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The Angela Y. Davis Reader
For three decades, Angela Y. Davis has written on liberation theory and democratic praxis. Challenging the foundations of mainstream discourse, her analyses of culture, gender, capital, and race have profoundly influenced democratic theory, antiracist feminism, critical studies and political struggles.
Even for readers who primarily know her as a revolutionary of the late 1960s and early 1970s (or as a political icon for militant activism) she has greatly expanded the scope and range of social philosophy and political theory. Expanding critical theory, contemporary progressive theorists - engaged in justice struggles - will find their thought influenced by the liberation praxis of Angela Y. Davis.
The Angela Y. Davis Reader presents eighteen essays from her writings and interviews which have appeared in If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Black Women and the Blues as well as articles published in women's, ethnic/black studies and communist journals, and cultural studies anthologies. In four parts - "Prisons, Repression, and Resistance", "Marxism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism", "Aesthetics and Culture", and recent interviews - Davis examines revolutionary politics and intellectualism.
Davis's discourse chronicles progressive political movements and social philosophy. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary political philosophy, critical race theory, social theory, ethnic studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural theory, feminist philosophy, gender studies.
Even for readers who primarily know her as a revolutionary of the late 1960s and early 1970s (or as a political icon for militant activism) she has greatly expanded the scope and range of social philosophy and political theory. Expanding critical theory, contemporary progressive theorists - engaged in justice struggles - will find their thought influenced by the liberation praxis of Angela Y. Davis.
The Angela Y. Davis Reader presents eighteen essays from her writings and interviews which have appeared in If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Black Women and the Blues as well as articles published in women's, ethnic/black studies and communist journals, and cultural studies anthologies. In four parts - "Prisons, Repression, and Resistance", "Marxism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism", "Aesthetics and Culture", and recent interviews - Davis examines revolutionary politics and intellectualism.
Davis's discourse chronicles progressive political movements and social philosophy. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary political philosophy, critical race theory, social theory, ethnic studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural theory, feminist philosophy, gender studies.
379 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 1998
About the author
Angela Y. Davis
116 books7,837 followersAngela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.
Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 21, 2020
Loved this so much. It's hard to find political theory that synthesizes gender, race, and economics so successfully.
November 21, 2016
Some of the highlights for me were:
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.
August 30, 2014
I had to digest this in small chunks, because I don't have the most academic of backgrounds and parts were pretty dense, but it was so worth it. Angela Davis is phenomenal as both an academic and an activist.
August 13, 2007
Angela Davis explains the reasons for not idolizing the work of activists in the 60's. She gives a good history of female involvement in the black panther party, and the rebirth of slavery in the united states.
April 16, 2026
AN EXCELLENT (AND VERY BROAD AND COMPREHENSIVE) COLLECTION OF HER WRITINGS
Editor Joy James (b. 1958) teaches African-American Studies and Humanities at Williams College; she previously taught at Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
She begins this 1998 book with an Introduction featuring a 20-page survey of ‘activist-intellectual’ Davis’s life and works, including her SNCC, Black Panthers, and Communist Party USA membership, as well as her political trials (she was once the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Woman’), her imprisonment, and her academic life. She explains that this Reader includes “selected essays from this body of work… organized into four parts: prisoners’ rights; intersectional analyses in Marxism and antiracist feminism; culture; and contemporary interviews. Although she has written extensively for nearly 30 years as a radical intellectual, Davis remains best known as a representational figure of a revolutionary movement in U.S. domestic racial politics.” (Pg. 19)
She wrote in a 1971 essay, “the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many bolstering the oppression of black people… these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus.” (Pg. 40) Later, she adds, “the prison has actually operated as an instrument of class domination, a means of prohibiting the have-nots from encroaching upon the haves.” (Pg. 45)
In a 1969 lecture, she observed, “The history of Afro-American literature furnishes an illuminating account of the nature of freedom, its extent and limits… Afro-American literature incorporates the consciousness of a people who have been continually denied entrance into the real world of freedom, a people whose struggles and aspirations have exposed the inadequacies not only of the practice of freedom, but also of its very theoretical formulation.” (Pg. 53)
Citing Kenneth Stampp, she points out that “those passages in the Bible emphasizing obedience, humility, pacifism, patience, were presented to the slave as the essence of Christianity… those passages that emphasized equality, freedom, and happiness as attributes of this world as well as the next… were eliminated from the official sermons destined to be heard by slaves. Thus a censored version of Christianity was developed especially for the slaves… Yet… new criteria for religious piety were developed within the slave community [in] the militant posture of a Frederick Douglass, a Harriet Tubman, a Gabriel Prosser, and a Nat Turner… Christian spirituals … were also powerful songs of freedom…” (Pg. 59)
