Lack of Interest Convergence: Why Individuals and Organizations Refuse to Adopt #AbolishICE
This past summer I worked at a large national non-profit that focuses on using impact litigation to expand civil rights and liberties. As an immigrant rights advocate and having just finished my first year of law school, I was looking forward to working for an organization with an established image of progressive political values. All seemed well as I began working on litigation demanding the end of human rights violations in immigration detention centers. When the #AbolishICE movement garnered media attention, I expected that the organization I was a part of (providing free labor for) would rapidly jump on board.
#AbolishICE garnered social media traction in June of 2018 as Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policies regarding family separation at the border made headlines. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), established by George W. Bush in 2003 as a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, has become a violent regime of racist surveillance and policing against immigrant communities of color. Since its inception, ICE has targeted mostly brown and black immigrants who are in the United States without legal status by imprisoning and deporting them with little to no due process. Why is this? Neoliberalism. ICE detention centers are largely run by private for-profit companies such as the GEO Group, Inc that get rich from multi-million-dollar governmental contracts that require GEO to house immigrants. Not only is this an example of state-sponsored corruption and nepotism but private prison companies also use prison labor for continued exploitation and profits.
While the #AbolishICE cause is new in name, the movement to end private for-profit detention centers and other prisons is not new. Community organizations and activists have protested the American carceral state for decades. In fact, it has been the Black Lives Matter movement that has paved the way for challenging mass incarceration as it relates to the imprisonment of black men, women, and youth.
During my internship, it seemed obvious to me that our non-profit would rally behind the #AbolishICE movement, especially as we engaged in impact litigation seeking to stop border separation of families and constitutional violations in detention centers. I was perplexed when the organization did not immediately jump on the #AbolishICE bandwagon and emphasized the need to await further instructions from headquarters on what the responsive “messaging” should be. It struck me that there must be political, social, and economic reasons why this left-leaning legal institution refused to publicly acknowledge a platform calling for the end of institutional oppression of immigrants.
Here, I propose that the phenomenon of interest convergence, the idea that American society supports civil rights for people of color only when the interests of white people are aligned, explains why individuals and organizations still fail to adopt #AbolishICE. Establishments that cater to the needs and fragility of white stakeholders are careful not to scare them off with “radical” concepts of abolition.
In 1980, prominent critical race theorist Derrick Bell coined the term interest convergence to explain how many of the legal “wins” of the civil rights movement were actually a result of the alignment of white interests with the goal of racial equity for black people. Specifically, Derrick Bell speaks about how Brown v. Board of Education, the law that dismantled school race-based segregation, was not gifted to the black community out of the kindness of white people’s hearts. In fact, white supremacy in America had a vested interest in only the appearance of support toward the civil rights movement. That is why school desegregation was able to take place.
During the 1950’s, White American leadership realized that the nation could benefit politically and economically from the integration of schools in order to challenge communism, appease Black World War II veterans, and enhance industrialization in the South. [1] Ultimately, the reasons for why white communities, especially white elites, supported school integration measures relates to the economic and political benefits to be obtained from desegregation. The Supreme Court of the United States did not have in mind the liberation of black people, the deep injustices faced by them at the hands of white people, or the law’s construction of racism, when they ruled in favor of ending “separate but equal” educational facilities.
[1] Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma, 93 Harvard L. Rev. 518 (1980).
Derrick Bell’s theory of interest convergence can be applied to the ways in which individuals fail to accept and understand the #AbolishICE campaign. Many people, liberals and conservatives alike, do not see the idea of immigration detention centers as problematic because the interests of white supremacy upheld by the scapegoating of migrants. The Democratic Party has been active in approving funding for ICE while leeching progressive votes under middle ground discourse of “humanity” in immigration reform and pursuing a “need” for law and order in society. It was the Bill Clinton administration who approved the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, which expanded the kinds of “crimes” that made undocumented immigrants eligible for deportation.[1] Most “revolutionary” rhetoric spewed by the Democratic Party is a farce because it is not backed by actual power redistribution.
[1] Sean McElwee, It’s Time to Abolish ICE, THE NATION (Mar. 9, 2018), https://www.thenation.com/article/its-time-to-abolish-ice/.
The connection between Derrick Bell’s interest convergence and the lack of adoption of #AbolishICE cannot be overlooked. The solution to fighting the desire to play into white needs above all else is to give power to grassroots people’s movements and affected individuals. Only when white people step aside, can they truly be called allies.
