INCITE! Conference - Beyond the State: Inciting Transformative Possibilities

In keeping with today's discussion on criminalization, social death, and possible alternatives to rights-based politics, I am posting information about the INCITE! Color of Violence conference this year. The theme is "Beyond the State: Inciting Transformative Possibilities." It is going to be held March 26-29, 2015 at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Here is a link to the conference website: www.colorofviolence.org

From the website: "This conference will highlight emerging strategies and new frameworks that focus on ending violence without relying on policing, mass incarceration, restrictive legislation, and other systems of violence and control. Non-state based responses to violence are happening in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, places of worship, friendships, online social networks, political actions, and around our kitchen tables. These efforts have been called 'community accountability,' 'transformative justice,' 'restorative justice,' or simply taking care of our communities and our lives...We believe that these practices are key components of radical movement building."

The call for proposals has closed, but you can still register to attend the conference as a guest. Early registration begins November 1 - December 31 2014, and regular registration begins January 1 2015. They have discount rates for low-income students.

About INCITE!: "INCITE! is a network of radical feminists of color working to end violence against women of color, gender non-conforming & trans people of color, and our communities."

Cacho

In Cacho's book, Social Death, she writes, "To be represented as entitled to civil rights and deserving of legal recognition, working poor African Americans and undocumented Latina/os must demonstrate that they are deserving and/or in need of U.S. citizenship and its rights and privileges" (129).  Only if those people, the "working poor African Americans and undocumented Latina/os" fall into the binaries. It seems that there is a check list that must be marked to allow a person to become a citizen. The checklist is defined by those who want to keep the American Dream alive.

Cacho goes to write, "Sexual practices and gendered identities that fall outside accepted and expected norms are interpreted not only as threats to "the family"but also as evidence of what Alexander calls "irresponsible citizenship"(129). To be marked an irresponsible citizen, a person is not carrying on the traditional model of what is a family. A family must be able to reproduce and if they are not able to reproduce then why should they be allowed in the United States?  Basically, no couples that are physically not able to reproduce would automatically be non citizens.

It seems that the family model is how we keep people out of America. We deem people trying to establish citizenship that are here while their family is in their original country as negligent. Unless a person has their whole family, they do not deserve to be in the United States. Cacho writes, "These condescending statements impugn migrants' moral fiber, but at the same time they fully and publicly support the core argument that undocumented immigrants advocates make against deportation: that family unity is more important than the law" (131). Cacho explains further, " While immigrants' advocates argue that immigrants should prioritize their family's unity over fighting against immigration law" (131).  People are not even allowed to fight back because of the manipulation and control of having to be a family. If a person is deemed unfit because they are not supporting their family, then that person should not be allowed to be a citizen.

Social Death

I think Cacho's fresh perspective on the complex ways in which inequality is structured as criminalization and denial of personhood in the United States reveals important truths about how we "group" society. For example, the unemployed and the "illegal alien," while radicalized groups, are not legally disempowered by their race. As Cacho points out, the law uses these supposedly "color blind" terms to identify these groups of people, although public discourse and identity politics are still overwhelmingly preoccupied with the racial identities. This is all rooted in the gap we are all familiar with which takes (for example) the percent of unemployed Americans and the percent of unemployed African Americans without treating them as the same issue. Politicians, pundits, and activists alike often speak of the economics of unemployment and racial discrepancies as separate issues (e.g. one to be solved by a stimulus package, the other by affirmative action). By investigating how other labels (such as gang vs family member) Cacho begins the important work of conflating the lines between these issues, encouraging, I think, the discontinuation of factionalized activism/lobbying and a closer look at the true underlying structures that cause social death.

This is not, of course, to remove race from the equation; Cacho makes that clear and I don't think any of us would disagree. However, I think her work suggests that race should not be the organizing structure through which these issues are confronted. The danger of neoliberal politics, as Duggan pointed out, is the treatment of the economy as independent from social/cultural/racial factors. It is equally dangerous, however, to brand various types of criminalization as a "black/latino/a/muslim/etc. issue" as opposed to recognizing that, "Because racial identities are commonsensical conceived of a s discrete, the production of racial difference and corresponding processes of radicalization are also assumed to be separate and parallel, rather than relational, intersecting, and interdependent," (79). As Cacho pointed out on page 16, focusing on the treatment of African Americans after Katrina rendered the equally disparate Vietnamese experience invisible. Coming from New Orleans having been forced to read various different accounts of the Katrina/post Katrina experience, I encountered a number of works that confronted the various racialized iniquities, including black and muslim experiences, but I never heard about how the Vietnamese population was affected. I know that New Orleans has a significant Vietnamese population, but I never even asked or thought about it in terms of Katrina because even the progressive academic responses to the catastrophe have focused on the racial problems as black problems. She does the same work in the chapter on terrorism by investigating the relationship between the changing popular discourses surrounding muslim terrorism and latino/a immigration. Branding issues racially can be just as detrimental as the colorblind approach, and considering Cacho's labels of the unprotected/criminalized/illegal/etc. is helpful for looking at new ways to confront and dismantle these systems of power.

Social Death..

Reading Social Death was like being in a time capsule, helping to make this week’s reading a very reflective experience. In short, my opinions on the content of this book can be conceptualized through the following question. Have you ever watched a film as a child, then as an adult watch that same film and think  to yourself “ Who let me watch this?” Usually this question arises because you have watched something extremely inappropriate or offensive that you overlooked as a child. The subliminals you recognize as an adult can be attributed to life experiences or new information, but in either instance, you are probably not as credulous as you once were.

