Prisons Are the Real Welfare Queens
Krista K
CUNY, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
ANT 230
Professor Vladimir Gurewich
12/18/2024
Final Response Paper: Are Prisons Necessary? Exploring Options of Social Reform;
Prisons Are the Real Welfare Queens
Based on The New York Times article written by Rachel Kushner about Ruth Gilmore’s ideologies as a prison abolitionist we can see how such an idea shocks the majority of American culture. Ruth Gilmore tells us a story of her experience at the environmental-justice conference in Fresno in 2003 where she was confronted by the poor and working-class children of farmers in the area who challenged her stance of prison abolition. Many disagreed and held contempt for the idea of not having an institution to lock up violent offenders who are seen as a danger to society. However, Ruth started turning the wheels in these young minds by asking a simple yet abstract question- “Why don’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place? Why as a society would we choose to model cruelty and vengeance?” At first the kids were apprehensive to such a radical concept that seemed taboo in a country whose fundamental existence functions within “law and order”. Nonetheless, the children made a presentation at the broader conference announcing that in their workshop they had come to the conclusion that there were three main environmental hazards plaguing their communities, which were pesticides, the police and prisons.
Critics have been asking whether prisons themselves were the best solutions to social problems since the birth of the penitentiary system (Kushner, Pg 3/10). In 1902, the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow told the male inmates in a Chicago Cook County Jail that jails should not exist, and they do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. Which is true considering in the American Prison Industrial Complex based on recidivism rates in 2024 according to the World Population Review, 77% of convicts reoffend within 5 years upon release. Meaning, prisons do not reduce “crime”, nor do they reduce harm in society. The capitalist system that fundamentally operates on the exploitation of human beings is a crime in itself and causes far greater harm than any single violent offender. Prisons do not “protect us from violence” especially considering the fact that most of the violence committed is by the police, government institutions and the systematic intentional displacement/disenfranchisement of vulnerable populations.
Ruth Gilmore states that “where life is precious, life is precious” which essentially means if we don’t have a system that fundamentally operates on penal punishment of whatever is said to constitute as a “crime” in society (which in Afghanistan a woman seeking an education would be considered criminal), if instead we treated humans as humans and not as criminals or “savages” that perhaps the collective behavior could overall potentially improve. If we get down to the root causes of why a human may behave violently or cause harm to others instead of causing more harm to them perhaps, we seek to empathize and understand them so not to have these behaviors repeat. It is a cycle of violence that never ends unless we break the cycle. However, there will always be human beings who will cause harm in societies and prisons will never fix, solve or change that fact of human nature. To be solution-oriented means we must humanize violent offenders and try to see what might have led them to act in the violent ways they did. We may find we have a lot more in common with these “criminals” then we want to believe.
Humanitarian crises such as war, homelessness/displacement, natural disasters, psychological/mental issues, trauma, addiction, poverty are all the root cause of why most humans behave violently or cause harm to others. For example, if a person grew up as a child being exploited and saw this as normal within a capitalist society that functions on exploitation, they may grow up to exploit their own child or others. In many cases the abused becomes the abuser. Ruth Gilmore states she never met a person who caused harm that had no harm done to them first. Hurt people, hurt people. Prisons continue to punish hurt people for hurting people because they are hurting only perpetuating more hurt. That was a bit of a tongue twister but essentially, we need to help those in pain and crisis rather than punish them for how they are reacting to pain and crisis. Prison Abolitionists seek to reduce harm and find solutions to why people are causing harm rather than continuing a never-ending cycle of harm, which is the penitentiary system- that does neither. Prisons do not reduce harm, nor do they prevent others from causing harm. They also do not generate any profits, they simply are a black hole that the State/ government invests our tax dollars into to create an economy and employment for some at the expense of harming others, hence the monopoly on violence.
If healthcare, affordable housing, social security/disability, mental health services, food security, resources for victims of trauma amongst many more social safety nets were being appropriately invested in as opposed to allocating funds for carceral spaces and the Prison Industrial Complex- a lot of violence and harm would be reduced drastically. Alas, that would destroy their monopoly on violence that they use to obtain State welfare benefits (state funding) for themselves, instead of investing into welfare benefits for the vulnerable populations. They much rather these vulnerable populations remain the targets of carceral space and incarceration as a scapegoat to suck dry state funding for their own employment based on this violence (that they systematically create on purpose) rather than just simply invest state funds into actual welfare programs. Hence ironically making prisons the biggest Welfare Queens we ever seen.
References
Author, Rachel Kushner. (April, 17, 2019). Are Prisons Necessary? Ruth Gilmore Might Change Your Mind. The New York Times,
World Population Review (2024). Recidivism Rates by State 2024. Recidivism Rates by State 2024 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/recidivism-rates-by-state
Anthropology 230 Krista K
10/01/24
The Ethnography of New York and New Jersey
I grew up in multiple different neighborhoods in New York City from the 90s-2000s and from a very young age recognized the segregation of the city. My father worked for the Department of Sanitation during the 80s-2000s when the mafia was running it and lived in a predominately white (Irish, Italian and German) racist neighborhood called Gerritsen Beach full of cops, fire fighters and other union workers like himself. The irony of this neighborhood is that the crack era did not discriminate against race so many of these white people living in this area became heavily addicted to crack and fentanyl- my sister being one of them. I met mayor Giuliani at 7 years old in front of the well-funded pristine Brooklyn Public Library on Gerritsen Avenue down the block from my father’s house-just to give you an example of the political ties and special privileges this neighborhood has. My dad is an evangelical white man of German descent born in the 1950s who didn’t require a degree in higher education to become a foreman in his 20s at Bethlehem Steel and worked on the Intrepid in Manhattan. He got into Brooklyn Tech with a score of 75 which ironically in 2003 in the 8th grade I was denied entry into Brooklyn Tech because my score of 80 was not enough. My father inherited three waterfront properties with docks for people to rent boat space on behind each of them, a privilege that most of us couldn’t even imagine especially with the housing crisis.
My mother entered the New York City foster care system at the age of 11 and lived in poverty with her foster mother in Marcy projects in Bed Stuy, who was only slightly better than her biological mother that burned her with cigarettes. Her father, my grandfather, was a Norwegian notorious criminal from Sunset Park Brooklyn during the “Rolling 20s”. He was in prison for 10 years for bank robbery and eventually died an early death to alcoholic liver cirrhosis, same as my mother’s biological mother. My mother followed her biological’s family tradition by dying this year from alcoholic liver cirrhosis, a passive suicide that she’s been dedicated to my entire life. My father knew my mother lived in poverty and was vulnerable with no family or anywhere to go, so my mother took the deal and stayed with my abusive father. They were both heavy drinkers and before I was born were cocaine, crack and meth addicts. I believe my father was also possibly involved in some organized crime at the time I was a child however I have no concrete evidence for this claim. This is based on his highly paranoid behavior of people constantly being out to get him.
Due to them not wanting to be parents because substance abuse had them in a chokehold, I ended up being raised by my best friend’s family who were a middle class educated first generation immigrant Haitian family in Canarsie on East 80th by the B82 bus. I used to speak and understand Haitian Creole when I was 8 years old. I probably was the only blonde-haired blue-eyed child in Brooklyn at that time eating goat with rice and peas for dinner. Her parents were Baptist Christians who made me go to Brooklyn Tabernacle Church downtown Brooklyn every Sunday no excuse. They were my parents which was a relief because they did not drink, or smoke and they were not abusive. I got tired of going to school smelling like cigarettes. They were safe, kind and if not for them I do not believe I would be here today. My Haitian mother tried to help me get into NYU for journalism, but I was gang raped by the Folks at 15 years old in Vander Veere projects in Brooklyn which caused me to spiral further into the street life straying away from my goals and dreams. Because of my increasing juvenile delinquency, my Haitian family did not want me to be a bad influence on my best friend (their biological child) so they had distanced themselves from me. I was left to fend for myself in the streets of New York as a teenager sometimes sleeping outside or on subways. Or at random older men’s houses in East New York a neighborhood in Brooklyn where the parks were for shootings and not children playing.
