The National Securitization of Traditional Criminal Justice

By Jason Michael Williams

In the post-911 era, traditional criminal justice processes have become nearly ancient. For example, according to some scholars within criminology/criminal justice, the administration of justice presently finds itself at a strange crossroad (Wacquant, 2009; Garland, 2001; Braithewaite, 2000; Simon, 2007). This crossroad has been linked to several paradigmatic shifts that have been occurring within the crime control complex that has governed the administration of justice since the 1980s. Some believe this shift is the consequence of late modernity (Garland, 2001; Monahan, 2006) and others blame neo-liberalism (Brown, 2010), and the changing currents within the social, political, and cultural contexts. Birthed from this discourse are crimes of late modernity. These crimes consist of terrorism, cyber- crime, and other crimes categorized under the umbrella of national security.

What is of essential importance is the context in which the mechanisms of punishment and crime control has changed. For example, traditionally, rights afforded to U.S. citizens via the Constitution were off limits and could never be challenged or taken away under any circumstances; however, today, because of various laws and powers of the Executive Branch of government, U.S. citizens are at a greater risk of being punished and surveilled by the government. A good indicator of this reality is the current debates on the Obama Administration and the National Security Administration's (NSA) spying program. The ACLU has taken measures to combat the intrusive qualities of the NSA's spying program.

According to the ACLU, the U.S. government does not seem to have a concrete purpose for collecting data on its citizens; it simply alleges that, by doing so, it makes it easier for intelligence officials to identify trends and possible leads later. This shifting in the administration of justice implicates a minority report-effect wherein law enforcement has become involved in the business of preemptive-law enforcement. This shift is a process whereby the government investigates to prevent crime but under a dogmatic notion that everyone is possibly guilty before committing the crime. This logic is abundantly counterproductive to the usual processes of law enforcement. However, the biggest question regarding this discourse is why this is happening and what are some critical elements that may need to be contextualized for a better understanding on what is occurring.

In the post-911 era, the crime control model of administering justice has been placed on steroids. Packer (1968) describes the crime control model as a process in which justice is swift and based on just deserts. There is very little room for improvement of the individual under this model, for justice is at best an assembly line and crime is never-ending and unfixable. The crime control model operates off the presumption of guilt, which is congruent to the way in which the system operates today under preemptive-law enforcement. Large quantities of cases are brought into adjudication and convicts are swiftly assigned punishment. In fact, many cases are never brought to court due to the continuous movement of the system and the large amounts of persons being charged daily. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, 90-95% of defendants on both the federal and state levels never reach the trail stage due to plea bargains, which have more striking cons to them than pros. Timothy Lynch of the CATO Institute has written a compelling article that focused on government's response to one's option/right to a trial by jury, thus alleging that government retaliates against those defendants who are apathetic to pleas.

On the other hand, Packer describes the due process model as a more egalitarian approach to administering justice. Under this model, the humanity of the victim and perpetrator is recognized, and there is no loss of Constitutional rights for either side. The due process model understands that error can occur within the fact-finding process and makes strides toward making sure that such errors are avoided and considered; thus, it tries to maintain the integrity of justice.

However, the impact that all the above has on modern day criminal justice is one of the most important questions that must be answered. Since 911, social control has become more punitive. Government can now surveil people in ways never done before. Techno-surveillance has become a very attractive tool in modern-day spying. More strikingly, state and local law enforcement agencies are starting to impersonate federal protocol. For example, many states now have counter-terrorism units, cyber-crime units, and departments of homeland security and emergency management. These advents are indicative of a dual police state (federal and state), or a system in which surveillance reigns supreme 24/7 and within all spaces of governance.

Another critical element to process is the extent to which the private sector has increasingly become involved in the administration of justice. Because the post-911 era brings with it a hyper-punitive platform of administering justice, mass incarceration has become a huge phenomenon and profitable idea to many in the private sector. Some scholars have looked at private prisons and the reentry industry as two of the main beneficiaries of mass incarceration (Thompkins, 2010; Wacquant, 2010; Hallett, 2006; Price, 2006), alleging that private prisons and reentry organizations profit off modern-day punishment and surveillance. For example, Thompkins (2010) explains that, many times, ex-prisoners are recommitted back to prison because of their inability to prioritize their need to work alongside attending counseling sessions with reentry organizations. As a result of not attending mandated counseling sessions because of simple scheduling concerns, many ex-prisoners are sent back to prison to repeat the never-ending cycle of surveillance; meanwhile, reentry organizations and prisons continue to profit off their misery and endless captivity.