I now know that some of the legislation I remember hearing so much about, that was supposedly designed to protect me and my family actually wasn’t. For example, the “3 strikes law” in California that later became Proposition 36 wasn’t implemented to protect all communities in the same way. When initially hearing the rhetoric surrounding this legislation it seemed like it made sense to me. Of course that was probably because I lived in the suburbs where police rarely came. If they did, they didn’t stay long. Both of my parents worked for the State of California, and my father worked in corrections, so surely if they agreed with the legislation than it must be legit. Wrong. Before the 3 strikes legislation was revised it was said to have resulted in an imprisonment for African Americans that was 13 times their white counterparts. To know that I resided in such a “progressive” state that would be willing to pass such racist and onerous legislation is preposterous. It literally invokes a visceral reaction to know that the legislation wasn’t revised until 2012, so I can only imagine the many communities of color in California that were affected. Lisa Chaco makes a great point when she states that “Historically, law has criminalized the recreational activities, survival economies, and intimate relationships of people of color so that the status of ‘being of color’ was inseparable from conduct assumed to be ‘criminal’” (40). Discriminatory legislation that mirrored the “3 strikes law” was so specious that it bamboozled Californians into believing that denying marginalized groups personhood would somehow make their lives better. “To be ineligible for personhood is a form of social death; it not only defines who does not matter, it also makes mattering meaningful” (6). What it actually did was work to construct poor minorities as criminals whose only purpose in society is to remain property of the state. The more criminals in the prison system, the more money corporations are making. I am ashamed to say that I too participated in denying certain marginalized groups access to personhood. I didn’t necessarily do so through the polls, but definitely through racial-microagressions. Because of the rhetoric and legislation surrounding immigration legislation I started harboring prejudices toward Hispanics. Why should THEY be allowed access to health insurance if THEY are coming here illegally? Why should OUR tax dollars be used to support THEM? He looks illegal. She looks illegal. Are our gardeners illegal? These were some of my sentiments until I realized years later what I was actually doing. Sure I wasn’t t as bad as the young men who were patrolled for immigrants in the book, but I wasn’t too far off. No, I wouldn’t have ever physically or verbally assaulted anyone I perceived as illegal, but those attitudes I had mirrored the same sentiments as the young men. Thank God for growth.

Social Death

"Both within and beyond the borders of the United States, indigent and indigenous populations of color are literally made into criminals. This ensures that the poorest people will remain legally vulnerable and hyperexploitable because, as criminals, they are denied not only rights but also compassion" (118). Lisa Marie Cacho's analysis of the criminalization which causes social death views issues of race, class, gender, and immigration through the aforementioned dehumanizing lens. She discusses how immigration laws, issues of the legality of citizenship, and the post-9/11 society have exacerbated this criminalization. I was particularly compelled by her explanation of how the aftermath of 9/11 stirred fears of Arab immigrants and perpetuated Islamophobia to the point where even the visual perception of illegality was used as a basis of criminalization. Media entities and government administration only encouraged these warped perceptions.

News sources in particular bear much of the blame for criminalization. Cacho's introduction, in which she described the media presentation of the Katrina aftermath, reminded me strongly of the events of Ferguson, particularly in regard to the alleged "looting" of supplies. Media sources sought in both cases to present the desperation for food and medical supplies as less of a need, and solely as an unrestrained act of recalcitrance. In the case of Ferguson events, individuals affected by tear gas sought supplies from stores to aid in relief, while media presented these as break-ins and robbery. Cacho's framework for analyzing the Katrina events can be applied to almost any racialized disaster and aftermath.

Cacho's arguments throughout the text examine how the systems of law and it's intersections with race, class, and gender inherently privilege whiteness. We see white criminals as having individualized motives and backgrounds, whereas people of color are viewed as inherently violent simply based on group categorization. Violence is never seen as a "white issue". This same logic applies to cases such as missing persons, where white individuals, particularly young, attractive women, are given priority in media, group searches, and efforts. All of this works towards the dehumanization of people of color, implying that their lives are simply not worthy of saving. Additionally, Cacho writes that, "Because being an 'illegal alien' is essentially a de facto status crime, undocumented immigrants’ 'illegal' status renders their law-abiding actions irrelevant. At best, 'illegal' status complicates representing undocumented immigrants as moral, ethical, and 'deserving'" (117). This system of discrimination exists in the same vein as the criminalization of persons of color, implying that those belonging to such groups should be viewed as a volatile collective.

Social Death

10/27/14

There most definitely is much about this book that is troubling. I mentioned something in class last week that I’d like to develop a little further here with some of Cacho’s examples. Last week, during our discussion on adoption, I spoke about my frustrations with the perpetual public discourse that expresses sympathy toward the children who live in impoverished or decimated parts of the world, but not toward their mothers: we bestow sympathy, we desire to ‘save the kids,’ but the suffering of the mother who gives up/loses her child is completely absent.  Worse yet, we do nothing to try to alter the social structures, the wars, the famine, or the destruction caused to or inflicted upon their native lands.