I moved out of New York City at 18 to Georgia for college and since I didn’t have parents, I felt I might as well be on my own since I technically already was for so long. I was obviously extremely poor and the only job who would hire me an 18-year-old kid with no experience was a cheap motel that paid me $4 an hour. One day out of hunger, desperation and wanting to pay my electric bill so I could afford air conditioning in the 100-degree temperatures of Georgia summers, I stole an expensive camera set from one of the guests at the motel hoping to pawn it for food and electricity. Of course, I was fired and the guest pressed charges against me. At 19 years old I was now a convicted felon for grand larceny. This greatly effected my ability to get decent jobs which I obviously was unable to for many years so that kept me in poverty. As James Baldwin said best “anyone that has been poor knows how expensive it is”.
Majority of the people who surrounded me in poverty with felonies and similar traumatic backgrounds were black people. This is a major reason to this day my father’s neighborhood doesn’t like me and considers me a “wigga”, which is a slur used to describe a white person who affiliates with black people. Everyday I drive home to the quiet clean neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach with no garbage piling up, no rats running around, no parking meters or silly “No Parking” signs, no noise, no traffic unlike Little Caribbean Flatbush Brooklyn- this is like day and night two completely different worlds in the same exact borough. To this day because my daughter is biracial, I face a lot of discrimination and disapproval from white people. Every neighborhood in Brooklyn is segregated. The white neighborhoods are clean with zero police patrolling and quality super markets stocked with fresh produce that I never see at the Keyfood on Flatbush Ave in between Clarkson and Lenox road. That Keyfood in Flatbush is dirty, mainly has processed food choices and hardly any produce options, a lot of the food is expired and the seals have been broken.
Oh, but it gets way worse than New York City which I found out when I moved from Georgia to Camden, New Jersey. Camden was once the murder capital of the United States for a decade straight when I was a teenager. I can assure not much had changed in Camden from 2017 compared to 2007. I lived in Pollock the worst part of Camden which is adjacent to North Philly not far from the notorious “skid row” on Kensington Avenue. Pollock used to be inhabited by the Polish hence the name. Due to white flight and the flexible accumulation of Campbells Soup, which was the main source of work for the people of Camden, the city crumbled. The mayors have always been corrupted which evidently shows amongst the benign neglect of these three cities Camden, Philly and Baltimore. Even now Wilmington Delaware another city devasted from flexible accumulation and white flight.
In Camden there were shootings in broad day light and people trying to break into your house at night. I saw dead bodies of people overdosing on the streets as first responders and police looked like novelty cops, standing around laughing almost as if they got their uniforms from Party City. The cops were either too scared or maybe directly told by the mayor to ignore all crime in Camden. You can quite literally kill someone in Camden and the police will act like nothing happened. Camden, like North Philly and Baltimore, looks like a warzone or a third world country. I once attempted to take a bath in my house on 1274 Jackson Street and the water came out brown. I thought Flint, Michigan was the only city lacking clean water. I learned very quickly in black impoverished areas these inhumane conditions are the norm across the country. New York City is very special because it gives impoverished and black people the chance to rise from their circumstances. When you are born in a place like Camden, Philly or Baltimore- there is no way out of your circumstances. It’s like quicksand, a death trap almost impossible to escape. This is absolutely a war tactic on black people in the United States.
The schools were obviously understaffed and underfunded with too many kids with behavioral issues but not enough social workers or teachers to accommodate. When my daughter was having behavioral issues due to witnessing past domestic violence between me and her father along with post separation anxiety from our “divorce”, the first thing they recommended was to take her to “crisis” (which is the psych ward in Cooper University Hospital downtown Camden adjacent to the Rutgers campus) and suggested medication. My daughter is also extremely advanced for her age but due to the behavioral issues like most black or biracial kids in the inner city they try to push them into special ed-which I vehemently declined. I also wasn’t privy to giving my 6-year-old any medication. To me this was an unethical suggestion from the people who we are supposed to trust to teach our children.
There are no supermarkets in the area with any fruits or vegetables except one Aldi which is almost on the outskirts of Camden and requires a car for transportation, an unattainable luxury to have for most people in poverty. Unlike New York City, other cities in other states don’t have reliable public transportation so without a car they suffer. They’re stuck. Only thing to eat in the area was corner store food, crack, fentanyl, Chinese food, Puerto Rican food and a few pizza joints that refused to deliver because the block was too dangerous so that also required a vehicle for pick up. I was in an abusive relationship that I had to escape and abandon my house in Camden, which of course the police could’ve cared less, so for a while I was homeless living out of my car until I got into a domestic violence shelter in the quiet lush much safer area of Blackwood New Jersey.
I visited about 14 apartments in New Jersey with the security deposit and rent money in hand ready to sign the lease, but it was no use, no one was renting to me. I was left with no choice but to move back to Brooklyn with my alcoholic parents in Gerritsen Beach a neighborhood I had hoped to leave in the past. I now see it as an enlightening experience for me to study and see the contrast of these neighborhoods amongst the boroughs. They recently suspended certain bus lines in far areas where you’re stuck without a vehicle such as Starrett City in East New York Brooklyn. There is no supermarket, food or store whatsoever for miles. It is a long walk up Pennsylvania avenue to even get to any stores. Almost all the Rite Aids in the black neighborhoods of New York have been closed which leaves elderly and disadvantaged individuals with less access to medicine and necessities.
One of my best friends lives in Flatbush on the border of Crown heights, my other best friend lives in Jamaica Queens which is starting to remind me of Philly. Just last month at the gas station a man was waving a gun at me as I was pumping gas in my car on Farmers Blvd. I drove off frantically without filling my tank however a few weeks ago a person was shot in the head in that same exact location on Farmers Blvd by that exact gas station. The person who was shot lost control of the vehicle and hit a woman with her three children. I went to visit my friend that night and saw MSNBC one of the famous reporters on the scene, police tape everywhere and detectives standing over bodies. A scene that will never be seen by the white people of Gerritsen Beach or the Jews of Midwood by Kings Highway and Madison High School.
In Flatbush Brooklyn, my other best friend lives in a rundown building where they refuse to turn her gas on so she can’t use her stove, and she is harassed constantly by the crackhead neighbors. The trash piles up as high as me on these blocks but never ever in places like Breezy Point or Dyker Heights. Or in my father’s neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach. I guess only certain people are allowed basic human rights and necessities in this country. From what I have seen in my 33 years is the luxury of clean water, proper sanitation, school funding, clean air, jobs, healthy food, transportation access and safety from extreme violence are all only exclusive rights solely for white people in many areas and major cities of the United States.
ANT 210 03 Krista K
02/17/2025
Field Notes on Gendered Space
*I must put a disclaimer that I was extremely ill with the bird flu this entire week and was unable to go many places if at all. I almost had to be hospitalized so I’m going to do my best. I guess luckily for me I still had a car appointment I had to go to at the dealership on Friday morning while I was still ill. I was in a lot of pain and did not want to go to this appointment, but I had to and so since this is the only space I was able to visit I will do my field notes on the car dealership. I wasn’t actually able to take any notes because I was barely able to sit in the chair comfortably since I was experiencing severe body pain and chills but I will do my best to record what I saw.*
Open Road Honda Dealership and Service Center, Edison, NJ, Friday, February 14th, 7:30AM. There are the usual employees present at the front where you check in your car for service. A few women and a few men. Aside from the mechanics who are all males. The employees indoors that greet you at the desks are a combination of men and women. The mechanics who take your car for service are all men. There were two different female employees I never seen before working at the front desk who were both very attractive and done up with make up and hair done. I never seen them before in my 5 years of coming there so maybe they usually work a different shift, but it was Valentine’s Day so I’m guessing they wanted pretty women at the front, who knows. Many companies will hire attractive women for these types of reasons, as greeters and in desk positions.
As you can imagine it was mainly men in the dealership quietly waiting. There were about 4 other women who were all over the age of 45. A few were in their 40s or 50s and one of them was over 60. Which speaks to older people having more financial security or being able to have a vehicle specifically women. I saw two other men who were around my age early 30s, I’m 34, but there were no women my age or younger. Which speaks to a lot less women having cars, driving cars or taking their cars to the mechanic for service which kind of reinforces those stereotypes that cars are “masculine”. My mother did not know how to drive her entire life, I know many women who do not know how to drive, and I know women who have a license and know how to drive they just don’t have a vehicle. This speaks to a lot less women, primarily younger women, having access to vehicles and lacking the ability to drive compared to men drastically. Also, when there are women who have vehicles, they tend to be much older and financially stable. Maybe this speaks more to certain privileges and resources being less accessible to women than men.
