen as a
shifting racial project. This has important consequences, not only with respect to emerging patterns of inequality, but also in regard to the degree of
power available to different racial actors to define, shape or contest the existing racial landscape. Attention to such matters is largely absent in Feagin
and Elias's account. In their view racially identified groups are located in strict reference to the dominant ‘white racial frame’, hammered into place, so
to speak. As a consequence, they fail to examine how racially subordinate groups interact and influence each others’ boundaries, conditions and
practices. Because they offer so little specific analysis of Asian American, Latino or Native American racial issues, the reader finds her/himself once
again in the land (real or imaginary, depending on your racial politics) of bipolar US racial dynamics, in which whites and blacks play the leading roles,
and other racially identified groups – as well as those ambiguously identified, such as Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans (MEASA) – play at
We still want to acknowledge that blacks
have been catching hell and have borne the brunt of the racist reaction of the past several decades. For
example, we agree with Feagin and Elias's critique of the reactionary politics of incarceration in the USA. The ‘new Jim
best supporting roles, and are sometimes cast as extras or left out of the picture entirely.¶
Crow’ (Alexander 2012) or even the ‘new slavery’ that the present system practises is something that was just in its beginning stages when we were
writing Racial Formation. It is now recognized as a national and indeed global scandal. How is it to be understood? Of course there are
substantial debates on this topic, notably about the nature of the ‘prison-industrial complex’ (Davis 2003, p. 3) and the social and cultural effects of
mass incarceration along racial lines. But beyond Feagin and Elias's denunciation
of the ferocious white racism that is
operating here, deeper political implications are worth considering. As Alexander (2012), Mauer (2006), Manza and
Uggen (2008) and movement groups like Critical Resistance and the Ella Baker Center argue, the upsurge over recent decades in
incarceration rates for black (and brown) men expresses the fear-based, law-and-order appeals that have shaped US racial politics since the rise
of Nixonland (Perlstein 2008) and the ‘Southern strategy’. Perhaps even more central, racial repression aims at restricting the increasing
impact of voters of colour in a demographically shifting electorate.¶ There is a lot more to say about this, but for the
present two key points stand out: first, it is not an area where Feagin and Elias and we have any sharp disagreement, and second, for all the
horrors and injustices that the ‘new Jim Crow’ represents, incarceration, profiling and similar practices
remain political issues . These practices and policies are not ineluctable and unalterable dimensions of
the US racial regime . There have been previous waves of reform in these areas. They can be transformed
again by mass mobilization, electoral shifts and so on. In other words, resistance is not futile .¶ Speaking of
electoral shifts and the formal political arena, how should President Barack Obama be politically situated in this discussion? How do Feagin and Elias
explain Obama? Quite amazingly, his name does not appear in their essay. Is he a mere token, an ‘oreo’, a shill for Wall Street? Or does Obama
represent a new development in US politics, a black leader of a mass, multiracial party that for sheer demographic reasons alone might eventually
triumph over the white people's party, the Republicans? If the President is neither the white man's token nor Neo, the One,5 then once again we are in
the world of politics: neither the near-total white despotism depicted by Feagin and Elias, nor a racially inclusive democracy.¶ President Obama
continues to enjoy widespread black support, although it is clear that he has not protected blacks against their greatest cumulative loss of wealth in
history. He has not explicitly criticized the glaring racial bias in the US carceral system. He has not intervened in conflicts over workers’ rights –
particularly in the public sector where many blacks and other people of colour are concentrated. He has not intervened to halt or slow foreclosures,
except in ways that were largely symbolic. Workers and lower-middle-class people were the hardest hit by the great recession and the subprime home
mortgage crisis, with black families faring worst, and Latinos close behind (Rugh and Massey 2010); Obama has not defended them. Many writers have
explained Obama's centrism and unwillingness to raise the issue of race as functions of white racism (Sugrue 2010). ¶ The black community – and other
communities of colour as well – remains politically divided. While black folk have taken the hardest blows from the reactionary and racist regime that
has mostly dominated US politics since Reagan (if not since Nixon), no united black movement has succeeded the deaths of Malcolm and Martin.
Although there is always important political activity underway, a relatively large and fairly conservative black middle class, a ‘black bourgeoisie’ in
Frazier's (1957) terms, has generally maintained its position since the end of the civil rights era. Largely based in the public sector, and including a
generally centrist business class as well, this stratum has continued to play the role that Frazier – and before him, Charles S. Johnson. William Lloyd
Warner, Alison Davis and other scholars – identified: vacillation between the white elite and the black masses. Roughly similar patterns operate in
Latino communities as well, where the ‘working towards whiteness’ framework coexists with a substantial amount of exclusion and super-exploitation.¶
Alongside class issues in communities of colour, there are significant gender issues. The disappearance of blue-collar work, combined with the assault
by the criminal justice system – chiefly profiling by the police (‘stop and frisk’) and imprisonment, have both unduly targeted and victimized black and
brown men, especially youth. Women
of colour are also targeted, especially by violence, discrimination and
assaults on their reproductive rights (Harris-Perry 2011); profiling is everywhere (Glover 2009).¶ Here again we are in the realm of
racial politics. Debate proceeds in the black community on Obama's credibilty, with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley leading the critics. But it seems safe
to say that in North Philly, Inglewood or Atlanta's Lakewood section, the president remains highly popular. Latino support for Obama remains high as
well. Feagin and Elias need to clarify their views on black and brown political judgement. Is it attuned to political realities or has it been captured by the
white racial frame? Is Obama's election of no importance?¶ ***¶ In conclusion, do Feagin and Elias really believe that white power is so complete, so
extensive, so ‘sutured’ (as Laclau and Mouffe might say) as they suggest here? Do they mean to suggest, in Borg-fashion, that ‘resistance is futile?’ This
seems to be the underlying political logic of the ‘systemic racism’ approach, perhaps unintentionally so. Is white racism so ubiquitous that no
meaningful political challenge can be mounted against it? Are black and brown folk (yellow and red people, and also others unclassifiable under the
always- absurd colour categories) utterly supine, duped, abject, unable to exert any political pressure? Is such a view of race and racism even
recognizable in the USA of 2012? And is that a responsible political position to be advocating? Is this what we want to teach our students of colour? Or
our white students for that matter?¶ We suspect that if pressed, Feagin and Elias would concur with our judgement that racial
conflict, both
within (and against) the state and in everyday life, is a fundamentally political process. We think that they would also
accept our claim that the ongoing political realities of race provide extensive evidence that people of colour in
the USA are not so powerless , and that whites are not so omnipotent, as Feagin and Elias's analysis suggests them to be.¶
Racial formation theory allows us to see that there are contradictions in racial oppression. The racial formation approach reveals that white racism is
unstable and constantly challenged, from the national and indeed global level down to the personal and intra-psychic conflicts that we all experience,
no matter what our racial identity might be. While racism – largely white – continues to flourish, it is not monolithic. Yes, there
have been
enormous increases in racial inequality in recent years. But movement-based anti-racist opposition
continues, and sometimes scores victories. Challenges to white racism continue both within the state and
in civil society . Although largely and properly led by people of colour, anti-racist movements also incorporate whites such as Feagin and Elias
themselves. Movements may experience setbacks, the reforms for which they fought may be revealed as
inadequate, and indeed their leaders may be co-opted or even eliminated, but racial subjectivity and self-awareness, unresolved and
conflictual both within the individual psyche and the body politic, abides . Resistance is not futile.
The law is obviously problematic, but that’s a reason we should hold it
accountable to live up to its ideals
Kimberle Crenshaw 88, Law @ UCLA, “RACE, REFORM, AND RETRENCHMENT:
TRANSFORMATION AND LEGITIMATION IN ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW”, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1331,
lexis
One wonders, however, whether a demand for shelter that does not employ rights rhetoric is likely to succeed in America today. The
underlying problem, especially for African-Americans, is the question of how to extract from others that
which others are not predisposed to give. As Tushnet has said himself, rights are a way of saying that a society is what it is,
or that it ought to live up to its deepest commitments. 135 This is essentially what all groups of dispossessed people say when they
use rights rhetoric. As demonstrated in the civil rights movement, engaging in rights rhetoric can be an attempt to turn
society's "institutional logic"'136 against itself - to redeem some of the rhetorical promises and the self-congratulations
that seem to thrive in American political discourse. ¶ NOTE 136 BEGINS… ¶ 136 Cf. F. PIVEN & R. CLOWARD, POOR PEOPLE'S
MOVEMENTS 22-23 (I977) (noting that "the opportunities for
defiance are structured by features of institutional
life "). NOTE 136 ENDS. ¶ Questioning the Transformative View: Some Doubts About Trashing The Critics' product is of limited
utility to Blacks in its present form. The implications for Blacks of trashing liberal legal ideology are troubling, even though it may be
proper to assail belief structures that obscure liberating possibilities. Trashing legal ideology seems to tell us repeatedly what has
already been established -- that legal discourse is unstable and relatively indeterminate. Furthermore,
trashing offers no idea
of how to avoid the negative consequences of engaging in reformist discourse or how to work around such
consequences. Even if we imagine the wrong world when we think in terms of legal discourse, we must nevertheless exist in a
present world where legal protection has at times been a blessing -- albeit a mixed one. The fundamental problem is that, although
Critics criticize law because it functions to legitimate existing institutional arrangements, it is precisely this legitimating function
that has made law receptive to certain demands in this area. The Critical emphasis on deconstruction as the vehicle for liberation
leads to the conclusion that engaging in legal discourse should be avoided because it reinforces not only the discourse itself but also
the society and the world that it embodies. Yet Critics offer little beyond this observation. Their focus on delegitimating rights
rhetoric seems to suggest that, once rights rhetoric has been discarded, there exists a more productive strategy for change, one which
does not reinforce existing patterns of domination. Unfortunately, no such strategy has yet been articulated, and it is difficult to
imagine that racial minorities will ever be able to discover one. As Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward point out in their [*1367]
excellent account of the civil rights movement, popular struggles
are a reflection of institutionally determined
logic and a challenge to that logic . 137¶ FOOTNOTE 137 BEGINS… ¶ 137 See id. at 22-25. The observation concerning
the inability to bring about change in some non-legitimating fashion does not, of course, rule out the possibility of armed revolution.
