1. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said so astutely, capitalism will cease to be racial capitalism when “all the white people disappear from the story.” Whiteness is deeply implicated in both the structure and operation of capitalism, which sustains racial hierarchies. Here, “whiteness” is more than just a racial identity; it is a social and political construction that has served to justify and validate systems of exploitation and inequality. In this regard, whiteness has been at once beneficiary and enabler of the capitalist system, obtaining economic and social advantages for whites at the expense of people of color. The connection between “whiteness” and racism in this schema would be that whiteness operates as a signifier of privilege and power in capitalistic societies. Whiteness is tied to the economic structures benefiting from racial exploitation, whether through the enslavement of Black people, colonialism, or disproportionate extraction of labor and resources in many other ways from communities made marginal. Racism, in this sense, is not an individual prejudice but a systemic force that sustains these economic relations. According to Gilmore, dismantling racial capitalism would require dismantling structures upholding whiteness as a privileged racial identity, an exercise that calls for radical rethinking of economic and social systems built upon racialized inequalities. Thus, it is also a struggle against the social construct of whiteness and the privileges that come with it in the fight against racial capitalism.
  2. Gilmore suggests that the prison system creates actively new “criminals” by labeling people as criminals and reinforcing that identity through the system of treatment. Individuals who go into the prison system are being punished, not only for their crimes, but also subjected to a system that will constantly reinforce their criminal status. The prison system often offers little in the way of rehabilitation or meaningful support, which means that once someone is labeled as a “criminal,” that label tends to stick, even after they are released. It not only punishes but also prevents them from easily reintegrating into society through curtailing rights, making jobs, housing, and social services difficult to access; these very factors may drive them back into criminal conduct as a survival strategy. This punishment-exclusion circle creates the concept that once a criminal, always a criminal. I do agree to a great extent with Gilmore’s view: the criminal justice system has often failed to address the very roots of crime, such as poverty, lack of education, and social inequality, and instead has focused more on punishment and incarceration. This will not only stigmatize individuals but also keep them in a vicious circle of crime. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in many instances where former prisoners, unable to find opportunities for reintegration, are forced into crime. Instead of changing, the system too often locks a person into the role of “criminal,” reinforcing rather than breaking the cycle.
  3. In the last part of the video, Professor Gilmore frames “liberation struggle” as a process that involves contesting and tearing down systems that maintain racial capitalism and its constituent inequalities, including the criminal justice system. For Gilmore, the liberation struggle is less about reform of these systems but more about the radical rethinking and restructuring of the social, economic, and political systems that articulate oppression. It means confronting historical and current configurations of exploitation, domination, and racialization that marginalized communities face in their struggle toward a society with more equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and power. I understand “liberation struggle” not only as a combat against the injustices of the present but also as the vision of a radically different world: the undoing of systems of racial capitalism that have created society, particularly those specific ways in which race and class intersect to create structural inequality. According to Gilmore, the liberation struggle is collective, long-term work, one that requires solidarity across various groups as well as a reimagining of what justice, freedom, and community look like outside the existing structures of domination. It is a movement in the sense that it works toward the structural transformation of power toward conditions where all individuals, especially those who have been historically oppressed, have the ability and opportunity to live a full and meaningful life.

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