Another thing about the women was it seemed they either all had careers or they were retired. One of the women in their 40s-50s was dressed in green scrubs making me assume she is either a nurse practitioner or physician assistant since RNs tend to wear red. The dealership is also next to Princeton Hospital in New Brunswick, which is a very good hospital, so I assume she makes more money than most Americans or women in general. This also speaks to class and the class of people primarily at car dealerships. The other woman was on her laptop clearly doing work while she was waiting for her car being serviced drinking a coffee. I was rocking back and forth in my seat like a crazy person in extreme pain shivering which everyone was looking at me as if I was a drug addict. No, I’m just sick. But again, classism. I don’t look like the class of people who is “supposed” to be there especially not as a female. I was the youngest female there; I didn’t look professional or well off or apart of the class or age group the other women were clearly in. The woman who was over 60 looked of retirement age. So, I didn’t fit the typical female you see at the dealership which always garners unwanted attention and stares, even when I’m not rocking back and forth like a crazy person. There are other times I come to the dealership looking normal and presentable and people still look at me as if I do not belong there.
The only people in my age group were two other males. Majority of people at the dealership were all over 40-50 including the men. This may speak to financial stability of the older generation, maybe more responsibility in taking care of your vehicle as an older person where younger people may miss and skip oil changes, it may speak to privilege of even being able to afford an oil change or service on your vehicle that the younger generation can’t afford oil changes or vehicle maintenance, the generational wealth gap between the older generation and younger, the lack of vehicle ownership in the younger generation compared to the older generation, and how this drastically affects women way more than men. That not only are you less likely to have a vehicle or get it serviced if you are younger but if you are a woman, this lack of access is multiplied even more. There was about 20 people in the dealership and only 4 of us were women and out of that 4 only 1 of us was under 35 years old- (me).
A man came in and apparently knew another man who was waiting, and they started talking. They sat right next to me so luckily for us I can use their conversation in these notes. I found out that they work for the same employer as contractors and work on building projects. Apparently, they have building projects in Miami, Chicago, St. Louis and other places that I don’t remember but hearing this made me assume they are in a much higher tax bracket than I am. Again, back to class and classism and the primary class of people in the dealership. Which shows that depending on what class you are in directly correlates to the presence of vehicle ownership or the latter- the lack there of. That certain classes of people disproportionately have access to vehicles and have the ability and privilege to drive in comparison to other classes of people. They both stated they were bringing their car in to be serviced for their wife on Valentines Day. So, this showed me another key point that although there were more men in the dealership some of them were taking their wives’ cars into be serviced for them. This would mean there are more women’s cars being serviced at the dealership who do drive but they are not physically present because their husbands took their cars in for them. This can also speak to martial status and if martial status increases the likelihood of vehicle ownership for women. The men were also over 50 years old, so I assume their wives aren’t much younger. If we include the wives of these two men as also having their vehicle serviced than we can add them to the rest who are in the age range of 45+ years old. Which still enforces my observation on the generational differences in vehicle ownership and vehicle ownership amongst genders.
It also can be considered that this was a rare and exceptional moment since it was Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day gender roles play a major part for example men are traditionally to get gifts or perform romantic gestures for their woman/ sweetheart. Perhaps if not for Valentine’s Day we would mainly see men getting their own cars serviced and not bringing in their wives’ cars for service so that might be an exceptional variable. The men also laughed at the mechanics recommendation at replacing their air and cabin filter for $100 when they cost $20 and he claimed, “I can do It myself”. He declined the overpriced mechanics suggestion to replace his cabin filter which also made me think about all the times I overpaid for that since I don’t know how to replace it. I know it’s easy, I know I must open the glove compartment or pop it our or something but as a woman I am paying for convenience, I guess. Which is another thing to note that many times men will be more assertive and deny add Ons at the mechanic and are less likely to overpay especially for services they don’t need. This is why they always tell women “Bring a man with you to the mechanic and see the difference in what you’re charged”. That’s not to say there are not women who aren’t knowledgeable about cars and can’t handle themselves just fine. But it is true, women are more likely to be overcharged by mechanics due to lack of knowledge of cars, women being more agreeable in nature than assertive and their lack of ability to fix certain things in their car on their own.
I guess from all of this we can see that the car dealership was a pretty good place to observe gendered space.
02/09/2025 Krista K
ANT/PSY 201-03
Field Notes: Gendered Behavior in Superbowl Commercials
During the Superbowl there were two commercials regarding gender roles that stood out to me the most. There was a commercial I believe before the Halftime show that showed young girls being ridiculed by the male jocks in their high school for playing flag football. The boys were named “Chad” and “Brad” which are the names used in our current society as euphemisms for privileged hetero white males who possess toxic masculinity. In other pop culture terms or simpler terms- fuck boys essentially (I’m not sure if I can include profanity in this but I felt it was necessary for linguistic purposes; and science). The Chad and Brad were wearing red lettermen jackets which are the typical jackets that many football players sport. There was also a letter ‘C’ on their jackets which to me along with the color red symbolized conservatives and conservative values, which tend to consist of ideology revolved around traditional gender roles.
With Trump just filing executive orders to dismantle the transgender and LGBTQ communities I found this to be a very intelligently made commercial in our current political climate. The girls who were playing flag football were mainly black and brown girls, that was another key element I noticed. During a time where women’s rights have been under attack aggressively, Black women are the ones who endure the vast brunt of the suffering that comes with misogyny and our patriarchal society. Whether it’s from higher femicide and sexual assault rates, the hatred projected onto immigrants or higher maternal mortality rates, Black and brown women are being affected by conservatives’ policies more than any other demographic. In my opinion these were all subliminal messages being conveyed regarding feminism and the current war we have on gender roles in our polarized country.
As the commercial continued, the Chad and Brad challenged the girls to a game of flag football to “prove girls have no place in a man’s sport”. The girls beat the red coats and progressed onto a professional team to win a championship. The commercial concluded by saying “support women’s flag football in all 50 states” and stated that the NFL would be working towards a women’s football division. This was such a profound commercial especially to be played on national television during rural America’s favorite game where every conservative, sexist and misogynist in the country was most certainly tuned in. I can only imagine the repulsed and sarcastic reactions this commercial probably provoked behind closed doors in many Americans’ living rooms.
The second commercial was aired after the Eagles had already won the Superbowl. It was a commercial for Jeep Wranglers with Harrison Ford having a “manly monologue”. We live in a society where to appeal to male viewers you can’t come across as “soft” or “feminine” in anyway. You can’t to be “too woke” if you want to grab the attention of white conservative leaning American men. The marketing of this commercial was totally genius. Indiana Jones, one of the most beloved characters by most white American men, was speaking about civil rights for humans in a way that even an incel or Elon Musk might understand. Harrison Ford was depicted living alone in a log cabin with a German Shephard dog, which tends to be affiliated with hunting (very masculine).
It also appeals to the male loneliness epidemic which many males can probably resonate with the visuals of seeing Harrison Ford living alone in the country with his dog and his Jeep. As each scene of the commercial was strategically showing how masculine and relatable he was to the average American white male, he spoke about how trans and gay people should not be persecuted or deprived the right to be who they are just because they are different. He made having empathy and tolerance for transgender people seem understandable to the toxic masculine audience who may reject the same message when delivered by more feminine or woke individuals that they would typically dismiss or tune out. I cried at the end of this commercial because I admired the tactful way they utilized marketing strategies to appeal to the male conservative audience but also the entire message was so beautiful. Seeing that commercial during the Superbowl made me feel there may still be hope for Americans to raise their consciousness and become more educated on things that make them uncomfortable or that they were unknowingly socially conditioned to hate. Also, what is more masculine than Harrison Ford in a Jeep Wrangler driving down a dirt road with a German Shepard? Chef’s kiss, truly.
Anthropology 230 Krista K
9/26/27
Brett Story starts discussing Ferguson, MI not only because of the unlawful murder of Mike Brown by police but also due to the severe segregation built into the city’s communities which is the cause for such discrimination and police brutality. As quoted by James Baldwin “Anyone who has been poor knows how expensive it is”. These communities are strategically manufactured and racially spatialized to keep black people in a cycle of criminalized poverty and homelessness. These racially spatialized zones of the city, such as the city of Jennings, are environments whose infrastructure’s sole purpose was to cultivate more prisoners (or dead bodies rather) to exploit in the prison industrial complex.