The private market found its transformational niche in criminal justice after 911. As a result of 911, intelligence became the key focus within crime control. The government wanted to prevent another attack from happening, which gave the intelligence community an opportunity of a lifetime; however, much of what it was and can do requires the voluntary submission of many civil liberties from the citizenry. This new focus would later become known as the intelligence industrialization complex. Under this complex, intelligence is outsourced to private entities to conduct the usual tasks of intelligence gathering and assessment that would be done by government agencies. However, due to neo-liberal logic, this task has been handed over to private industry under the ludicrous assumption that the private sector is free of error and more efficient. Sadly, most are unaware of the effects this has caused on the local levels of law enforcement. It has turned ordinary citizens into criminal suspects. Preemptive-law enforcement has become part of the daily routine within traditional criminal justice. For example, occurrences of police brutality have been met with extreme protests within the last decade. Civil protests have become occasions for law enforcement to test their counter-terrorism exercises on apparent non-threatening citizens, and policies like stop and frisk have become legitimated under the mantras of "get tough" and "crime control."

Under what appears to be a national security-criminal justice, even law-abiding citizens are suspected criminals, and much of this "suspicion" has racial implications behind them. For example, a report by the Public Advocate, analyzing 2012 NYC stop and frisk data, found the following:

1. The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

2. The likelihood a stop of African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

3. Despite the overall reduction in stops, the proportion involving black and Latino New Yorkers has remained unchanged. They continue to constitute 84 percent of all stops, despite comprising only 54 percent of the general population. And the innocence rates remain at the same level as 2011 - at nearly 89 percent.

The above findings are grounds for new theorization on the impact of national security and its impact on localized crime. Localized crime under national security-criminal justice has become just as punitive and totalitarian as crimes on the federal level regarding national security. Furthermore, this new formation of administering justice as noticed above seems to have a disparate impact on racial-minorities. The disparate impact has more to do with labeling and stereotypes than any genuine threat. Furthermore, immigration is another "crime issue" in which to contextualize under national security-criminal justice. Immigration, of course, has racial implications behind it as well due to the assortment of pejoratives used against Spanish-speaking persons who are automatically alleged to be "illegals."

What is most important about this new system of social control is the extent to which it has hyper-punitized the traditional system of criminal justice. The same justifying arguments used by the Bush and Obama Administrations have been used by local government officials concerning, for example, stop and frisk and Mayor Bloomberg. Much of this justifying rhetoric is believed by many due to the unwavering presence of totalitarianism. Most people do not care to know whether or not a certain law or practice is just, especially when the law or practice does not affect them. This is the case with stop and frisk, whereas most Caucasians in NYC are not particularly concerned about stop and frisk because their Mayor and flawed police statistics tells them minorities are to blame for rampant crime and, therefore, minorities will be the targets of stop and frisk. However, funny enough, this narrative works notwithstanding the facts as reported by the Public Advocate as well as prior data that had long depicted that the myth of the dangerous minority could not be further from truth.

By framing certain criminal acts under national security, the traditional methodology of responding to crime becomes obsolete. Instead, adjudication is very swift and harsh, and justified by a zero tolerance ideology. There is very little room for fact-finding, which takes away the scrutiny that usually comes with traditional trials. Nonetheless, what is especially intriguing is the extent to which some traditionally domestic issues have suddenly become part of national security discussions, and many of those issues are tied to politically powerless groups. For example, in NYC at one time, there were talks regarding the labeling of street gangs as terrorists. Another issue would be immigration and the extent to which republicans/conservatives believe immigration to be pertinent to national security. Both of the aforementioned issues have racially-anchored implications hidden in the subtext. Therefore, policy implemented in those areas can only lead to disparate treatment onto those selected groups hidden in the subtext (Monahan, 2010).

