WSOS term tables
We understand that we may from time to time use terms that are new or unfamiliar to some folx. So that we can all be on the same page, we want to share the definitions of these terms as we understand them.
Some of the terms defined here may be different than how you may find them with an internet search or in a dictionary. The reason for that is we find those sources to often be limiting in regard to the impact they have. We approach our work through the lenses of anti-racism, abolition, and equity. These lenses help to shape our understanding of the terms we use.
These definitions are intended to be conversation starters. We welcome healthy dialogue within our communities as we strive to clarify and refine the definitions of the words we use and our analysis of the circumstances we contend with.
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Racism
The systematic marginalization and disempowerment of an entire group of people because of the color of their skin and/or their ethnic origin or heritage. This is often accompanied with a devaluation of their humanity, well-being, status, and rights. It can be accomplished through coercion, both by the state and by members of the supposed ‘dominant’ class, and often involves violence and terror. It also includes the systematic indoctrination of the claimed inferiority of a group of people, to both the subjugated and the subjugators, as a means to attempt to rationalize and uphold the unjust system.
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Reverse Racism
There is no such thing as reverse racism.
Racism by its very nature is predicated on a system of oppression and discrimination. One who does not have access to or control of that system cannot apply the same kind of downward pressure on individuals or groups.
To imply that a “Black” person is racist toward a “white” person is to admit that one has no understanding of the institution of racism or how it functions.
In the United States, we live within a system of systems – those political, social, economic, educational, residential, and others. In each of these systems, BIPOC have historically had little input and today still have minimal input. Furthermore, we are contending with the legacy of racist laws, policies, and practices that are difficult, if not near impossible, to separate from their shrines. Coupling and overlapping these systems on top of one another (as they actually are) reveals the systemic disenfranchisement, disempowerment, and marginalization of BIPOC.
We literally do not have the power within this system to be racist.
However, we can and arguably should discriminate, that is, to a priori be cautious when encountering those who have affiliation with and membership in the class of people who have historically and often contemporarily been our oppressors. It is this caution and the righteous anger that results from experiencing oppression that is often wrongly conflated with what have been termed ‘reverse racism.’
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Race
Race is a social construct. It is not a fact of genetics or biology. Yet, regardless of it being a social construct, its impacts both historic and current are nonetheless very real.
The concept of race in the Americas and what has become the United States was created to establish a distinction primarily between ‘white’ and ‘black’ people (people of African descent) to assign or deny benefits or privileges. This has since been extended to all BIPOC. The goal was to create a foil, that is, to form a contrast to call attention to another thing's good qualities, between people of English descent and people not of English descent. The motivation of the fabricated distinction was an attempt to rationalize the institution of enslavement in the context of burgeoning capitalism.
Race is a socially constructed lie that those who wanted to remain in power and to exploit the labor of BIPOC were all too ready to believe and propagate. This history is arguably the foundation of racism as we currently understand it.
You may dive further into the history and evolution of the social construct of race here.
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Criminalization
Criminalization is the process of classifying individuals as criminals.
The insidious part of this practice is that when laws are codified, they are not so explicit as to say “Black ‘gangsters’ are illegal,” or “Trans sex workers are illegal.” Many laws are drafted in ‘colorblind’ language. However, laws can still have the same impact. For example, when a person “fits the description” of either a Black “gangster” or drug dealer or Trans sex worker, then the simple gestures of a wave or a handshake can be used to justify the detainment, arrest, and charging of a person with the crimes of either distribution or solicitation.
In addition to laws like this, there are also laws that identify behaviors such as as public urination and sleeping on the pavement as illegal. Those types of laws specifically target those who are living unhoused, and for the most part, target behaviors that are inevitable.
In all of these situations, either the customary actions or the necessary actions of people have been identified as criminal behavior and so, although the law does not explicitly say, ‘these people are illegal,’ the targeting of certain actions has effectively defined a class of people as illegal, thus criminalizing us.
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Disenfranchisement
Disenfranchisement is the act of stealing, revoking, or denying a person or a people the right to make decisions or to be part of the decision-making process regarding issues that impact their lives.
Most often, disenfranchisement is used in reference to state or government voting rights and privileges. It can also be used to describe a situation within a company or corporation by the people employed or compelled to work.
Disenfranchisement is most often concerned with the legal right to vote because throughout the majority of the existence of the U.S., only white men could vote, hold elected positions, write and pass legislation, and serve on juries. During the colonial period, it was even further restricted to those who were wealthy. In large part, not much has changed regarding the group of people who tend to retain power in this society.
Prior to 1965, Black people did not have the right to vote in the United States. White women were only granted the right to vote in 1920 with the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, after a century-long suffrage movement.
