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A review by ashedryden
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance by Angela Y. Davis
4.0
A good collection of essays, letters, and other works. Didn’t feel super cohesive and it definitely drags in places, but where it’s good it is VERY good.
(Highlights below as I purchased this book from Haymarket and not Amazon)
- The American triumph—in which the American tragedy has always been implicit—was to make Black people despise themselves.
- as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our Black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.
- Nat Turner and John Brown can be viewed as examples of the political prisoner who has actually committed an act which is defined by the state as “criminal.” They killed and were consequently tried for murder. But did they commit murder? This raises the question of whether American revolutionaries had murdered the British in their struggle for liberation. Nat Turner and his followers killed some 65 white people, yet shortly before the Revolt had begun, Nat is reputed to have said to the other rebelling slaves: “Remember that ours is not war for robbery nor to satisfy our passions, it is a struggle for freedom. Ours must be deeds not words.”
- The battle for the liquidation of slavery had no legitimate existence in the eyes of the government and therefore the special quality of deeds carried out in the interests of freedom was deliberately ignored. There were no political prisoners, there were only criminals; just as the movement out of which these deeds flowed was largely considered criminal.
- The political act is defined as criminal in order to discredit radical and revolutionary movements. A political event is reduced to a criminal event in order to affirm the absolute invulnerability of the existing order.
- Indeed, the assistant warden at San Quentin, who is by profession a clinical psychologist, tells us in a recent interview that prisoners suffer from “retarded emotional growth.” The warden continues: “The first goal of the prison is to isolate people the community doesn’t want at large. Safe confinement is the goal. The second obligation is a reasonably good housekeeping job, the old humanitarian treatment concept.”2 That is, once the prisoner is adequately confined and isolated, he may be treated for his emotional and psychological maladies—which he is assumed to suffer by virtue of the fact that he is a prisoner. We have a completely circular method of reasoning. It is a closed-circuit system from which there is no apparent escape. The alleged criminal
- Professor Theodore Sarbin of the University of California criminology department put it very well: “… membership in the class of people known as ‘law-breakers’ is not distributed according to economic or social status, but membership in the class ‘criminals’ is distributed according to social or economic status … ”6 Example: the ten executives of the General Electric Company convicted in 1961 of price-fixing involving tens of millions of dollars are law-breakers, and some of them actually served some months in prison. Still, the society does not consider them criminals. By way of contrast, a Chicano or Black youth alleged to have stolen ten dollars from a grocery store is not only considered a criminal by the society, but this assumption allows the police to act with impunity. They may shoot him down in the street. Chances are it will be ruled justifiable homicide in a coroner’s inquest.
- consider penology as the confinement and treatment of people who are actually or potentially disruptive of the social system.
- In an increasing number of ways the entire judicial and penal system involving the police, the courts, the prisons and the parole boards has become a mechanism through which the ruling powers seek to maintain their physical and psychological control, or the threat of control, over millions of working people, especially young people, and most especially Black and Brown young people. The spectre of the prisons, the behavioral psychologists, the Adult Authority, the judicial treadmill, haunts the community.
- “indeterminate sentences” for felony convictions, e.g. one year to life imprisonment, gives the parole board incredible powers.
- For once you accept the behavioralist view of the criminal as morally depraved or mentally defective it is perfectly logical to preventively detain all persons who manifest such tendencies and are therefore potential criminals. Thus, in April 1970 a leading physician and close associate of President Nixon proposed that the government begin the mass testing of 6-to 8-year-old children to determine if they have criminal-behavior tendencies. He then suggested “treatment camps” for the severely disturbed child and the young hard-core criminal.
- Banfield’s analysis of the urban crisis exactly coincides with the behavioralists’ view of the criminal. That is, the cause of the urban crisis lies with the existence of what Banfield calls the “lower classes” who are poverty-prone. These lower classes are of course working people, and Black and Brown people in particular. They are, Banfield would have us believe, morally depraved and mentally defective.
- Banfield’s description of the lower class is in fact a description of the criminal. And it is precisely at this moment when the description of the lower class and the description of the criminal coincide that we have a central aspect of the ideological basis for fascism and genocide. This is exactly Banfield’s program.
- He argues that the people at the bottom of the society are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus, the oppressed exist, and will always be used to maintain the privileged status of the exploiters.
- America is a prison. As Brother Huey P. Newton stated, the only difference is that one is maximum and the other minimum security.
- As Brother Malcolm X once said, “We as people, as human beings have the basic human right to eliminate the conditions that have and are continuously destroying us.”
- Historically the prison system has been an integral part of our lives. Black people emerged from slavery only to encounter the prison labor system as one element of the new apparatus of exploitation. Arrested for trivial or falsified offenses, Blacks were leased out to politicians, planters, mining firms, and Northern syndicates for up to thirty years. A remnant of that era can still be detected, for example, in Arkansas’ notorious Cummins’ Prison Farm where prisoners work for no pay in cotton fields five and a half days a week. While more insidious forms of slave labor have persisted in the prisons, this broader social function of maintaining the existing socio-economic order has achieved monstrous proportions.
- There are more prisons of all categories in the United States than in all other countries of the world combined.
- Most crime, however, is clearly the simple effect of a grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of the state of present property relations. There are no wealthy men on death row, and so very few in the general prison population that we can discount them altogether—imprisonment is an aspect of class struggle from the outset.
