Resisting internalized oppression: Black women's perceptions of incarceration

......................................................................................................4 Resisting Internalization....................................................................................5 Two Differing Analyses of Black women’s incarceration from formerly incarcerated Black Women....................................................................................................7 Incarcerated Black Women............................................................................7 Hierarchies of Oppression: Black feminist Frameworks...............................................13 Intra-Community Marginalization.......................................................................19 Suppressing Identity, Masking Racism, & Advancing Myths: Neoliberal Capitalism............23 Neoliberal Foundations for Black Women’s Incarceration & the PIC............................23 Neoliberal Capitalist Processes of Criminalization...................................................29 Neoliberal Production of Criminalized Markets......................................................30 Negative Effects of the PIC on Black Women..........................................................33 Education and Employment.............................................................................36 The PIC & the Role of Racial Identity in Movement-Building.......................................39 Prison Abolition Analyses of the PIC..................................................................40 Methods.....................................................................................................46 Conducting Research with Black Women............................................................46 Data Collection..........................................................................................49 Data Analysis.............................................................................................51 Analysis....................................................................................................53 Endangered Black Male Narratives & Politics of Loyalty.........................................53 Neoliberal Conceptions of Personal Wealth.........................................................58 Resisting Internalization 4 Question 2..................................................................................................63 Internalized Responsibility.............................................................................64 Individual Perceived Benefits of Incarceration......................................................68 Critical Consciousness & Political Analyses.........................................................69 Question 3...................................................................................................72 Resistance, Activism, & Resilience....................................................................73 Discussion...................................................................................................78 Conclusion...................................................................................................85 References...................................................................................................95 Appendix...................................................................................................102 Resisting Internalization 5 Abstract In 2010, I attended two anti-incarceration events where formerly incarcerated Black women spoke against incarceration. While it seemed to me that the motivation to engage in anti-incarceration resistance could only allow for so much variance, I soon became painfully aware of the vital importance of considering formerly incarcerated Black women’s stories while being critical of the broader contexts of American history and dominant political-economic paradigms. Specifically, as a result of synthesizing the messages I received at each of these events, I understood the importance of utilizing a politicized racial consciousness when considering the context within which Black women are the fastest growing population in American prisons (Roberts, 2012). Black women’s politicized racial consciousness becomes important as similarities are uncovered between chattel slavery (and other pre-civil rights anti-black racist institutions like Jim Crow segregation) and contemporary incarceration practices in America (Alexander, 2010, Davis, 2010). The connections made between historic anti-black institutions and contemporary incarceration practices compel many to re-engage a Radical Black Feminist tradition and call for a broad-based movement to abolish the contemporary prison system. In anti-incarceration resistance, a politicized racial consciousness would allow a formerly incarcerated Black woman to perceive herself within a larger context of American socio-cultural institutions, to identify systemic racism as it relates to her life experience, and to formulate oppositional positioning against systemic anti-black racism (Brush, 2005). In this thesis, I argue that one critical step in anti-incarceration movement-building will be to invest considerable organizing efforts that politicize formerly incarcerated Black women’s racial consciousnesses.In 2010, I attended two anti-incarceration events where formerly incarcerated Black women spoke against incarceration. While it seemed to me that the motivation to engage in anti-incarceration resistance could only allow for so much variance, I soon became painfully aware of the vital importance of considering formerly incarcerated Black women’s stories while being critical of the broader contexts of American history and dominant political-economic paradigms. Specifically, as a result of synthesizing the messages I received at each of these events, I understood the importance of utilizing a politicized racial consciousness when considering the context within which Black women are the fastest growing population in American prisons (Roberts, 2012). Black women’s politicized racial consciousness becomes important as similarities are uncovered between chattel slavery (and other pre-civil rights anti-black racist institutions like Jim Crow segregation) and contemporary incarceration practices in America (Alexander, 2010, Davis, 2010). The connections made between historic anti-black institutions and contemporary incarceration practices compel many to re-engage a Radical Black Feminist tradition and call for a broad-based movement to abolish the contemporary prison system. In anti-incarceration resistance, a politicized racial consciousness would allow a formerly incarcerated Black woman to perceive herself within a larger context of American socio-cultural institutions, to identify systemic racism as it relates to her life experience, and to formulate oppositional positioning against systemic anti-black racism (Brush, 2005). In this thesis, I argue that one critical step in anti-incarceration movement-building will be to invest considerable organizing efforts that politicize formerly incarcerated Black women’s racial consciousnesses. Resisting Internalization 6 Resisting Internalized Responsibility: Formerly Incarcerated Black Women’s Perceptions of Incarceration Black women’s incarceration has been highly politicized in recent years. Much prison abolition research and analyses of the prison industrial complex (PIC) demonstrate that several systemic, political and economic factors contribute to Black women becoming incarcerated (Crenshaw, 2012; Davis, 2003, 2010; Sudbury, 2004, 2009). Davis (2005) suggests that one formidable step in dismantling the prison system will be to challenge mainstream perceptions that the logic of the prison is “self-evident” and that prisons are necessary to keep society safe (p.91). Intersectional analyses that focus on incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Black women’s lives have challenged mainstream notions of crime and defied simplistic notions about individuals who “choose” to participate in crime and subsequently become incarcerated. Primarily through life history methodology, this foundational body of research has illustrated the complexity of Black women’s lives in economically disenfranchised contexts. Furthermore, this work is consistent with prison abolition perspectives that follow Black feminist traditions as it has captured the inequity created by systemic processes in the lives of Black women who are in danger of becoming incarcerated, are incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated. Also, this body of research reveals the inadequacy of American institutions and systems for Black women whose lives are intricately intertwined with criminal legal processes and systems. The women’s lives are often impacted by systemic racial violence, experiences with male physical and sexual abuse, and participation in illegal markets to survive (Richie, 1996; 2012). However, this body of work has not explicitly considered incarcerated or formerly incarcerated Black women’s perceptions Resisting Internalization 7 of guilt and responsibility within the context of the PIC for the purposes of informing prison abolition movement-building strategy. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Black women’s ideological perceptions of and political analyses about crime and incarceration are important. Formerly incarcerated Black women could form a broad political base with which to populate a robust prison abolition movement. While their stories have been used to challenge dominant perceptions of crime and criminality, efforts to explore Black women’s perceptions of crime and criminality as it relates to their own experiences have been under-included in the research. This dynamic is important to explore with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Black women. Despite the overwhelming presence of institutions in their lives, they too are susceptible to internalizing mainstream ideological perceptions about the necessity for prisons to keep society safe. The potential for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Black women to have perceptions of responsibility that are consistent with mainstream ideology about crime and incarceration seems to have the potential to undermine prison abolition movement-building. Specifically, if formerly incarcerated Black women believe that they are responsible for becoming incarcerated, even though prison abolitionists assert that the PIC is responsible for the disproportionate number of Black women becoming incarcerated, this becomes a fundamental challenge to building a prison abolition movement that centers Black women’s experiences and voices. The following juxtaposition of analyses about how Black women become incarcerated and who/what is responsible illustrates this contention. Two Differing Analyses of Black Women’s Incarceration from formerly Incarcerated Black Women Resisting Internalization 8 In 2010, when I attended a lecture given by Angela Davis for Black History Month, I was introduced to the concept of prison abolition. Determined and eager to take full advantage of the privilege of being a graduate student in Chicago, I proudly sat in the front row while Davis gave a lecture on the prison industrial complex. Learning about the prison industrial complex as Davis (2005) defines