She observes, “Fear has always been an integral component of racism. The ideological reproduction of a fear of black people… is rapidly gravitating toward and being grounded in a fear of crime. A question to be raised … [is] how the … ideologically produced fear of crime… serves to render racism simultaneously more invisible and more virulent…. How many black people … have successfully extricated ourselves from the ideological figure of the young black male as criminal---or at least seriously confronted it?” (Pg. 65)
She states, “The designation of the black woman as a matriarch is a cruel misnomer… because it implies stable kinship within which the mother exercises decisive authority… it is cruel because it ignores the profound traumas the black woman must have experienced when she had to surrender her child-bearing to alien and predatory economic interests.” (Pg. 113)
She clarifies, “That black women have not joined the anti-rape movement en masse does not mean that they oppose anti-rape measures in general. It was black women, after all, who conducted the very first organized protest against sexual abuse.” (Pg. 130)
She suggests, “The socialist movement must never forget that while the economic struggle is indispensable, it is by no means the sole terrain of significant anti-capitalist activity. Thus, the unique features of the women’s struggle cannot be restricted to economic agitation alone.” (Pg. 185)
She notes, “Black women have paid a heavy price for the strengths they have acquired and the relative independence they have enjoyed. While they seldom have been ‘just housewives,’ they have always done their housework… the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized---and all these services should be readily available to working-class people.” (Pg. 199)
She outlines, “I want to pose a question: How much of the ideological tradition of ‘defending our name’ do we wish to affirm and reserve? … I only want to make a few points, and leave the rest to you. First, we can no longer assume that there is a single monolithic force against which we position ourselves in order to defend our name---i.e., the white establishment. We have to defend our names in those places we consider home as well… Second, we can no longer ignore the ways in which we sometimes end up reproducing the very forms of domination which we like to attribute to something or somebody else… Third, we have to rid ourselves of the habit of assuming that the masses of black women are to be defined in accordance with their status as victims… there are those of us who have made it into the … corporate world or into the political establishment… Yet, when it is advantageous, we like to represent ourselves as victims. As when Clarence Thomas invok[ed] the idea that he was the victim of a ‘hi-tech lynching.’ Fourth, we cannot afford to commit ourselves so fervently to defending our names that we end up positioning ourselves against our Asian, Latina, Pacific Island, and Native American sisters.” (Pg. 226-227)
In a 1994 essay, she recalls, “Not long ago I attended a performance … by women presently or formerly incarcerated… in collaboration with Bay Area performance artists. After the show, I went backstage … One woman introduced me to her brother, who at first responded to my name with a blank stare. The woman admonished him: ‘You don’t know who Angela Davis is? You should be ashamed.’ Suddenly a flicker of recognition flashed across his face. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Angela Davis---the Afro.’ … it is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo. It is humiliating because it reduces the politics of liberation to a politics of fashion; it is humbling because such encounters with the younger generation demonstrate the fragility… of historical images, particularly those associated with African-American history.” (Pg. 273)
She wonders, “It is possible that if Malcolm had not been shot down… he might be identifying with the global feminist movement today? Would he have allowed his vision to be disrupted and revolutionized by the intervention of feminism?… In 1992 Malcolm’s legacy is being contested within the realm of popular culture… What is so striking about the debate is its anchoring point: the very conception of black nationalism---with its conservative radicalizing limitations and strong masculinist implications---that Malcolm problematicized at the end of his life.” (Pg. 280, 283)
Asked in an interview about feminism, she explains, “I don’t think I would propose a single definition of the term ‘feminist.’… But I do think we can agree that feminism in its many versions acknowledges the social impact of gender and involves opposition to misogyny. In my opinion, the most effective versions of feminism acknowledge the ways gender, class, race, and sexual orientation inform each other… Personally, it was only after many years of political involvement that I decided to embrace the term feminism. I now feel very comfortable calling myself a feminist. But the way I am a feminist tomorrow may be different from the way I am a feminist today.” (Pg. 304)
She states, “most people date the development of women of color as a new political subject from 1981, when ‘This Bridge Called My Back’ was published. Women of color conceptualized as a political project… is extremely important… The fact that race is placed at the forefront of women of color politics is important, because it also challenges the influence of nationalism on identity politics. Women of color formations are compelled to address intersectionality and the mutual and complex interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality.” (Pg. 313)
She explains in an interview, “Studying with both [Theodor] Adorno and [Herbert] Marcuse allowed me to think about the relationship between theory and practice, between intellectual work and activist work.” (Pg. 316)
This is a really EXCELLENT selection of Davis’s work, that will be of great interest to anyone studying her.