Moreover, the state will argue the need for such precautionary measures in the name of risk management, which is the quintessential logic behind preemptive-law enforcement and post-modern surveillance. This logic is also legitimated through the use of fear as a tool of galvanizing support for the new form of social control-national security-criminal justice. As the traditional system of criminal justice becomes more like that of national security, citizens can expect harsher policy and penal control. Sadly, much is not being done to on behalf of researchers and government regarding an exploration on the extent to which the powerless will be as always innocent victims in this paradigmatic shifting (see, e.g., Haggerty & Samatas, 2010; Manahan, 2006;).

With the ongoing and aggressive warehousing of undocumented persons and citizens in private detention facilities, and the continued expression of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, time can only tell whether or not the American people will tap into a greater consciousness that will catapult the system into a more egalitarian reality. However, in order for such a revolution to happen, the essentialist concept of hyper-individualism must cease to exist. Furthermore, justice itself must be re-conceptualized to fit the post-911 context (see, e.g., Hudson, 2009) to make brainstorming on this matter efficient. People must begin to sympathize with others, they must begin to see beyond the context of the self and discover the interconnectedness between those who are not suspected criminals (predominantly Caucasian) and those under indefinite surveillance (predominantly people of color). Otherwise, national security-criminal justice will continue to turn the U.S into a police state that will eventually impact everyone - even those who may not be targets of this vicious system at the present time. The national securitization of traditional criminal justice is partly due to society's inability to understand issues of late modernity, and so instead of evaluating the issues logically so that a proper response can be applied society responds in the only way in which it knows. It responds via the institution of usually racist, xenophobic, sexist, and classist, campaigns against the "other/issue," which routinely gets entangled into the criminal justice system, because punishment and social control is of course the only option in America.

Works Cited

Braithwaite, J. (2000). The New Regulatory State And The Transformation Of Criminology. British Journal of Criminology 40:2, 222-238.

Brown, D. (2011). Neoliberalism as a criminological subject. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 44:1, 129-142.

Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control Crime Control and Social Order In Contemporary Society. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.

Haggerty, K. D., & Samatas, M. (2010). Surveillance and democracy. New York : Routledge .

Hallett, M. A. (2006). Private prisons in America : a critical race perspective. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.

Hudson, B. (2009). Justice in a Time of Terror. British Journal of Criminology, 702-717.

Monahan, T. (2006). The Surveillance Curriculum: Risk Management and Social Control in the Neoliberal School. In T. Monahan, Surveillance And Security Technological Politics And Power In Everyday Life (pp. 109-124). NY: Routledge .

Monahan, T. (2010). Surveillance as governance: social inequality and the pursuit of democratic surveillance. In K. D. Haggerty, & M. Samatas, Surveillance and Democracy (pp. 91-110). NY: Routledge .

Packer, H. L. (1968). The limits of the criminal sanction. Stanford : Stanford University Press .

Price, B. (2006). Merchandizing prisoners : who really pays for prison privatization? Westport: Praeger .

Simon, J. (2007). Governing through crime : how the war on crime transformed American democracy and created a culture of fear. New York: Oxford University Press .

Thompkins, D. E. (2010). The expanding prisoner reentry industry. Dialectical Anthropology 34:4, 589-604.

Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham : Duke University Press .

Wacquant, L. (2010). Prisoner reentry as myth and ceremony. Dialect Anthropology 34:, 605-620.

Political Crossover: The Troubling Emergence of Black Reaganism

By Colin Jenkins

During the 1976 Republican Presidential Primaries, then-candidate Ronald Reagan coined the term "Welfare Queen" as he detailed the story of an African-American woman from Chicago who was arrested after using multiple identities to collect over $150,000 worth of welfare benefits. Reagan's story had a purpose: to establish a connection between the "evils of taxation" and the consequences of "illegitimate" welfare programs that "rewarded laziness," and to relay this to an American electorate poised to identify a scapegoat for what they viewed as a "dying nation." The engine behind this message was the Republican Party's overtly racist "Southern Strategy," which formulated a conscious effort to "appeal to racist whites" who Republicans believed "could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for Blacks." Reagan's implication, while purposely misleading, was ripe for the taking and tapped into America's deep-seated culture of white supremacy, misogyny, and classism - prompting a public discussion over social welfare programs and the need for higher levels of "personal responsibility" from those who relied on such.