For most oppressed peoples, however, the costs of such a revolt are often too great. That is, the oppressed cannot
realistically hope to overcome the "coercive" components of hegemony . More importantly, it is not clear that
such a struggle, although superficially a clear radical challenge to the coercive force of the status quo, would be a lesser
reinforcement of the ideology of American society (i.e., the consensual components of hegemony). ¶
FOOTNOTE 137 Ends.¶ People can
only demand change in ways that reflect the logic of the institutions that
they are challenging. 138 Demands for change that do not reflect the institutional logic -- that is, demands that
do not engage and subsequently reinforce the dominant ideology -- will probably be ineffective. 139¶ FOOTNOTE 139
BEGINS… ¶ 139 Reforms necessarily come from an existing repertoire of options. As Piven and Cloward note, "if
impoverished southern blacks had demanded land reform, they would probably have still gotten the vote." Id. at 33. ¶ FOOTNOTE
139 ENDS. ¶ The possibility for ideological change is created through the very process of legitimation, which is
triggered by crisis. Powerless people can sometimes trigger such a crisis by challenging an institution
internally, that is, by using its own logic against it. 140 Such crisis occurs when powerless people force
open and politicize a contradiction between the dominant ideology and their reality . The political consequences
[*1368] of maintaining the contradictions may sometimes force an adjustment -- an attempt to close the gap or to make things
appear fair. 141 Yet, because the adjustment is triggered by the political consequences of the contradiction, circumstances will be
adjusted only to the extent necessary to close the apparent contradiction. This approach to understanding legitimation and
change is applicable to the civil rights movement. Because Blacks were challenging their exclusion from political society, the
only claims that were likely to achieve recognition were those that reflected American society's institutional logic: legal rights
ideology. Articulating their formal demands through legal rights ideology, civil rights protestors exposed a series of contradictions -the most important being the promised privileges of American citizenship and the practice of absolute racial subordination. Rather
than using the contradictions to suggest that American citizenship was itself illegitimate or false, civil
rights protestors proceeded as if American citizenship were real, and demanded to exercise the “rights”
that citizenship entailed. By seeking to restructure reality to reflect American mythology, Blacks relied upon
and ultimately benefited from politically inspired efforts to resolve the contradictions by granting formal
rights. Although it is the need to maintain legitimacy that presents powerless groups with the opportunity to wrest concessions
from the dominant order, it is the very accomplishment of legitimacy that forecloses greater possibilities. In sum, the potential for
change is both created and limited by legitimation. The central issue that the Critics fail to address, then, is how to avoid the
"legitimating" effects of reform if engaging in reformist discourse is the only effective way to challenge
the legitimacy of the social order . Perhaps the only situation in which powerless people may receive any favorable response
is where there is a political or ideological need to restore an image of fairness that has somehow been tarnished. Most efforts to
change an oppressive situation are bound to adopt the dominant discourse to some degree .142 ¶
FOOTNOTE 142 BEGINS… 142 This engagement is apparently required
PIVEN & R. CLOWARD, supra note 136, at I-32. ¶ FOOTNOTE 142 ENDS.
of successful efforts at change . See F.
A dialectical process of revolutionary reforms is necessary---the aff is a
concrete expression of a more systemic critique
Ben Wray 14, International Socialist Group, The case for revolutionary reforms,
http://internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/2014/04/the-case-for-revolutionary-reforms/
We need revolutionary change. There’s no two ways about it – if the exploitation of labour by capital continues to be the central dynamic
driving economic development, we are headed for human and environmental catastrophe. ¶ But as I’ve discussed in the previous five parts of this
series, getting from where we are to a revolutionary transformation that overthrows the dominant property relations
of the capitalist economy and replaces them with social relations based on democratic control of the world’s resources is not as simple
as declaring our desire for it to be so. I saw a petition on change.org the other day proposing the overthrow of
capitalism. If one million people signed that petition and one million people signed a further petition to
introduce full collective bargaining rights for trade-unions in the UK, which one would move us closer to the
overthrow of capitalism? I wager the latter.¶ Whilst having an end goal in sight is important, most people
don’t change their thinking about the world based on bold visions of what could be done at some point in the future:
they change their ideas based on evidence from their material lives which points to the inadequacy or irrationality of the status quo. In other words, we
need to have ideas that build upon people’s lived experience of capitalism, and since that it is within the framework of a representative democracy
system, we
need ideas based around proposals for reforms. At the same time those reforms have to help rather than
hinder a move to more revolutionary transformation that challenges the very core of the capitalist
system.¶ The dialectic of reform and revolution¶ What we need, therefore, is a strategy of revolutionary reforms. Such a notion
would appear as a contradiction in terms to many who identify as reformists or revolutionaries and see the two as dichotomous, but
there is no reason why this should be the case. Indeed, history has shown that revolutionary transformations have
always happened as a dialectical interaction between rapid, revolutionary movements and more
institutional, reform-based challenges . Even the revolutionary part of that dialectic has always been motivated by the immediate needs
of the participants involved – ‘land, bread and peace’ being the first half of the slogan of the Russian Revolution. ¶ What does a strategy of
‘revolutionary
reforms’ entail? Ed Rooksby explains that it is a political strategy that builds towards revolutionary
change by using reforms to ‘push up against the limits’ of the ‘logic of capitalism’ in practice :¶ “At first
these “feasible objectives” will be limited to reforms within capitalism—or at least to measures which, from
the standpoint of a more or less reformist working class consciousness, appear to be legitimate and achievable within the
system, but which may actually run counter to the logic of capitalism and start to push up against its
limits. As the working class engages in struggle, however, the anti-capitalist implications of its needs and
aspirations are gradually revealed. At the same time, through its experience of struggle for reform, the working
class learns about its capacity for “self-management, initiative and collective decision ” and can have a “foretaste of
what emancipation means”. In this way struggle for reform helps prepare the class psychologically,
ideologically and materially for revolution .” The late Daniel Bensaid expressed this argument through the lens of the history of the
socialist movement:¶ “In reality all sides in the controversy agree on the fundamental points inspired by The Coming Catastrophe (Lenin’s
pamphlet of the summer of 1917) and the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International (inspired by Trotsky in 1937): the need for
transitional demands , the politics of alliances (the united front), the logic of hegemony and on the dialectic (not
antinomy) between reform and revolution. We are therefore against the idea of separating an (‘anti-neoliberal’) minimum
programme and an (anti-capitalist) ‘maximum’ programme. We remain convinced that a consistent anti-neoliberalism leads to anti-capitalism and that
the two are interlinked by the dynamic of struggle.Ӧ So revolutionary
reforms means a policy agenda that, as Alberto Toscano
one and the same time make concrete gains within capitalism which permits further movement
against capitalism”. The Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci described this approach as a ‘war of positon’.
has put it, “at
Legal change has resulted in racial advancement and more is still possible--reject pessimism because it results in subversive alternatives
Randall Kennedy 12, Harvard Law Professor, Race, Crime, and the Law, Knopf Doubleday
Publishing Group, pp. 388-389
True, it is sometimes genuinely difficult to determine an appropriate remedial response. The proper way to
address that difficulty, however, is to acknowledge and grapple with it, not bury it beneath unbelievable assertions
that, in fact, no real problem exists. Whitewashing racial wrongs (especially while simultaneously proclaiming that courts are
doing everything reasonably possible to combat racially invidious government action) corrupts officials and jades onlookers, nourishing
simplistic, despairing, and defeatist critiques of the law that are profoundly destructive .¶ The second impression that I
the administration of
criminal law has changed substantially for the better over the past half century and that there is reason to
believe that, properly guided, it can be improved even more . Today there are more formal and informal
protections against racial bias than ever before , both in terms of the protections accorded to blacks
against criminality and the treatment accorded to black suspects , defendants, and convicts. That deficiencies,
large deficiencies, remain is clear. But comparing racial policies today to those that prevailed in 1940 or
1960 or even 1980 should expose the fallacy of asserting that nothing substantial has been changed for
the better .¶ This point is worth stressing because of the prevalence and prominence of pessimistic thinking about
the race question in American life. Some commentators maintain, in all seriousness, that there has been no
significant improvement in the overall fortunes of black Americans during the past half century, that advances that
appear to have been made are merely cosmetic, and that the United States is doomed to remain a
pigmentocracy. This pessimistic strain often turns paranoid and apocalyptic in commentary about the
administration of criminal law.¶ It is profoundly misleading , however, to focus exclusively on the ugliest
aspects of the American legal order . Doing so conceals real achievements: the Reconstruction
Constitutional Amendments, the Reconstruction civil rights laws, Strauder v. Alabama, Dempsey v. Moore, Brown
v. Mississippi, Powell v. Alabama, Norris v. Alabama, Batson v. Kentucky, the resuscitation of
Reconstruction by the civil rights movement, the changing demographics of the bench, bar, and police
departments—in sum, the stigmatization (albeit incomplete) of invidious racial bias. Neglecting these
achievements robs them of support . Recent sharp attacks upon basic guarantees bequeathed by the New Deal
ought to put everyone on notice of the perils of permitting social accomplishments to lose their rightful stature
in the public's estimation. Moreover, one-dimensional condemnations of the racial situation in America
renders attractive certain subversive proposals that are, given actual conditions , foolish,
counterproductive , and immoral. I think here in particular of the call for racially selective jury nullification. Such proposals
should be openly challenged on the grounds that they fundamentally misperceive the racial realities of
American life.