Municipal restrictions in St. Louis to allocate taxes for their local governments due to clauses such as the “Hancock Amendment” gives police incentive to target citizens for petty traffic violations to allocate money that they were unable to from taxes. On a personal level I have dealt with my fair share of unnecessary police brutality, harassment and being pulled over for petty offenses that I could not afford but also in attempts to suspend my license. This incentivized policing depraves the community of humanity by seeing them as just a number. What is the difference between this “civilized” quiet holocaust that the United States prison industrial complex/criminal justice system is performing on black people verses Hitler in the Holocaust? I believe in fact the death toll for black people in the United States under these conditions and systems has been a lot higher. How is this dynamic possible if “All Lives Matter”? I guess this is a slogan only said to dismiss black lives and confirm that they are excluded from “All Lives”- because they are considered a number not a LIFE. Nazis also branded numbers onto concentration camp victims. I see no difference really.
Neoliberalism is basically unchecked unregulated capitalism. The initial freedom of individualism with little government interference on the market initially promoted by the late Thomas Jefferson has undoubtedly gone way too far. Billionaires currently destroy the environment and deplete the earths’ natural resources due to flexible accumulation- the expansion of moving their means of production overseas for a lager profit margin. Of course, not without the demise of all nature and humanity within its vicinity. “The free market” is a controlled market that was never “free”. There is obvious nepotism, discrimination, racism and white exceptionalism that is at play here which means those who even benefit from this “free market” are primarily white males. A very small consolidation of power in comparison to the globes population. It also allows for a slew of corruption for example today we continue to fight our own corporations to not put chemicals in our food that is banned in other countries. These same conglomerates who have no shame poisoning us for profit would never serve to other countries the same ingredients they serve to us here in the United States. The FDA is basically a cartel and mafia, the way it allows unregulated capitalism to run amuck in the food and drug industry. Interesting to know how food, one of the most vital things for our health and wellbeing, is also being regulated by a company who gains incentive through Big Pharma? I think its safe to say these two organizations need to be separate as opposed to being intertwined which is the likely cause for corruption. There is too much conflict of interest for these two entities to be operating as one, however Liberalism (Neo liberalism primarily) allows such an obvious paradox to exist.
I witness White Spatial Imaginary every day. My father is from an Italian, Irish and German evangelical & catholic neighborhood who never experiences crime or trash all over their streets. Just last week 6 people were stabbed around the block from my dad’s house and the neighbors’ reaction was “this can’t happen HERE”. But why not here? Why is it that the neighborhood my daughter’s father grew up in, Brownsville, can be plagued with crime but just not in white spaces? I have a lot more to expand on this in my next paper so I will not say too much but carving out these cookie cutter communities of idealistic values for only whites while displacing and causing disparity amongst black people is quite literally a war strategy. Create unsufferable impoverished environments that lack the resources that are available in white spaces, ONLY for black people, to breed mental illness, PTSD, sociopathy and obvious increase in criminal behavior for survival or from environmentally induced mental disorders. They are modern day “breeding plantations” for more black bodies to enter the prison industrial complex- or death. You cannot convince me this has not been an ongoing corporate legalized Holocaust and genocide on black people.
Anthropology 230 Krista K
11/14/24
Racial Capitalism is an inherently race-based racialized system which uses differences between people, such as skin color, to divide the working class and justify exploiting certain people over others. Robert D.G Kelly’s argument about the fundamental structure of the United States was that Financialization, Globalization, Privatization and Neoliberalism are the base line motivations for keeping a Racist Capitalist State as the main form of government across the world in order to continue exploiting labor and natural resources while also controlling the white working class by using identity politics in order to prevent them from uniting with others in the working class/proletariat who are not homogenous. Racism gives poor whites the false sense of inclusion with the ruling class which causes them to see others in the working class “who are not the same race” as inferiors and subordinates, even wanting to hopefully have a group of people they too can exploit one day to become rich. I’ve always known this because of my own personal lived experiences but learning the actual terminology to describe what is happening broke down in such a detailed well-spoken manner was not only immensely validating in a world filled with propaganda but opened my mind to even more knowledge and vocabulary that I did not know prior. This shows me that every single institution or system that exists in our world it’s primary root of origin is racism/racial capitalism and hetero patriarchal authority.
9/19/24 Krista K
Anthropology 230
The culture that has been cultivated in our modern society under White Supremacy has shaped our mental maps of reality in many psychologically damaging ways. For one, using the South Bronx as a prime example of how White supremacy shaped our cultures current caste and class system, the community was suffering from benign neglect under a racist government that only prioritized the interests of Europeans. The slumlords were burning down the Bronx working with insurance companies for money grab schemes that they could dump on and blame the poor citizens of the community- scapegoating the groups they had already dehumanized under this culture that only allows certain ethnic groups to have any power. The apathetic self-serving wealthy gaslit the abandoned community which was famously exhibited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan stating, “People in the South Bronx don’t want housing or they wouldn’t burn it down”. (Marshall Berman, 1982) (Decade of Fire, 2018)
During the World Series, Reggie Jackson who was a superstar athlete and first black player (and the most expensive) to be signed to the Yankees at that time, Jackson’s controversial political takes demanded more eyes on the conditions of the South Bronx where Yankee Stadium is located. (Jeff Chang, 2005) Sports and baseball particularly had brought in the revenue but more importantly it brought in the white people, the politicians and the people who had the power within our culture to see the Necropolis (Jeff Chang, 2005) with the ability to make a change. The United States seemed to be more concerned with overseas affairs since their economic interests are primarily international due to flexible accumulation and industrialization. (Marshall Berman, 1982) However, the revenue of Baseball and Reggie Jackson (the star slugger) in particular, gave a culture of people who once felt they had no power, no voice or agency suddenly all three of those things. One thing black and brown people understood is when it comes to getting the American governments’ and elites’ attention- they will be invested in whatever cause is lucrative for themselves (in this case baseball).
Robert Moses had an ethnocentric idealism with his new concept of modernism. The question is not whether modernism is good or bad but WHO is modernism good and bad for? With his racist projects and developments already displacing 200,000 BIPOC in the South Bronx, which he saw as his playground to build as he pleased with no regard for human beings. This was the foreshadowing of white flight, red lining and a modern form of segregation in a city that was once known as the “Wonder Borough” for it’s harmonious integration amongst multiple ethnic groups. (Decade of Fire, 2018) (Marshall Berman, 1982) Robert Moses built multiple expressways and highways, at the expense of impoverished black and Hispanic people, for whites to be able to commute into Manhattan for commerce from their cozy suburbia in New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island. The exploitation of communities and people of color has its roots going back to 1619 when Spanish, British and French colonizers invented “Whiteness”.
Not only was the concept of race a complete social construct not based in any biological or scientific evidence but depending on what region you lived in the world shaped your views of who had power- and who did not. Although in the United States the North was often a place people of color went to seek asylum from the Confederate South, based on what we see in the South Bronx the whites still exercised a more covert insidious form of racism that was quite literally built into the infrastructure of this city’s design. It seemed there was no escape from the clutches of White supremacy at every turn no matter where black people migrated, the whites who were in power made survival extremely difficult for BIPOC.