Fast forward thirty-two years - a period that witnessed the unveiling of neoliberalism, historic welfare drawbacks at the hands of a Democratic President (Clinton), and a disastrous eight years under the George W. Bush administration - to the election of America's "first Black President." For a nation whose history is littered with the horrors of genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow, Barack Obama's ascendancy to the highest office was an incredibly symbolic victory over a shameful past - a seemingly giant leap over the obstruction of institutionalized racism. While not specifically elaborated on, one could not help but recognize the campaign motto of "hope and change" as having a firm foundation in bridging the country's racial divide. To many Americans, electing a Black man to the white house equaled a proverbial cutting of the ribbon - the official opening to a "post-racial America," ready for the business of not only bridging this divide, but also of finally addressing the collective disenfranchisement of a Black population still feeling the effects of a horrible past.

It is no secret that Reaganism, in its original form, was especially unkind to the Black community. "The Reagan legacy is replete with examples of disrespect and outright hostility towards African-Americans," writes David Love in The Grio. "As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act , which prohibited the public carrying of firearms. The law was passed specifically as a direct response to the Black Panther Party." On the campaign trail, Reagan courted openly racist Dixiecrats in the South, championed the States Rights platform which was responsible for Jim Crow, and even referred to the historic Voting Rights Act as "humiliating to the South." While in office, Reagan "stepped up the war on drugs, which was really a war against people of color; waged an assault on labor unions ; cut programs of importance to African Americans; slashed low income housing under HUD and social programs such as Medicaid and food stamps that disproportionately impacted black people; attacked the government's civil rights infrastructure; sought to gut the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action; and waged war on the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada. Reagan even befriended the white supremacist government in South Africa, and vetoed a bill to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime."

It would seem far-fetched to attempt to establish a connection between the Reaganism of the 1980s and the emerging Black leaders of today. However, in reality, Reaganism never really left - it merely flowed through the pipelines of neoliberalism, gaining a near-omnipresence within America's socio-political structure. Considering its permeation through the 1990s into what was once considered the opposition - the Democratic Party - it only makes sense that this process would eventually reach outlying components of the former center-left. Symbolic victories don't always translate into real change. An Obama presidency, unfortunately, has proven to be no exception. In true Reaganesque fashion, Obama immediately "brought corporate executives into the White House, reached out to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and made compromise his new watchword. He also signed a surprise $858 billion tax cut that would have made Reagan weep with joy, and huddled with Reagan's former White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein for lessons learned when the Gipper governed amid economic troubles." Besides appointments and policies, Obama has never shied away from his admiration for the former President. In a January 2011 op-ed in the USA Today, Obama lauded Reagan for "his leadership in the world," his "gift for communicating his vision for America," and his ability to "recognize the American people's hunger for accountability and change." In a 2010 speech, Obama told a newspaper editorial board in Nevada, "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not (by tapping into) what people were already feeling, which is - We want clarity, we want optimism."

While Obama spent time immortalizing Reagan, Black Americans - fresh off their symbolic and historic "victory" - remained stifled under the mounting economic crisis. Today, in the fifth year of the "first Black presidency," the results are in:

• Black unemployment remains double that for whites.

• The median income gap between white and black households has hit a record high.

• Blacks have half the access to health care as whites.

• The gap in homeownership is wider today than it was in 1990.

• African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to have suffered foreclosure.

• Net wealth for Black families dropped by 27.1 percent during the recession.

• One in 15 African-American men is incarcerated, compared with one in 106 white men.

• Blacks make up 38 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons.

• Although only 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, African-Americans represent 27 percent of those living below the poverty line.

• African-Americans are the only demographic group with higher unemployment today than when Obama took office. White unemployment dropped from 7.1 percent in January 2009 to 6.8 percent in February 2013. Hispanic unemployment dropped from 10.0 percent to 9.6 percent. But African-American unemployment rose from 12.7 percent to 13.8 percent during that time.

