Whiteness is a social and political idea that determines who can access resources, safety, and full citizenship. It is more than just skin color; it includes a set of advantages and meanings that make inequality seem normal. Whiteness helps explain why some people get different treatment in jobs, housing, police actions, and social services. It marks certain people as more deserving of rights and opportunities. Racism includes the practices, laws, and social norms that keep this system in place. Because capitalism relies on taking advantage of workers and managing populations, it uses racial categories – like whiteness – to classify people into roles that can be exploited or ignored. To fight racism, we need to address these economic structures and cultural attitudes as well.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
According to Gilmore, the prison system helps create new \u201ccriminals\u201d because once someone enters the system, it becomes hard for them to escape that label. She explains that prisons and criminalization keep expanding, with longer sentences and more behaviors being treated as crimes. After people leave prison, they often struggle to get jobs, housing, or support, so they remain trapped in the same cycle. In that way, the system keeps reproducing the category of the \u201ccriminal person.\u201d I agree with her argument because when society constantly treats someone like a criminal even after they have served their sentence, it becomes harder for them to rebuild their life. Instead of helping people return successfully to their communities, the system often pushes them back into situations where they are more likely to end up involved with the justice system again.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
What I understood from Gilmore\u2019s idea of \u201cliberation struggle\u201d is that it is about communities organizing together to fight against unfair systems and improve their lives. What stood out to me was her idea that liberation struggles are always connected to real places and real people. In the example from Lisbon, people organized not only to save their homes but also to protect their community and support each other. They created spaces where they discussed politics, racism, history, and social issues together instead of staying silent. I liked how Gilmore described solidarity as something people continuously build and remake through collective effort. For me, liberation struggle means people coming together, learning from one another, and taking action to create change instead of waiting for institutions to solve problems for them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":11217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-14-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13131,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130\/revisions\/13131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}