After the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the state started passing legislation to strip the right to vote from people for myriad reasons. Many of these were based on prior convictions for a crime. This practice has been termed “criminal disenfranchisement.”
There are a host of justifications that support this practice, but the two most important are the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
The 15th Amendment outlawed disenfranchisement based on race, color, and previous condition of servitude, but it left open a plethora of other reasons to deny people the right to vote, including literacy, wealth, and whether a person has been convicted of a crime.
Disenfranchisement on the basis of literacy was a major issue during the “Jim Crow” era.
The 14th Amendment explicitly states that a person can be denied the right to vote because of a prior conviction for any crime.
Criminal disenfranchisement has been so effective that there are currently more than 12 million people in the U.S. who cannot vote or serve on juries.
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Criminal
A demeaning label that is a “colorblind” term used to define a continual state-of-being of primarily Black and Brown folx, but also other folx who the state and this society consider unwanted.
On the surface, the term is used to define a person who commits ‘crime,’ or who has committed a ‘crime.’ Upon deeper analysis, First Nations Peoples and the descendants of enslaved Africans have always been perceived as ‘criminals’ – those who cannot and will not conform to this society and are relegated to being eternally inferior to white folx.
The “Slave Codes” of the 1712 South Carolina Statutes at Large are the quintessential example of this, as they outlined the ‘criminal behavior’ and ‘criminal nature’ of Black people. This can be traced all the way through the minstrels of the 1800s, the Black Codes of the Reconstruction Era, the depiction of a Black male rapist of white women depicted in “Birth of a Nation” (1915), the “tough on crime” rhetoric of President Nixon, the “war on drugs” of President Reagan, and the “super predator” myth used by Hillary Clinton and others to label Black men.
When the “N-word” became taboo to speak out loud as a result of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the word ‘criminal’ supplanted it and acquired all of its meaning through clever political and media strategies. Despite the abolition of slavery by the 13th Amendment, it is clear that this is the term now used to identify the new “slave caste.”
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Crime
A ‘crime’ is an action or existence that the state has determined is worthy of punishment. However, it often bears little resemblance to actual harm.
Most things labeled as ‘crime’ have no clear person who has been harmed. For example, jaywalking (walking across a street between crossings) or sleeping on a sidewalk cause real harm to nobody. The vast majority of behaviors codified as ‘crime’ impact property and not people. The concept of property is the cornerstone of the legal system of the United States.
In the media, crime is used as a measuring characteristic of good and bad to categorize and label people and places. As an example, one may refer to a neighborhood as a bad place because there is lots of crime, or somebody as a good person because they don’t do crime. This holds true for things from super (s)hero movies to prime-time sitcoms to the morning news — it’s everywhere.
In politics, the supposed ‘prevalence of crime’ is used to rationalize which laws are passed and how heavily an area or a people are policed to enforce those laws. Case in point: “stop and frisk,” a law that specifically targeted Black and Brown youth in New York in the 1990s and spread around the country. “Stop and frisk” superseded the constitutional requirements of probable cause and reasonable doubt, thus arbitrarily subjecting everyone who “fit the description” to unconstitutional searches and seizures.
It is a common misconception that one area or people commit more crime than others. The ‘crime’ may merely look different, though this is not necessarily the case, as with the sale, distribution, and usage of drugs (Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”). This can be evinced by what has been coined the “opioid epidemic.” Because it is affecting white neighborhoods and people, it has been viewed as more of a public and mental health concern than a ‘criminal’ activity, in stark contrast to the “crack epidemic,” which negatively impacted Black and Brown neighborhoods and people and was used to rationalize some of the harshest laws on the books and the expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex.
Thus, ‘crime,’ as a tool of the state, is a major element of the system of racialized control in the U.S.
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Convict
A derogatory and dehumanizing term used to describe a person who has been convicted of a “crime” and is or has served time in a prison or jail.
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Convict Leasing System
The legal practice of selling the labor of people who were incarcerated in prisons to businesses, people, and public entities outside of the prisons.
13th Amendment to the United States:
”Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”The “crime clause” of the 13th Amendment did not define slavery as unconstitutional, as many believe. Rather, it actually made enslavement and involuntary servitude legal by writing them explicitly into the Constitution for the first time.
After the American Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the institution of enslavement was transferred from privately owned plantations and business to publicly owned prisons. However, there was nothing stipulating that this labor must occur within the prisons. The result, in the late 1800s, was that many ‘freed people’ were ‘leased’ back to the same plantations and mines from which they were just freed.
The convict leasing system was an element of redefining who belonged to the ‘slave caste.’ This laid the foundation for what would later become the Prison Industrial Complex.