it, “...the coordinated expansion of prisons, corporate involvement, provisioning of goods and services, and the use of prison labor resulting in the generation of vast amounts of capital,” had a radicalizing effect on me (p.4). From this analysis, it was glaringly obvious that contemporary prison practices are not designed for the sole purpose of rehabilitating incarcerated persons or making society safer. Davis asserts that the prison industrial complex is what has led to the formation of an apartheid society wherein more Black people are in prison than were slaves during plantation slavery (Alexander, 2010, Davis, 2010, Gilmore, 2011). Davis compares several contemporary prison practices to practices common in chattel slavery; such as, policies that require women’s legs to be shackled during childbirth or custodial sexual abuse in prisons (Davis, 2010; Human Rights Watch, 1996). Furthermore, Davis identifies systemic factors that contribute to and create disproportionate rates of incarceration among Black women and other racial groups. Such systemic factors include the globalization of labor markets, criminalization of welfare and drug addiction, three strikes laws, plea bargaining, and a general subscription to individualist economic values. As a prison abolitionist, Davis argues that the structural underpinnings of the prison industrial complex and the institution of the prison are beyond repair. Prison reform would not suffice to eliminate the racial and class bias with which the institutions that comprise the prison industrial complex currently operate. Some institutions that are implicated are public schools, Resisting Internalization 9 employment, the military and public social services. Rather, the entire complex would need to be dismantled (broken down and disenabled) and replaced with smaller institutions that actually solve problems to which society currently responds with incarceration (Davis, 2003, 2005, 2010; Gilmore, 2007). Davis’ analysis of the prison industrial complex expanded my racial consciousness by providing a clear analysis of systemic racism. It seemed clear to me from Davis’ analysis that the overrepresentation of Black women in prisons was neither coincidence nor a result of an inherent criminal nature of Black women. Within an abolitionist framework, there were several examples with which to understand how race, gender, and social class can intersect to create a context for crime among Black women living in economically distressed situations. I became impassioned by the realization of the degree to which the state continues to oppress Black communities. With strong conviction about the systemic injustices perpetuated by the criminal legal system and the liberatory promise of abolitionist perspectives, I committed to researching Black women and incarceration. This commitment led me to become involved with a small grassroots organization consisting primarily of formerly incarcerated people of color, the Changing Minds Campaign. The first event I attended with The Changing Minds Campaign was one in which the goal was to raise consciousness about the conditions of incarceration among family members of incarcerated individuals. Several members of The Changing Minds Campaign, all of who were formerly incarcerated Black women, had written a skit based on their experiences with incarceration which they performed at this event. The women’s skit began by sharing the complexity of their life circumstances prior to participating in criminalized behavior. All of the women were mothers. Traditional school settings had not supported their success. Two graduated from high school. Collectively, the Resisting Internalization 10 women had not had many opportunities to generate steady, sufficient income. Furthermore, their stories were complicated by histories of physical, emotional, and sexual trauma. A common theme in the women’s skit was an exclusion from mainstream institutions which resulted in isolation from access to traditional resources such as mental health services following traumatic experiences, full-time employment, and access to higher education. As I listened to the women recollect their lives prior to incarceration, I was reminded of Davis’ analysis of the prison industrial complex. The women were describing situations that were the result of the prison industrial complex as Davis had described in her lecture. While the women acknowledged that they believed that race had played a role in the length of their sentences and certainly affected the way they were treated by police, each refrained from holding criminal legal systems and other institutions responsible for creating contexts where their participation in criminalized behavior seemed logical or the best decision to ensure survival. Instead the women asserted that they had made conscious decisions about their participation in criminalized behavior and therefore felt as though they had deserved to be incarcerated. I asked the women if they still felt responsible for having become incarcerated despite the fact that white women are incarcerated less often than Black women for the same charges. They responded, “Yes!” When I heard the women maintain that they could not be absolved of the consequences of their choices despite evidence of institutional racism (that white women are charged less often than Black women for the same crimes) and also considered that Davis’ analysis clearly indicated that race is a better predictor of incarceration than is actual criminal behavior, it became clear to me to that the women’s stories were indicative of an insidious internalization of guilt, crime, and American institutional logic. I became preoccupied with the potential role that Black women’s internalized oppression could play in maintaining the PIC and Resisting Internalization 11 the disproportionate representation of Black women in prison. Furthermore, I became concerned that a radical, politicized analysis of the PIC existed, yet the women whose lives seemed to be in many ways shaped by the PIC did not have access to that analysis. It seemed to me that with access to this information, the women would have been able to better resist pathways and circumstances which contributed to them becoming incarcerated. I wondered how the audience would have been impacted if the women had shared an analysis similar to Davis’ analysis as opposed to one where the responsibility for becoming incarcerated was placed solely on Black women and their choices. Contrary to mainstream ideology about individuals who become incarcerated, there are several concerns that relate to the potential for formerly incarcerated Black women to internalize responsibility for becoming incarcerated. The psychological effects of internalized responsibility could create the illusion that the problem, wrong-doing, and/or dysfunction is with the individual, not the system or institution. For instance, in the case of formerly incarcerated Black women, this illusion created by internalized responsibility has the potential to obscure the recognition and/or validation of other factors outside of an individual’s control that could be responsible for Black women having become incarcerated. Furthermore, internalized responsibility in this case can be considered a form of internalized oppression. Internalized oppression is accompanied by harmful psychological effects and is a necessary factor in maintaining systems of domination such as racist criminal legal practices and misogyny (Pyke, 2010; Szymanski & Stewart, 2010). Psychological distress experienced as anxiety, self-doubt, and low self-esteem can be caused by internalized oppression and can contribute to shorter life expectancy (Gilmore, 2011; Pyke, 2010). Resisting Internalization 12 The difference between the ideological foundations of prison abolition and the meaning the formerly incarcerated Black women of the Changing Minds Campaign made about incarceration raises questions about formerly incarcerated Black women’s political consciousness and prison abolition movement-building strategy. Specifically, questions emerge about the extent to which one is able to identify racism in multiple forms, to recognize the ways in which institutional racism has influenced one’s life experience, and to develop an oppositional stance against institutional racism accordingly (Stewart-Brush, 2001). Additionally, this disconnect raises questions about what strategies might lead formerly incarcerated Black women to recognize their experiences within the complex web of the PIC, to implicate the criminal legal system, and to engage in activism accordingly. To explore the internalized oppression and racial consciousnesses of formerly incarcerated Black women is not to suggest that Black women are complicit with the social oppression that they may experience or that they have been duped by the system. The women of the Changing Minds Campaign agreed that racism in the criminal legal system existed; indeed, they cited many examples of such racism. However, their analyses of how they became incarcerated did not ascribe responsibility to the criminal legal system or social oppressions. In this thesis, I advocate for the formerly incarcerated Black women of the Changing Minds Campaign and Black women with similar life experiences to have access to further politicized analyses about their experiences with the criminal legal system. Specifically, I argue that prison abolition movement-building strategy can be informed by formerly incarcerated Black women’s perceptions of their experiences and ultimately incorporate resistance strategies to minimize internalized responsibility. Resisting Internalization 13 This thesis, grounded in Black feminist frameworks, utilizes a Foucauldian critique of the contemporary political and economic paradigm, neoliberal capitalism. This critique clearly illustrates the ways in which political and economic processesfully removed from individual Black women themselvescreate both markets for criminalized participation and subjectivities that make participation in criminalized markets likely (and in some cases unavoidable). Then, a review of prominent prison abolition ideological foundations and analyses will allow for a systemic level understanding of the role that formerly incarcerated Black women have played in movement-building. Specifically, this section focuses on race discourses within prison abolition analyses and the extent to which Black women’s political and/or racial consciousnesses have been engaged with respect to developing movement-building strategy. Following that section, a content analysis of six formerly incarcerated Black women’s life history narratives will provide deeper insight into the meaning they make about having become incarcerated and with whom/what they locate responsibility for having become incarcerated. In the final section of this thesis, I offer three recommendations for prison-abolition movement-building that center formerly incarcerated Black women’s experiences and help to build resistance against Black women’s internalized responsibility for having become incarcerated. It is my hope that while these strategies resist internalization, they will also politicize and even radicalize Black women and inspire fervent prison-abolition movement-building. This thesis attempts to negotiate the tension between system-level processes and individual perceptions of experiences. The following questions guide this research: 1. How do Black women become incarcerated? 