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From Palestine to the Prison Regime: The Politics of Apartheid and Settler-Colonialism in the 21st Century

All three women on the Palestine/ Prison Industrial Complex panel are “intellectual superstars” yet I choose to focus here on the Andy Smith portion of the conference. This is simply because her portion of the conference was filled with layers and layers of information which will take this entire paper to unpack. I really enjoyed that many of the concepts and theories she referenced came out of women’s grassroots organizing and not academia.

During the “Question and Answer” session, Professor Smith outlined the “Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” This diagram was developed collectively by an organization that Professor Smith helped to co-found named INCITE. This organization is notable for the expanse of issues it addresses and its openness to new ideas and these philosophies are reflected in the diagram as a method of analysis. The Three Pillars are defined by the categories of slaveability, genocide, and orientalism. The first pillar, slaveability, or the capacity of a person or people group to be enslaved, forms the foundation for capitalism. This is essentially because capitalism, akin to slavery, puts a price tag on people’s bodies and their labor which enables everyone to be perceived as a commodity.

The second pillar of white supremacy is genocide and it is based on the conception that native peoples are replaceable. Accordingly, the logic of genocide enables colonialism to occur because if native peoples can be disappeared then their land can be claimed by the white colonizer. As a side note, Professor Smith noted in a separate lecture that we can see the effects of this second pillar in blockbuster Hollywood films such as King Kong where the brutal savage beast King Kong, must eventually be tamed and give way to more civilized society. In a different example, she also pointed out how Boy Scout troops pretend to be different Native American tribes. From this analogy, Professor Smith pointed out that these comparisons would not be made if Native Americans were actually believed to be real, functioning members of our society. That is, there would be no need to “pretend” to be them. Poignantly, much of this colonization is started within our own imaginations.

Lastly, the third pillar is categorized as orientalism and the theoretical framework of Edward Said and his book by the same name. Orientalism is the logic by which the Arab and East Asian worlds are thought about. Europeans and later, Americans absorbed the logic that even though Arab and East Asian cultures had a developed and rich history, there was something missing in terms of their present day culture. One example of this logic that we often use to demean Arab cultures today is that they mistreat their women. This logic of orientalism has been an important aspect of European and now America’s strategy to support being in a constant state of war. By categorizing Arab and East Asian bodies as morally inferior, it is easier to create distance between “them” and “us” and to create this illusion that “we” are under the threat of permanent foreign invasion. Shockingly, it is this exact logic that allows Native Americans to offer their bodies in service to the US military for this is the same government that has historically mistreated and disempowered their communities. And this brings me to my last point.

The question raised during the Q&A that actually sparked Professor Smith’s reasoning to bring up the Three Pillars of White Supremacy was: “How do people from different identity groups fight a collective and united battle?” Thus, after quickly outlining the Three Pillars of White Supremacy, Professor Smith used this teaching tool to frame her answer which was that we cannot fight only where we are commonly oppressed but also where we are commonly complicit. A people group may be oppressed along one pillar only to use another pillar’s logic to subjugate a different people group. Of course, if everybody is simultaneously being oppressed as well as oppressing, nobody is accomplishing anything. It is important that we all acknowledge that we have internalized “the enemy” and that accordingly we must struggle to confront the ways in which our minds and imaginations have been colonized. To struggle against the injustices within our society, we must first start with ourselves and we must come to the difficult but honest realization that none of us are free unless we all are free.