• The Black teen jobless rate hit a staggering 39.3 percent in July 2012.

The reasons for these horrid realities are vast. However, if you were to listen to the President, they most surely come from a lack of "personal responsibility." Piggy-backing on Reagan's three-decade-old message, Obama has gone on a tour of the American landscape, carrying this very message. His most recent stop was Morehouse College, where he spoke to the nation's most prominent historically-Black graduating class. "We've got no time for excuses," said Obama, "nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned." "You're graduating into an improving job market," he claimed. "You're living in a time when advances in technology and communication put the world at your fingertips. Your generation is uniquely poised for success unlike any generation of African Americans that came before it." In other words, Black youth (or anyone for that matter) have no viable excuse for not making it in America. An antiquated and powerfully conservative message indeed - one that, while seemingly positive and motivating on the surface, is delivered on the false premise that individuals truly control their own destiny. An absurd notion to a working class that, despite working more hours at more jobs than any other time in history, is still waiting for that "trickle"; and laughable to Black members of that working class who have long been trapped under the shallowest of glass ceilings.

Obama's latest speech was viewed by many as condescending, elitist, and out of touch. When placed alongside his policy initiatives, or lack thereof, it was flat out insulting. And these allegations are nothing new. In 2008, during the Presidential race, Jesse Jackson made similar remarks regarding Obama's "tone" when speaking to Black audiences. "I said it can come off as speaking down to black people," said Jackson. "The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. There is a range of issues on the menu." And as Ajamu Nangwaya points out, Obama's words ignore deeply embedded issues of racial inequality, including those faced by college graduates in the job market: "Many of these African men do not have control over events within the labor market. There are entrenched racist, gendered and class-related employment barriers that are resistant to personal effort and responsibility on the part of these prospective racialized, despised and stereotyped job-seekers." A point supported by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which reported that "African men in the United States with a bachelor's degree earned only 82 percent ($41,916) of the median income ($51,138) of their white counterparts."

The President is not alone in channeling Reagan while addressing predominantly Black audiences. On the campaign trail in late 2011, Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain proclaimed that black voters were "brainwashed" and incapable of "thinking for themselves," concluding that "if you don't have a job, you should blame yourself!" Political commentator Juan Williams has made a career out of preaching "personal responsibility" to Black men, suggesting they could "get ahead" if only they were willing to "work hard" and stop wearing their pants "hanging off their asses." In a recent speech at Bowie State University, the First Lady teetered on the "personal responsibility" mantle by openly criticizing black children for what she perceives as a narrow-minded obsession with becoming "ballers or rappers," and for "sitting on couches playing video games and watching TV," as if that's merely a "Black problem." In a June 10th op-ed in the NY Post, a notoriously conservative newspaper, Bill Cosby gave his two cents on "what's wrong" with African-American communities. In it, Cosby pointed to a lack of "personal responsibility" on the part of Black children for being unnecessarily "loud" and "angry," yet "apathetic." And this is not the first time Cosby has made such remarks. In a 2004 speech to the NAACP, Cosby referred to Black youth as "knuckleheads" for not being able to "speak English," ridiculed hip hop culture and style for its backwards hats and sagging pants, and reduced the entire Black population to "women who have eight children with eight different husbands," millionaire athletes "who cannot read or write two paragraphs," and "someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids," while ending his speech with the disclaimer of "we cannot blame the white people any longer." Ironically, all of these charges come at a time when African-American voters participated at a higher frequency than white voters for the first time in history; "Occupy the Hood" movements are gaining traction around the country, grassroots alternative organizations like the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners are surfacing, and Black-centered labor movements like "Detroit 15" have garnered national attention.