Editor Joy James (b. 1958) teaches African-American Studies and Humanities at Williams College; she previously taught at Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
She begins this 1998 book with an Introduction featuring a 20-page survey of ‘activist-intellectual’ Davis’s life and works, including her SNCC, Black Panthers, and Communist Party USA membership, as well as her political trials (she was once the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Woman’), her imprisonment, and her academic life. She explains that this Reader includes “selected essays from this body of work… organized into four parts: prisoners’ rights; intersectional analyses in Marxism and antiracist feminism; culture; and contemporary interviews. Although she has written extensively for nearly 30 years as a radical intellectual, Davis remains best known as a representational figure of a revolutionary movement in U.S. domestic racial politics.” (Pg. 19)
She wrote in a 1971 essay, “the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many bolstering the oppression of black people… these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus.” (Pg. 40) Later, she adds, “the prison has actually operated as an instrument of class domination, a means of prohibiting the have-nots from encroaching upon the haves.” (Pg. 45)
In a 1969 lecture, she observed, “The history of Afro-American literature furnishes an illuminating account of the nature of freedom, its extent and limits… Afro-American literature incorporates the consciousness of a people who have been continually denied entrance into the real world of freedom, a people whose struggles and aspirations have exposed the inadequacies not only of the practice of freedom, but also of its very theoretical formulation.” (Pg. 53)
Citing Kenneth Stampp, she points out that “those passages in the Bible emphasizing obedience, humility, pacifism, patience, were presented to the slave as the essence of Christianity… those passages that emphasized equality, freedom, and happiness as attributes of this world as well as the next… were eliminated from the official sermons destined to be heard by slaves. Thus a censored version of Christianity was developed especially for the slaves… Yet… new criteria for religious piety were developed within the slave community [in] the militant posture of a Frederick Douglass, a Harriet Tubman, a Gabriel Prosser, and a Nat Turner… Christian spirituals … were also powerful songs of freedom…” (Pg. 59)
She observes, “Fear has always been an integral component of racism. The ideological reproduction of a fear of black people… is rapidly gravitating toward and being grounded in a fear of crime. A question to be raised … [is] how the … ideologically produced fear of crime… serves to render racism simultaneously more invisible and more virulent…. How many black people … have successfully extricated ourselves from the ideological figure of the young black male as criminal---or at least seriously confronted it?” (Pg. 65)
She states, “The designation of the black woman as a matriarch is a cruel misnomer… because it implies stable kinship within which the mother exercises decisive authority… it is cruel because it ignores the profound traumas the black woman must have experienced when she had to surrender her child-bearing to alien and predatory economic interests.” (Pg. 113)
She clarifies, “That black women have not joined the anti-rape movement en masse does not mean that they oppose anti-rape measures in general. It was black women, after all, who conducted the very first organized protest against sexual abuse.” (Pg. 130)
She suggests, “The socialist movement must never forget that while the economic struggle is indispensable, it is by no means the sole terrain of significant anti-capitalist activity. Thus, the unique features of the women’s struggle cannot be restricted to economic agitation alone.” (Pg. 185)
She notes, “Black women have paid a heavy price for the strengths they have acquired and the relative independence they have enjoyed. While they seldom have been ‘just housewives,’ they have always done their housework… the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized---and all these services should be readily available to working-class people.” (Pg. 199)
She outlines, “I want to pose a question: How much of the ideological tradition of ‘defending our name’ do we wish to affirm and reserve? … I only want to make a few points, and leave the rest to you. First, we can no longer assume that there is a single monolithic force against which we position ourselves in order to defend our name---i.e., the white establishment. We have to defend our names in those places we consider home as well… Second, we can no longer ignore the ways in which we sometimes end up reproducing the very forms of domination which we like to attribute to something or somebody else… Third, we have to rid ourselves of the habit of assuming that the masses of black women are to be defined in accordance with their status as victims… there are those of us who have made it into the … corporate world or into the political establishment… Yet, when it is advantageous, we like to represent ourselves as victims. As when Clarence Thomas invok[ed] the idea that he was the victim of a ‘hi-tech lynching.’ Fourth, we cannot afford to commit ourselves so fervently to defending our names that we end up positioning ourselves against our Asian, Latina, Pacific Island, and Native American sisters.” (Pg. 226-227)