2. What is the meaning that formerly incarcerated Black women make about their participation in criminalized behavior and incarceration? Resisting Internalization 14 3. What are the implications of formerly incarcerated Black women’s perceptions of incarceration for prison abolition movement-building? Hierarchies of Oppression: Black Feminist Frameworks “The only ones who we can expect to work for our liberation is us.”~ Combahee River Collective “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression.” (Combahee River Collection, 2005; p.315). The possible truth of this claim is compelling and makes the argument that if the logic of gendered anti-Black racism is eliminated, then the current systems of domination would not be able to function, and would therefore be unable to dominate groups with other marginalized identities (Rose, 2012). Black women have had a long and complicated history with American systems and institutions. Since slavery, Black women’s social positioning, agency and ability to self-determine social outcomes has been entangled with and suppressed by capitalist interests as represented by American heterosexual white male values or white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy (Davis, 1998, hooks 2007). A few Black feminist concepts will provide theoretical foundations for exploring the potential for formerly incarcerated Black women to internalize responsibility for becoming incarcerated despite evidence that suggests that the criminal legal system operates with racial bias. One concept is capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy. The Combahee River Collective (2005) asserts that within this system, Black women are positioned at the very bottom of the social organization with heterosexual white males at the top. Many Black feminists agree that the systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy are deeply implicated in Resisting Internalization 15 the social oppression experienced by many Black women. Specifically, Black women’s social positioning, agency, and ability to self-determine social outcomes has been entangled with capitalist interests (Davis, 1998; hooks, 1993; Smith, 2008). The clearest example of the ways in which capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy has been used to advance capitalist interest at the expense of Black women is slavery. The logic of slavery was founded on anti-black racism and the constructed idea that Blacks are inferior to whites (Smith, 2008). Many anti-prison scholars agree that while slaves were emancipated in 1863, structural anti-black racism has persisted in American society and white supremacy and heteopatriarchy have remained the social norms (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003, 1998; Wacquant, 2002). Heteropatriarchy has been used to maintain capitalist interest primarily through the normalization of the nuclear family and monogomous marriage primarily for the purposes of transferring wealth through generations (Wolf, 2010). The assertion of heteropatriarchy necessitated the construction of a belief system that female individuals are inferior to men. Furthermore as a dominating system, heteropatriarchy, as a dominating system, makes all other family structures and organizations seem pathological (Wolf, 2010). Furthermore, during slavery, these standards were rarely attainable for Blacks because of forced separation and sexual terror that was characteristic of the slave trade. This misperception is related to historic trends in employment, when Black men were systematically excluded from traditional employment and Black women were able to work as domestic help in white families, therefore becoming breadwinners in Black homes. That Black women were afforded minimal employment opportunities created the illusion that they had access to privileges which Black men did not. It is a gendered expectation for men to be providers, and patriarchal constructions of masculinity in Resisting Internalization 16 relation to Black males did not account for their intentional exclusion from lucrative employment (hooks, 1995) Capitalism, the dominant political and economic system in America, is a system based on competition, commodification, and the maximization of profits (Davis, 1998; Smith, 2008; Wolf, 2010). The wealth of this nation was built on slave labor and many argue that anti-black racism is endemic to American society (Taylor, 2012). For this reason, socialist and anti-capitalist Black feminists assert that the social and political disenfranchisement that they have experienced is a result of imperial, colonial, and hegemonic legacies (Combahee River Collective, 2005; Davis, 1998; hooks, 1995). Therefore, anti-capitalist and socialist Black feminists have developed political visions and positions that resist oppressive conditions created by dominant political systems. Furthermore, as it is purported that capitalist white supremacist and heteopatriarchal domination affects individuals differently based on their location within social hierarchies of gender, race, sexuality, and class, Black feminists acknowledge that there are many groups and social identities that experience oppression as a result of systems of oppression. They have come to understand that they constitute the bottom of this hierarchy, but they also believe that it would be short sighted and ineffective to organize only for their liberation (Cohen, 1997; Smith, 2008). White supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy has contributed to oppressive situations in the lives of Black women also through its domination of other identities. They are the invisible values that define American institutions (hooks,1995). By the very construction of identities, social groups are formed and some are “othered.” One way in which social groups’ identities have been constructed is through the construction of stereotypes. As is the case presently with the PIC, historic institutions constructed meaning about Black women with the sole purpose of creating a social and political landscape wherein the exploitation and oppression of Black Resisting Internalization 17 women would become normalized. This normalization of Black women’s inferiority allows exploitation to occur without challenging the legitimacy of the individuals and institutions participating in Black women’s oppression by creating the illusion that Black women’s oppression was/is warranted (Collins, 1996). In the case of Black women, de-humanizing images have been deployed to control Black women’s social agency and mainstream perceptions of Black womanhood. The benefit for white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy is that they can control the social positioning of Black women while maintaining the illusion that Black women are responsible for their experiences and predicament (Lorde, 1984).The stereotypes are dehumanizing because the meaning is not grounded in reality about Black women; rather they are constructed for the purposes of maintaining exploitative systems from which white supremacy is preserved and its benefits reproduced. In the case of the PIC, there are several specific stereotypes that relate to the criminalization of Black women. Socialist and anti-capitalist Black feminists assert that the social and political disenfranchisement that Black women have experienced within a United States context is a result of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy which has a historical legacy of colonization, imperialism, and hegemony (Combahee River Collective, 2005). Prison abolitionists still argue that this historical legacy influences the social positioning of Black women in economically depressed communities (Davis, 2005). Therefore, while Black feminists have developed analyses that define oppressions specific to their subject position and situate said oppressions within American institutional and white patriarchal power systems, they also recognize that their oppression is a part of American colonial domination whereby many ethnic, racial, national and gender groups have been violently suppressed, exploited, and marginalized (Combahee River Resisting Internalization 18 Collective, 2005, Crenshaw, 2000). The political and social disenfranchisement of Black communities generally, and Black women, specifically is directly related to the stabilization of white male rule, white supremacy, and capitalism (capitalism also operates from a top down notion, i.e. capitalism thrives on the exploitation of one class by another). The PIC creates social and political dynamics that are illustrative of a regenerative relationship between American institutions, Black women, and economic capital that is deeply entrenched in white supremacy, heterosexism, patriarchy, and capitalism. The PIC relies on Black communities as an economically depressed and socially devalued population on which it can criminalize, extract resources, and relocate without contestation. An anti-capitalist stance possesses the potential to interrupt the symbiotic relationship between politicians, corporations, and Black women that characterizes the PIC. To acknowledge the revolutionary acts of Black feminists in American history illuminates strategies that have been successful in securing liberation from oppression for Black women in an American context. It is precisely the destruction of the current political-economic institutions which could lead to Black women’s liberation. In, “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation”, Angela Davis (1998) states, “An effective women’s liberation movement must be cognizant of the larger social revolution: the capitalist mode of production must be overturned, like the political and legal structures that sustain it.” (p.56) Anticapitalism is a vital political stance in considering Black women’s perceptions of incarceration as it presents a politic that is directly in opposition to the American politicaleconomic system that has caused centuries of exploitation, social, and political subjugation for Black women and other people of color (Combahee River Collective, 2005, Davis, 2005). An anti-capitalist lens allows for a radical politicized analysis about the ways in which state and other institutions criminalize and oppress Resisting Internalization 19 Black women. While there are historic examples of Black women’s individual and organized resistance to white patriarchal systems, deeply entrenched ideologies about Black women’s worth and respectability have consistently proved to be barriers in securing the economic, social, and political self-determination for American Black women (Combahee River Collective, 2005, Jones,2007). This next section, discusses the ways in which oppressive conditions created for Black men and white women have further marginalized Black women from historical movements for liberation. The outcomes of Black women’s positioning within the Civil Rights and Women’s movements make visible the short-comings of organizing for equality on the sole basis of one aspect of one’s identity: race or sex. Intra-Community Marginalization Black feminist political activism is distinct given that Black women’s liberation from systems of domination has required that their political goals be defined separately from Black men and white