Considering barely half of whites believe that racism against Black Americans still exists, and instead actually believe they are subjected to racism at a higher rate, it is no surprise that Cosby's comments (as well as the others) caught on like wildfire through the mainstream media - the product of millions of White Privilege-deniers seeking confirmation: "See! A Black man/woman is saying it, so we must be right!" This ultra-conservative approach to historic problems facing African-American communities, especially when coming from those who are viewed as leaders and representatives of that community, is problematic to say the least. In response to Michelle Obama's speech, Jamelle Bouie succinctly wrote , "That too many black students live in poor neighborhoods, attend segregated schools, and don't have much access to the outside world has nothing to do with their effort or their priorities. Michelle Obama is a native of Chicago. I have no doubt she knows this history. Ignoring it, and focusing on the daydreams of teenagers as the real problem, is a considered choice, and a bad one at that." A bad choice indeed - and one typically reserved for those operating under the banner of the Southern Strategy.

The President has called upon his own biracial identity many times in an attempt to reach across "racial and cultural divides" and to symbolize America's diversity and multiculturalism. However, as Nangwaya suggests, the way in which he has used these identities since being elected is particularly telling. While he seems to feel comfortable utilizing his "Black side" to lecture Black Americans about so-called "personal responsibility" and their perceived "shortcomings," he never once has utilized his "white side" to lecture white folks about their collective role in perpetuating societal problems like classism, racism and xenophobia. In other words, as Nangwaya asks, why does the President not call on his "white identity" to tell a "largely white graduating class that they should stop blaming immigrants for taking away "their" jobs, or stop blaming social assistance and welfare recipients for high taxes?" Ultimately, by embracing Reaganism, the President has assumed a license to operate under a double-standard while in office; a double-standard that went global in 2009 when he told African nations to "stop blaming colonialism for their problems." As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes , "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict Black people - and particularly black youth - and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that 'there's no longer room for any excuses' - as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of 'all America,' but he also is singularly the scold of 'Black America."

The right-wing populism that carried Reagan through two successful presidential campaigns and a mythological place in American history was no surprise. Promises to champion privilege and end "white guilt" attracted the upper classes in droves, and strong condemnations against the "weakness" of liberalism and the "corrupt welfare system" for which it supported stroked the highly-reactionary and racist egos of a conservative American middle class that had been patiently waiting to strike back against the radicalism of the 1960s. Three decades later, the emergence of "Black Reaganism" points to the enduring strength of neoliberal corporatism as much as it exposes the transition of white supremacy from the rural landscapes of the Old South to the executive offices of the modern political elite. And the perpetuation of the "personal responsibility" myth is as telling as the seemingly conscious omission of structural failures that continue to relegate a disproportionate number of Black Americans to poverty and prison. "(W)hen you look at the prison industrial complex and the new Jim Crow: levels of massive unemployment and the decrepit unemployment system, indecent housing; white supremacy is still operating in the US, even with a brilliant black face in a high place called the White House,' explains Cornel West. "He (Obama) hasn't said a mumbling word about these institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth... It's not about race. It is about commitment to justice. Maybe he couldn't do that much. But at least tell the truth... He's just too tied to Wall Street."

Ultimately, as Obama and the purveyors of "Black Reaganism" have proven, it is not merely racism that creates this unaccountability, it is the tie that binds racism - as well as misogyny, homophobia, jingoism and other oppressive mentalities - to the alienating effects of capitalism, and vice versa. In this sense, it is not Obama who has chosen to be a "good Reaganite" by remaining indifferent to systemic deficiencies that continue to plague the inner-cities and urban ghettoes of America - it is the duty for which he has been chosen to carry out. As Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report concludes: "The Age of Obama, now in its second and final quadrennial, has largely succeeded in divorcing African American politics from the historical Black consensus on social justice, self-determination and peace. What remains is play-acting and role-modeling, an Ebony magazine caricature of politics that leaves the great bulk of Black people with, literally, no avenues of resistance to the savage depredations of capitalism in decline."

If Black Power is "a range of political goals designed to counteract racial oppression through changing and establishing social institutions," then "Black Reaganism" is its antithesis - a co-opting of Afrocentric direct action and a rebranding of white privilege and corporate culture. Although many would just as soon move on from "racial politics," with all of its potential downfalls, the fact remains that America's social structure still operates from a foundation built on racial inequity. "Blaming the victim" through hollow calls for "personal responsibility" is not the solution - because one cannot "pull themselves up from their bootstraps" if their bootstraps were taken from them long ago.