To uphold the system of White supremacy, they even went so far as to have doctors and scientists praise the pseudo-science of Eugenics, which was not based on anything other than pure delusion and superiority complex. Racism and white supremacy is so ingrained in our culture and our mental maps of reality that many people today still suffer tremendous psychological affects due to the severe generational trauma this system has caused. The South Bronx and even The Bronx to this day has never recovered from their awful reputation of being a warzone. To this day New Yorkers still jest about The Bronx being the concrete jungle, or like Wu-Tang has described Brooklyn as “The Brooklyn Zoo”. The emergence of Hip Hop with artists like Grand Master Flash and KRS-one, who was also of Jamaican descent, bringing awareness to the inhumane conditions of The South Bronx and black people across the entire nation. It was a movement that had a ripple effect that to this day is still prevalent in our society. Music had become a radical form of expression and a form of revenue without begging for the racist government to come fix their problems. Hip hop became an impactful solution as resistance against a culture in which black and brown people were not seen as having a voice. It goes to show how much of a difference a community can make with organization, unity and remembering our voice is our greatest weapon. (Jeff Chang, 2005) (Decade of Fire, 2018)
Anthropology 230 Krista K
10/18/24
The Emergence of Command-and-Control Policing:
Broken windows policing is harsh, aggressive policing and surveillance on impoverished and black communities. I mentioned this today on the quiz that many police and immigration officers used the Patriot Act to justify breaking into Americans homes on the “suspicions of terrorism” (which they should be suspicious of themselves primarily in that regard) which ended up being majority drug related busts that had zero to do with terrorism. Command and control policing is essentially legal public policy that enforces repression of black and impoverished communities. It enforces the militarization of police, like the creation of the Talban (sips tea), where police can use inhumane violence and force behind the guise of “fighting crime”. This reading validated my and my peers life experience where for years they have gaslit us into doubting our reality that this was a very intentional war that was declared on black and impoverished people in this country. I experienced this firsthand unfortunately so it’s refreshing to see I am not alone and finally these conversations I’ve been screaming for years are being heard/ acknowledged. I thought we would never get to this point of people recognizing that this is modern day slavery and aside from technology we have not advanced as a society in America since the 1700s. Vitale and Jeffersons main argument is that Neoliberalism allowed a system of mass incarceration that created the billion dollar industry of the prison industrial complex which instead of seeing people as humans, they were criminalized to become modern day slaves at the hands of a greedy corporation that prioritizes profit over human rights. (CCA, Corrections Corporation of America) (ALEC- a major lobbyist that influences politicians to enforce public policies that cater to maintaining mass incarceration)
Why does Neoliberalism allow for mass incarceration? Well, every single major company such as Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Kellogg’s, JC Penny, the list goes on and on let’s just say all the businesses under Blackrock and Vanguard (because that’s what it is) are strongly reliant on the free labor being provided by the prisons in the United States of America. When Trump said he wanted to bring back manufacturing that was outsourced overseas and have majority of our consumer goods produced in America as opposed to China, he wasn’t kidding. He just failed to mention in the fine print that this manufacturing labor would be heavily provided by inmates in our prison industrial complex.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander:
Michelle Alexander’s main argument is that nothing has changed in this country besides the way we view “reform”. Disingenuous language has been intentionally used in politics and public policy to enact the same exact circumstances and results of Jim Crow in black communities. For example, when presidential campaigns are aimed at instilling a strong emotion like fear into citizens to manipulate a population into believing other humans are their “enemy”, it is used as an excuse to continue legal slavery, discrimination and war on said “enemy” communities. The role of a “criminal” in our society is an insidious tactic to intentionally dehumanize a group of people to justify mass incarceration and a dog whistle that can be used against a person instead of directly associating the discrimination as “racism”. As many people say to defend Donald Trump, “how is Donald Trump a racist he hasn’t said anything outright racist?!”. Well, for one he did and for two the term “criminal” is in fact a label that is used to describe black and immigrant peoples primarily. This was demonstrated by Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama to appear “tough on crime” in a country where “crimes” are punished differently depending on who you are.
Many people who hold high ranking positions in society, especially those with diplomatic immunity and a lack of oversight (like the CIA), can get away with crimes far worse than Trayvon Martin walking at night wearing a hoodie. Driving with a broken taillight, most likely because you can’t afford to get it fixed, is also a crime punishable by death if you are a black person (Philando Castile). Me and Trayvon Martin share the same birthday, February 5th. I guess certain harmless actions we may partake in as human beings trying to survive can suddenly be considered a criminal offense depending on who you are in the caste system.
I was arrested in 2010 for grand larceny and labeled as a felon for majority of my adult life for stealing a camera set because I was a hungry college student living in poverty at 19 years old with no parents-I just wanted to afford my electric bill for once. As someone who was born in 1991 with a sister born addicted to crack and alcohol in 1986 and a brother who is a black ops navy seal born in 1982, I sometimes felt nothing changed until I read Michelle’s book. What has changed is people finally waking up and acknowledging we have a problem, something I longed for and felt like I would never see be spoken about in my lifetime. I was hopeless for years thinking no one could see what this system really is so from then to now the collective consciousness has drastically changed thankfully. I notice a shift now in how majority of Americans view the criminal justice system. It is a shame that no matter our efforts they will weaponize what they can to use as leverage in their political campaigns, such as using Willie Horton as a scapegoat for the criminalization of black people as a monolith. Even “credible” organizations such as the Innocence Project are using similar tactics by basing criminal defenses in cases regarding Shaken Baby Syndrome as “junk science” (which the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Association of Neurological Surgeons among many more reliable medical organizations mentioned on dontshake.org the National Website for the Institute of Shaken Baby Syndrome have already discredited these misconstrued studies as irresponsibly being used to overturn guilty convictions) as an attempt to exonerate guilty men, similar to Willie Horton. It is statistically proven that only 43% of inmates that the Innocence Project files appeal for are exonerated as innocent, 42% are in fact confirmed guilty with DNA and 15% are found inconclusive due to unfounded or unreliable evidence (such as the false statements of Shaken Baby Syndrome being debunked). As Michelle Alexander emphasized, even under “liberal leadership” of presidents who presented as “compassionate and trustworthy”, there were many ambiguous policies being signed into legislation that contradicted this guise of “advocating for human and civil rights”. A lot of attempts at “reform” are simply rebranded tactics that have been recycled time and time again throughout our history as a covert way to continue mass incarceration agendas.
Anthropology 230 Krista K
11/25/24
Racial Capitalism and Prison Abolition
According to Robin D.G. Kelly, capitalism originally emerged as a racial and gendered regime which was not incidental nor accidental. He explains further how race isn’t primarily about identity, but it is a means of structural power through differences amongst humans. Essentially, you can’t have capitalism to begin with without the system of racism and patriarchy because according to Stewart Hall, “race and gender are modalities in which classes live”. Meaning it is no coincidence that the primary countries in our modern world that are being exploited by imperialist empires to extract a surplus supply of resources are countries primarily inhabited by black and brown people. It’s a system of extracting and accumulating resources while also exploiting the labor of black and brown people to create a “white’s only” welfare state. In other words, all the surplus that our government extracts does not go into rebuilding social safety nets in disadvantaged or disenfranchised communities. On the contrary, racial capitalism intentionally creates precarity in black and brown communities while using all surplus that is extracted from exploited laborers to provide home subsidies for whites and investing into a large police state to maintain order while also using violence to prevent nonwhites from rebelling.
Investing into a prison industrial complex and police state is one of the oppressive systems that makes it very difficult if not downright deadly for the exploited laborers and impoverished communities to fight back against wealth disparity caused by Racial Capitalism. For example, when looking at how the United States handled the rebelling workers in Guatemala under United Fruit’s exploitation they responded with military force and what we now know as the Banana Massacre. I always found it hypocritical that a cop can take a black person’s life with no consequence without them having the right to the judge, jury and trial every citizen is entitled to in the United States but if a black person were to commit murder they would get the death penalty in some states. There are instances where we plainly see on body cam police killing innocent black people execution style where in the state of Texas an execution style homicide is a crime punishable by death. It’s hard to take the government’s stance on “law and order” and “crime” seriously when they live by a “rules for Thee, not for me” mantra. In “Stealing a Bag of Potato Chips and Other Crimes of Resistance” by Victor M. Rios, we see in the story of Mike being racially profiled for stealing when he was not by the Asian store clerk, even when he had intentions on paying for his items. In a hypocritical country that forgives Wall Street Bankers for collapsing the housing market and stealing millions of dollars, justifies genocide and slavery in the name of “expansion and economic growth” , what can truly constitute as a “crime”? In fact, the system of Racial Capitalism rewards the rich for profiting off stealing from us, so ironically to make a statement Mike stole a bag of chips on purpose. Which is hardly causing any harm to anyone including the store clerk but what constitutes as a “crime” greatly depends on your race, gender and/or class.