(Highlights below as I purchased this book from Haymarket and not Amazon)
- The American triumph—in which the American tragedy has always been implicit—was to make Black people despise themselves.
- as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our Black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.
- Nat Turner and John Brown can be viewed as examples of the political prisoner who has actually committed an act which is defined by the state as “criminal.” They killed and were consequently tried for murder. But did they commit murder? This raises the question of whether American revolutionaries had murdered the British in their struggle for liberation. Nat Turner and his followers killed some 65 white people, yet shortly before the Revolt had begun, Nat is reputed to have said to the other rebelling slaves: “Remember that ours is not war for robbery nor to satisfy our passions, it is a struggle for freedom. Ours must be deeds not words.”
- The battle for the liquidation of slavery had no legitimate existence in the eyes of the government and therefore the special quality of deeds carried out in the interests of freedom was deliberately ignored. There were no political prisoners, there were only criminals; just as the movement out of which these deeds flowed was largely considered criminal.
- The political act is defined as criminal in order to discredit radical and revolutionary movements. A political event is reduced to a criminal event in order to affirm the absolute invulnerability of the existing order.
- Indeed, the assistant warden at San Quentin, who is by profession a clinical psychologist, tells us in a recent interview that prisoners suffer from “retarded emotional growth.” The warden continues: “The first goal of the prison is to isolate people the community doesn’t want at large. Safe confinement is the goal. The second obligation is a reasonably good housekeeping job, the old humanitarian treatment concept.”2 That is, once the prisoner is adequately confined and isolated, he may be treated for his emotional and psychological maladies—which he is assumed to suffer by virtue of the fact that he is a prisoner. We have a completely circular method of reasoning. It is a closed-circuit system from which there is no apparent escape. The alleged criminal
- Professor Theodore Sarbin of the University of California criminology department put it very well: “… membership in the class of people known as ‘law-breakers’ is not distributed according to economic or social status, but membership in the class ‘criminals’ is distributed according to social or economic status … ”6 Example: the ten executives of the General Electric Company convicted in 1961 of price-fixing involving tens of millions of dollars are law-breakers, and some of them actually served some months in prison. Still, the society does not consider them criminals. By way of contrast, a Chicano or Black youth alleged to have stolen ten dollars from a grocery store is not only considered a criminal by the society, but this assumption allows the police to act with impunity. They may shoot him down in the street. Chances are it will be ruled justifiable homicide in a coroner’s inquest.
- consider penology as the confinement and treatment of people who are actually or potentially disruptive of the social system.
- In an increasing number of ways the entire judicial and penal system involving the police, the courts, the prisons and the parole boards has become a mechanism through which the ruling powers seek to maintain their physical and psychological control, or the threat of control, over millions of working people, especially young people, and most especially Black and Brown young people. The spectre of the prisons, the behavioral psychologists, the Adult Authority, the judicial treadmill, haunts the community.
- “indeterminate sentences” for felony convictions, e.g. one year to life imprisonment, gives the parole board incredible powers.
- For once you accept the behavioralist view of the criminal as morally depraved or mentally defective it is perfectly logical to preventively detain all persons who manifest such tendencies and are therefore potential criminals. Thus, in April 1970 a leading physician and close associate of President Nixon proposed that the government begin the mass testing of 6-to 8-year-old children to determine if they have criminal-behavior tendencies. He then suggested “treatment camps” for the severely disturbed child and the young hard-core criminal.
- Banfield’s analysis of the urban crisis exactly coincides with the behavioralists’ view of the criminal. That is, the cause of the urban crisis lies with the existence of what Banfield calls the “lower classes” who are poverty-prone. These lower classes are of course working people, and Black and Brown people in particular. They are, Banfield would have us believe, morally depraved and mentally defective.
- Banfield’s description of the lower class is in fact a description of the criminal. And it is precisely at this moment when the description of the lower class and the description of the criminal coincide that we have a central aspect of the ideological basis for fascism and genocide. This is exactly Banfield’s program.
- He argues that the people at the bottom of the society are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus, the oppressed exist, and will always be used to maintain the privileged status of the exploiters.
- America is a prison. As Brother Huey P. Newton stated, the only difference is that one is maximum and the other minimum security.
- As Brother Malcolm X once said, “We as people, as human beings have the basic human right to eliminate the conditions that have and are continuously destroying us.”
- Historically the prison system has been an integral part of our lives. Black people emerged from slavery only to encounter the prison labor system as one element of the new apparatus of exploitation. Arrested for trivial or falsified offenses, Blacks were leased out to politicians, planters, mining firms, and Northern syndicates for up to thirty years. A remnant of that era can still be detected, for example, in Arkansas’ notorious Cummins’ Prison Farm where prisoners work for no pay in cotton fields five and a half days a week. While more insidious forms of slave labor have persisted in the prisons, this broader social function of maintaining the existing socio-economic order has achieved monstrous proportions.
- There are more prisons of all categories in the United States than in all other countries of the world combined.
- Most crime, however, is clearly the simple effect of a grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of the state of present property relations. There are no wealthy men on death row, and so very few in the general prison population that we can discount them altogether—imprisonment is an aspect of class struggle from the outset.