I have seen this in the schools many times over: the adults who work in the schools are extremely sympathetic regarding the circumstances of students because, as they often acknowledge, children have no control over their own lives and statuses. What this actually means, though, is that children are relinquished from being blamed for their scenarios only because they lack access to the foundation of the neoliberal ideology: ‘choice.’ So while the child may be spared (only temporarily, that is), the blame is instead deflected to the individual who society believes has full access to ‘choice:’ the parent. Similar to the adoption scenario above, sympathy is bestowed upon the child because of his choicelessness; the pains of the parent are ignored (if she’s even acknowledged) so she can take on the blame for her poor ‘choices;’ and society skirts the blame for its lack of humanity in devising its social structures.

See, in order for the dominant class to justify entitlement to its own status, the individuals have to believe that they have rightfully earned it. And, of course, in order to fully internalize this notion, privileged individuals must also wholeheartedly believe that freedom of opportunity not only exists for everyone, but that it is alive and well. Now, in order to make these two ideas solidify in one’s mind, it is necessary to seek out, isolate, and glorify the scarce examples that support this ideological stance. Most commonly, of course, these are the ‘boot strap’ stories of individualistic, self-redemption and upward mobility. On occasion, however, I come across perspectives where people are irate about the fact that an individual’s ‘right’ to meritocracy has been cut off. And what I see there is not actually the fact that the (often White) person is upset that another person experienced injustice; I more often hear that they are upset that they could not use a person’s experience to uphold the meritocratic claim.

Cacho describes several ways in which African Americans and Latina/o immigrants are pitted against each other in the media and in the ring of meritocracy. Take for instance the case where some African Americans were robbing undocumented immigrants in New Orleans. “It’s very sad…[the immigrants] work all week. Then comes the weekend, they get robbed” (p. 12). This is undoubtedly unfair. But, the sympathy seems to derive from the idea that the workers were doing ‘the right’ and meritocratic thing by working so hard to ‘better themselves.’ (Again, I’m not arguing against the wrongness of this act). The question, however, is whether the sympathizer’s reaction would be the same if the victims’ funds were not earned through backbreaking labor. What if the victims’ stolen funds were derived from public assistance or the second economy? Would the crime then be perceived as less tragic?

Another example is where she discusses the belief about the ‘ownership’ over civil rights and the history of the civil rights movement itself. As Cacho puts it, civil rights were spun into the “intellectual property” domain of African Americans by the media (p. 137). Again, notice that this is associated with the idea of ownership, as in it was earned and therefore ‘belongs’ to one group of people. So in contrast to the prior example where African Americans are stealing what rightfully belongs to Latina/o immigrants, in this case the Latina/o immigrants are taking what rightfully belongs to the African Americans. Sympathy is directed each time to whichever group was ‘choosing’ to ‘pull themselves up by their boot straps.’ And what is missing from the conversation altogether is the conversation about the social structures that actually prohibit both groups from being able to access the same privileges and ‘choices’ as the dominant class.

Because of the faith in meritocracy and how it upholds the hierarchy, crimes are not perceived as injustices done to the person. The perceived problem is instead that people were cut off from the meritocratic path, or that they had stolen what they had earned. And stories such as these delegitimize, disprove, and therefore compromise the stability of the faith of meritocracy. They shed light on the fact that meritocracy, upward mobility, and equal opportunity do not actually exist. Thus, through the eyes of the dominant class, such instances cannot be viewed as problematic simply because they are crimes against humanity. In reality, they express the belief that they are only problematic because they are crimes against meritocracy.

Social Death and Trap Music

Although the idea of social death is not new to me, I found Cacho’s Social Death convincing, accessible, and smart. When I thought about bodies that are often criminalized and devalued, I immediately thought in terms of geography and how geography can often shape value to certain bodies as well. Specifically, I am referring to the US south and how it is generally viewed as disposable to the rest of the nation. Visions of the South often are compared to tropes of trash, where its people are poor and backwards, and its food garbage and unhealthy. A construction of the contemporary South that is indicative of Cacho’s argument about social death is the rap and rappers of the “Dirty South.” The work of Dirty South rappers is produced in response to their marginalization by other rap centers. Their work often resists, embraces, and appropriates the stereotypes that have stigmatized them. Like the gang members that Cacho discusses, rappers are also criminalized in body and being. Cacho highlights the “spatial disablement” of contemporary gang membership in impoverished communities of color: “Believed to be subjected to their natural and man-made environments, people of color are represented as products of environments that are identified as the cause, rationale, and evidence not only for a population’s inability to access political and economic equality but also for its vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence” (Cacho 73). The South is itself abject to the rest of the nation as southern rappers are abject to the larger genre of hip hop. Additionally, the spaces where southern rappers originate is often wrought with abject poverty and violence. As such, Cacho argues that this “condition” of spatialized violence becomes naturalized and rationalized as to why these bodies are devalued.

Admittedly, although not all Dirty South rap music is conscious-driven, there are many Dirty South rappers like UGK, T.I., and Rich Boy, whose careers in the rap game all embody the intersectionality of identities which are viewed as disposable, including the poor, black, male, southern rapper. However, these rappers are consciously reminded and aware of their disposability and strategically employ this alienation as part of their identity as rappers. Where there was previously no such nationwide rap narratives of the South, Dirty South rappers continue to create spaces where they can give voice to the dispossessed and attempt to control their own narratives.