The police are not public servants nor here to “fight crime” whatsoever their entire purpose is to uphold and protect the interests of Racial Capitalism. Now, although we know there is no biological basis for “race” and that race is a social construct that was intentionally created to justify having a subordinate subservient lower class to dispossess from their native land to extract resources while also exploiting the native inhabitants for their labor-the system of racism is very real and deeply ingrained in the foundation of our society. This system was experimented on whites first before they expanded racism to divide the white laborers from the black slaves. Racialism was already permeated in Western Feudal Society under the ideology of herrenvolk which was a “presumed German racial superiority” amongst the other Europeans who were considered “subhuman, sub cultural”. Irish, Slavic and Jewish peoples were often the groups exploited under Racial Capitalism before they invaded Africa and started the Atlantic Slave Trade. Europeans had created their own system of racial hierarchy amongst the whites because this is fundamental to the existence of capitalism. Without the have nots, the “haves” cannot have. There is no surplus value to exploit from others of a “different class” in a communal society of equality, therefore being “white” in such a utopia would be obsolete and meaningless. Capitalism at its core cannot exist where there is not a lower class to exploit.
White school shooters who mass murder dozens of children are gently escorted into police cars while black women like Breanna Taylor can’t sit innocently in their living room without police randomly breaking and entering into their home murdering her in cold blood. How many times has a black person called the police for help because they were a victim of a crime, and the police ended up killing them instead? With that being said, the police state does not stop, solve or prevent crime. It is an organized monopoly on violence to maintain Racial Capitalism and the white welfare state that relies on it economically. Based on the article “Nothing Will Be The Same- A Prison Town Weighs a Future Without Prison” by The New York Times, the whites justify themselves being the beneficiaries of the Prison Industrial Complex due to neoliberal policies that ironically outsourced their employment prospects overseas and just like the poor black people they too were left unemployed in poverty due to flexible accumulation in their cities/ towns. This monopoly on violence and racial division were designed to keep white people believing that nonwhite laborers in the same working class as them are inferior so they would feel a part of the ruling class. This white privilege and different treatment by the police has intentionally dehumanized an entire group of people to keep poor white laborers in “white bondage” while also normalizing cruel and unusual punishment for “certain people”. If the white proletariat fought against neoliberal policies and formed solidarity with the black proletariat instead of selling them down the river for a corrections officer job and “the illusion of inclusion”, I’m sure a whole LOT would be very different. It’s astounding how brainwashing a group of people that they are “superior’ for having recessive traits would be so effective in dividing the lower class and supporting a ruling class that doesn’t care about them anymore or less than the black laborers. It’s a sham. Of course, the police not killing you for shooting up malls and elementary schools must also be a neat perk.
Ruth Gilmore’s stance on Prison Abolition is that “where life is precious, life is precious” meaning prisons don’t rehabilitate those it incarcerates, nor does it reduce harm in our communities. I remember when I was given a felony for grand larceny at 19 years old for stealing an expensive camera set while working at a motel making $4 an hour starving, how that conviction caused me more harm which caused me to ultimately engage in more harm. It’s a vicious cycle. I couldn’t get decent employment and continued to engage in “crime” or illegal activity just to survive. It was also hard not to justify being a “criminal” when isn’t that what this country is founded on? How am I a criminal for stealing but the founding fathers weren’t convicted for human trafficking for the Atlantic Slave Trade? There were never any “Numberg Trials” for the leaders of this country who committed some of the most heinous and horrendous crimes known to man. Isn’t the entire concept of capitalism a crime? Isn’t capitalism and Racial Capitalism entirely based on stealing and exploitation? If the people who decide what constitutes as a “crime” are the biggest criminals and cause the most harm to humanity how is Prison a system of “reducing crime and harm” in society? When you break down all the illogical fallacies and how the Prison Industrial Complex’s only function is to create a white welfare state at the expense of black people under a system of Racial Capitalism, the idea of Prison Abolition is not so abhorrent or farfetched. The true criminals are the ones in charge. Maybe if we can change the collective consciousness and hopefully dismantle racism and patriarchy, we can create a “Utopia” but just as Robin D.G. Kelly stated, I’m not sure that exists.
03/20/2025 Krista K
ANT 210
Sexualized Ads
Today I was taking the B train home at around 9:30 am and the entire cart was filled with ads for the dating app Bumble. There were no other ads which is strange because usually there is a combination of different ads at the very least, but they were all for Bumble. I even took pictures of the Ads, one of them showed a man laughing with the quote next to him stating “Dating in New York is a constant adventure”, and yeah, I guess from a male’s perspective that’s what it would feel like. I personally do not agree and if it is an adventure, it must be one that takes place in a jungle filled with tons of obstacles and scary beasts to slay. The fact that the entire subway car was saturated with Ads for a dating app tells me that the government, (or men), really want women to reproduce or at the very least start having more sex, since dating apps are comprised of 60% men; I suppose marketing and advertising to attract more women feels necessary. There were a few Ads for women, one showed a young Asian girl who was minorly white passing, (predominantly European features but she was obviously of Asian descent), and her quote read, “looking for someone to bring calm to the New York chaos”, which is laughable that a man would ever bring calm since they are the ones causing the chaos. It’s almost like asking for the snow to be the blanket to keep you warm when it’s cold outside.
Let me not generalize, I’m sure there are some great guys out there and I shouldn’t let my personal bias cause me to be cynical. Because, sure enough there was another Ad portraying the “good guy” or the “simp/beta” male, which is a term that men who can’t get women scornfully use to describe men who do nice things for women and men who “act like they care and have empathy”, which to most men seems like a scheme since they mainly pretend to have empathy to trick women. The Ad showed a guy, a very light skinned Hispanic man with green eyes who was also white passing on a skateboard, (so we can assume he has “safe” hobbies and maybe is “harmless”), a quiet shy guy who enjoys skateboarding, seems legit. Then his quote stated, “down to cross a borough (or two) for the right match”, implying he is the masochist self-sacrificing male willing to do anything for companionship. However, he is also being shown on a skateboard implying he doesn’t have a car and most likely is love bombing because realistically speaking constantly traveling through multiple boroughs just for a person you swiped right on the internet seems unsustainable and honestly logistic wise not practical. That’s a lot of wasted time traveling for a fairy tale that probably could’ve been used more wisely, for example maybe towards self-development and betterment so he can buy a car instead of that skateboard.
How can you pick up a woman on a date with a skateboard? Is he a “hobosexual”, (a homeless man who uses romance to find shelter), looking for a place to live or a second income on a dating app, or am I just traumatized and assume the worst of men? Well, Bumble did a good job of advertising that outside validation and meeting a stranger on the internet will fill the void in our lives. It sends the message to men that even with a skateboard, even without a car, even you are worthy of dating women and having sex- you don’t need much. Prioritize dating over self-betterment because dating is what will bring more calm to a person’s life, possibly even be an “adventure” for some men who are playing with a few poor young girls feelings that are looking for genuine love while they’re looking for excitement and dopamine rushes, and of course why try getting a car when you can manipulate a woman into falling in love with you instead which can be way more lucrative and possibly become a residual income if you play your cards right. This is why I’m no fun at parties or during scary movies because this is the uncomfortable way I view things that most either don’t notice or find benign. I’m probably just a bitter old skeptic that hates to see romance, then again romance shouldn’t require such heavy advertising.
Anthropology 230 Krista K
10/15/2024
Response Paper 2: Spatial Imaginary
Everyday I constantly see the difference between the white spatial imaginary and the black spatial imaginary. For one thing it’s interesting how the white spatial imaginary is meant to prioritize inclusion and community by of course excluding black people. They believe in the community contributing towards its own needs but of course property taxes in rich white areas fund better schools than the property taxes in poor black areas. Even something a lot of us take for granted such as parks, having safe clean open spaces. Robin D.G. Kelley argues that the creation of private parks and the destruction of public play areas by New York City in the 90’s is a small part of racial subordination and suppression (Lipsitz).
A few months ago, I was going to Physical Therapy in Coney Island across the street from the Carey Gardens projects. The area JUST built a supermarket there a year or two ago but before that there was really no access to food aside from junk or fast food. I guess the beach and boardwalk is technically the “park” and open space they have in the area however most people live in the middle of nowhere far from transportation in large apartment buildings with not much to do in the surrounding areas. There is one open park all the way at the end by the water past Mark Twain junior high school but again without a car depending on what side you are on it’s not accessible. I noticed the basketball court in the projects being demolished and it made me think about how that’s probably the only open space and recreation they have in that area. Due to white spatial imaginary they want to build a casino and make Coney Island like Atlantic City. Basically, exactly what was stated by Lipsitz, that white spatial imaginary caters to the private sector and big business while black spatial imaginary just wants clean safe open spaces for recreation, for children to be able to play, proper education that clearly cannot be relied on the lack of property tax funding in the area and the basic necessities of an environment that white spatial imaginary creates for themselves.
