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Cayla Baluyot
Andrea Smith
ETST001 Section 31
29 September 2015
Davis and Are You Kidding.. Response
1.

According to Angela Davis, the real reason for prisoning and policing is that it is created

as a place of storage for undesirables in order to relieve the society of the responsibility of
engaging with social problems such as racism and global capitalism. She believes that corporal
migrations are the cause of prison expansion because it leaves entire communities in shambles
thus affecting their education and other surviving social services. Consequently, damaged
communities render perfect candidates for prison. In addition, prisoning and policing are easy to
accomplish because of the consent of the people because they assume that prison expansion
would create jobs, capital, local development when in reality it does not. Prisons just tend to
reproduce the same conditions that lead people to prisons.
On the other hand, Sam Mitrani asserts that the policing was created in order to protect
the new form of wage-labor capitalism from the working class, in which today are considered the
minorities. She believes that the police were molded to be violent in order to reconcile electoral
democracy with industrial capitalism where their main job is to enforce order among those who
resent the system in which are mostly consisted of poor black people.
2.

In Chapter two of Davis book, she demonstrates how prison institutions works in the

similar way as the system of slavery. For instance, the penitentiary prison is designed to provide
convicts with the conditions for reflecting on their crimes and repent; however, in reality, it is a
reflection of chattel slavery. Both institutions practice subordination of their subjects to the will

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of others. Like Southern slaves, inmates are isolated from the general population, depend on
others for food and shelter, and follow a daily routine ordered by their superiors. Moreover, these
institutions utilize forms of punishment that were very similar to the Slave Codes.
According to Mitrani, poor black and Latino people are the main threat to the bourgeois
civilization; therefore, they were molded to use violence to deal with the social problem. In
particular, the ruling class established hierarchies. The police redefined themselves by donning
uniforms, establishing their own rules, and identifying themselves with order. They can arrest
anyone who is considered a threat to this order who are mainly black people, in order to feed
them into convict labor systems. It is due to the police hierarchy that connects incarceration and
racism.
3.

Despite the flaws of the current prison system, Davis agrees that it still better than having

slavery, lynching, and racial segregation. However, she believes that we should reform the prison
system by making it restorative rather than punitive system because if prisons puts a greater
value on discipline and security, the inmates are more likely to grown on fear and they will have
a higher chance on opposing the system which would lead to more crimes.
On the other hand, Mitrani asserts that an alternative way to prisoning and policing is to
have a democratic police system in which the people get to choose and elect which police will
patrol each area. However, she admits that a democratic police system is unlikely to happen
because of how the origins of the police were created; that is, to control the working class and
protect the ruling class.

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Black Lives Matter Response
1.

The source of the disagreement in this issue is defining whose lives matter more. The

Black Lives Matter consider the phrase all lives matter to be violent because every life is not
treated as such while anti-BLM groups believes that Black Lives Matter is considered to be racist
as it promotes that only black lives have meaning.
2.

I am more sympathetic with the Black Lives Movement side because I think that their

position is easily misunderstood. Even before reading the articles about them, I originally
thought that the Black Lives Movement believe that only black lives matter but I was wrong. In
addition, I also agree that Black Lives Movement does not promote violence against police
officers but they simply want to call to end police brutality; however, they are often
misunderstood.
III. It Is Not Just Black Men Who Matter
In Andrea Andersons article, she raises awareness regarding how it is not only black men
who experience police violence but also women of color. Cases regarding police misconduct
against women of colour are under-studied and often overlook in national discussions. It is an
effective article because it increases our understanding of racial profiling by giving examples of
how black womens identities are always racialized and their racial identities are always
gendered. For instance, the Abbot v. Toronto Police Services Board demonstrates how Abbots
race and gender played a role in the officers failure to mitigate the situation. Cases such as
Abbots open up discussion concerning the social realities of racial discrimination and serves as a
reminder that racial incidents like the ones mentioned in the articles are not only exclusive to
Americans but also in other countries.

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