One such space where Dirty South rappers engage in discourses surrounding the criminalization of black male bodies is “the trap.” The term “trap” in a southern rap context refers to an actual place where drug deals are made. These places, usually abandoned buildings in impoverished neighborhoods, where so called “the trap” because there was only one way in and one way out. This was to ensure that the underground drug rings were regulated. Not only can physical spaces become the trap, but Southern rappers used their music to refer to their lives as being trapped in a life of drugs and violence. Many of the songs illuminate the psychological and social prison that Dirty South rappers inhabit, as a result of not seeing many other options for their devalued bodies other than a life behind bars or an early violent death. Trap music is a genre where Southern rappers voice the disposability of black men in the American judicial system while simultaneously acknowledging their own internalization of their fatal demise.

                 

Problematizing rights-based politics

Lisa Marie Chaco’s “Social Death” problematizes many concepts about rights, personhood, and legality that we often do not engage critically in a liberal multicultural society. From immigration reform to same-sex marriage, we are taught that the good of the American system lies in the fact that the rights and privileges of citizenship are constantly being expanded to include more people. But, as Chaco points out, marginalized people who “form the foundation” for certain laws can never be incorporated into laws that depend on their criminalization (p.8).

I was especially moved by the complexity surrounding marginalized people’s claims to American citizenship. Despite the validity of these claims for one group, they often reinforce or further advance the ‘social death’ of another marginalized group. I could see a lot of this in the conversations after Trayvon Martin’s death, where the focus became on how black men should avoid dressing like criminals – as if their criminalization lie in an article of clothing, not their blackness. But this kind of respectability politics is frequently used to further marginalize young black males who wear hoodies and baggy jeans as if they are deserving of their social death.

Ultimately I find myself wrestling with the implications of Chaco’s book. We know that claims to citizenship and liberal rights are not going to bring marginalized bodies ‘to life’ so to speak. What would an immigration movement look like that did not reconstitute legal / illegal binaries, or a gay liberation movement that did not seek legal recognition of some same-sex relationships by further marginalizing those that were non-homonormative? Moving beyond rights-based politics remains a challenge because it feels like it is the only thing we know (and is certainly the only thing we are taught in K-12 schools), but it must be done if we are committed to an oppression-free world.

Personhood and Social Death

Upon reading the title of the book for this week's readings - Social Death - I imagined that the book spoke about something one had become; something one ends up being. Conversely, the Cacho does a great job of uncovering how "social death" is not only something that one can become, but also a designation from birth; a status one is born into and a status one may have very little agency to remove themselves from or operate within. Also, using distinct examples of violence, death, and legal cases, Cacho shows how communities and individuals are denied personhood and the ways in which these communities are pitted against one another.

Halfway into the book of Cacho showing the tensions, ideas, and divisiveness that has happened between Black and Latin@ communities, i'm reminded about the instance in class where Dr. Shoaff asked why it was that those of us that feel like/are second-class citizens are not fighting alongside those who have no citizenship and are fighting to obtain it. As someone who has been to immigration protests and marches with the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) and LUPE (La Union del Pueblo Entero - Cesar Chavez' organization) that dealt with everything from farmworker rights to wage theft to basic human rights for the undocumented, it isn't too hard for me to understand why many African Americans do not see this fight as their own. My best friend, Yvette, works for LUPE and is a Chicana who has educated me on these experiences and situations. I met her in my early twenties when I was just beginning to learn about Black history, Black feminism, and power structures, and colonialism. Being women of color, anti-racism and feminism have been inextricably linked, and while we both learned about Black struggles, she informed me on the Chicano struggle, and racism, sexism, and colorism within Latin@ communities. Alongside bell hooks and Audre Lorde, we were reading Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (who is actually from the same place Yvette is from - the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas). I can recall her asking me once whether I had any association with immigration. And I remember not having anything of personal experience to link with my idea of immigration - I'd had maybe one or two Latin@ friends in school (I believe the population in my hometown was less than 5%), but besides that I only drew a blank. It was as foreign and unrelated to me as that of Korean adoptees. If she weren't my best friend and weren't so involved in the struggle, I question whether I would be as involved and as knowledgeable about the situation as I am presently. 

On one level, it's ignorance about the situation and willful ignorance on another (that's their issue, not ours...). I'd like to believe that if more African Americans knew that by any stretch of the imagination, what happens to farmworkers on a daily basis would be considered slavery, many more would feel a connection to it. On another level, however, I think the distancing of our communities has to do with the larger structures playing us against one another. When two groups are competing for a job, neither one of them is going to ask about the benefits, risks, or salary of the job in question. Cacho highlights this nicely by showing the issues inherent within the idea that "they take jobs that no one else wants" without asking why no one else wants them, and questioning the corporations that make these jobs as opposed to those seeking employment. As Cacho showed, African Americans have learned that we don't have rights, simply by being human - we have to fight for them, and do so continuously. With this idea underlying our experience, it isn't a surprise that many African Americans feel as though they have to aid in the degradation or dehumanization of undocumented individuals and communities; that we have to fight against immigration. Many a times, it may have very little to do with color, seeing as how many African Americans also distance themselves on various levels from other Black immigrants (from the Caribbean or Africa). I think Cacho really brought to light how inherently dehumanizing it is to have to fight or struggle for your rights and how doing so - whether successful or not - solidifies the personhood hierarchy of those who do not have to fight for their rights (i.e., whites, and the hierarchies within that as well - those that had to fight for whiteness and those who did not) and those who do (people of color, immigrants, women, non-Christians, queer, poor, etc.). The respectability politics that also manifests itself from these hierarchies of personhood become even that much more problematic. 