In a 1994 essay, she recalls, “Not long ago I attended a performance … by women presently or formerly incarcerated… in collaboration with Bay Area performance artists. After the show, I went backstage … One woman introduced me to her brother, who at first responded to my name with a blank stare. The woman admonished him: ‘You don’t know who Angela Davis is? You should be ashamed.’ Suddenly a flicker of recognition flashed across his face. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Angela Davis---the Afro.’ … it is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo. It is humiliating because it reduces the politics of liberation to a politics of fashion; it is humbling because such encounters with the younger generation demonstrate the fragility… of historical images, particularly those associated with African-American history.” (Pg. 273)
She wonders, “It is possible that if Malcolm had not been shot down… he might be identifying with the global feminist movement today? Would he have allowed his vision to be disrupted and revolutionized by the intervention of feminism?… In 1992 Malcolm’s legacy is being contested within the realm of popular culture… What is so striking about the debate is its anchoring point: the very conception of black nationalism---with its conservative radicalizing limitations and strong masculinist implications---that Malcolm problematicized at the end of his life.” (Pg. 280, 283)
Asked in an interview about feminism, she explains, “I don’t think I would propose a single definition of the term ‘feminist.’… But I do think we can agree that feminism in its many versions acknowledges the social impact of gender and involves opposition to misogyny. In my opinion, the most effective versions of feminism acknowledge the ways gender, class, race, and sexual orientation inform each other… Personally, it was only after many years of political involvement that I decided to embrace the term feminism. I now feel very comfortable calling myself a feminist. But the way I am a feminist tomorrow may be different from the way I am a feminist today.” (Pg. 304)
She states, “most people date the development of women of color as a new political subject from 1981, when ‘This Bridge Called My Back’ was published. Women of color conceptualized as a political project… is extremely important… The fact that race is placed at the forefront of women of color politics is important, because it also challenges the influence of nationalism on identity politics. Women of color formations are compelled to address intersectionality and the mutual and complex interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality.” (Pg. 313)
She explains in an interview, “Studying with both [Theodor] Adorno and [Herbert] Marcuse allowed me to think about the relationship between theory and practice, between intellectual work and activist work.” (Pg. 316)
This is a really EXCELLENT selection of Davis’s work, that will be of great interest to anyone studying her.
January 8, 2008
angela davis. always on point.
February 28, 2008
Angela Davis disects the connections between sexism, racism, capitalism. Interesting and important stuff.
June 12, 2017
Wish I read it five years ago. Something I'll be going back to for a long time. Some, of many, still quotes that still stick to this American moment:
“Political Prisoners, Prisoners, and Black Liberation” (1971)
"Official assertions that meaningful dissent is always welcome, provided it falls within the boundaries of legality, are frequently a smokescreen obscuring the invitation to acquiesce in oppression." 39
"Likewise, the significance of activities which are pursued in the interests of liberation today is minimized not so much because officials are unable to see the collective surge against oppression, but because they have consciously set out to subvert such movements." (43)
"Whenever blacks in struggle have recourse to self-defense, particularly armed self-defense, it is twisted and distorted on official levels and ultimately rendered synonymous with criminal aggression. On the other hand, when policemen are clearly indulging in acts of criminal aggression, officially they are defending themselves through ‘justifiable assault or ‘justifiable homicide’."(43)
"Contained in the very concept of property, crimes are profound but suppressed social needs which express themselves in anti-social modes of action." (45)
"If one-third of America’s white youths were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism." (48)
“Unfinished Lecture on Liberation – II” (1969)
"One of the striking paradoxes of the bourgeois ideological tradition resides in an enduring philosophical emphasis on the idea of freedom alongside an equally pervasive failure to acknowledge the denial of freedom to entire categories of real, social human beings.” (53)
“From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison” (1998)
"When the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865, thus legally abolishing the slave economy, it also contained a provision that was universally celebrated as a declaration of the unconstitutionality of peonage. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added). That exception would render penal servitude constitutional – from 1865 to the present day.”