want to leave with readers should serve as an antidote to these overwrought, defeatist critiques by acknowledging that
2AC
Case
Prisons
The prison makes a mockery of justice; the prisoner is at once commanded
to be accountable and yet to be un-free. The dilemma of the prisoner puts
us in question & exposes our arbitrary freedom as a site of potential
violence. This difficult experience of freedom calls us to ethics and
manifests itself as a demand for justice
Guenther 11 – Prof. of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University
Solitary Confinement and the Rhetoric of Accountability: A Levinasian Critique
Keynote Address, North American Levinas Society, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, May 2,
2011, Lisa Guenther,
http://www.academia.edu/2343692/Solitary_Confinement_and_the_Rhetoric_of_Accountability_A_Le
vinasian_Critique
Critique begins with the ethical provocation of an other who puts me in question and commands me to justify myself. This command
is not an act of war, rhetorical or otherwise; rather, it makes a break with the logic of war by addressing the subject as one who is
both free and responsible. It critically engages the identity of the same, asking, in effect: Who do you think you are? What do you
have to say for yourself? For Levinas, we question ourselves, and ultimately we question being, because we have been put
in question by an Other, because we have been called to justify ourselves to one whose vulnerability is
exposed to the potential violence of our arbitrary freedom. Without this experience of being put in question by an
Other, there would be no motivation for critique, nothing to interrupt the spontaneity of the for-itself, no command to reflect on the
conditions of one’s own freedom. Critique begins in shame--if by shame we mean the experience of being turned back upon oneself
by a feeling of ethical exposure to the face of an Other whose presence commands me to justify myself. 6 Philosophy, the vocation of
perpetual questioning, does not antecede this experience of being put in question by another, which marks the birth of the
philosopher as an ethical subject and therefore also as a speculative theoretical subject. In this sense, conscience precedes
consciousness, and ethics is first philosophy. Philosophy may be born in wonder, but wonder is born in shame. The critical
provocation of shame both highlights our freedom and conceals it by subordinating freedom to responsibility. But shame does not
destroy my freedom; it merely commands me to justify this freedom, and to invest it in ethical responsibility. A
freedom
invested is a freedom divested of its arbitrary spontaneity , and so made meaningful. Ultimately, for Levinas,
freedom is invested only in “Discourse and Desire, where the Other presents himself as an interlocutor, as him over whom I can not
have power, whom I cannot kill . . . where, qua I, I am not innocent spontaneity but usurper and murderer” (TI 84). At the very
moment I am commanded not to murder, I appear to myself as both a murderer and a responsible subject; I discover
both the
violence of my arbitrary freedom and the “difficult freedom” of responsibility (Levinas 1997).In what follows, I
draw on Levinas’ critique of war and rhetoric, and his ethical reduction of philosophical knowledge to justice and responsibility, to
develop a critical phenomenology of accountability and choice in supermax prisons. I argue that the insistence on prisoners’
individual accountability for their choices in a context where they have almost no control over their
situation, makes a mockery of ethical responsibility and political justice . Rather than challenging criminal
offenders to face others in responsibility, and to join others in solidarity, the control prison declares war on the
prisoner, disrupting his identity as a separated subject and condemning him to “an objective order from which there is no escape”
(TI 21). An ethical response to crime, motivated by a demand for social justice rather than by punishment, “correction”
or behavior modification, can help us to envision new possibilities for criminal justice, both within prisons and
beyond them.
K
FW
Their desire to ignore the consequences of their advocacy causes alt failure
---must evaluate consequences of proposals
Christopher A. Bracey 6, Associate Professor of Law, Associate Professor of African & African
American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, September, Southern California Law Review, 79 S.
Cal. L. Rev. 1231, p. 1318
Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to elide inquiry into
whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy positions masquerading as principled
ideological stances create the impression that a racial policy is not simply a choice among available
alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher moral principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in
itself, without reference to outcomes. Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional
discourse. Colorblindness has come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just , independent of
its actual effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race
preferences, and his tragic assertion that "Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law." 281 For Thomas, there is
Critics may point out
that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society.
But in framing the debate in purely ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of
outcomes and make viability determinations based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures
exude fidelity to the ideological principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by
ideological exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of resentment.
no meaningful difference between laws designed to entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression.
Dahlberg
Evaluate the desirability of the plan---using the resolution as a heuristic for
deliberation is necessary to produce democratic citizens able to responding
to manipulation and deception used by those in power---this does not
necessitate excluding conjuring, but does necessitate having a common
background for normative evaluation
Lincoln Dahlberg 5, The University of Queensland, Center for Critical and Cultural Studies, Visiting
Fellow, The Habermasian public sphere: Taking difference seriously?, Theory and Society (2005) 34:111126
I believe this critique of power, transparency, and the subject is largely based upon a poor characterization
of Habermas’ position. There are three main misunderstandings that need to be cleared up here, to do
with power as negative, as able to be easily removed, and as able to be clearly identified. First, Habermas
does not define power as simply negative and as therefore needing to be summarily removed from the
public sphere. The public sphere norm calls for “coercion-free communication” and not power-free
communication. Habermas emphasizes the positive power of communicative interaction within the public
sphere through which participants use words to do things and make things happen.60 Communicative
rationality draws on the “ force of better argument ” to produce more democratic citizens, culture, and
societies. Subjects are indeed molded through this constituting power, but their transformation is towards
freedom and autonomy rather than towards subjugation and normalization. As Jeffrey Alexander points
out, to act according to a norm is not the same as to be normalized .61 The public sphere norm provides a
structure through which critical reflection on constraining or dominating social relations and possibilities
for freedom can take place . As Chambers argues, rational discourse here is about “the endless
questioning of codes,” the reasoned questioning of normalization.62 This is the very type of questioning
critics like Lyotard, Mouffe, and Villa are engaged in despite claiming the normalizing and repressive
power of communicative rationality. These critics have yet to explain adequately how they escape this
performative contradiction, although they may not be too concerned to escape it.63
The form of power that is to be excluded from discourse in the public sphere is that which limits and
disables democratic participation and leads to communicative inequalities . Coercion and domination are
(ideally) excluded from the public sphere, which includes forms of domination resulting from the
maldistribution of material and authoritative resources that lead to discursive inequalities . This emphasis
on the ideal exclusion of coercion introduces the second point of clari- fication, that the domination free
public sphere is an idealization for the purposes of critique. Habermas is more than aware of the fact that,
as Nancy Fraser, Mouffe, and Young remind us, coercive forms of power, including those that result from
social inequality, can never be completely separated from the public sphere.64 Claims that such power has
been removed from any really-existing deliberative arena can only be made by ignoring or hiding the
operation of power. However, this does not mean that a reduction in coercion and domination cannot be
achieved. Indeed, this is precisely what a democratic politics must do. To aid this project, the public
sphere conception sets a critical standard for evaluation of everyday communication . Chambers puts this
nicely:
Criticism requires a normative backdrop against which we criticize. Crit-icizing the ways power and
domination play themselves out in discourse presupposes a conception of discourse in which there is no
[coercive] power and domination. In other words, to defend the position that there is a mean- ingful
difference between talking and fighting, persuasion and coercion, and by extension, reason and power
involves beginning with idealizations. That is, it involves drawing a picture of undominated discourse.65
However, this discussion of the idealizing status of the norm does notanswer claims that it invokes a
transparency theory of knowledge. Iwould argue that such claims not only fall prey to another performative contradiction – of presupposing that the use of rational discourse can establish the impossibility of
rational discourse revealing truth and power – but are also based on a poor reading of Habermas’ theory
of communicative rationality. This is the third point of clarification. In contrast to the metaphysics of
presence, the differentiation of persusion from coercion in the public sphere does not posit a naive theory
of the transparency of power, and meaning more generally. The public sphere conception as based upon
communicative rationality does not assume a Cartesian ( autonomous, disembodied, decontextualized )
subject who can clearly distinguish between persuasion and coercion, good and bad reasons, true and
untrue claims, and then wholly re-move themselves and their communications from such influence. For
Habermas, subjects are always situated within culture. The public sphere is posited upon intersubjective
rather than subject-centered rationality. It is through the process of communicative rationality, and not
via a Cartesian subject, that manipulation, deception, poor reasoning, and so on, are identified and
removed, and by which meanings can be understood and communicated. In other words, it is through
rational-critical communication that discourse moves away from coercion or non-public reason towards
greater rational communication and a stronger public sphere. The circularity here is not a problem, as it
may seem, but is in fact the very essence of democratization: throughthe practice of democracy,
democratic practice is advanced.
This democratizing process can be further illustrated in the important and challenging case of social
inequalities. Democratic theorists (bothdeliberative and difference) generally agree that social inequalities
al-ways lead to some degree of inequalities in discourse. Thus, the ide-alized public sphere of full
discursive inclusion and equality requires that social inequalities be eliminated. Yet how is social
inequality to befullyidentified,letaloneeliminated? The idealization seems wholly in-adequate given
contemporary capitalist systems and associated social inequality. However, it is in the very process of
argumentation, even if flawed, that the identification and critique of social inequality, and thus of
communicative inequality, is able to develop. Indeed, public sphere deliberation often comes into
existence when and where people become passionate about social injustice and publicly thematize
problems of social inequality. Thus the “negative power” of social inequality – as with other forms of
coercion – is brought to light and critique by the very discourse it is limiting.
This is not to say that subjects are merely effects of discourse, that there are no critical social agents acting
in the process. It is not to say that
125 subjects within discourse cannot themselves identify negative forms of power, cannot reflexively
monitor their own arguments, cannot rationally criticize other positions, and so on. They can, and in
practice do, despite the instability of meaning . The point is that this reasoning and understanding is
(provisionally) achieved through the subject’s situatedness in discourse rather than via a pre-discursive
abstract subject. As Kenneth Baynes argues, it is through discourse that subjects achieve a degree of
reflective distance (what we could call autonomy) from their situations, “enabling them to revise their
conceptions of what is valuable or worthy of pursuit,[and]to assess various courses of action with respect
to those ends.” 66 Democratic discourse generates civic-oriented selves, inter-subjective meanings and
understandings, and democratic agreements that can be seen as the basis of public sovereignty. How-ever,
the idea of communicatively produced agreements, which in the public sphere are known as public
opinions, has also come under ex-tensive criticism in terms of excluding difference, criticism that I wantto
explore in the next section.