A point I though linked well with our previous readings was the idea of one have the choice to stay and the privileges within that stance. In discussing the devastating effects of NAFTA and DR-CAFTA on Central American and Caribbean populations, economically forcing many to search for basic sustainment outside their borders, she says "...the coercion was so powerfully felt that in Oaxaca, Mexico, indigenous communities are organized around the right to not migrate, demanding 'el derecho de no migrar'. ... These populations have been denied the right to stay home." (p. 123-124). The point that Kim made in Adopted Territories of certain individuals (or economic classes) have the privilege to stay in Korea, while others wish they'd had the opportunity parallels and clarifies exactly how staying home is a privilege for some. 

I posted a video of a Monica Mendoza performing a spoken word piece about women farmworkers and their (all too common) experiences of sexual assault in fields and off. Hopefully, for some who are not as knowledgeable about what farmworkers go through in the fields (picking the majority of the nation's fresh produce while being paid in crumbs, if it all...), it brings certain issues to light. I think for feminists, for anti-racists, and for those who are generally for reforms or the complete demolition of the system, immigration should be a major topic of discussion due largely to the fact that they are so invisible in many instances. And when people are invisible, and they are of color (and more so...and they are women), they are extremely vulnerable to physical and sexual violence and various levels of exploitation. Their voices are the least heard and the most silenced. 

I went to visit Yvette in March of this year for a short time. The Valley, situated right on the border is full of checkpoints going north and border patrol around the southern tip. The extreme militarization that continues to escalate has been a source of violence and disruption for quite sometime now. While I was there, an investigation was underway in which a checkpoint officer who'd "caught" a woman and her teenage daughter trying to leave the valley took the two women back to his home, raped them and slit one's wrists. The daughter escaped and went to the police, and was able to send help back to save her mother. Upon finding out, the checkpoint officer committed suicide before being arrested. Upon hearing this, the question I had was why was it not reported when he took these two women in his car after getting off work? Why did this not raise suspicion with his colleagues? Why is there no protocol for what to do with undocumented individuals when stopped at checkpoints and why was it not followed in this instance? Furthermore, if this situation caused no alarm with his colleagues, how many other undocumented women has this man taken back to his home? How many women have been taken back by other officers (the majority of which are men)? Had it not have been such a gruesome scene, would it have caused any uproar? And why do situations like that rarely make the national news? All of these loaded questions further show how personhood, as Cacho interrogates, has literally been taken away from people and even their deaths mean nothing.

Cacho: Reduction & Racialization

     One of the themes apparent in Lisa Marie Cacho’s Social Death is that of reduction. Cacho adequately illustrates that criminalized bodies are treated as always already criminal, thus rendering them inevitable of and already guilty of law-breaking (4). Because these bodies are simultaneously racialized, they are regarded as “just another thug/gang member/criminal/etc.” This reductionist language further removes personhood and the right to have rights from these criminalized, racialized bodies. Cacho writes “Journalists rarely represent gang members and drive-by shooters as complex people, let alone as victims of law or as teenagers and young adults who make mistakes” (59). This lack of addressing complexity is significant not only because it further proves Cacho’s point, but also because when looking at other bodies in the news media – those that are not racialized and not criminalized --  there seems to almost always be a trend of expansion. For example, the typical white male school shooter is never referred to a “just another shooter/psycho.” Instead, there is extensive coverage of his past, his family, his personal relationships, his morals, his interests, his hobbies, how he spent his free time…the list goes on. Inherent in this effort to find the root of his deviant behavior is the assumption that he was not supposed to end up this way and furthermore, that this behavior is not “natural.” The failure to expand upon the potential causes for racialized and criminalized bodies signifies first, that the behavior is “typical” and is not in need of digging further, and second, that an exploration into the social problems and issues that contributed to such behavior is not necessary and/or relevant. In this manner, criminal behavior falls under the umbrella of essentialism for certain types of bodies, and thus, they are guilty of the crime of being, or as Cacho refers to it: de facto status crimes (43).

            Although there are probably many who would refute Cacho’s claims, her theoretical arguments are sound and can be seen in the media on a daily basis. For example, there was a news story about a white youth not too long ago who drove intoxicated, even causing a death. The court ruled that he was not fit for jail, and he was put on house arrest instead (a Google search of this is coming up blank, but it happened!). This is quite the opposite of the situation involving Cacho’s cousin Brandon, who was not only portrayed as undeserving of sympathy in death, but also completely responsible for the death of himself and his friends. The term Cacho would use to differentiate between these scenarios would be the intelligibility of the crime; for the white youth, his crime of drunk driving was seen more as an anomaly or a one-time mistake (unintelligible for his white body), whereas Brandon’s crime was seen as “making sense” and/or inevitable (intelligible for his body of color). Another example that comes to mind is the situation that occurred after the passing of the anti-immigration law in Alabama:

Then, in a widely publicized, awkward incident in November of 2011, cops in Alabama stopped a Mercedes Benz executive driving a rental car and were forced, under the new law’s provisions, to arrest him when he couldn’t produce acceptable ID. The executive was driving near Tuscaloosa, where Mercedes Benz has a manufacturing plant — Alabama, like many Southern states, has bent over backward in recent decades to attract foreign automakers by giving them generous tax breaks and other incentives.

(Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/alabamas-draconian-anti-immigrant-law-dies-with-a-whimper)

Because the law’s intent was to encourage self-deportation, the aforementioned was not seen as a potential outcome. According to Cacho: “…illegality, like criminality, is also unrecognizable in popular discourse without a body of color” (101). I wonder how the story would have played out differently had the executive been a man (or woman) of color from the Middle East or Latin America.

            The end of Cacho’s book left me with many questions regarding both current events and the state of feminism. I would like to learn more about the racialization of the riots and protests in Ferguson due to the death of Mike Brown, especially after the recent comparison to the ridiculous situation involving white people in New Hampshire and pumpkins (http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/21/living/keene-pumpkinfest-riot-ferguson/). My next question is about the reflexivity and personal aspects of critical feminist theory. More specifically, is there a way for critical feminist theory to be less personal or less reflexive and if so, is it necessary? Or, is the reflexive and personal nature of critical feminist theory what makes it so unique and important? I keep returning to this question because some of our more recent readings have a very self-reflective lens to them: Downtown Ladies, Adopted Territories, and now Social Death with the telling of Brandon’s story. One of the most offensive things I learned in my feminist pedagogy class is that Women’s Studies in general is critiqued for easily morphing into “group therapy sessions.” Although I was upset by this, I could see how others’ misinterpretation of the discipline could be framed that way. How many times in class do we tell personal stories, and isn’t it necessary to do this in order to “theorize from the the flesh?” I believe it is, and I do not mean to question the validity of Women’s Studies in any way or suggest that personal experience is irrelevant. Furthermore, I do not wish to portray that we should not theorize from the flesh because it is too messy or sticky. However, what I do wish to question is how big or small of a piece it should be when it comes to writing feminist scholarship.

Whispers from the Field - Monica Mendoza

Whispers from the Field - a spoken word poem by Monica Mendoza about sexual abuse women farm workers experience.

Social Death

Lisa Cacho’s Social Death provides a critical approach to the construction of personhood and rights in a (neo)liberal “democracy.”  As Cacho points out in the introduction, these ideas (of rights and personhood) are not without racial or gender implications. Liberal democracy is based upon the idea that "we" have inherent rights and the freedom to do what we want provided that we do not inflict harm on others. However, this is established upon the bodies of those who must be "othered" and demonized (gender, race, class, sexuality). Rights are not conferred on everyone, but on only small privileged groups. In order to create legal justification of exclusion or denial of others from the protections of this system, they must be established or normalized/naturalized as inherently flawed--criminal. Without the criminalized body, there cannot be the understanding of what "normal" is in this society. Criminalization of certain bodies also allows justification for not allowing full access or representation under these structures. As Cacho points out, they are bodies to be disciplined, but in no way do they "benefit" (i.e. receive protection or provide authorship of these laws that limit life) from this legal system. She asserts that "the foundation of law...is dependent upon a group's permanent criminalization," making them ultimately "ineligible for personhood" (6).  Neoliberalism further reinforces the exclusion of these groups. It does so by creating a script that shows not that there is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, but that it is "those" people's/group's fault for why their lives are the way they are. It places responsibility upon the individual, but it also ERASES any way of these groups proving their discrimination (19)

Her methodology was something that struck me instantaneously with the analysis of media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the perpetuation of the construction of the criminalized body juxtaposed to the surviving body. Cacho performs a type of "eclectic" archival project, in which she pulls from all sorts of sources to create this rich analysis that bolsters her thesis. This allows her to get at "how human value is made intelligible through racialized, sexualized, spatialized, and state-sanctioned violences" (4). I find this quite impressive because of her ability to pull partly from the "public" archive (I recall some of the images or news releases that she refers to, and I have public access to go hunt these stories and images down) and create a deep critical analysis that shows how we need a racialized body to understand criminality, for example.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of the social death, or (in Butlerian terms) the unlivable life, the "living death". This begins with something like criminalization, in which there is justification for stripping people of rights. But when a body can be criminalized without being involved in any criminal activity, this calls into questions the idea of personhood and human value ascribed to these bodies. In creating ineligibility to personhood,  this cause these groups to be "refused the legal means to contest those laws as well as denied both the political legitimacy and moral credibility necessary to question them" (6).  By the state and the system in place, these groups are "legally recognized as rightless" (6-7). When one does not have full access to these rights and has been constructed in a way that says "these lives don't matter", or because of who these bodies are, their lives don't matter, these are bodies, people who can never have the status of "living".  She then calls into question the difference between mere survival and living life. 

In her conclusion I was particularly interested in her narrative about her cousin and the idea of resistance. Moving away from a kind of dialectical way of talking about resistance/defiance, Cacho invokes a “politics of deviance” (from Cathy Cohen) to explain the deviations away from the normative structures of society made by her cousin, Brandon (Cacho 167). Rather than being strictly oppositional, this politics of deviance not only “challenge normative order” but also inscribe “new or counter normative structures upon which to judge behavior” (Cacho 167). This becomes particularly important because it unsettles normalcy, pushes us to rethink social worth, and finally makes us responsible for centering our focus on those who have been criminalized and considering "unworthy" of our attention (Cacho 167). This way of resistance (if it can be called this, as it seems that Cacho troubles this way of thinking/talking if I understand her point correctly) isn't so much about upending everything, but noting that one can make a transformation through this type of unthinkable politics. It's a pretty intriguing notion. 

