1. Whiteness and Racism 

When Gilmore says racial capitalism will only stop when white people disappear from the story, she is talking about ending whiteness as a political project, not removing actual white people. Whiteness was built as a category used to justify inequality, and it still shapes who gets protected and who gets targeted. The connection between whiteness and racism becomes obvious when you pay attention to how institutions operate. Whiteness is treated as the norm that must be protected, while people outside of it are seen as suspicious or threatening. You can see the same logic in immigration policy, policing, and even global politics. It mirrors what happened in places targeted by anticommunist campaigns described in The Jakarta Method, where entire groups were labeled dangerous to justify violence. We saw a modern version of this during Trump’s presidency, when racist rhetoric, open appeals to white grievance, and policies like the Muslim ban or family separation helped legitimize white supremacist beliefs that had always existed but were suddenly encouraged and brought into the mainstream. Racism works the same way now as it did then. It maintains the power and comfort of those seen as white while treating everyone else as a problem to be controlled. Ending that system means removing whiteness from its position of authority so it can no longer determine who is valued and who is disposable.

2. Prison System

Gilmore argues that the prison system actually creates the very category of the criminal, and I agree with her completely. The system responds to social abandonment with punishment instead of support, and that process turns poverty, instability, and survival into crimes. When jobs disappear, when schools fall apart, when health care is stripped away, the state fills that vacuum with police and surveillance. People get pushed into situations where even trying to make ends meet becomes criminalized. And once someone is labeled a criminal, it sticks to them permanently. They lose access to employment, housing, voting, and education, which traps them in a cycle they can’t escape. The system then uses this manufactured crisis as evidence that more policing and more prisons are needed, which keeps the cycle alive. 

This is neo slavery. I absolutely believe that because the data is impossible to ignore. Mass incarceration exploded during periods of economic restructuring, and policies like the War on Drugs were never about protecting communities. They were designed to cage Black and brown people under the appearance of law and order. That is why there are more Black people incarcerated today than there were enslaved at the height of slavery, and that reality cannot be explained by population growth. It is the evolution of racial control, a system that creates the very conditions it claims to fight and profits from the lives it destroys. 

3. Liberation Struggle 

When Gilmore talks about liberation struggle, I understand it as the ongoing work of transforming the conditions that make oppression possible in the first place. It is not just about changing laws or releasing people from prisons. It is about demanding a world where communities are not treated as disposable and where punishment is not the default response to social problems. For me, liberation struggle means choosing to organize even when things feel overwhelming, because collective action is the only thing that has ever shifted systems this deeply rooted. It is a commitment to creating conditions where prisons are not necessary and where labeling people as threats is no longer an excuse fordenying them humanity.