The ends of discourse: Public opinion formation
The starting point of discourse is disagreement over problematic validity claims. However, a certain
amount of agreement, or at least mutual understanding, is presupposed when interlocutors engage in
argumentation. All communication presupposes mutual understanding on the linguistic terms used –
that interlocutors use the same terms in the same way.67 Furthermore, in undertaking rational-critical
discourse, according to Habermas’ formal pragmatic reconstruction, interlocutors also presuppose the
same formal conditions of argumentation . These shared presuppositions enable rational-critical
discourse to be undertaken. However, as seen above, meaning is never fixed and understanding is always
partial. Understanding and agreement on the use of linguistic terms and of what it means to be
reasonable, reflexive, sincere, inclusive, non-coercive, etc. takes place within discourse and is an ongoing
political process.
This is offense---their attempt to commodify the affective performance of
the 1nc recreates the false binary between affect and reason that they are
trying to critique
Sarah Sorial 11, Faculty of Arts, The University of Wollongong, Habermas, Feminism, and Law, Ratio
Juris. Vol. 24 No. 1 March 2011 (25–48)
In Between Facts and Norms , Jürgen Habermas develops a proceduralist model of law that is grounded
in deliberative procedures; these procedures are, in turn, grounded in a system of rights that ensures
equal rights of participation in the law making process. Essential to this conception of legal legitimacy is
that the deliberative and decision-making procedures in question be guided by the discourse principle.
The discourse principle states that: “Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected
persons could agree as participants in rational discourses” (Habermas1998a, 138). This new paradigm of
law is intended to perform a number of different functions. It is intended to move beyond both the liberal
and welfare models of law, to re-establish the lost connection between private and public autonomy, and
to provide a normative framework for thinking
about rights and oppression.
My primary aim in this paper is to assess the relevance of Habermas’ proceduralist model of law for
securing feminist objectives. I take these objectives to include the analysis and critique of patriarchal
institutions, concepts and relations; securing the equal representation of women in public life; protection
from rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, discrimination in education and the workplace, and the
protection of freedoms in general and reproductive freedoms in particular.1 I suggest that the
proceduralist model can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an
alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of
the equality/difference dilemma . Both these attempts to secure women’s equality by emphasising
women’s sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a
way of integrating themselves into existing institutions or to confront the so-called question of women’s
difference.2 The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of
sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require
interpretation by both men and women.3 This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise
the so-called problem of women’s difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms.
Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests effects a
fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for
promoting male interests ; a shift that feminists have long thought necessary to achieve the
aforementioned objectives.
My secondary aim is to defend the deliberative model of law from the charge that it is inherently
masculine, and thus, reproduces gender inequality. The emphasis on a public life governed by reason and
rights has been criticized on the grounds that it reproduces a conception of public reason that has
traditionally been used to exclude women. The deliberative model also assumes that everyone who is
affected by an issue has the capacity to contribute to public debate. It thus ignores the various social,
cultural and familial constraints on one’s capacities to contribute to law making.4
These concerns over public reason, I suggest, not only rest on a misunderstanding of Habermas’ account
of communicative reason, but risk reproducing the very binaries between reason and affect that have been
used to exclude women from public life.5 With reference to Habermas’ account of communicative
rationality, I demonstrate the way in which one’s ability to contribute to informal public debate does not
depend on one’s intellectual capacities, or education, as contended by these criticisms, but merely
depends on one’s capacity to give reasons—whatever they may be—for one’s position by way of language. I
also demonstrate the way in which these criticisms fail to distinguish between the cultural and political
spheres and between the spheres of ethics and justice. I conclude by demonstrating the way in which
Habermas’ model is actually closer to feminist concerns than feminists have traditionally conceded.6
Tonn
Communication in the public sphere must be aimed at the resolution of
targeted issues---the neg’s model of debate as a site for affective connection
and personal expression obscures institutional constraints and naturalizes
hegemony
Mari Boor Tonn 5, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park,
Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public, Rhetoric & Public Affairs , Volume 8, Number 3, Fall
2005
Abstract This essay interrogates "conversation," "dialogue," and the language of therapy as framing devices for
various public deliberative processes in the 1990s and since. Although "conversation" and "dialogue" are often trumpeted as a means
to restore civility, egalitarianism, and community into thepublic sphere, this essay argues that these communication modes ,
coupled with the language of therapy in which they frequently have been couched, are problematic as
paradigms for conflict and problem resolution on public issues. The essay argues, first, that a conversational model for
deliberation may impede rather than further democratic goals, and, second, that conversation may function as
a therapeutic substitute for policy formation necessary to remedy social ills. As the last century neared its close, the second-wave
feminist slogan "The Personal Is Political " was turned on its head: the political became highly personalized. In this new
politics of intimacy, candidates whistlestopped on Oprah Winfrey, political journalists posed as psychotherapists, and President "I feel your pain" Clinton presided in the popular imagination as The Great
Emblematic of this conflation of the private and the public was the increasing casting
of social controversies such as affirmative action, escalating crime, and welfare reform in the language of
"conversation," "dialogue," and the therapeutic talk of healing, dysfunction, coping , self-esteem, and empowerment.1 Among academics,
this cult of conversation has been championed most ardently by communitarian political theorists, civic journalists, cultural feminists,
postmodernists, multiculturalists, family therapists, and a number of communication scholars concerned with identity,
the public sphere, conflict and negotiation, and counseling. In many cases, the rationale for a conversational [End Page 405] turn in the ways citizens conduct business, solve problems, and
approach conflict is couched in a language interpolating "conversation" or "dialogue" with spirituality and therapy. Particularly visible is Deborah Tannen's 1998 bestseller The Argument
Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue , wherein she blames a culture of critique for "corroding our spirit ."2
Empathizer and the Commander in Grief.
Likewise, the earlier The Conversation of Journalism proposed supplanting the "disabling" monological approach to news reporting with a more inclusive dialogic paradigm overtly engaging citizens.3 So, too, at
the University of New Hampshire in the late 1990s, administrators and some faculty proposed replacing the existing Academic Senate, which they termed "dysfunctional," with a nonvoting University Forum
aimed to "advance functional conversation" and attendant community.4 And the conflation of the conversational and therapeutic for approaching public controversies is made explicit in the Boston Public
Conversations Project, premised on "[t]he idea that family therapy skills can be fruitfully applied in the realm of 'public conversations'" on "divisive public issues" such as abortion.5 Perhaps the most conspicuous
Clinton's Conversation on Race, launched in mid-1997. Controversial from its inception for its ideological
met further widespread criticism for its encounter-group approaches to racial stratification and strife,
critiques echoing previously articulated concerns—my own among them6 —that certain dangers lurk in employing private
or social communication modes for public problem-solving.7 Since then, others have joined in contesting the treating of public
problems with narrative and psychological approaches , which—in the name of promoting civility, cooperation, personal empowerment, and socially constructed or
idiosyncratic truths— actually work to contain dissent, locate systemic social problems solely within individual
neurosis, and otherwise fortify hegemony .8 Particularly noteworthy is Michael Schudson's challenge to the utopian equating of "conversation" with the "soul of
democracy." Schudson points topivotal differences in the goals and architecture of conversational and
democratic deliberative processes. To him, political (or democratic) conversation is a contradiction in terms. Political deliberation entails a
clear instrumental purpose, ideally remaining ever mindful of its implications beyond an individual case.
Marked by disagreement —even pain—democratic deliberation contains transparent prescribed procedures
governing participation and decision making so as to protect the timid or otherwise weak. In such processes, written records chronicle the
effort at replacing public debate with therapeutic dialogue was President
bent, the initiative
interactional journey toward resolution, and in the case of writing law especially, provide accessible justification for decisions rendered. In sharp contrast, conversation is often "small talk" exchanged among
family, friends, or candidates for intimacy, unbridled by set agendas, and prone to egocentric rather than altruistic goals. Subject only to unstated [End Page 406] "rules" such as turn-taking and politeness,
9/11, the onset of war with Afghanistan and Iraq,
and the subsequent failure to locate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have resuscitated some faith in debate,
argument, warrant, and factsas crucial to the public sphere. Still, the romance with public conversation
persists. As examples among communication scholars, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's 2001 Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture treated what she termed "the rhetoric of conversation" as a means to "manage
conversation tends to advantage the gregarious or articulate over the shy or slight of tongue.9 The events of
controversy" and empower non-dominant voices10 ; multiple essays in a 2002 special issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs on deliberative democracy couch a deliberative democratic ideal in dialogic terms11 ; and the
2005 Southern States Communication Convention featured family therapist Sallyann Roth, founding member and trainer of the Public Conversations Project, as keynote speaker.12 Representative of the dialogic
turn in deliberative democracy scholarship is Gerard A. Hauser and Chantal Benoit-Barne's critique of the traditional procedural, reasoning model of public problem solving: "A deliberative model of democracy . .
. constru[es] democracy in terms of participation in the ongoing conversation about how we shall act and interact—our political relations" and "Civil society redirects our attention to the language of social dialogue
on which our understanding of political interests and possibility rests."13 And on the political front, British Prime Minister Tony Blair—facing declining poll numbers and mounting criticism of his indifference to
public opinion on issues ranging from the Iraq war to steep tuition hike proposals—launched The Big Conversation on November 28, 2003. Trumpeted as "as way of enriching the Labour Party's policy making
process by listening to the British public about their priorities," the initiative includes an interactive government website and community meetings ostensibly designed to solicit citizens' voices on public issues.14
In their own way, each treatment of public conversation positions it as a democratic good, a mode that heals divisions and carves out spaces wherein ordinary voices can be heard. In certain ways, Schudson's
initial reluctance to dismiss public conversation echoes my own early reservations, given the ideals of egalitarianism, empowerment, and mutual respect conversational advocates champion. Still, in the spirit of
the dialectic ostensibly underlying dialogic premises, this essay argues that various negative consequences can result from transporting conversational and therapeutic paradigms into public problem solving. In
what follows, I extend Schudson's critique of a conversational model for democracy in two ways: First, whereas Schudson primarily offers a theoretical analysis, I interrogate public conversation as a praxis in a
public "conversation" and "dialogue" havebeencoopted to silence rather [End Page 407] than
empower marginalized or dissenting voices. In practice, public conversation easily can emulate what feminist political scientist Jo
variety of venues, illustrating how
the tyranny of structurelessness " in her classic 1970 critique of consciousness-raising groups in the women's liberation movement,15as well as the
key traits Irving L. Janis ascribes to "groupthink."16 Thus, contrary to its promotion as a means to neutralize
hierarchy and exclusion in the public sphere, public conversation can and has accomplished the reverse .