Social Death Response

            Cacho argues that race and gender are “ways of knowing” that allow us to make sense of reality in the U.S. She argues we don’t necessarily see “stereotypes” when we see/think we see images of people of color as criminals, but rather, we are recognizing criminality. Without the bodies of color, we wouldn’t recognize criminality because white bodies are not coded as criminal. In fact, white bodies are coded as exactly the opposite, and even when white people are criminals, we have trouble recognizing them as such. It doesn’t fit into the reality we live in/understand. She uses the example of the group of white teenage boys who robbed and violent assaulted a group of elderly Mexican men to illustrate this. Despite the obviousness of the boys’ crimes, they were represented in the media as “good” kids, and sympathetic stories were written about them. They received light sentences despite how disturbing their crimes were because it was believed they could/would be rehabilitated. They were not yet lost causes in the eyes of the legal system, but that’s not because of their ages, which one would think if they just heard about this case. The fact that they were in their early to mid-teens isn’t why they were seen as able to overcome these crimes and become “good citizens”, but rather, because they were white. Had they been African American, Hispanic, or any other race/ethnicity, they probably (definitely?) would have received much harsher sentences and no sympathy from the legal system or the public.

            The “social death” of the title is what happens when certain groups are denied the protection of the law, are criminalized, and are basically considered “dead” to those groups who do have the protection of the law and do have power/privilege. The socially dead have no legal or social rights; how can they? It seems as though they are the groups society doesn’t want to deal with and doesn’t want to exist, but also, society cannot function without them, at least, not the way it currently functions.

The law is not “blind”, though we (as a society) might like to think it is; it’s influenced and structured based on the same issues that plague all other aspects of society. Certain populations are denied the protection of the law because of race and class. They are criminalized based on their identities rather than on anything they have actually or will ever do. Being a member of a gang or being suspected of or simply assumed to be a gang member criminalizes a person, and this criminalization results in a lack of public sympathy, harsher sentences, and the reinforcement (perpetuation?) of racism, classism, sexism, etc. The fact that being an “illegal alien” basically means you are an illegal person means that no matter what you do or don’t do, you are a criminal. Part of me wants to say, “Well, shouldn’t there be regulations/laws about coming into a country/crossing a border?” And I’m sure that many people have that reaction; it seems logical and legitimate, but it isn’t because of the ways movement in general is constricted, because movement within the “system” is a privilege. When we say we want to regulate who crosses the border—and really, we mean the U.S.-Mexican border most of the time probably—we’re saying we want to regulate how many people of color come into the U.S. We don’t care how many white people come here. Or if we do, I’m unaware of it.

 “Cultural differences” are blamed for why some groups fare better than others, as though that alone can explain it, and also for why some people, who are representative of their group (it seems) behave the way they do. Cultural difference as an explanation both “normalizes and abnormalizes” not only the violence committed by Southeast Asian gangs, but also, really, all of the behavior of marginal racial groups, especially if they’re from a lower class/working class background. Nothing is the result of systemic oppression or the neoliberal global economy or etc; it’s all because of “cultural differences.” “Immigrant rights” and “civil rights” are basically the same thing in that both are seeking the legal protection and enfranchisement of marginalized groups, specifically people of color. (Because what white immigrants are in need of immigrant rights?) Arguing that they are unrelated struggles seems to just pit the marginalized against one another and obscure the real problems.

The aftermath of 9/11 and “war on terror” changed the way the U.S. looks at illegality, with Hispanics receiving more sympathy, especially in the early days after 9/11. They were/are seen as doing whatever it takes to live in the U.S., which is used to illustrate the power of the American Dream and that living in the U.S., under any circumstances, is better than living anywhere else. So, people/groups who would have been criminalized and stigmatized before were/are lauded as patriots. At the same time, Muslins and people from the Middle East are stigmatized and subject to intense scrutiny. Their movement is policed. They must constantly make clear, to reassure society and the legal system, that they are not terrorists. 

Lisa Cacho did an incredible job with unveiling the many contradictions that are present in the legal system. She uses several case studies that questions society's assignment of personhood to indvidulals who are of color. One thing that made this book so effective, in my opinion, is how she was able to provide real-life examples about how the justice system protects some but not others.

Cacho says, "To be stereotyped as a criminal is to be misrecognized as a criminal, but to be criminalized is to be prevented from being law-abiding." The criminalization of people of color makes it impossible for  them to particapte in the society an be "productive" citizens. In the case study about the the eight boys who beat and robbed elderly immigrants, Cacho points out that it turned into a case about whether the boys should be tried as adults instead of the horrific things they did, and felt entitled to do.

The law is not meant to punish those with personhood and citizenship (white, male, middle class, educated, etc..). In the instance with the eight boys, they were thought to be redeemable; they had potential reverse the error in their ways and become "good citizens." In other cases-- with people of color-- this possibility was revoked from them because the color of their skin is ineligible for personhood.

If money characterizess your personhood and power, people who are criminalized are perpetually inelgible for personhood. With a jsutice system that targets them instead of offering protection, and a neoliberal government that sees them as lazy and not worthy of assistance, people of color are not a part of the "United" States.