women (Combahee River Collective, 2005; Davis, 1998; James 2000; Roth, 2004). Black women have endured an equally long and often times violent history in the U.S. However, Black males’ experiences are often the focus in conversations, discussions, research, and movements for racial justice (Crenshaw, 2000; 2012; James, 2000). For example, apart from Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, the most well-known leaders from the Black Rights movement are males (McGuire, 2010). When one considers Jim Crow segregation and the violent racism which was characteristic in many American towns and cities, one most often thinks of lynching, even though sexual assault and rape were also common forms of violence used against Black women to reinforce white supremacy (McGuire, 2010). The same is true for contemporary analyses of the PIC. Although there has been an increase in research about mass Resisting Internalization 20 incarceration and Black women (mostly research done by Black women), Latino and Black males are often reported to be the primary victims of police brutality, criminalization, and incarceration in mainstream discourse (Alexander, 2010; Corbado, 2012). However, Black feminists assert, and statistics support that Black women experience oppressive conditions on the basis of multiple identitiesrace, gender, sexuality, and class (Crenshaw, 2012; Collins, 1991; Giddings, 1984; hooks, 1995). Furthermore, Black women have become an increasingly criminalized group (Bush-Baskette, 2012;Corbado, 2012; Crenshaw, 2012; Richie, 2012). In addition to the way in which Black women traditionally have been marginalized in racial justice discourse, they also have been marginalized in women’s rights discourse (Combahee River Collective, 2005; Crenshaw, 2005, 2012; Davis, 1998; James, 2005; Roth, 2004). While Black women’s gender granted them group membership with the mainstream, predominantly white women’s liberation movement, Black women’s experiences were not fully represented. Instead, Black women’s efforts and support were utilized in the movement, but their political demands were not central concerns (Roth, 2004). This development created a situation in which Black women’s experiences with social oppression were undefined in American legal terms; therefore discriminatory treatment on the basis of gender and race was not recognizable by American law, leaving Black women without the option of legal redress for mistreatment on the basis of race and gender (Crenshaw, 2000; 2005; 2012). The perceived ideological difference between white women and Black women relates to constructions of femininity and patriarchy utilizing harmful stereotypes to define perceptions of womanhood. White womanhood historically has been constructed as pure, innocent, and moral. In contrast, Black womanhood has been “othered” and constructed as domineering, sexually amoral, and unattractive (hooks, 2000; Giddings, 1984). Although, the origins of these Resisting Internalization 21 stereotypes date back to American slavery and were used in part to justify the enslavement of Black women, contemporary effects of these stereotypes can be found in criminal legal practices and the extent to which Black women are perceived to be victims of domestic and sexual violence, and are perceived as dysfunctional mothers (Richie, 2012; Roberts, 2008). Furthermore, deep ideological entrenchments about Black women’s worth and innocence have consistently proved to be barriers in securing the economic, social, and political selfdetermination of American Black women (Combahee River Collective, 2005; Jones, 2007). Presumably, previous social movements and liberation struggles have failed to sufficiently make claims that have interrupted the capitalist logic which perpetually and strategically re-creates the social, economic, and political subjugation of Black communities generally and Black women specifically (Alexander, 2010, James, 2000). Ultimately, while Black women played pivotal roles in each historical liberation movement, their claims have yet to be central to mainstream political movements (Crenshaw, 2000; James, 2000). This consideration of Black women’s roles in the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s movement provides insight into the formulation of Black feminist ideologies which emphasize multi-issue politics and demonstrates the importance of intersectional analyses with respect to Black women’s experiences (Crenshaw, 2000, 2012; James, 2000; 2005). That Black males have dominated racial justice discourse, and that white women have dominated sexual violence/gender equality discourses, has had both systemic and intra-racial community effects for Black women. In particular, endangered Black male narratives within Black communities create precarious expectations for Black women. Endangered Black male narratives advance and contribute to the perception that Black women do not similarly experience systemic racial oppression. Therefore, Black males experiences with racism are often Resisting Internalization 22 privileged over Black women’s experiences with racism (Crenshaw, 2000, 2012; hooks, 1995; Richie, 1996, 2012). West (1999) describes Black women’s obligation: ...Black women’s awareness of the systematic oppression of black men through lynchings, imprisonment, unemployment, and the ever prevalent “rape” charge causes women to feel obligated to be understanding and forgiving of Black men. There are cultural cues that foster the notion that because of the racist oppression suffered by black men, a sacrificial role is demanded of black women. (p. 83) Black women’s perceived privilege in contrast to Black male’s racial oppression can often be translated into the expectation that Black women have an obligation to support racially disenfranchised Black men and put their interests above their own (Richie, 1995, 2012). That Black women are by contrast perceived to have more social mobility, the expectations are set that Black women compensate or use their social “privilege” to support Black men who experience decreased opportunities because of systemic and social racism. Beth Richie (2012) refers to this dynamic as loyalty politics and asserts that these politics also arise from Black women’s understandings that Black men experience racism to a greater extent than do Black women. Rhetoric of racial solidarity can also contribute to Black women internalizing responsibility for the well-being of Black men and their communities. This perception that Black women are safe from racial social oppression illustrates the importance of affirming Black women’s voices and developing resistance strategies specific to their experiences with the PIC. This racial disenfranchisement for Black men being reflective of dominating systems of patriarchy and capitalism, in many cases, plays out in interpersonal violence (hooks, 1995; Smith, 2008). Indeed, Black feminists have examined the ways in which loyalty politics, endangered Black male narratives, and race and gender identities contribute to oppressive Resisting Internalization 23 experiences for Black women. In a study of incarcerated African American battered women, Richie (1996) defined gender entrapment as: The socially constructed process whereby African American women who are vulnerable to men’s violence in their intimate relationship are penalized for behaviors they engage in even when the behaviors are logical extensions of their racialized gender identities, their culturally expected gender roles and the violence in their intimate relationships. (p. 4). The, “logical extensions of their racialized identities,” (p.4) to which Richie (1996) refers were often informed by cultural values that extended to Black women’s intimate relationships with men. Richie noted that often, the women she interviewed embodied self-sacrificing ideology. The gender roles that women assumed in intimate relationships often involved the woman risking her safety for the betterment of her intimate relationship or for her family. Many of the women in Richie’s study participated in prostitution and drug trafficking (for which they were ultimately incarcerated) wherein they sacrificed their well-being to generate income for their families, selves, and/or intimate partner. These criminal behaviors often constituted relatively “low risk” activity with profitable ends. For this report, intersectional analyses are vital when conceiving of Black women’s potential to internalize responsibility for incarceration, as race, class, and victim-survivor status greatly influence one’s life experiences in America (hooks, 1995, West, 1999). As Black feminists have established, white supremacist heteropatriarchal domination suppresses all other social identities in the interest of privileging its own. Therefore, this discussion of domination illustrates the importance of developing organizing strategies that do not appeal to only one marginalized identity. Rather, models which organize on the basis of challenging the power system based on shared oppression are likely to yield better results for all Resisting Internalization 24 oppressed identities (Cohen, 1997; Smith, 2008). Furthermore, that the laws and policies which resulted from the civil rights’ movement did not end racial discrimination and secure full equality for Black women calls into question the legitimacy of assimilationist models in achieving liberation. The following section provides a critique of the contemporary political economic landscape and locates with the processes that have intentionally criminalized Black women. Neoliberal capitalist, political, and economic paradigms and the processes of criminalization and market creation demonstrate the ways in which capitalist logic relies on Black women in economically disenfranchised communities to build industry and global profits. Furthermore, the following section discusses the extent to which the state controls economic and criminalized behavior. Suppressing Identity, Masking Racism, & Advancing Myths: Neoliberal Capitalism “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.”