When such moves are rendered transparent, public conversation and dialogue, I contend, risk increasing rather than diminishing political
cynicism and alienation. Second, whereas Schudson focuses largely on ways a conversational model for democracy may mute an individual's voice in crafting a resolution on a given
question at a given time, I draw upon insights of Dana L. Cloud and othersto consider ways in which a therapeutic, conversational approach to public
problems can stymie productive, collective action in two respects.17 First, because conversation has no clearly defined
goal, a public conversation may engender inertia as participants become mired in repeated airings of
personal experiences without a mechanism to lend such expressions direction and closure . As Freeman aptly notes,
although"[u]nstructured groups may be very effective in getting [people] to talk about their lives[,] they
aren't very good for getting things done. Unless their mode of operation changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of 'just talking.'"18 Second, because
the therapeutic bent of much public conversation locates social ills and remedies within individuals or dynamics of
interpersonal relationships, public conversations and dialogues risk becoming substitutes for policy formation
necessary to correct structural dimensions of social problems. In mimicking the emphasis on the individual in therapy, Cloud warns, the
therapeutic rhetoric of "healing, consolation, and adaptation or adjustment" tends to "encourage citizens
to perceive political issues, conflicts, and inequities as personal failures subject to personal amelioration."19
Social Conversation, Therapy, and Public Deliberation The allure of conversation or dialogue to remedy corrosive political alienation and
disaffection undoubtedly lies in social talk as a primary site for locating a sense of self, creatingand performing social
identity , and developing and sustaining relationships.20 On its face, conversation appears less threatening than traditional modes of
public deliberation in several respects. First, conventional conceptions of expertise are significantly refigured in social
conversations. In social settings, evidence often consists of livedexperiences , hearsay, anecdotes, and personal feelings and opinions ratherthan, for example,
statistics or studied conclusions from authorities . Moreover, because social conversations frequently [End Page 408] engage with the trivial, quotidian, or entertaining, persons
Freeman termed "
with social or cultural knowledge and interpersonal skills—the talent, say, to tell a joke, discuss sports, or narrate travails of childbearing and rearing—may find themselves prized in a conversational arena. Indeed,
conversational "expertise" often is equated with the gift for eliciting and validating personal experiences
and opinions of others, even in the face of disagreement. Additionally, whereas informal rules of conversation are familiar and accessible to most individuals, formal
processes common to public deliberationmay intimidate the uninitiated in parliamentary procedure. Although conversations are not without
norms, such talk unfolds spontaneously through informal, unstated conventions of politeness linked to turn-taking; topic initiation, acceptance, and refusal; leave-taking; and so forth. Participants
who violate conventions by interrupting, monopolizing talk, or even voicing racism or sexism, for example, seldom face thetype of reprimand often
encountered in formal deliberations. In a related vein, then, the priority placed on forging and maintaining relationships in social conversations privileges avoiding conflict,
even when conversational partners violate norms or make outlandish claims. Because the presumption of trust governs, Ronald Wardbaugh notes, "good behavior in conversations is cooperative behavior" and
confrontation becomes anathema: challenging or "correcting others . . . directly questions an underlying assumption of conversation—that everybody is telling the truth."21 If friction threatens or erupts, parties
skirt conflict through capitulation or compromise, silence, shifting topics, or polite physical escape.22 Even some argumentation scholars agree that eluding discord trumps effective decision making when talk is
"conversational." Thomas A. Hollihan and Kevin T. Baaske, for example, counsel conversationalists to consider, "How might [a dispute] affect our relationship?" and "What good is securing a victory in an
Therapeutic dialogue is likewise highly personal, although
such talk directly engages with some conflict or struggle: addiction, familial strife, grief, eating disorders, low self-esteem, or
argument, if the person [I] have argued with . . . refuses to be a friend, or comes to . . . dislike [me]?"23
other personal or relational issues. Therapeutic discourse—be it in encounter groups, 12-step programs, or individual counseling—travels a course of self-discovery aimed ultimately at personal, not social, reform.
In therapeutic talk, the self monopolizes ; the individual is central subject, provider of evidence, and
solution, even if the "problem" entails external structures such as work-related stress or navigating racism, sexism, or homophobia.24 Ironically, although
the postmodern turn in therapy challenges the concept of an isolated self by emphasizing identity and knowledge as products of relational dialogue,25 some postmodern dialogic therapists nonetheless regard
external data that might contradict a client's self-reports [End Page 409] as not germane. Sheila McNamee, for example, terms as "monologic" rather than her preferred "dialogic" the "modernist belief that we can
objectively assess a person, a situation, or a relationship based on the notion that there are (or could be) some clear standards for evaluation. . . . .The discourse of reason is so commonplace" that "[w]e simply
To be sure, certain conventional boundaries between
public and private forms of communication and problem solving are artificial; deliberation over facts,
values, and courses of action inhere in essentially all human decision making, whether it be over foreign policy or navigating daily life. So,
too, some rhetorical scholars, myself included, have noted that some rhetors may mobilize oppressed or politically disaffected constituencies
by transferring certain communication skills acquired in the private sphere into the public domain , especially if
expect others to be able to provide rational and objective evidence supporting their claims."26
the rhetor's aims entail transforming disempowered audiences into confident and skilled political actors.27 In fact, Campbell's treatment of the "rhetoric of conversation" in the talk of three historical female
Still, in important respects, received conceptions
of democracy and public deliberation stand in sharp relief to social conversations and therapeutic
dialogues. First, unlike the scrupulous avoidance of conflict in social conversations, democratic argument, as Kenneth Burke contends, is necessarily an
admixture of "competition" and "cooperation." As he argues, "Only if all reports were in and if there were no vital questions still unanswered, could a social body
figures greatly mirrors the consciousness-raising that she earlier analyzed in the women's liberation movement.28
dispense with the assistance of a vocal opposition in the maturing of our chart as to what is going on, which social functions are helpful and which are harmful."29 Thus, contrary to the relational harmony
Public arguments are catalyzed by
predicament or dispute, placing them at odds with the social convention prescribing divisive issues such as
politics and religion as off-limits in "polite conversation." Rather than developing relationships of equality, the conversational priv–
ileging of affective criteria over reasonable problem solving public deliberations can invite, as I have said, what Janis
terms "groupthink." Among the primary contributors to groupthink, explains Janis, is the goal of group cohesiveness. To maintain the god-term of
"community," self-appointed group mindguards paint dissenters as disloyal or uncooperative, limit future
membership to like-minded individuals, and frame out-group opposition as too evil, ignorant, or unintelligent
privileged in social conversations, true civic deliberation fully recognizes, in Schudson's words, that "Democracy is deeply uncomfortable."30
to warrant consideration. Similar to social conversations, in groupthink, parties concerned about appearing unduly [End Page 410] quarrelsome avoid conflict by denying or diluting their
reservations about a proposed action, shifting or tabling discussion of thorny topics, or resorting to silence or physical absence. Such self-censorship, coupled with the faulty assumption that silence equals consent,
Although name-calling and ostracismcan and do occur in traditional democratic processes, the
prioritizing of group harmony and cohesiveness in conversational models grants freer license to scapegoat. Second,
democratic processes and public problem solving necessarily diverge from social conversations by articulating
objectives at the outset ; adhering to formal rulesfor participating in, managing, and achieving problem resolution; and documenting outcomes.
