1. Ruth Gilmore says that capitalism will stop being racial capitalism, when all the white people disappear from the story. What’s the connection between “whiteness” and racism, do you think?

what she says is that “capitalism requires inequality, and racism enshrines it.” In other words, capitalism requires inequality to take place, and racism was the method used to “enshrine” or preserve capitalism as standard practice. If it weren’t for racialization during this era capitalism would not have had a racial component, but since it did, capitalism is a racial issue. Whether or not oppression was the result of capitalism or if capitalism was the result of oppression is a chicken and egg type question, but the larger point that we can extrapolate is that racism and capitalism are intertwined historically. Gilmore states that these issues are still systematically oppressing black people. She says the version of capitalism we’ve inherited continues “to depend on racial practice and racial hierarchy, no matter what.” The reason whiteness is connected to this is geographical. Europe took over the world. This is why North is at the top of a map rather than the bottom even though our planet has no relationship to up and down as it hurtles through space. Gilmore is not saying white people are inherently evil. She is saying capitalism/racism, which IS inherently evil, is also inherently white. Due to the nepotistic nature of wealth, the history of capitalism will always have a connection to modern problems relating to contemporary capitalism. Because of how much race permeates this issue, it shares the connection.

2.Gilmore makes the point that criminals are actually being created by the criminal justice and prison system (she says “the category of ‘criminal person’ can be perpetuated”). According to Gilmore, how does that happen, how does the prison system create new “criminals“? Do you agree with her view?

What Gilmore is talking about is the prison industrial complex. The first point she makes is that the prison industrial complex only works when prisons are being constantly supplied with new offenders, and this means that incarceration capitalists are encouraged to imprison as many individuals as they can in order to assure state funding. So how do these capitalists encourage this? The answer is that the systematic treatment of black people results in a poverty trap that encourages criminal behavior in order to get ahead. Simultaneously this promotes a distrust for authority which results in more delinquency. More delinquents result in more local fear, which results in the use of more violent policing strategies. By heavily policing black communities more black criminals are caught which creates skewed demographics. These skewed demographics are used to justify even more over-policing. If it weren’t for the expectation/fact that black people are mistreated by society, fewer black people would resort to crime. It’s worth mentioning that poverty traps can affect all low-class people, but the difference between blacks and the rest of us is that they are arrested at a disproportionally higher rate regardless of the offense which results in disproportionally higher incarceration rates. Also, by labeling/assuming ex-cons as criminals, they are apt to repeat their offenses. This is because treating people like criminals and nothing more results in ex-cons viewing themselves as such. This is known as the “cycle of crime.” I agree with Gilmore, especially when she connects the prison industrial complex with chattel slavery. The prison industrial complex is an ugly series of paradoxes.

3. Describe how you understand what Prof. Gilmore – in the last part of her video – calls “liberation struggle”?

I believe she is referring to the struggle against oppression that many individuals have not opened their eyes to. I think the point that she’s making is a blue pill/red pill argument. She’s saying that we have to be aware of the many processes people go through as they enlighten themselves in the gloom of their own oppression. A “liberation struggle” is a term generally used to describe movements and so what I think Gilmore is saying is that there are many personal triumphs as well as injustices that lead individuals to come to “consciousness,” which she says is done by “fomenting,” or instigating, a liberation struggle/movement.