~Audre Lorde (2007, p. 53) “In a normalizing society, race or racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable. When you have a normalizing society, you have a power which is, at least superficially, in the first instance, or in the first line a biopower, and racism is the indispensable precondition that allows someone to be killed, that allows others to be killed. Once the state functions in the biopower mode, racism alone can justify the murderous function of the state.” (Foucault, 1993; p.256) Neoliberal Foundations for Black Women Becoming Incarcerated and the PIC In America, current prison trends coincide with the adoption of a neoliberal politicaleconomic framework. That is, a rise in the PIC is correlated with an ideological shift regarding Resisting Internalization 25 criminality, an increase of privatization, and a decrease in social welfare (social services) funding. These neoliberal shifts contribute greatly to the increased number of Black women who are incarcerated in America. The significance of the correlation between Black women’s representation in prison and the adoption of neoliberal capitalist policies indicate that neoliberal philosophy and practices frame the ways in which Americans perceive crime, incarceration, and working class, urban, Black women (Crenshaw, 2000, Davis, 2005). These perceptions shape policy development and the formation of institutional practices (Harris-Perry, 2011). The central tenets of neoliberal capitalism create a social and political discourse wherein Black women blame themselves for their participation in illegal behavior and wherein the larger society fails to support claims that the criminal legal system operates with institutional racism to incarcerate Black women at alarming rates. This section examines the overall American political economic landscape to identify the factors which create a context wherein Black women can be incarcerated at disproportionate rates without alerting the general public to the racist praxis of the criminal legal system, as well as how many Black women themselves might assume guilt irrespective of their perceived experiences with racism throughout their involvement with the criminal legal system. To be observant of neoliberal philosophies and practices will likely aid in establishing an understanding of the rationale behind the “self-evident” logic of contemporary prison practice. A critical analysis of neoliberal frameworks allows for investigation of social policies that create a sociopolitical and economic ethos wherein incarceration can justifiably play a central role to the US monetary economy, the prison economy that capitalizes on Black communities while appropriating claims of racism, and incarcerated Black women perceive themselves to be Resisting Internalization 26 responsible for becoming incarcerated despite evidence of institutional racism and several experiences with inadequate institutions, such as school, foster care, or juvenile detention. Many elements of domination as described by radical and socialist Black feminists can be found in the ideological foundations of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism is a political economic theory and practice that equates personal liberation with consumption, economic freedom, free trade, and unregulated markets (Harvey, 2005). Essential to the premise of neoliberalism is the ascription of economic terms to domains that previously had no economic implications for the state; for instance, modern education links performance on standardized tests, school funding, and labeling particular schools as failures. Neoliberalism is not just a concept which is solely relegated to politicians and policy, but it is deeply entrenched in the lives and psyches of the American people (Harvey, 2005). The concepts of the state working for the collective good of American citizens have been replaced by the central concepts of privatization, individualism, personal responsibility, and meritocracy. Within an American context, many believe in a bootstrap ideology: a hard work ethic pays off and that free enterprise should guide economic endeavors. According to David Harvey (2005) in, A Brief History of Neoliberalism: The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices [free trade, unregulated markets, private property rights, etc.]. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist...then they must be created by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. (p.35) Resisting Internalization 27 This re-framing of the state’s role represents the beginning of a series of political shifts which have contributed to an increase in the population of Black women in prisons, the potential for formerly incarcerated Black women to internalize responsibility for becoming incarcerated, and to mainstream society’s failure to recognize institutional racism in the American criminal legal system. Prior to neoliberal capitalism, the political economic landscape was one in which re-distributive policies such as affirmative action and social welfare were posited to be solutions to minimize economic inequalities created by historical anti-Black institutions like Jim Crow segregation, redlining, systemic sexual violence, and slavery. These historical practices inspired committed resistance from Black communities and political organizations against structural injustices. Some of the results of that resistance were the abovementioned social programs that resulted in increased access to social and economic resources (Morris & Davis, 2007; Taylor, 2012). This political economic system, Keynesianism, served as the umbrella concept behind a broad set of social welfare programming and policies that were instated as part of the “New Deal” to assist Americans in recovering from the Great Depression (Gilmore, 1998). While neoliberal philosophy and policies are stated in what is presumably “deracialized” terms, the neoliberal subjects and the ways in which crime is constructed within a neoliberal context altogether have racialized outcomes (Foucault, 2003, Roberts, 2008). Furthermore, the absence of racial language is reflective of a colorblind racist paradigm, wherein the assumption is made that if race is not mentioned explicitly in the constitution, laws, or policy, then racism does not exist and has no effect on social, legal, and political outcomes (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008; Crenshaw, 2012). In this era of color-blind racism, there has been a corresponding shift from de jure racism codified explicitly into the law and legal systems to a de facto racism where people of color, Resisting Internalization 28 especially African Americans, are subject to unequal protection of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation, and neo–slave labor via incarceration, all in the name of crime control. At present, civil justice has been at the center of legal claims of color-blindness, forwarding the notion that if race is no longer the basis for legalized discrimination, then it is no longer relevant to the law at all. It is civil justice that currently claims that when explicit racial discrimination is removed from the language of the law, it is magically removed from any societal impact and any subsequent legal remedy (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008 p.626). Consistent with these claims, Harvey’s assertion that neoliberalism was instated not as a means of extending freedom for all, but instead as an avenue by which to restore class domination further supports claims that American institutions are not currently equipped to achieve racial equality and will exploit Black people and Black women in particular to the extent that it is in the interest of the state to do so (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008; Combahee River Collective, 2005, Gilmore, 2007; Taylor, 2012). In this sense, the state has the ability to criminalize populations without recourse in order to preserve its image, wealth, status quo functioning, or to develop a global industry. A prime example of one technology that the American neoliberal state has used to create markets where none had previously existed has been evident in an ideological shift around drug policy. The political, legal shifts that began in the 1980’s illustrate very well how the state went about setting up a racialized prison market where one had not existed previously. The instatement of the “War on Drugs” depended on highly racialized images that relied on threatening stereotypes of Black women and unleashed a literal war on Black communities (Taylor, 2012; Jordan-Zachary, 2007). After the CIA introduced crack-cocaine, a highly addictive drug, into Harlem and likely other predominantly Black communities, the Reagan Resisting Internalization 29 administration began the divestment in social service funding, privatized large fractions of the prison industry, and created a criminalizing discourse around working class, urban, Black women (Olsson, 2011). The “War on Drugs” was the primary source of racialized discourse to directly target Black women (Alexander, 2010,Clarke, 2005, Jones, 2005). In this campaign, Black women were portrayed as pregnant mothers who were addicted to crack and reproducing a generation of “crack babies” that would become the downfall of respectable American society. Black women living in poor resourced and urban areas became synonymous with crime in the minds and hearts of mainstream America (Alexander, 2010). Pregnant Black women were incarcerated on charges relating to use and/or possession of crack cocaine and were convicted of child neglect and distribution of drugs to a minor, despite the fact that white women are more likely to use drugs while pregnant (Jordan-Zachery, 2007). These images were spread in newspapers, previously reputable news programming networks, and in public policy (Davis, 2007; Jordan-Zachary, 2007). The advancement of this campaign and the hysteria that it provoked is frightening and it was the impetus to promote sterilization among Black women (Davis, 2007; Shihadeh & Steffensmeier, 1994). To describe how these stereotypical images translated into increasingly oppressive structural conditions for Black women living in economically disenfranchised communities, Jordan-Zachary (2007) states: The Policy elite used and responded to the crack mother symbol-one of an incapable and irresponsible decision maker, a moral deviant, and an unfit mother that became synonymous with “bad” black women-by implanting increasingly punitive policies...Ultimately, the war on drugs came to be distorted, unduly focusing on women and black people. This war forced Resisting Internalization 30 the black community to restructure itself in the individual, economic, and political realms. (p.112) As Blacks were portrayed as dangerous threats to society, a “tough-on-crime” discourse emerged from this political era that gave birth to the harsh three strikes laws, and long sentences for drug offenses (Alexander, 2010). The harsh sentencing practices and mandatory minimums are directly correlated with the drastic increases in prison populations (Alexander, 2010, Davis, 2009). While drug addiction is a real social problem in many communities, white males in fact account for the majority of drug users in America, and Black women are charged on drug-related crimes more often than any other racial group (Alexander, 2010, Clarke 2005). This statistic illustrates the pervasiveness of the racist discourse advanced by the war on drugs and the effects it had on social perceptions of Black women. Neoliberal Capitalist Processes of Criminalization The way in which crime and the criminal are defined in neoliberal capitalist societies allows for an alternative perception of the methods by which the state directs and constructs economic behavior. Crime is defined as, “...that which is punished by the law...” (Foucault, 1999). So, in this sense, the state has sole discretion to decide what behavior is punished and that which is deemed acceptable. The state has a long history of enforcing social control through criminalization of particular racialized groups. For example, Black women can be criminalized for self-medicating with street drugs, yet common mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs, like Prozac and Aderol are used in upper middle class white communities and not criminalized (Jordan-Zachary, 2007). Moreover, the state is concerned with policing its borders with Mexico and disproportionately deports Mexican immigrants; however, the same ferocity is not used in enforcing immigration from European countries (Davis, 2005). Resisting Internalization 31 If one were to believe