results in the illusion of unanimity.31
Through the scrupulous recording of motions, discussions, amendments, and votes, the dynamics of such joint action are rendered visible, accessible, and retrievable, even to persons not party to the immediate
contrary to the
framing of conversation and dialogue as egalitarian public problem-solving models, they, in truth, can reify pecking
orders by licensing group members with social authority to set agendas, steer and dominatediscussion, and—
absent the polling and recording of votes—interpret the "will" of the group. Moreover, such informal processes can reward those who
speak theloudest, the longest, are the most articulate, or even the most recalcitrant. Freeman's analysis of consciousness-raising groups is instructive: At any small group meeting anyone with a
deliberative process. "Democracies," Schudson writes, "put great store in the power of writing to secure, verify, and make public. Democracies require public memories."32 Thus,
sharp eye and an acute ear can tell who is influencing whom. The members of the friendship group will relate more to each other than to other people. They listen more attentively, and interrupt less; they repeat
each other's points and tend to give in amiably; they tend to ignore or grapple with the "outs" whose approval is not necessary for making a decision . . . They are nuances of interaction, not prewritten scripts. But
they are discernible, and they do have their effect. Once one knows . . . whose approval is the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things.33 As a result, Freeman argues that purportedly
structureless" organizations are a "deceptive . . . smokescreen," given that "'structurelessness' does not
prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones . . . For everyone to have the opportunity
to be involved . . . and to participate . . . the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must
be open and available to everyone, and this can only happen if they are formalized."34 Schudson likewise argues that the
inherently "threatening" nature of political deliberation demands procedures guaranteeing "equal access to
"
the [End Page 411] floor, equal participation in setting the ground rules for discussion, and a set of ground rules designed to encourage pertinent speaking, attentive listening, appropriate simplifications, and
widely apportioned speaking rights."35 Third, whereas in social and therapeutic talk, personal experience, opinion, and individual well-being reign supreme, the force of "opinion" in a democracy demands
allegiance both to reasonableness and to the larger collective good. Unlike certain postmodern dialogic therapists, responsible public deliberators view neither facts as inescapably elusive nor appeals to the
A key groupthink
feature—uncritical, self-righteous faith in the group's inherent morality and traditions—is nourished by
privileging lived experiences and personal opinions, the primary content of social and therapeutic talk. As Donal Carbaugh points
out, because the "self" becomes the "locus of conversational life,"conversationalists may "disprefer consensual truths, or
standards of and for public judgment ," which they view to "unduly constrain 'self.'"37 Such an egocentric focus
can enable members of deliberative bodies to discount crucial, formal types of external evidence that counters existing
personal and group assumptions, resulting in what Lisa M. Gring-Pemble characterizes as forming public policies such as welfare
reform "by anecdote."38 Fourth, a communicative model that views public issues through a relational,
personal, or therapeutic lens nourishes hegemony by inviting political inaction . Whereas the objective of
conventional public argument is achieving an instrumental goal such as a verdict or legislation, the aim of social
conversation generally stops with self-expression. As Schudson puts it, "Conversation has no end outside itself."39 Similarly, modeling therapeutic paradigms that
trumpet "talking cures" can discourage a search for political solutions to public problems by casting cathartic talk
as sufficient remedy . As Campbell's analysis of consciousness-raising groups in the women's liberation movement points out, "[S]olutions must be structural,
not merely personal, and analysis must move beyond personal experience and feeling . . . Unless such
transcendence occurs, there is no persuasive campaign . . . [but] only the very limited realm of
therapeutic, small group interaction ."40
rational uniformly suspect. Rather, democratic arguers apply rigorous standards for evidence and, above all, writes Schudson, subscribe to "norms of reasonableness."36
2AC – NME
Their position is not mutually exclusive---we can embrace the 1AC while
recognizing the 1NC’s conjuring method is important --- our 1AC was black
conjuring
Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen 5, is founder and Director of the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of
Romania (PATRIR) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND, and is on the Executive Board of the TRANSCEND Peace University (TPU)
where he is Course Director for the courses Peacebuilding and Empowerment and War to Peace Transitions. He has worked in
Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Russia, South Eastern Europe, North America, Colombia, Somalia, Cambodia, Aceh-Indonesia
and the Middle East at the invitation of governments, inter-governmental organisations, UN agencies, and local organisations and
communities. He has written and published widely, and is author of The Struggle Continues: The Political Economy of Globalisation
and People's Struggles for Peace (Pluto, forthcoming), co-author, together with Johan Galtung and Carl Jacobsen, of Searching for
Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND (Pluto, 2000 & 2002) and Editor of the TRANSCEND book series published together with Pluto
Press, Constructive Peace Studies: Peace by Peaceful Means. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Journal of Peace and
Development and the Executive Board of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution. In 1999 he was founder and Director of the
Coalition for Global Solidarity and Social Development, and in 2000, together with Johan Galtung, he was founder of the Nordic
Institute for Peace Research (NIFF). Since 1996 he has provided more than 250 training programmes in peacebuilding,
development, and constructive conflict transformation to more than 4000 participants in 30 countries.
http://www.globalsolidarity.org/articles/peace_means_kai.html
Peace by Peaceful Means Dear Friends, The discussions which have taken place over e-mail over the past few days have been extremely interesting. I
have just returned from Oslo where the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize was being celebrated. The obvious contrast between the rather elite
'suit' dominated celebrations in Oslo and the realities of what is occurring in the world today was stark. Questions
of strategy, tactics and
visions for how we work to bring about change, to transform all forms of violent conflict -- direct, structural, and cultural -- and
to empower, mobilise, and involve people in a mass, broad-based movement for peace and to build the alternatives
we are looking for, are vital . In Norway alone, to take one example, perhaps 80% of people think what is happening now in and over Afghanistan is
wrong, either completely or at least in part, and yet all they hear from the media, academics and politicians is constant support and acclaim for the
'justness' of this war (or indeed, any war in which it is 'we' against 'them'). Small
groups of people and 'NGOs', in Norway as in every single
trying to bring forward alternatives, to raise their voices, and to protest/oppose what they think is wrong. While these
organisations are in every case much smaller than our governments and militaries going to war, they often represent the social majority. A major
challenge they face, however, is how to reach out to people, how to involve people, and how to develop
alternatives which make sense to people tired of war and violence (whether of the kind we are seeing in Afghanistan, or of a global economic
system killing 100,000 a day). Negative slogans and opposition to what is wrong is not enough however. It is not enough,
but it is necessary. 'Basta!', 'Enough!' was perhaps the most 'revolutionary' cry of the last decade , and still is in many
parts of the world. The simple, courageous act, of standing up when we see that something is wrong, and stating that it is wrong,
not cooperating with it, can be a powerful and evocative symbol . When we are having our conferences, discussions and meetings in
country, are
whichever city, town or village of the world we may be found, we should always remember that the vast majority of people in our own city, town or
The vision, hope and ideas which bring
people to these conferences are, in the vast majority of cases, kept marginalised, on the periphery. Yet that is also
part of our own responsibility, technique and methods. Basta! became a cry to inspire millions, because those who said it lived it, refusing
to cooperate any longer with what they know to be wrong. While Basta! may be the most revolutionary cry or word today,
transforming all forms of direct, structural, and cultural violence is the greatest challenge . The two are
inclusive and complementary, not exclusive. We need to state clearly our opposition to violence, war, injustice and
exploitation (the 'peace movement' has often been willing to do the first two, not always as willing on the last two), and we need also to build
a constructive, positive programme . It is not only a question of what we are against, but what we are for.
When we criticize what we think is wrong, people will also want to know what we think could be done instead . In these
cases, our answers must seem real and viable to people. The 'anti-globalisation' movement is therefore also a social justice
village, as well as the entire rest of the world, have no idea that we are there, meeting.
movement; 'non-governmental organisations' should also be people's organisations or people's movements; and one of our challenges today will be to
build upon the growing 'anti-war' movement, transforming it also into a peace movement. A step further, as many social and peace activists have
recognised, will be to link the peace and social justice movements. Slogans and messages are important, as are practice and vision.
It will not be
possible today to unite broad numbers of people around issues which they feel are too abstract and
divorced from them. The 'abolish the debt' campaign/movement was successful because people were able to
see the clear linkages between debt and the effective colonisation and enslavement of countries and
people across the south, as well as the incredible suffering and destruction it brought. The Jubilee 2000 'campaign' however, unlike the
Jubilee South movement which continues today, did not reach its objective of having the debt cancelled. Instead, while many people around the world
believe the problem has been solved, the debt-system and the burden it places upon countries has become even more extreme. Going from 'campaigns'
to movements will also be important, though even here it
is not a question of 'either/or' but 'both/and' with individual
campaigns extremely useful and effective at times for involving people, raising awareness and mobilising
around specific issues, strengthening further the broader movements of which they may be a part. Today, a
movement for demos kratos is necessary , and vital for any movement or work towards peace. To speak about the United States or any
government in the world today as a 'democracy' is a ridiculous farce. They are highly elite dominated systems built upon massive structures and
cultures of violence, and willing to use overwhelming (Powel Doctrine) violence when necessary to enforce their needs and/or interests. At best they
may be demagogia's, where elites maintain power by promising the people what they will do for them (we call this 'elections'), but they are not system's
or societies built upon people's power, demos kratos. Decisions to go to war are made by tiny numbers of people. Our economic and political policies
are constructed for us, often to the detriment of the social majorities who are told to 'leave well enough alone' and trust in the experts. This is
sometimes as true of politicians as it is of non-governmental organisations who themselves frequently prefer the conference halls and well-funded
projects to actually working democratically with people as part of the people themselves. An alternative today, what Johan Galtung has called for, with
10,000 dialogues, meetings, discussions
at every level, focussing not only on what is wrong, but also on what we
want therapy, ideas, alternatives. In one form or another many of these dialogues are taking place. In a way they are therapy for the
massive amounts of violence we are all being exposed to today, in our cultures, in our world, on our television sets or in the speeches of our
'democratically elected' rulers (the question, for those who do not support their policies, should not be 'who put them in power' -- though this is also
important -- but why haven't we removed them from power yet_). They are also empowering,
if we take the step beyond saying
what is wrong to what could be done _, what should be done_, and then go further to discussing what I/we can do about it.
Mobilising people for peace today is not simply about a slogan (though coming up with clearly expressed messages in a few words will of course help us
to link people together and raise awareness). What
is necessary, beyond any single issue or top-level strategy for how to
change the world, is the process . The way is the goal. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the social justice/anti-globalisation movement
is that it has mobilised, involved, and empowered millions of people around the world in discussing, thinking about, and acting upon the realities
around them. On the streets of Seattle, Praha, Okinawa, Melbourne, Gotheburg, Washington, Quebec, Genoa, Ottawa, people, many of whom refuse to
vote, have been discussing foreign policy, domestic politics, people to people movements, and all the issues which politicians and well-established
NGOs are not able and often not willing to discuss with people. We
have our 'manifestos', our policies and plans which we wish to put
addressing them to 'politicians' and 'elites' believing, in a fundamentally undemocratic way, that
they will be the ones to bring about and implement change for us. This is not to say that that is not an important level which we also need to work
at. The broader vision here is both/and, not either or, in terms of strategy as well often of vision. We also
need, however, to be willing to take part in the much slower, more timely, and more empowering process, of
tens of thousands of dialogues together with people, communities, and organisations at every level. Solidarity today is
being built upon and carried further into alliances not just supporting people in their struggles for social justice, peace
and freedom, but carrying forward those struggles ourselves in our own communities, our own towns, cities and villages. If we
wish to change the injustices taking place in the world today we must of course work on a global level, but
we must also work, just as importantly, within our communities. Again, both / and rather than either or. We
should also be wary when we say 'we must begin here', or 'this must be done first !', even when the message is very
positive and constructive. 'We must begin with the individual!'. 'We must begin by changing society!'. 'We must
begin with a culture of peace!'. 'We must begin by ending the debt!'. All of these , and the many others put
forward, are extremely important issues. They are also all linked together . Again, both/and. Exclusive and elitist
visions will only serve to further fragment our efforts, creating division and separation where what is
needed is dialogue, solidarity, cooperation and alliances between movements/organisations which often take
diverse strategies and approaches to addressing deeply interlinking injustices and structures and cultures of violence.