In my neighborhood currently they are all tight knit with connections to police, politicians, fire fighters, real estate agents etc. almost everyone in this neighborhood has been apart of a union. Of course, generational wealth and inherited property is an advantage this neighborhood has compared to others in New York City. There aren’t even parking meters here on any street nor are there any signs with parking regulations a true rarity in New York City. There is hardly any policing after all majority of them live here or have ties to them here. It’s interesting to me how even what I see currently happening today in Coney Island with the destruction of the only basketball court in the vicinity yet just down the block a giant casino project is in progress. The white spatial imaginary seems to have no regard for the black spatial imaginary or black spaces in general. Kind of like gentrification, creating the white spatial imaginary in once predominately black communities raising the prices and costs of living forcing the long-life residents to relocate from a community that was always their home. The inconsideration, selfishness and the neoliberalism that allows the white spatial imaginary to roam free without any regulations allows the priority of casinos over safe parks for black children.
It’s evident that New York City wasn’t only doing this in the 90s when we see today the greed of the white spatial imaginary allows the city to tear down black spaces to cater to the private sector and big businesses. Neoliberalism is essentially unregulated capitalism with zero restrictions where money and profit are valued over quality of life. If the white spaces have a strong community where they are “responsible for their own communities”, they conveniently leave out their advantages and abundance of funding they have in comparison to black spaces. When the white spatial imaginary expects every community to use their property taxes for their education, we can clearly see how neoliberalism is only beneficial to those who have- not the have nots. In this regard I believe government should fund education in low-income areas but of course those funds are prioritized for the white spatial imaginary such as the casino they plan to build in Coney Island while leaving most of the area in poverty with no resources or many safe open spaces.
Neoliberalism allows for these circumstances that stem from the strong beliefs in individualism with little government interference, to allow people to earn as much money as possible unethically while also neglecting major issues in communities that are not their “priority”. For one, systems like health care, education, parks, cleanliness and safety should not be left up to the community especially when one community is much more impoverished and lacking than the other. The resistance to any government interference in capitalism, the resistance to any communal solution or anything seen as “socialism” such as billionaires being forced to pay their fair share in taxes is what holds these communities back. There are so many unethical harmful practices that are completely legal because ironically the conservatives who favor the wealthy are the most “liberal” group of people on the planet based on their financial capitalist views. The issue at hand is that we even have a white spatial imaginary vs a black spatial imaginary. Our focus should be a “human” spatial imaginary that prioritizes the needs of humanity and not private business.
Anthropology 230 Krista K
10/28/24
Response Paper 3: The New Jim Crow, War on Drugs and Durkheim
Me and so many of my peers have been victimized by the War on Drugs and tough on crime policies in the United States. I always found it extremely paradoxical how the same people who participated in slavery were also the same people who wrote into the law what constitutes as a “crime”. I knew from a young age you were only considered a “criminal” depending on who you were in the caste system. Like KRS-One says in his song Sound of Police– “there could never be justice on stolen land. Are you really for peace and equality? Your laws are minimal cause you won’t even think about looking at the real criminal” (the cops). Also, it’s well documented and pretty much common sense that the CIA brought heroin here from Afghanistan and cocaine here from Colombia. So how exactly are you going to “arrest drug dealers” and be “tough on crime” when you are the one trafficking the drugs and bringing them here to begin with? That never made sense to me. A lot of presidents and CEOs of major companies have committed more crimes against humanity than any human or “crack dealer” they have attempted to police and criminalize. As mentioned in The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and the movie The 13th, the war on drugs was a way to dehumanize any drug addict or dealer as an excuse to mass incarcerate black and brown people. This is about to get heavy so buckle up.
My older sister is an 80s baby, born addicted to crack/cocaine and alcohol she was put on phenobarbital and sent to the NICU, which was a substance given to babies with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to help with withdrawal symptoms. Both of my parents were severe alcoholics riddled with mental illness and struggled with addiction. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and cocaine use in mothers during pregnancy was later revealed to be a high-risk indicator for a child to develop Anti-Social Personality Disorder- or sociopathy/ psychopathy, which my sister developed consequently to my mother’s addiction. The addiction and mental illness in my family was generational. As you can imagine the 80s and 90s war on drugs caused an immense mental health crisis. Now this was obviously much more prevalent in black and brown neighborhoods than in white ones so black children and families suffered the brunt end of this drug crisis and let me explain further as to why.
White people like my sister are coddled, enabled and treated for their disease of addiction- NOT as a criminal. My sister has been on cocaine since she was 12/13 years old, I was 7/8 years old at the time she began using it. My sister was in and out of rehabs for as long as I can remember. She was in a program called Dynamite which helped white teenagers addicted to crack, cocaine, heroin and hard substances during the 90s and 2000s. I even visited her in one of the rehab facilities she stayed in Yonkers, it was actually very nice, but she always managed to find a way to sabotage her residency and get kicked out. She’s 38 years old now and this will be about her 574035th attempting sobriety. She has been arrested multiple times for violent assaults, however, when in front of the judge she puts on the crocodile tears, she complains of her suffering with the disease of addiction and is sent away to Samaritan Village upstate in a clinical setting to be treated for her revolving door behavior. Yet, on the drastic contrary, one of my best friend’s childhood friend Nicole who died last year struggled with addiction. She was a dark skin black woman living in Florida which we see plain as day Jim Crow in full blown effect in that State. Nicole found out she was adopted in her early 20s which sent her into a spiral of depression and suicide ideation. Nicole became addicted to cocaine and meth, once a straight A valedictorian honor student and cheerleader who aspired to be a doctor, Nicole ended up selling her body addicted to drugs losing custody to all her children. The system was not as understanding to Nicole as it was to my sister and you can imagine why.
Last year Nicole was pulled over by police in Kissimmee, Florida for reasons unclear but due to Nicole’s addiction and involvement in prostitution (which is not criminalized in New York, only the traffickers receive penal punishment girls involved no longer are treated as criminals but as victims of trafficking) however in Florida unlike New York, drug use AND prostitution are both to this day still heavily criminalized-especially if you’re a black woman. There are prisons built on old slave plantations in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi etc. that have billion-dollar daily revenue and are utilized by almost every major company for their supply chain and manufacturing. Like Sandra Bland in Texas, Nicole mysteriously died in police custody. They claim she swallowed some drugs that she had on her to avoid arrest because she just had a baby and did not want to lose custody of her child and overdosed. However, there was not much proof or plausible evidence of this since the police are refusing to release her autopsy, (which is suspicious to say the least) and it’s easy to blame the murder of a drug addict on an “overdose”, like they attempted to do with George Floyd. To the police not only are you black but because you are a drug user it is an excuse and justification to treat you like an animal or not human.
Police were the cause of George Floyd’s death due to his “crime” of selling loose cigarettes and they tried to discredit George Floyd’s inhumane unlawful murder by claiming he died of a fentanyl overdose and mentioning in the media that he had an addiction problem. As if that is an excuse to murder a person for selling cigarettes because as I stated I witnessed firsthand how the system treats my white sister drastically differently. Yet, not only does she use the same hard drugs that the government use as an excuse to dehumanize black people, but she actually was detained on violent crimes and not petty loose cigarette selling or having a broken taillight. Or walking to the store for skittles in a hooded sweatshirt in Jim Crow Florida as a black boy like Trayvon Martin. Marijuana is still criminalized in many southern and midwestern states for the same exact reason in fact marijuana use and distribution in these states is treated very similarly to cocaine, meth and heroin. The “crime” has the same penal punishment. It’s still a mystery whether Nicole overdosed or was killed by the police, and they used that convenient excuse to absolve themselves of guilt but today is her birthday she would’ve been 33 years old. She left behind 3 children and a 1-year-old baby that all miss her dearly and will never see her again because her disease of addiction got “treated’ differently than people like my sister.