in Harvey’s assertion that neoliberalism is actually a wellexecuted plan to restore class power, then one could posit that a prime technology of the state to control individuals’ economic participation would be to criminalize market participation that threatens or undermines the power of the state (Foucault, 1999). Presumably this domain is constructed based on the interest of preserving power and dominance to those who already possess American political, economic, and social control (Roberts, 2008). Depending on the markets in which one participates, production and exchange dictate the way in which one becomes intelligible to the state, privileging some and criminalizing others. Foucault defines the criminal as: ...nothing other than absolutely anyone whomsoever. The criminal, any person, is treated only as anyone whomsoever who invests in an action, expects a profit from it, and who accepts the risk of a loss. From this point of view, the criminal is and must remain nothing more than this. (p.91) However, in the campaign against Black women in the 1980’s which created justification for divestment in social welfare programs, the state strategically created a group of people who had limited access to social institutions and exacerbated their already vulnerable economic situations by reducing funding on which they relied to subsist. This example contests the notion that the criminal is, “anyone whomsoever,” and implies that in fact, the state strategically crafted an ideological shift that criminalized Black women living in economically marginalized communities. Foucault’s final assertion that the criminal must remain simply and matter of factly defined could be reflective of the state’s interest to create markets designed for the sole capitalization of the state, while at the same time utilizing covert strategies. It’s necessary that meaning about criminalized groups be constructed in such a way as to create the illusion that Resisting Internalization 32 crime is equally enforced and equitably defined. This illusion, then, masks anti-Black racism. An example in support of this assertion can be found in the colorblind rhetoric of neoliberal capitalist market participation. Neoliberal production of criminalized markets. An analysis of criminalized participation in neoliberal societies juxtaposed against the divestment of social welfare will allow for a critical reading of formerly incarcerated Black women’s participation within criminalized markets. In the Birth of Biopolitics, a critique of neoliberalism, Michel Foucault (1979), introduces the neoliberal economic subject as homo economicus: ...the man of exchange, the partner, one of the two partners in the process of exchange. And this homo economicus, partner of exchange, entails of course, an analysis in terms of utility of what he is himself, a breakdown of his behavior and ways of doing things... to a problematic of needs...which leads to the process of exchange...Homo economicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself.” (p. 225) According to Foucault’s analysis of the economic subject that is rendered intelligible in a neoliberal society, such a subject has needs and on the very basis of meeting those needs for survival, will participate in market economies. It is through economic participation (the extent to which one exchanges and/or acquires money) that an individual is rendered intelligible to the state within neoliberal paradigms. Furthermore, one’s participation in market economies is dictated by that which she/he has available to her/himself--one’s human capital (Foucault, 1999). It is important to note here, that not all economies are rewarded equally by the state. For example, the state does not reward sex work in the same way that it rewards financial advising. Foucault describes two subjects, homo economicus and homo criminalis, which distinguish Resisting Internalization 33 between participation in legal markets and illegal markets as well as those who are criminalized and those who are not (Foucault, 1999). The economic subject’s participation in market economies is determined by his or her investment in his or her own respective human capital. In The Birth of Biopolitics, the two core elements of human capital are, “innate elements and the question of the improvement of genetics ...[and] acquired elements.” (Foucault, 1999, p. 216) In short, human capital speaks to one’s investment in oneself, one’s ability to invest in social capital, and one’s access to social institutions which will enhance one’s ability to acquire personal wealth. Thus, it follows that one owns one’s human capital and is free to invest in it in anyway one chooses. If one is to squander his or her human capital, neoliberal philosophy supports that his or her social outcome is simply a result of the individual failure to properly and fully invest in his or her human capital. It is not that the state contributed to the creation of a context wherein that individual was prevented from investing in her/his human capital in ways that would support the maximization of wealth in institutions deemed acceptable by the state. Philosophies of meritocracy assume that if one works hard one will profit and achieve success despite structural barriers. Structural factors have the potential to contribute to vulnerable financial circumstances or exclusion from traditional markets for some social groups. Despite these structural factors, an individual is responsible for her choices, which ostensibly in aggregate will determine her social and economic outcomes. For example, it is constructed that Black women who received welfare assistance in the 1980’s needed financial support because they were inherently lazy and dysfunctional. Historically exploitative systems, like colonialism, systemic rape, or slavery, that thrived on the exploitation of Black women are absolved of any responsibility in this regard (Davis, 2005). Resisting Internalization 34 The ideas of meritocracy and personal responsibility are persuasive in that they both provide the illusion that all individuals have an opportunity to achieve economic well-being in neoliberal societies, based on the presumption that failure is not indicative of a general systemic dysfunction, but instead due to an internal individual failure. At the same time, this illusion of meritocracy and personal responsibility has the potential to keep individuals striving to achieve social economic norms (i.e.“The American Dream”), despite negative experiences and histories with traditional American systems and institutions. Conversely, these notions leave unchallenged the prevalent belief that individuals who have acquired personal wealth and have achieved “The American Dream” have done so based on their own individual effort and merit, not social, economic, and/or gender privileges. Neoliberal policy purports to provide the possibility for all individuals to maximize human happiness through the opportunity to achieve economic freedom. This social, economic, and political discourse is deeply inscribed in American culture. Coupled with the hypercharged criminalization of Black women, and colorblind racism, neoliberal capitalist philosophies create significant ideological challenges for prison abolitionists and anti-incarceration activists. Despite the covert and deleterious nature of neoliberal ideology, it shapes abolition analyses of the effects of the PIC on Black women’s lives. Negative Effects of the PIC on Black Women “The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us.” ~Rosa Parks Secondary to the neoliberal paradigm, Black women have come to be incarcerated as a consequence of an ideological shift around criminality, a divestment in social welfare, and isolation from participation in traditional market economies. In this sense it can be argued that neoliberal processes of criminalization and market creation both exclude Black women from Resisting Internalization 35 participation in traditional markets and criminalize markets to which they have access and can maximize their human capital. These points and others support the assertion that neoliberal capitalism is a dominating system that has the potential to minimize Black women’s agency like many other historical anti-black systems. An analysis of the effects of the PIC on Black women living in economically disenfranchised situations will demonstrate the degree to which their ability to self determine their social, economic, and interpersonal outcomes can be shaped by American systems and institutions (Alexander, 2010; Roberts, 2008). As has already been mentioned in this thesis, many anti-incarceration scholars demand an end to present prison practices because of the striking similarities between contemporary incarceration and historical racist institutions like slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and Black Codes (Alexander, 2010, Davis, 2003, 2005; James, 2007; Sudbury, 2005;Wacquant, 2002). These institutions all yielded economic benefits to the state and enforced white supremacy, while at the same time further economically and socially disenfranchising Black communities. Similar social, economic, and interpersonal effects can be found in the lives of Black women who have become intertwined in the PIC. Examples that illuminate the way in which neoliberal policy capitalizes on and further re-inscribes economic disenfranchisement of Black women can be found in employment statistics and the educational rates of women who become incarcerated. It is significant to note that more than 70 percent of women who become incarcerated report that they had experienced sexual abuse or sexual assault prior to becoming incarcerated (Bush-Baskette, 2012; Human Rights Watch, 1996; Richie, 2012). Moreover, women in prison are three times more likely to have experienced sexual abuse than women who have never been incarcerated (Beck & Harrison, 2007, Freudenburg, 2002). Studies show that approximately 88 percent of women in prison report having been sexually abused (including rape) prior to Resisting Internalization 36 incarceration (Human Rights Watch, 1996; Freudenburg, 2002). The sexual abuse histories of women in prisons are significant because they create the conditions for drug charges and other criminalized behaviors like prostitution for which women are likely to be imprisoned (Moss, 2005, Davis, 2003). Amid, rapidly rising prison rates for women (800 percent since 1970), the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice (2009) estimates that nearly two-thirds of women in prison are incarcerated for non-violent offenses including drug crimes and prostitution. This background information becomes relevant when considering how Black women become incarcerated within a neoliberal paradigm in which there is currently a disinvestment of social services; increasingly this divestment has meant that much needed professional health care has gone underfunded. As Richie (2012) notes, “...almost none [of incarcerated Black women] have had long-term mental health care” (conference presentation January 27, 2012). The effects of sexual assaults and childhood sexual abuse can be pervasive and relate to participation in criminalized behavior for which Black women become incarcerated. Many women who experience sexual assault or childhood sexual abuse suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD) which is