From the young feminists

My neighbor just told me that the kids at the bus stop (my daughter included) were dropping the f-bomb the other day. I think that's why I find this all the more amusing.

http://aplus.com/a/little-girls-fckh8-fck-sexism


And one on racism:

http://vimeo.com/105147740

"Good American"

Transnational adoptions have always made me feel uneasy, but it was not until I read Eleana J. Kim's Adopted Territories that I could pinpoint what bothered me so much about this seemingly altruistic act of humanitariansm.The problem is that it is neither alrtuistic, nor humanitarian. Kim's piece really keyed in on the dilemmas of transracial adoption.

While reading, I instantly began to make connections to  Taking Haiti because there is such a stong sense of paternalism in this adoption process. Somehow , Korea's orphaned children became the responsibilty of the U.S. Taking children out of their birth countries so that they may have a better life, more opportunities, and better chances of becoming successful are pateranlistic in itself. These adopted parents somehow knows whats best for these children without even meeting them-- America is the best option for anyone's life, obviously. This "heroic" mentality really bothered me.

Not once is the child's welfare really put into quesstion. Adoption became a trend, and Korean children became a commodity. while Americans were desperately attempting to fit into their Americanhood, transnational adoption became another symbol of chivalry, heroism, and duty in which began to define Americaness. These children meant nothing but a status symbol to the American adopters; it was a stamp of their true Americanhood. This reminds me of Brennan in What's Love Got to do WIth It? in that there is a desire for people of the third world.

While Americans defined what it means to be American through transnational adoption, the adoptees struggled to self-identify. They are living in a family that, in the privacy of their homes, are the same, but in public they are treated differntly. How can someone truly identify themselves living in such a duality. Adoptees seem to have no actual space. Americans could not accept them as American because of outward appearaces, and Koreans could not accept them as Koreans because of their cultural upbringing. Eventually, adoptees had to create their own space, virtually. They could occupy this space without being judged; they were among others who had the same unique experience of being adopted transnationally.

A final point that really interested me was the idea of a globalized economy. South Korea is highly dependent upon the adoption proccess becauase it brings in 15-20 million dollars yearly. I made a not-so-obvious connection to Mohanty with the privatization of the academy. I connected these two because the welfare of people become unimportant once money gets involved. Stopping these adoptions would be the best answer, but because it was financially rewarding, it could not be completely expelled.

Money began to buy children! Americans actually placed a monetary value on a life that they claim to love and care about so much. With the case of the farmers attempting to adopt a Korean child, or the couple who actually circled the child they wanted as if it was a shopping catlogue reveals the true heart of the American adopters. They felt entitled to these children. They wanted so desperately to fit into true Americanhood that exploiting 1) Korean women who have to give up their children at birth, which opens an oportunity for the American couple who is infertile and 2) Korean children who are status symbols to Americans did not matter. As long as they fit the description of a "good American." 

Depersonalizing "Home"

     In Ahmed and Castenada’s introduction on uprootings and regroundings, they assert that the privilege of movement is actually evidenced not by who moves, but by who gets to stay put (7). This theoretical piece stayed with me while reading Kim’s Adopted Territory because there was so much power illustrated by the American parents’ agency in the adoption of their child. In one instance, a couple even sent a brochure back to Korea with a child’s face circled, thus indicating they wanted that child, as if shopping out of a magazine. This power of staying put/remaining on the homefront while mandating the activities of the marginalized and abroad made me think about the agency and power that is inherently intertwined with whom is doing the deciding on those who are moving. For example, the American parents in the aftermath of the Korean War desired to bring Korean orphans not only into their country, but into their homes. Their desire and ability to move these children legitimized the children themselves. Conversely, the current situation with Mexican children refugees is quite the opposite; in general, Americans (parents or not) want these children neither in their country nor in their homes. Why? Are not both groups of children products of American war, capitalism, and imperialism? Are not both groups of children without “proper” parents? Not to ignore the racialized piece of this conversation, but the main reason that the latter group is not seen as legitimate is because those with agency and power do not desire to move these children. This is not to suggest that racial reasons have nothing to do with the lack of desire to accommodate Mexican children refugees, but it is not the only informant of this viewpoint.

            This visibility of race is a fact that Kim explores in Part I of her book; after considering the readings altogether it would appear as if the visibility of race is parallel to the visibility of “not being at home.” Kim reflects on this a few times in the first half – Ulysse style??—when she talks about how the Korean adoptees do not know she is not an adoptee until she tells them. Mohanty also mentions this in her piece when she discusses how people would constantly ask her when she was going home (126). This assumed separation of home is synonymous with “out of placeness,” just like the semantics in the language surrounding Korean adoptees. Kim writes about “orphan” and “motherland” as words that infantilize and remove agency from the now adult adoptees, yet some of the adoptees themselves use these words (136-7). This verbal and visual suggestion of displacement seems to foster what Kim describes as a “model of kinship that is not exclusive but additive, transnational, and expansive” (95). This leads me to wonder: the authors dealing with these topics seems to always include some sort of personal narrative and/or experiences (home-building, meaning-making, world-making). With this in mind, is it possible to de-personalize the concent of home? If so or if not, what does this mean for studies of kinship and belonging?

Mohanty mentioned that when she did go home, she was criticized for not being able to understand the problems of home (131). I am anxious to see if this scenario plays out in the same way for the Korean adoptees when they visit Korea in Part II.