"Cheryl Harris argues that a property interest in whiteness emerged from the conditions of slavery and that 'owning white identity as property affirmed the self-identity and liberty of whites and, conversely, denied the self-identity of blacks'." (83)
“Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”
“If, as Foucault insists, the locus of the new European mode of punishment shifted from the body to the soul, black slaves in the US were largely perceived as lacking the soul that might be shaped and transformed by punishment.” (99)
"There was no reference to imprisonment in the US Constitution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment declared chattel slavery unconstitutional." (99)
“JoAnne Little: The Dialectics of Rape” (1975)
"The social incentive given to rape is woven into the logic of the institutions of this society. It is an extremely efficient means of keeping women in a state of fear of rape or of the possibility of it. It is, as Susan Griffin wrote, “a form of mass terrorism.” 158
“The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” (1981)
"For black women today and for all their working-class sisters, the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized—and all these services should be readily accessible to working-class people" (199)
“Political Prisoners, Prisoners, and Black Liberation” (1971)
"Official assertions that meaningful dissent is always welcome, provided it falls within the boundaries of legality, are frequently a smokescreen obscuring the invitation to acquiesce in oppression." 39
"Likewise, the significance of activities which are pursued in the interests of liberation today is minimized not so much because officials are unable to see the collective surge against oppression, but because they have consciously set out to subvert such movements." (43)
"Whenever blacks in struggle have recourse to self-defense, particularly armed self-defense, it is twisted and distorted on official levels and ultimately rendered synonymous with criminal aggression. On the other hand, when policemen are clearly indulging in acts of criminal aggression, officially they are defending themselves through ‘justifiable assault or ‘justifiable homicide’."(43)
"Contained in the very concept of property, crimes are profound but suppressed social needs which express themselves in anti-social modes of action." (45)
"If one-third of America’s white youths were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism." (48)
“Unfinished Lecture on Liberation – II” (1969)
"One of the striking paradoxes of the bourgeois ideological tradition resides in an enduring philosophical emphasis on the idea of freedom alongside an equally pervasive failure to acknowledge the denial of freedom to entire categories of real, social human beings.” (53)
“From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison” (1998)
"When the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865, thus legally abolishing the slave economy, it also contained a provision that was universally celebrated as a declaration of the unconstitutionality of peonage. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added). That exception would render penal servitude constitutional – from 1865 to the present day.”
"Cheryl Harris argues that a property interest in whiteness emerged from the conditions of slavery and that 'owning white identity as property affirmed the self-identity and liberty of whites and, conversely, denied the self-identity of blacks'." (83)
“Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”
“If, as Foucault insists, the locus of the new European mode of punishment shifted from the body to the soul, black slaves in the US were largely perceived as lacking the soul that might be shaped and transformed by punishment.” (99)
"There was no reference to imprisonment in the US Constitution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment declared chattel slavery unconstitutional." (99)
“JoAnne Little: The Dialectics of Rape” (1975)
"The social incentive given to rape is woven into the logic of the institutions of this society. It is an extremely efficient means of keeping women in a state of fear of rape or of the possibility of it. It is, as Susan Griffin wrote, “a form of mass terrorism.” 158
“The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” (1981)
"For black women today and for all their working-class sisters, the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized—and all these services should be readily accessible to working-class people" (199)
January 19, 2021
This book has SO MANY GEMS in it. I literally went through with a highlighter like in college. However, also like college reading, it can be quite dense! But if you’re fine with that (or break it up into smaller bits), there is certainly a lot of mind blowing wisdom here.
August 27, 2020
This is comprehensive insight into black and brown lives and the mechanics of their subjugation. It is a sobering read to be frank.
February 5, 2017
The writing in this book emotionally charged me up in so many ways-racism, sexism, the court systems, roots of black people's current daily struggles emanating from violent slavery history...
Next on my list will be her autobiography. Below are two quotes that very relevant today
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. "
"I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement." Angela Davis
Next on my list will be her autobiography. Below are two quotes that very relevant today
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. "
"I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement." Angela Davis
January 17, 2008
awesome
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October 24, 2022Good mix of historical information and philosophical/ ideological analysis of race, gender and class. Includes Angela Davis' opening defense statement.
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