Life In Space
I talk a lot about the Black Social Movements class I took during the fall of my senior year of college. I’ve recommended two books — Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation — to anyone who’s asked for literature about race and police. But now I want to talk about the first book I read in that class: Stephanie Camp’s Closer to Freedom.
One of the central discussions in the book is about something called the “geography of containment.” Camp argues that monitoring the movements of enslaved people was paramount to total control. Enslaved people could only leave plantations with the antebellum equivalent of hall passes, and/or with white guardians who could vouch for the purposes of their movements. In response, as with all other forms of rebellion, enslaved people created secret maps and moved in the shadows between locations, either to plot escape routes or to simply be around friends or family in other areas. They risked brutality in doing so, but their lives were already brutal enough. They were living through a seemingly eternal, torturous genocide. It was worth the risk.
As soon as slavery was abolished, white institutions and civilians reconfigured the ways they could police the movements of black people. Any crime, real or imagined, regardless of severity, was grounds for arrest and imprisonment. Segregation limited where black people could live or eat or attend school. Because of the institutional disbelief in black narratives, segregation became the de facto rule even in places where it wasn’t explicitly stated — why, as a black person, would you walk in an all-white neighborhood, where at any moment a white person could accuse you of anything, and you would have no way of proving your innocence?
Nixon’s calls for “law and order” in the wake of the civil rights progress of the radical 1960s, Reagan’s mythological War on Drugs, and Clinton’s omnibus crime bill (plus his popularization of the term “superpredator” in reference to black youths) all contributed to the United States’ exploding prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, by a LOT. The entire purpose of prison is to control the movements and actions of its captives. And even upon release, people who have been imprisoned are still subject to the policing of their whereabouts. Jobs require you to disclose whether or not you have been convicted of a crime — and most will not hire you if the answer is yes — and parole often prohibits leaving the state or country. Also, the majority of imprisoned people are the working poor, so upon release they have nothing, trapping them in the same cycle of poverty that likely led them to be convicted in the first place. Then of course there is felony disenfranchisement — everyone currently incarcerated cannot vote. And in multiple states, felons who have been released will never regain that right again.
A lot of tone-deaf, privileged people have compared the current wave of social distancing and self-isolating measures to imprisonment. I don’t need to tell you why that comparison is out of touch and offensive. But it’s important to note how unevenly these policies of containment have been applied across racial and economic lines. Wealthy celebrities with multimillion dollar mansions may complain about not being able to leave their luxe compounds, but they have the freedom to roam tens of thousands of square feet and have their every need tended to by full-time staff. For middle- and working-class people who are working from home, they are in close quarters, likely with children home from school and possibly with extended family who are adding to the food and space demands that would already be stretched thin. For those who are deemed essential, their space is controlled too — without the resources to take time off work, they are shuttled back and forth every single day from home to a potential hotbed of viral infection. Also, I’ve seen countless news stories about how black and brown people are more likely to be stopped by police for violating social distancing rules (like wearing a mask in public) than their white counterparts. This is of a piece with the way laws are always unevenly applied to people of color.
That uneven application sparked a wave of protests that are still wracking the United States. George Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit bill and was brutally murdered by a police officer. He was unarmed and did not resist arrest. His death — and the apathetic response by law enforcement to adequately punish his murderer, Derek Chauvin, and Chauvin’s accomplices — prompted scores of frustrated citizens to demand retribution and assemble in cities across the nation. And maddeningly, restrictions like closing public transportation and enforcing curfews that proved flimsy when white protestors demanded haircuts and gym re-openings became martial law.
The government will seek to control the movements of our bodies as long as the movement of those bodies is a threat to their power. We are facing a catastrophic dearth of leadership and factual expertise at the highest levels, and because we are an unfettered capitalist nation, that means all decision-making is about the bottom line. It was an easy decision to give white people hair salons and beaches and restaurants back, because it would benefit the stock market and drive up spending. But to acknowledge the deep wounds caused by our police departments, with their unchecked budgets and alarming military arsenals, would require facing the financially powerful police unions and empowering the working class to have a political voice. If police departments were defunded, the money could be funneled into healthcare, housing, and public education. Cycles of poverty would be disrupted. And millions of people whose criminal records would otherwise have prohibited them from voting would get the vote back. The Republican party as it currently exists would crumble before our eyes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Democratic party were to then splinter, with a rapidly growing progressive faction advocating for equality in every sphere.
It is not a surprise that white people led the charge against public health containment measures. Their movements, historically, have not been policed so vigorously. They are unfamiliar with restrictions being placed on their agency, and those who protested proved they were incapable of making such sacrifices even in the interest of their own safety. It is also no surprise that black people led the charge against police brutality. For hundreds of years, unchecked police power has been the rule of law in the U.S., and black people have disproportionately borne the brunt of that corruption. If, as in the 1960s, this week of protests creates actual legislative change about police budgeting and power, we can expect to see massive social change follow close behind.