Conscientisation (raising awareness, often political awareness -- but also social, cultural, economic), organisation (we can do more
forward in the name of people, often
together than we can apart, and it is necessary to organise -- though in many different ways -- to be able to bring about changes, both against what we
think is wrong and for what we think is right), mobilisation (bringing in more and more people, involving
people in dialogues, discussion,
action, and work for change/transformation), and empowerment (I/we can, rather than 'I/we can't'; also important recognising the power we
have to bring about change, rather than simply accepting existing, often extremely violent, power structures and believing that change
can/should/must be implemented by those 'in power', whether slave owners, men, politicians, or fuhrers) are
all necessary .
AT: Whiteness
Whiteness is too monolithic to be analytically useful---the plan’s focus on
the institutional forms it takes is a better strategy
Adolph Reed 13, professor of political science @ U Pennsylvania, Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism, New
Labor Forum January/February 2013 22: 49-57,
This sort of historical materialist perspective throws into relief a fundamental limitation of the “whiteness”
notion that has been fashionable within the academic left for roughly two decades: it reifies whiteness as a
transhistorical social category . In effect, it treats “whiteness”—and therefore “race”—as existing prior to and
above social context.10 Both who qualifies as white and the significance of being white have altered over
time. Moreover, whiteness discourse functions as a kind of moralistic exposé rather than a basis for strategic
politics ; this is clear in that the program signally articulated in its name has been simply to raise a demand to “abolish
whiteness,” that is, to call on whites to renounce their racial privilege. In fact, its fixation on demonstrating
the depth of whites’ embrace of what was known to an earlier generation’s version of this argument as “ white skin privilege” and the
inclination to slide into teleological accounts in which groups or individuals “approach” or “pursue” whiteness erases the
real historical dynamics and contradictions of American racial history .¶ The whiteness discourse overlaps
other arguments that presume racism to be a sui generis form of injustice. Despite seeming provocative,
these arguments do not go beyond the premises of the racial liberalism from which they commonly
purport to dissent. They differ only in rhetorical flourish, not content . Formulations that invoke
metaphors of disease or original sin reify racism by disconnecting it from the discrete historical
circumstances and social structures in which it is embedded, and treating it as an autonomous force.
Disconnection from political economy is also a crucial feature of postwar liberalism’s construction of racial
inequality as prejudice or intolerance. Racism becomes an independent variable in a moralistic argument
that is idealist intellectually and ultimately defeatist politically. ¶ This tendency to see racism as sui generis
also generates a resistance to precision in analysis . It is fueled by a tendency to inflate the language of
racism to the edge of its reasonable conceptual limits, if not beyond. Ideological commitment to shoehorning
into the rubric of racism all manner of inequalities that may appear statistically as racial disparities has
yielded two related interpretive pathologies. One is a constantly expanding panoply of neologisms—
“institutional racism,” “systemic racism,” “structural racism,” “color-blind racism,” “post-racial racism,”
etc.—intended to graft more complex social dynamics onto a simplistic and frequently psychologically
inflected racism/anti-racism political ontology . Indeed, these efforts bring to mind [Thomas S.] Kuhn’s account of attempts to
accommodate mounting anomalies to salvage an interpretive paradigm in danger of crumbling under a crisis of authority.11 ¶ A second essentialist
sleight-of-hand advances claims for the primacy of race/racism as an explanation of inequalities in the
present by invoking analogies to regimes of explicitly racial subordination in the past. In these arguments,
analogy stands in for evidence and explanation of the contemporary centrality of racism. Michelle Alexander’s
widely read and cited book, The New Jim Crow, is only the most prominent expression of this tendency; even she has to acknowledge that the
analogy fails because the historical circumstances are so radically different .12¶ Rigorous pursuit of equality of
opportunity exclusively within the terms of capitalist class relations has been fully legitimized under the rubric of “diversity.”
Debating Law Good
Debating pragmatic legalization policy is key to generate an empathetic
institutional change---progress is possible
David Cole 11, Professor at Georgetown Law, Turning the Corner on Mass Incarceration?, 9 Ohio St. J.
Crim. L. 27-51 (2011)
The tragedy of the United States’ forty-year incarceration epidemic remains very much with us. No country on
earth incarcerates more people, or at a higher rate per capita. And while that strategy has imposed unnecessary costs on us all, the burden has been
disproportionately borne by African American and Latino men. But that is old news. The new news is that after
forty years of increasing
incarceration and widening racial disparities, the trend lines appear to be shifting . In recent years, the
incarceration rate has dropped, as has the total number of persons incarcerated in state prisons. And racial
disparities are also falling. Legislatures that were once obsessed with enacting mandatory minimums and increasing
the severity of criminal sentences are now eliminating mandatory minimums, reducing criminal penalties, and
directing new resources to alternatives to incarceration and reentry. The politics of crime, at least for the moment,
appears to have changed. It is less captured by demagoguery and more susceptible to arguments about costs and
benefits . ¶ These developments should not be overstated. The changes have as yet been only marginal, offering little challenge
to the United States’ dubious distinction of being the world leader in incarceration rates. Moreover, the criminal justice system, at every stage, still
disproportionately targets minority groups. But
the change in direction is nonetheless good, and surprising, news. The story has
we be in the midst of a new story line, a new strategy, a new criminal
justice policy? ¶ It is too early to tell, of course. But it is not too early to recognize the changes, to ask what may have
prompted them, and to think about strategies for facilitating further positive change . We ought to build on
what has worked and push for change that might create further improvements. While what must be done is
relatively clear—reduce criminal sentences, reduce reliance on criminal penalties for illicit drugs , increase
resources for alternatives to incarceration, and invest in communities that are most vulnerable to crime—
it is less clear how we persuade the public that these measures are worth it. Pragmatic arguments about cost
savings need to be paired with moral appeals to America’s commitment to equality. But most importantly, we must bridge the
empathy gap between the public at large and the incarcerated population. If Americans were to come to view those
been otherwise for two solid generations. Might
behind bars as part of our community, indeed our family, mass incarceration would no longer be tolerated.
AT: You’re Whiteness/Consume
Experimenting with different advocacies is not a tactic of whiteness---truly
endorsing a politics of social locations means accepting the fact that
political resistance requires multiple nodes of attack---only a broad-based
account can give us an effective map with which to navigate politics
Rosi Braidotti 6, contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician, Transpositions: On Nomadic
Ethics, 7-8
Secondly, the term 'transposition'
refers to mobility and cross-referencing between disciplines and discursive
levels. I rely on transposable notions that drift nomadically among different texts - including those I authored myself - while producing their own
specific effects. Transposable concepts are 'nomadic notions' that weave a web connecting philosophy to social
realities; theoretical speculations to concrete plans ; concepts to imaginative figurations. Trans-disciplinary in structure,
transposable concepts link bio-technology to ethics and connect them both with social and political philosophy. Moreover, I will inject
feminism, anti-racism, environmental and human rights as an extra booster of theoretical energy and then let
nomadic flows of becoming run loose through them all .
Thirdly, the notion of transposition describes the connection between the text and its social and historical context, in the material and discursive sense
of the term. The passion that animates this book is a concern for my historical situation, in so-called advanced, post-industrial cultures at the start of
the third millennium. A kind of amor
fati motivates me, not as fatalism, but rather in the pragmatic mode of the
cartographer . I am seeking modes of representation and forms of accountability that are adequate to the
complexities of the real-life world I am living in. I want to think about what and where I live - not in a
flight away from the embodied and embedded locations which I happen to inhabit . In Metamorphoses I argued
that, if you do not like complexities you couldn't possibly feel at home in the third millennium .
Transpositions enacts this notion by proposing creative links and zigzagging interconnections between
discursive communities which are too often kept apart from each other. To name but a few significant ones: biotechnologies and ethics and political agency; the omnipresence of a state of crisis on the one hand and the possibility of
sustainable futures on the other; the practice of nomadic politics of difference versus technological monoculture; the creative
potential of hybrid subjectivity, in opposition to new and more virulent forms of ethnically fixed identities ;
cartographic accounts of locations and normative stances . Ultimately: post-structuralism and ethical norms or values.
More specifically, I will transpose nomadically from philosophical theory to ethical practice. Loyal to the feminist politics of locations,
I remain committed to the task of providing politically informed maps of the present , convinced of the usefulness of
a situated approach as a critical tool to achieve an enlarged sense of objectivity and a more empowering grasp of the social. Politically, a
cartographic method based on the politics of locations results in the recognition that not one single
central strategy of resistance is possible (Grewal and Kaplan 1994; Patton 2000; Massumi 1992b). A heterogeneous style of
politics is needed instead, based on centrelessness. As a corollary, this implies a variety of possible political strategies
and the non-dogmatic acceptance of potentially contradictory positions . A scattered, weblike system is now operational,
which defies and denies any pretence at avant-garde leadership by any group. Resistance being as global as power, it is centreless and just as nonlinear: contemporary politics is rhizomic.
Spirituality Focus Bad
Their conjuring black magic cannot be controlled by them—it takes on a life
of its own and naturalizes itself into society in the form of some of the most
violent leaders in history
Shaun Robert Treat 4, PhD in Comm from LSU, THE MYTH OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP AND
FANTASY RHETORIC OF CRYPTO-CHARISMATIC MEMBERSHIPS,
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-01272004-085638/unrestricted/Treat_dis.pdf
There may indeed be an inherent danger in rhetorical visions that substitute the ¶ comforting oversimplifications of a monomythic
fantasy metanarrative for the complex and ¶ contradictory realities of political organization and human behavior. “Because it is
shared, a ¶ group fantasy takes on an aura of truth that the private fantasies of individuals do not ,” observe ¶
Nimmo & Combs (1990), since “the proof of the validity of a group fantasy lies simply in the ¶ fact that it is shared” (11). Nimmo &
Combs (1980) worry that the increasing popularity of the charismatic superhero fantasy within popular media
could be both nobilized and mobilized ¶ rhetorically into a religiously-charged political force of
considerable consequence, as it has in ¶ times past: ¶ Such fantasy is understandable but is potentially dangerous.