associated with effects like severe depression, anxiety, flashbacks, and low selfesteem (West, 2007). Furthermore, stigma that is often associated with sexual abuse can often cause internalized guilt and shame. West (1999) states: ...shame can eat away at the women’s self-hood...the multi-edged shame that is generated in Black women victim-survivors of intimate violence is a powerful covert weapon of domination. It can train women to locate the deprecating social stigmas and culpability for the violence against them with their own identities. The way in which Black women can experience sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse is not removed from broader systemic violence. In the case of Black women who may be Resisting Internalization 37 abused, self-blame for sexual victimization can be engendered by negative stereotypes that portray Black women as hypersexual or as unworthy of protection and respect (West, 1999). Furthermore, the silence that characterizes responses to sexual abuse can be compounded by a general (and substantiated) distrust of police and social services, and even further aggravated by the pressure to not to contribute to further racial degradation of Black communities (West, 1999; Richie, 1996). Given these severe instances of abuse, coupled with insufficient access to mental health care, it seems logical that many women who have been sexually abused and are without access to mental health care would develop alternative coping mechanisms in response to sexual trauma. In a study about collateral consequences of incarceration for Black women, Jones (2005) states, “These women’s efforts to deal with the various forms of violence in their lives made them even more vulnerable of mass incarceration that is fueled by a federally sponsored war on drugs that targets Black people.” (p.127) This quote suggests and supports the argument that the divestment in social services with the consequence being incarceration resonates with an interaction between race, incarceration, gender, and profit. The development that Jones describes is another example of the way in which Black women living in economically distressed situations within neoliberal capitalist paradigms can be excluded from professional mental health care yet the alternative method they have adopted to cope has been criminalized. Education & Employment Increasingly, education has become linked with prisons and neoliberal capitalist goals. More than 65 percent of women who are incarcerated have not graduated from high school (Bush-Baskette, 2012). The militarization of public schools in economically distressed Resisting Internalization 38 communities of color is significant here (Meiners & Quinn, 2011). The presence of armed security guards, surveillance technology, and criminal consequences for behavior infractions have served to create an environment in which young students of color face criminal consequences for misbehaving in school. Much of the literature on the school-to-prison pipeline relates to young Black and Latino boys, although Black girls also have disproportionately high rates of school expulsion (Crenshaw, 2012). In a prime example of the extent to which young Black girls can be criminalized within educational environments, a six year old, Selasia Johnson, was handcuffed and arrested for having a temper tantrum in her kindergarten classroom (Change.org, 2012). Prison abolitionists assert that these developments are strategic shifts in discourse and praxis that support the PIC. No Child Left Behind, a federal policy with the stated goal of, “Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged,” and its dependency on standardized test scores to determine funding has resulted in a drastic shift in the nature of public education (Mathis, 2003). The pressure to achieve passing test scores has in many cases resulted in scenarios where teachers spend the majority of classroom time preparing students for the standardized exams. Failing test scores have been used to demonize public schools in communities of color and in many cases do students a disservice. These resultant school closings in communities of color have ultimately undergirded a growing charter movement. The charter school movement serves neoliberal capitalist interests of privatization. Furthermore, these transformations in public school education could be perceived as creating a system of domination to the extent that they reinforce capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchal values to the exclusion of multiple cultural, racial, and sexual values (Bricca, 2011). An example of this is the critical ethnic studies ban in Arizona. White male politicians spearheaded a successful campaign to ban Latino and Black history in Resisting Internalization 39 high schools despite the fact that graduation rates increased among Latino and Black students who attended those classes (Bricca, 2011). Some could argue that one’s connection to her history could be empowering and that the ban in Arizona and other recent developments in public education could be linked to Harvey’s assertion that neoliberal capitalism is, more than anything, an effort to restore class domination. Given Foucault’s analysis of neoliberal processes of criminalization and market creation, labor (or lack thereof) is a central motivator for participation in criminalized behavior. Eightytwo percent of women who have become incarcerated were unemployed at the time of arrest. Furthermore, if women do not have gainful employment in traditional job settings, then it could increase the likelihood that they would interpret their bodies as human capital and participate in sex work and drug economies, which are criminalized markets. Gilmore indicates that in the late 1980’s, California’s prison rate rose 400 percent and that 50 percent of the prisoners did not have steady employment in the year prior to becoming incarcerated and that over 80 percent of incarcerated individuals utilized a public defender, indicating that the majority of the individuals sentenced to prison were Black and Latino and from working class backgrounds. These statistics illustrate the ways in which exclusion from full participation in traditional mainstream work creates situations in which one becomes, “an entrepreneur of himself” and creates economies around drugs and sex trade, which ultimately increases one’s likelihood of becoming incarcerated (Foucault, 1979 p. 79). As a result of incarceration for felonious charges, many Black women are politically and socially marginalized through restricted access to voting, federal loans, public housing, and social assistance (Sokoloff, 2007). Frequent and multiple forms of policing, poor educational programs in prisons, minimal substance abuse treatment and barriers to securing housing, Resisting Internalization 40 employment, and custody of children upon re-entry into their communities are all examples of barriers created by the PIC for Black women(Davis, 2005, Meiners, 2010, Sokoloff, 2007). The barriers to full political and social participation for Black women, also create challenges for their children and their communities by the extraction of both human and economic resources. The disenfranchisement of thousands of formerly incarcerated Black women significantly can be understood as civil death. Marable (2011) states: The individual who has been convicted of a felony serves time, and successfully completes parole nevertheless continues to be penalized at every turn. He/she is penalized in the labor force, being denied certain jobs because of a criminal record. He/she has little direct access or influence on the decision-making processes of the political system. He/she may be employed and pay taxes, assuming all of the normal responsibilities of other citizens, yet may be temporarily or permanently barred from the one activity that defines citizenship itselfvoting. (p. 113) Marable’s definition brings to light the ways in which formerly incarcerated Black women are silenced and denied political agency. Apart from the denial of political agency, formerly incarcerated Black women’s social agency (i.e.ability to self-determine life outcomes) is greatly decreased because of the restricted access to social institutions that assist with funding for college and affordable housing, which presents Black women with further isolation from traditional American institutions. For these reasons, formerly incarcerated Black women’s understandings of their participation in criminalized behavior within a neoliberal paradigm and the PIC is crucial to the continued building of a strong vibrant prison abolition movement. Resisting Internalization 41 The PIC and The Role of Racial Identity in Movement-Building “Prison is the modern day manifestation of the plantation. The antebellum plantation ethos of dehumanization was marked by master-slave relations revolving about sexual terror and domination, beatings, regimentation of bodies, exploited labor, denial of religious and cultural practices, substandard food, health care, and housing, forced migration, isolation in “lockdown” for punishment and control, denial of birth family and kin.” ~Joy James, 2005, p. xxiii Prison Abolitionist Analyses of the PIC There are 2.5 million people currently incarcerated in the United States (Davis, 2005; Richie, 2012; Taylor, 2012). The United States incarcerates more people than any nation in the world. Statistics show that the majority of individuals who are incarcerated are Black and Latino (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003; Gilmore, 2007; Sudbury, 2009). In the United States, Black women constitute two -thirds of the women who are incarcerated. Black women are two times more likely to be incarcerated than Latinas and nearly four times more likely to be incarcerated than white women (Alfred & Chlup, 2009). The disproportionate incarceration of Black women has catalyzed significant research and analysis grounded in prison abolition and antiincarceration perspectives that have revealed political, economic, and social factors that contribute to Black women having become one of the most represented groups in prisons (Davis 2012; Richie, 2012; Roberts, 2008, 2012). The prison industrial complex has emerged to describe how mass incarceration of people of color can occur despite a decrease in crime rates (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003; Gilmore, 2007). Prison abolition analyses of the PIC identify the ways in which neoliberal philosophies like meritocracy, privatization, personal responsibility and disinvestment in social services translate from political economic philosophy into lived experiences for Black women. Although, Resisting Internalization 42 the majority of prison abolition analyses of the PIC have been conducted on the level of politics and economics, prison abolition is relevant to formerly incarcerated Black women’s perceptions of responsibility for incarceration because these analyses implicate U.S. systems and institutions for Black women becoming incarcerated (or somehow entangled with the criminal legal system). This suggests that Black women who become incarcerated might also consider the ways in which their lives could have been shaped by political and economic developments that are outside of their control. Furthermore, prison abolitionists offer alternatives to incarceration that align with