Social Justice Usage
Source: What is Abolition? by Critical Resistance
We take the name “abolitionist” purposefully from those who called for the abolition of slavery in the 1800’s. Abolitionists believed that slavery could not be fixed or reformed. It needed to be abolished. As PIC [Prison-Industrial Complex] abolitionists today, we also do not believe that reforms can make the PIC just or effective. Our goal is not to improve the system; it is to shrink the system into non-existence.
…
Source: Kaepernick, Colin. Letter to his “Abolition for the People” community on LEVEL on Medium.
[T]he abolition of police and prisons is the only way forward if we are to create a society capable of interrupting violence, reducing harm, and creating safe and healthy futures for all people.…
Source: Kaepernick, Colin. “The Demand for Abolition.” Abolition for the People. LEVEL on Medium and Kaepernick Publishing.
I began to ask myself the question “What is being reformed or reformulated?” Ultimately, I realized that seeking reform would make me an active participant in reforming, reshaping, and rebranding institutional white supremacy, oppression, and death. This constant re-interrogation of my own analysis has been part of my political evolution. “One should recall that the movement for reforming the prisons, for controlling their functioning, is not a recent phenomenon,” Michel Foucault wrote in Discipline and Punish. “It does not even seem to have originated in a recognition of failure. Prison ‘reform’ is virtually contemporary with the prison itself: it constitutes, as it were, its programme.” Reform, at its core, preserves, enhances, and further entrenches policing and prisons into the United States’ social order. Abolition is the only way to secure a future beyond anti-Black institutions of social control, violence, and premature death.
New Discourses Commentary
In greatest generality, “abolitionism” refers to abolishing something, usually something unjust. Historically, it is the term most commonly used for favoring the abolishment of the institution of slavery, which was done in the United States in 1863 and made Constitutional in 1865. The term therefore tends to carry the connotation of the very noble and morally right desire to abolish slavery and taps into that long history and positive moral valence. Under Critical Social Justice, abolition may refer to two things at once, though one is more common—the abolition of prisons and law enforcement, more often, and the abolition of systemic racism, more rarely. “Abolitionism,” then, usually refers to the intention to abolish police and to abolish prisons as a part of a bigger project of ending, or abolishing, systemic racism. It proceeds from a belief that policing, criminal justice, and prisons are a form of (racist) slavery that still exists in the world today and that these institutions are irredeemable and incapable of reform.
The Theory of Critical Social Justice identifies law enforcement and prisons as integral to creating the disparate, or inequitable, outcomes that are then interpreted as “systemic racism.” It believes these institutions are intrinsically racist and operate within a paradigm of institutional racism so endemic to them that it cannot be reformed. The case for this dubious—if not completely spurious—claim is that historically law enforcement, the justice system, and the penal system have, in fact, been racist and were active in enforcing racist laws, catching escaped slaves, and, even still, enforcing immigration law including deportation of illegal immigrants. Those features that were part of law enforcement in the past (but not now) are believed to have left an indelible trace upon the relevant systems that cannot be reformed and must be done away with and “remade” or “reimagined.” (It bears remembering that the relevant lines of Theoretical thought maintain that racism either “has a permanence” or “is permanent” in systems, so therefore a history of racism is sufficient proof to conclude racism must still be present in more hidden forms now.) Those features that are still present, particularly regarding enforcing immigration law but also statistical differences by identity group in arrests and incarceration rates, are taken as prima facie proof of active systemic racism, no matter what the real reasons for those statistical differences.
In the eyes of Theory, the institutions must therefore be abolished and replaced with something else, which is usually a vague and unrealistic combination of community policing, social work, and “accountability.” Because black and Latino men are disproportionately incarcerated, Theory maintains that policing and prisons in and of themselves are major contributors to racism. Theory tends to elide the fact that incarceration and policing appear to be largely proportionally to the rates of criminal offense and blame all facets of this circumstance on “systemic racism” as well.
Most of the use of the term “abolitionist,” while technically correct for people who do wish to literally abolish policing and prisons, is a language game meant to associate the positive moral standing of people who fought to get rid of slavery with a movement that wants to achieve something far more radical and nonsensical. Police and prison abolition are, for obvious and good reasons, extremely unpopular and very unlikely to be successful. Without positive branding, like the term “abolitionists,” the people pushing for these reforms would be unlikely to be able to have much success in getting people to believe they’re doing the right thing (see also, right side of history).
In a somewhat less-common usage that is (probably) intentionally meant in a double-meaning, “abolition” can also refer to abolishing systemic racism entirely. This requires a complete change to the system, under the thought of Theory, such that it is taken completely apart and reorganized around Critical Race Theory and intersectionality (see also, revolution). It is believed that only this this way can the original sin of slavery (see also, 1619 Project) be fully abolished from the liberal order (the system). In this regard, “abolitionism” refers to the idea of fully empowering Critical Race Theorists in all of our institutions and letting them remake society in their preferred image.
Related Terms
1619 Project; Accountability; Critical; Critical race Theory; Equity; Identity; Injustice; Institutional racism; Intersectionality; Language game; Liberalism; Racism (systemic); Radical; Revolution; Right side of history, the; Social Justice; System, the; Theory
Revision date: 10/30/20