When I lived in Camden New Jersey and realized how the “community” literally felt like a prison with no resources or anyway out I saw how impossible escaping poverty was and felt like I was stuck on a slave plantation. The cops looked like nazis and slave plantation overseers, which to this day in the southern prisons “overseer officers” still ride around on horses to make sure inmates are picking cotton diligently in the hot sun for 12 hours straight. Living in Camden and frequently visiting Philly I saw how the war on drugs was exactly that- a war. The cherry on top was realizing that we were still living under Jim Crow which I didn’t discover until I went to family court in Burlington County New Jersey to report abuse against my biracial daughter’s father and the misogynistic racist judges who saw me as a “mud shark” (a bottom feeder; a slur used to describe white women who have children with or date black men) kept allowing her abusive father parenting time. I couldn’t understand why with proof of abuse and neglect against my child that the judge kept allowing my daughter to have visitation time with her father. Then I learned that during Jim Crow due to hegemony, the one drop rule, all biracial children were seen and treated as black no matter what and the black side of the child’s family was typically always awarded custody as white women were punished for reproducing interracially. I was extremely poor, with no family struggling in Camden and felt like I was losing my mind thinking no way this could be possible, this was 2019 not 1959, right? No coincidence Trump was president during this time.
As Durkheim spoke about a lack of social support and the way crime is determined in a country can lead people to suicide, that’s exactly what began to happen to me. I was being trafficked by an abusive man who broke my ribs and threatened to kill me when I tried to escape him all while trying to pay the bills working 2-3 jobs, fighting my daughter’s abusive father in court to no avail, which made me question the entire criminal justice system and who it was designed for. Clearly not for the victims like me or my daughter or even Nicole. They didn’t see my child as “biracial” they saw her as black and treated her as such which caused me to become enraged and manic. I felt like I was a mouse on a wheel running so much but never getting anywhere. I was angry to watch child services, the family court and police let my child be abused because she was black and as a white woman “I’m not supposed to have children that are not white”. I would call the cops asking for help to get my belongings from the trafficker who tried to kill me so I could go into the domestic violence shelter, and they laughed at me and hung up- not joking. So, what “crime” is worth a cop’s time if a woman escaping a violent sex trafficker is laughed at and ignored? I had no family, friends and no way out. I went to get therapy because I felt all of this was causing me to lose my mind but when I went to get help, I saw them drug testing women and they took a girl’s baby away from her because she failed a drug test for marijuana. She was crying and screaming as they took her baby that was in a car seat carrier away from her because she smoked weed. At the time weed was illegal in New Jersey. Another child ripped from their mother for “drugs” and of course she was black.
How do I get help if I go to get help, they will take my child? The police don’t care, the judges don’t care, child protective services don’t care so I went into a psychosis I lost my mind. I felt like I was enslaved with no escape, no light at the end of the tunnel I felt like I was stuck in 1845 the way I saw how much racism still was so prevalent in this criminal justice and court system. I drove on the opposite side of the i-95 trying to kill myself. The cops arrested me and took me to a psych ward which was just as bad if not worse than jail. Every woman in the psych ward was black or Hispanic except for me. I was severely raped and abused in the psych ward along with many other girls who were also either victims of trafficking, homeless, drug addicts or married to abusive men who continued to send them to the psych ward like we were living in 1925. While I was in the psych ward my child’s father went to court and lied told a Burlington County judge that I “abandoned my child” when he knew I was in the psych ward, but he wanted to get himself off child support and abuse me by using my child as a weapon. He told blatant outlandish lies which without evidence or proof the judge terminated my parental rights without my knowledge and gave custody of my daughter to her abusive father. I ended up losing my job, my house, all my money and finding out I had lost rights to my baby girl when I got out of the psych ward. It felt like a nightmare. It was at this moment I realized we were living under Jim Crow and that nothing had changed. They were punishing me for “having a black child” and treating my child as they treat all black children. I saw firsthand by unfortunately having to endure it myself how this system destroys black families and takes black children from their mothers at disproportionate rates.
I fought hard to get my daughter back because I failed a hair follicle drug test for THC so the state of New Jersey felt that was a good enough reason to keep me from my daughter for 9 months during 2020. The trauma me and my daughter had to endure due to the war on drugs and new Jim Crow alone is living testimony that this system only HARMS and does NOT help. It creates vicious cycles of unescapable generational trauma, addictions and trauma-based disorders. Growing up in school we had the DARE program and “Just Say No”. The DARE program was an “anti-drug campaign” which is ironic because during this time I believe Big Pharma was prescribing OxyContin like candy to people suffering with pain to make a profit. They were also pushing Ritalin and Adderall on little kids during this time as well, which are both chemically just pharmaceutical methamphetamine. I always saw the nefarious contradiction and as “heart felt” and well intentioned that the DARE program seemed, it was just another form of employment by the war on drugs. Which if we’re being realistic coffee is also a drug caffeine is in fact a drug. I currently must take medication to survive and get through each day. Without “drugs” a lot of us would not be alive.
Now my daughter’s school in Burlington County New Jersey in Maple Shade is handing out red wrist bands that say, “drug free” and while the message isn’t a bad one per say it reminds me of being in school in the 90s receiving the DARE program wrist bands. Is this a precursor to a recycled era of the government once again trying to exploit yet another drug crisis as an excuse to maintain “law and order” and the economy of the prison industrial complex? I think so. Especially when the real criminals are the ones who write the laws. It’s a “crime” for a 12-year-old girl who was raped by her father to get an abortion in some states. Yet a convicted felon and rapist can run for President.
Krista K Anthro 230 9/17/24
The Social Life Of An Object: Sugar Cane
In class we discussed the social life of sugar or sugarcane. Sugar was introduced to the Spanish (Christopher Columbus) as a gift from the governor of the Canary Islands in 1813. Sugarcane takes 12 months to grow and needs a certain amount of hot weather and moisture. It is not planted with seeds but with stalks called billets. Harvesters used cane knives and billhooks to cut the leaves and stalks before bringing them to the sugar mill, which of course was located right next to the sugar fields. This was obviously taking place in tropical environments such as the West Indies (or Canary Islands) where Columbus was first introduced to the sweet treat.
Of course, sugarcane has now become very processed into granulated white sugar or brown sugar which is now available to all people on a global scale. Sugarcane played a major role in globalization because it led to the Spanish voyaging to and colonizing other countries to harvest the sugarcane while also introducing it to the French, British & the new founded “13 United States” (post American revolution) who of course wanted their hand in the pot of the flexible accumulation of sugarcane plantations (of course in countries primarily inhabited by indigenous black and brown people). The French in fact became extremely fond of sugar being known for their unique confectionaries and desserts (which was depicted in culture later through movies like Beauty & The Beast) and ironically initially sugar was only for the royals- not the peasants.
However, as increased disparity between the French elites and its citizens wage gap continued, a slogan initially donned by the infamous Marie Antoinette to “let the poor eat cake” became historical. This was meant to imply that instead of “peasants” eating nutritious food (that was unaffordable for most at the time) to let them eat sugar instead. This was the foreshadowing of how a lot of our foods TODAY became extremely processed with more added sugar than humanly necessary. Today, billionaire companies who continue to unethically exploit natural resources and human labor, continue to market sugar to the working class and poor (with our current profit incentive based privatized health care system also becoming a benefitting economy from sugar).
This surplus of sugar and sugary foods created an array of health issues in disadvantaged communities who either don’t have access to or can’t afford more nutritious foods. Either way, the elites and 1% see this as a “win win” situation where their addictive harmful super processed sugary products not only are being sold but are being sold to the people they intend to harm- (While ALSO profiting off of their insulin purchases and expensive healthcare bills). Big pharma and many food companies who are mega conglomerates may have some sort of alliance when it comes to sugary processed foods.
So did the super power countries (USA, Britain, France, Germany, China) who had formed a treaty that specifies which parts of Africa they are each allowed to exploit and establish flexible accumulation. Today, Kellogg’s has a commercial that says “Eat cereal for dinner!” which is eerily reminiscent of Marie Antoniette’s “Let them eat cake”. The discovery of sugar cane has long since created a ripple effect of extreme imperialism, globalization, flexible accumulation and slavery/inhumane labor conditions that persist to this very day. The world has never been the same since the discovery and manufacturing of processed sugarcane/granulated white sugar. It is a huge staple now in every Americans diet. Our foods today contain more sugar than nutrition while targeting the poor and working-class communities who sometimes, due to spending the majority of their days working, have no time to prepare meals and instead opt for fast food or convenience. It seems corporations are happy that labor conditions combined with inflation being so terrible that most citizens who are not wealthy have become reliant and even dependent on sugary foods- mostly not by choice.