radical anti-capitalist Black feminist ideology. While the current body of prison abolition research has provided a strong foundation for anti-incarceration movement-building, formerly incarcerated Black women’s voices and experiences have been under represented in this work. There is ample research on the PIC and various associated consequences of the PIC which focuses on the most prominent work from prison abolitionists who follow a radical Black feminist tradition. In this sense, the prison abolitionists who are discussed in this thesis focus attention on Black women or women of color generally, take a critical perspective on capitalism and use anti-racist and anti-sexist methods for movement building. There are a few primary analyses of the flaws inherent in the PIC drive arguments that support prison abolition. While the underlying assumption of prisons is associated with correction or rehabilitation of those incarcerated, many practices are de-humanizing and counterproductive to preparing individuals to live well in American society (Davis, 2005, Gilmore, 2007). As noted earlier, Davis has compared contemporary prison models to American plantation slavery. This comparison holds true with regard to the amount of Black people whose freedoms and civil rights have been disenfranchised through conviction and incarceration, and also speaks to the de-humanizing ways in which individuals who are incarcerated are treated. Resisting Internalization 43 Sudbury offers an analysis of the ways in which the U.S. prison model, like slavery, has become a global industry. Countries like South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have replicated policies and practices which emulate the American PIC, including versions of the “War on Drugs” (Sudbury, 2009). In addition to the replication of the PIC in other countries, a burgeoning goods and supplies market has emerged in the U.S. This market includes the development and marketing of surveillance technology, prison supply expositions (Richie, 1996, Sudbury, 2009). With industrial development, the prison system becomes inseparable from capitalist interest, prisoners come to represent profits, and Black bodies, in particular, become commodified (Davis, 2005, Sudbury, 2004). The feminization and racialization of poverty has contributed to the global increase of the incarceration of women of color. Ruthie Gilmore (2007) asserts that the prisons have represented a catch-all solution to crises created by increasing poverty, homelessness, and economic despair. She suggests that crime is subjective and the parameters around crime are fluid depending on the state’s needs. Gilmore acknowledges that the current prison practices disproportionately impact women, people of color, and working class whites (2007). Despite the demographics of individuals who become incarcerated, the academy has been a primary site of prison abolition and anti-prison activism within the last decade (Sudbury, 2009). Through publications, lectures, and significant community organizing, some abolitionist goals have been achieved, like decarceration and decriminalization of marijuana in some states and counties (Meiners & Quinn, 2011; Richie, 2012; Sudbury, 2009). Although any advancement towards prison abolition and dismantling the PIC is notable, most of the activism to achieve these small gains has taken place on policy levels through grassroots efforts by dedicated scholar-activists, community members, and community organizations (Richie, 2012). By and Resisting Internalization 44 large, the work to disrupt the “self-evident” logic of prisons has been most accessible to individuals in privileged spaces, not necessarily individuals who are most affected by the PIC, specifically formerly incarcerated Black women (Davis, 2005; p.93). The potential for formerly incarcerated Black women to internalize responsibility for becoming incarcerated despite the amount of research which supports that systems collude to create disproportionate rates of Black women who become incarcerated is problematic. Many studies reveal the negative effects that Black women experience as a result of the PIC, which information could potentially politicize Black women’s perceptions of the criminal legal system, better prepare Black women to resist the PIC, and ultimately inspire Black women to participate in and inform prison abolition movement-building While scholar-activists argue that prison abolition movement -building must continue, there is debate about the role that racial identity should play in movement-building. One approach to identity politics within the context of prison abolition seems to have arisen from the lessons learned from the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements. Davis (2005) states, “Identity by itself has never been an adequate criterion around which communities of struggle could be organized--not even during those periods when we imagined identity as the most powerful engine of movements.” (p.100) While Davis affirms the complexities of identities and the fallible qualities of identity-based politics, she does not completely dismiss the importance of racial identity as a viable basis on which to organize. Another perspective on the role of racial identity in the prison-abolition movementbuilding seems to be consistent with colorblind ideology, Gilmore (2007) urges researchers, activists, and scholars to: Resisting Internalization 45 ...quit the divisions old and new that trap us in doomed methods of analysis and action...Sadly, even anti-racists organizing to renovate commonsense division by objectifying certain kinds of people put into a pre-given category that then automatically gets oppressed. (243) Substantial evidence exists which supports that the PIC operates with anti-Black racism and disproportionately affects Black women. Gilmore’s recommendation to researchers, scholars, and activists seems to focus on political economy rather than the PIC in the lives of individuals who are affected by the PIC. This perspective seems to overlook, perhaps, even dismiss, a historical legacy of anti-black racism and the role that personal/individual liberation and healing can play in movement-building. Furthermore, this argument suggests that by researching and organizing on particular racailized identities, one is actually reinscribing those categories and seems to ignore that the American government has taken calculated steps and engaged in racist practice to oppress distinctly (based on identity, albeit constructed) different social groups. These racist logics have different effects in the respective communities and are internalized differently (Pyke, 2010). These positions on the role of racial identity sideline analyses of individual perceptions of identity within the context of the PIC and how those perceptions inform one’s inclination to participate in prison abolition movement-building or to internalize responsibility for having become incarcerated. There are prison abolitionist scholar activists whose work is grounded in gendered racialized identity based politics. This research has primarily served to complicate narratives about Black women who become incarcerated. Sudbury and Richie argue that anti-black racism in gendered forms is at the center of neoliberal capitalist economic development and that Black Resisting Internalization 46 women and women of color absolutely should be at the center of organizing the prison abolition movement. Sudbury (2005) states: Increasingly Black women and women of color are the raw material that fuel the prison industrial complex as scapegoats of tough-on-crime rhetoric; targets of drug busting operations that generate millions for police, customs and military budgets; or workers sewing and assembling electronics in prison workshops. (177) Significant work has been done to illustrate the ways in which race, gender, and class collude to create particular experiences for Black women in the PIC. Specifically, Richie’s (1996) gender entrapment theory best illustrates the distinct complexities of some Black women who become incarcerated. The theory of gender entrapment suggests that the particular meaning created around Black female racialized and gendered identity shapes the behaviors, experiences, and perceptions that can contribute to the ways in which one experiences oppressive situations. Also, this meaning has the potential to inform one’s perceptions of her participation in criminalized behavior. Plea bargaining also plays a role in the oppression of Black women. In the review of formerly incarcerated/incarcerated Black women’s narratives there is a trend in which many women state that they had been trafficking drugs for their boyfriends. After being arrested, women could be offered plea bargains and the opportunity to provide information about their boyfriends, who play more significant roles in the drug trade, in exchange for a lesser sentence. There are multiple examples of Black women who refuse to “snitch” on their boyfriends even though their loyalty in not disclosing information about their boyfriends was not reciprocated by their boyfriends. As a result Black women’s racialized and gendered loyalty can be exploited by the criminal legal system. So, in this case, Black women’s perceptions of themselves as Black Resisting Internalization 47 women within Black communities is integral to the state’s ability to criminalize and incarcerate Black women. This point about racialized and gendered identities can also be applied in transnational analyses. Julia Sudbury (2005) examines the ways in which women living in the global south become entrapped by the effects of neoliberal capitalist trade de-regulation and shrinking social service sectors. Sudbury (2005) describes the situations of limited agency in which many Black women globally find themselves as a result of recent economic restructuring. Even where these women do find employment, low wages, driven down by multinational corporations in search of ever greater profit margins and kept low by governments unwilling to set a living minimum wage for fear of losing foreign investment, mean that they cannot earn a sufficient income to support their families. The failure of the legal economy to provide adequate means for women’s survival is the key incentive for those who chose to enter the drug trade as couriers. (p.175) That Black women find themselves in similar subjectivities globally also supports the assertion that while transracial solidarities are important and will be necessary to dismantle the PIC, a multi-level approach to systemic anti-black racism will also be vital to dismantling the PIC. The work of Richie and Sudbury has begun to identify the situations in which Black women’s identities as women, mothers and partners influence their agency to participate in criminalized behaviors. Further research that explores Black women’s perceptions of the systemic processes which have informed their identities and participation in criminalized behavior is necessary. A potential outcome of this research could be movement-building strategies that politicize formerly incarcerated Black women and Black girls and women who are vulnerable to becoming incarcerated. In this way, the voices and experiences of Black women Resisting Internalization 48 could inform current prison abolition movement-building strategies which focus on systemic