The bulk of the ¶ superheroes depicted get their authority to act from translegal sources that supercede ¶ normal
legal precepts. Typically, they are charismatic, pure outsiders, and they ¶ succeed because of their moral and
technological power, oftentimes by violence. ¶ They are attractive because they offer a clearcut distinction
between good and evil, ¶ simplify the ambiguities in life, and overcome obstacles quickly and neatly. It need ¶ hardly be added
that these superheroic characteristics can take on a demonic form in ¶ political life. Napoleon, Hitler, and,
to some extent, Lenin and Stalin were exalted as ¶ political superheroes who derived their authority from
translegal sources; followers perceived them as charismatic , pure, outsiders (e.g., Napoleon was Corsican, Hitler ¶
Austrian); they offered simple solutions by violence; and they succeeded because of ¶ alleged moral superiority and technological
skill (e.g., military and propaganda). ¶ The belief that someone can and should have that kind of power to save has
had ¶ popular appeal-- and truly devastating results . (154) ¶ Their concern is that effective rhetorical visions can
exhibit all the characteristic traits and ¶ pitfalls of what is known in organizational studies as Groupthink, “the danger
that the shared illusion will not be penetrated by any discomfirming messages” as decision-making groups ¶
prefer “to have around themselves like-minded” participants who prize cohesion over conflict ¶ (1980, 215). “If what provoked
the fantasizing in the first place is of sufficiently widespread ¶ interest,” observe Nimmo & Combs (1990),
“conditions are ripe for another key stage of fantasy ¶ development where mass communication enters,
spreading a single fantasy shared by broad ¶ segments of a population to mass audiences” and thereby
come to “constitute the reality for a ¶ group faced with a problematic situation” (12). They are most concerned
that mass-mediated rhetorical visions might become “the single symbolic reality created for an entire
population,” reducing the complexities and contradictions of some crisis to the monological reality of a
dominant metanarrative: “For those who share them, fantasies are real, the reality is fantasy” ¶ (12-13). This “ultimate
fantasy” of a singular reality “has tyrannical implications ,” they warn, ¶ because such groupthink substitutes living in
“a world of plural possibilities” for the ¶ reductiveness and certainty of metanarrative logic (228-32). Eagleton (1991) similarly
cautions ¶ that as a register of ideology, “myths have mistaken their symbolic worlds for literal ones and so ¶ come
to naturalize their own status ,” yet are “clearly a piece of rhetoric, designed to foster solidarity and selfaffirmation ” when invoked within ideologically-interested political discourse ¶ (191). Instead of fantasy serving
as a dramatistic oversimplification of a complex social reality, ¶ mass-mediated rhetorical fantasy can itself become
reality for a rhetorical community if the ¶ mythic map becomes mistaken for the complex social terrain.
Charisma is universally incorporated into social structures as it asserts
itself
Shaun Robert Treat 4, PhD in Comm from LSU, THE MYTH OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP AND
FANTASY RHETORIC OF CRYPTO-CHARISMATIC MEMBERSHIPS,
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-01272004-085638/unrestricted/Treat_dis.pdf
Despite oceans of ink spilt on the topic, leadership today is a lot like pornography: hard to ¶ define, but we’re certain that we know it
when we see it. There are as many different definitions ¶ and conceptions of leadership as there are people who have studied the art.
Since this is true of ¶ leadership generally, it should come as little surprise that this is also true of charismatic ¶ leadership more
specifically. This study has been a humbling attempt to survey the origins and ¶ contemporary development of the evolving myth of
charisma within our fantasies of leadership. ¶ Charisma, the extraordinary “gift of grace or favor” that intimates the
superhuman and divine, ¶ remains a fascinating yet elusive ideal with powerful appeal to the mythic
imagination of our ¶ popular political unconscious. As the demands of cultural leadership and bureaucratic ¶
management have evolved as times have changed, so too have our fantasies of charismatic ¶ leadership. What has remained the same
amidst such dizzying change, I suggest here, are the ¶ centrally fundamental paradoxes conveyed within the cautionary Myth of
Charisma. ¶ Chapter one identified the mythic return of charisma within our contemporary discourses of leadership
and the central problematic posed by this most recent rise to prominence: definitional and methodological
bias causing persistent failures to acknowledge ‘charismatic management’ as a deeply troubling and
paradoxical concept . Critics have complained that¶ contemporary managerial models often result in autocratic,
coercive behaviors for top-down control dressed in the robes of pseudocharismatic leadership. Because of our
anxieties and ¶ profound ambivalence, charisma thus returns in covert and encrypted forms so that we do not
have to confront its contradictions and limits . In our eternal quest to discover and articulate ¶ more benevolent forms of
leadership, complicated by a persistent indistinction between ¶ volitional leadership and the imposed headship of bureaucratic
rulers, the specter of charismatic ¶ leadership continues to excite our conceptual fantasies but haunt our
cultural nightmares. The ¶ solution proposed by this study was to examine our notions of charismatic leadership as a
mythic ¶ rhetoric that influences and articulates contemporary leadership fantasies . ¶ Chapter two surveyed the
gargantuan history and evolutionary development of the Myth ¶ of Charisma. Beginning in the ancient world and ending in modern
times, this chapter identified ¶ a recurring and fundamental mythic tension in the divinely-charged conceptualizations of the ¶ “gift
of grace or favor” charisma. On the one hand, charisma has long been the exclusive ¶ domain of some transcendent social elite, most
often god-like heroes, divinely-sanctioned rulers, ¶ and the spiritually-inspired seers who transform society because they wield
magical superpowers ¶ far beyond those of lesser mortals. On the other hand, however, the God-given charismatic gifts ¶ which St.
Paul posits as having been distributed uniquely amongst a community of believers ¶ hints at another more subversive view
akin to Buddhist mysticism, which finds the power of ¶ charisma to be an immanent spiritual potential
latent within every human being and manifest as ¶ varying personal gifts or miraculous abilities. The
result is a paradox: charisma is a rhetoric invoked by both rulers and revolutionaries . Max Weber would
delineate the modern secular ¶ routinizations for this transformational magic of charisma as belonging to either the exemplary ¶
prophet, whose virtuous action and heroic deeds make them worthy of emulation, or the emissary ¶ prophet, whose righteous
mission and sacred doctrine become holy law for a community of ¶ believers. For Weber, despite almost infinite variance in
how cultures may subjectively conceive ¶ of charismatic gifts, there is a universal process of rationalizing
and institutionalizing charismatic ¶ gifts and heroes into enduring social structures, which nonetheless
always ends in the “iron cage” ¶ of cold instrumental reason and dehumanizing impersonal bureaucracy.
1AR
Smith
Making the debate about us as persons or forcing us to confess the sins
diverts attention from structural inequalities by misidentifying the
conditions of their removal---makes oppression inevitable because it uses a
flawed starting-point
Andrea Smith 13, intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist, The Problem with “Privilege,”
http://anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-problem-with-privilege-2013.html
This kind of politics then challenges the notions of “safe space” often prevalent in many activist circles in
the United States. The concept of safe space flows naturally from the logics of privilege. That is, once we
have confessed our gender/race/settler/class privileges, we can then create a safe space where others will
not be negatively impacted by these privileges. Of course because we have not dismantled
heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, settler colonialism or capitalism, these confessed privileges never
actually disappear in “safe spaces.” Consequently, when a person is found guilty of his/her privilege in
these spaces, s/he is accused of making the space “unsafe.” This rhetorical strategy presumes that only
certain privileged subjects can make the space “unsafe” as if everyone isn’t implicated in heteropatriarchy,
white supremacy, settler colonialism and capitalism. Our focus is shifted from the larger systems that
make the entire world unsafe, to interpersonal conduct . In addition, the accusation of “unsafe” is also
levied against people of color who express anger about racism, only to find themselves accused of making
the space “unsafe” because of their raised voices. The problem with safe space is the presumption that a
safe space is even possible.
By contrast, instead of thinking of safe spaces as a refuge from colonialism, patriarchy, and white
supremacy, Ruthie Gilmore suggests that safe space is not an escape from the real, but a place to practice
the real we want to bring into being . “Making power” models follow this suggestion in that they do not
purport to be free of oppression, only that they are trying to create the world they would like to live in
now. To give one smaller example, when Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, organized, we
questioned the assumption that “women of color” space is a safe space. In fact, participants began to
articulate that women of color space may in fact be a very dangerous space. We realized that we could not
assume alliances with each other, but we would actually have to create these alliances. One strategy that
was helpful was rather than presume that we were acting “non-oppressively,” we built a structure that
would presume that we were complicit in the structures of white supremacy/settler
colonialism/heteropatriarchy etc. We then structured this presumption into our organizing by creating
spaces where we would educate ourselves on issues in which our politics and praxis were particularly
problematic. The issues we have covered include: disability, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism,
Zionism and anti-Arab racism, transphobia, and many others. However, in this space, while we did not
ignore our individual complicity in oppression, we developed action plans for how we would collectively
try to transform our politics and praxis . Thus, this space did not create the dynamic of the confessor and
the hearer of the confession. Instead, we presumed we are all implicated in these structures of oppression
and that we would need to work together to undo them. Consequently, in my experience, this kind of
space facilitated our ability to integrate personal and social transformation because no one had to
anxiously worry about whether they were going to be targeted as a bad person with undue privilege who
would need to publicly confess. The space became one that was based on principles of loving rather than
punitive accountability .
Conclusion
The politics of privilege have made the important contribution of signaling how the structures of
oppression constitute who we are as persons. However, as the rituals of confessing privilege have evolved,
they have shifted our focus from building social movements for global transformation to individual selfimprovement.
Furthermore, they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a subject that can constitute itself
over and against others through self-reflexivity. While trying to keep the key insight made in
activist/academic circles that personal and social transformation are interconnected, alternative projects
have developed that focus less on privilege and more the structures that create privilege. These new
models do not hold the “answer,” because the genealogy of the politics of privilege also demonstrates that
our activist/ intellectual projects of liberation must be constantly changing . Our imaginations are limited
by white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc., so all ideas we have will not be “perfect.” The ideas we
develop today also do not have to be based on the complete disavowal of what we did yesterday because
what we did yesterday teaches what we might do tomorrow. Thus, as we think not only beyond privilege,
but beyond the sense of self that claims privilege , we open ourselves to new possibilities that we cannot
imagine now for the future.