The Three Pillars of Angela Davis's Philosophy

Graham Waltenbaugh, section #1 

   Pages 151 to 158 of The Philosopher Queens are written by Anita L. Allen about the story and legacy of Angela Davis. Davis is a Black feminist philosopher who rose to prominence in the 60s and 70s as an activist and public speaker. She was briefly on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and her arrest sparked a national campaign to free her. Her advocacy for equality continues to this day through her literature and public appearances. Davis's core philosophies can be split into three main pillars: intersectionality, communist critique of capitalism, and prison abolition. 

HER STORY, PT. 1
    In 1944, Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, widely considered the most segregated city in the United States at the time. Her parents were Marxist socialists. In 1948, they moved into a previously all-white neighborhood. Eventually, more Black families moved in. Their houses would be bombed by the KKK so often that the neighborhood became known as "Dynamite Hill." Witnessing this as a child made Davis realize the importance of self-defense and fighting back against irrational violence.
    She would pursue grad school in Europe, mainly in Germany. But while she was overseas, she kept hearing how awful things were for Black people back in America. In 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed. This attack killed four Black girls, all of whom were friends of Angela Davis.
    She decided she must work to end racial violence in America, transferring universities to California and joining several social justice organizations. She played major roles in the LA chapter of SNCC, the westside LA office of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and the Black Student Union at her college (UC San Diego). She directly organized several rallies and demonstrations to protest against racial injustice and violence.
    Unfortunately, even in these groups that worked towards social equality, she faced sexism and misogyny from other members. She was a strong leader with a lot of initiative, so many men felt like their masculinity was threatened.
    This can sadly be seen among many political social justice movements that focus on uplifting a single oppressed minority. For example, many feminist movements throughout history, while clearly well-intentioned, overlooked more specific needs of Black women or queer women. Angela Davis realizes from these experiences that all forms of oppression are interlinked, and that a movement can only overcome one of them by accounting for all of them. This theory would be defined about 25 years later as "Intersectionality."

INTERSECTIONALITY
    Britannica defines intersectionality as "the interaction and cumulative effects of multiple forms of discrimination affecting the daily lives of individuals, particularly women of color." The term itself was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, but the theory itself can be traced back to W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the first and most influential African American activists and writers. He analyzed how differences in race, class, and culture can overlap and reinforce each other, though he neglected to include other forms of oppression. It was expanded upon in the 1970s by the Combahee River Collective, a Black, lesbian, socialist, feminist group who brought discussions of gender and sexual orientation to the theory.
    Intersectionality is not simply the idea that a member of multiple minority groups faces more oppression than a member of less minority groups. It is the idea that multiple forms of oppression mix together, forming unique kinds of oppression. Poor people with disabilities, for example, face unique hardships that stem from their overlapping minority statuses, such as not being able to afford proper medication or mobility aids.
    An example of ignorance towards intersectionality can be seen in the workplace discrimination case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976). Five Black women were laid off by General Motors, so they accused them of hiring discrimination. The court ruled that General Motors could not have been discriminating in their practices because they continued to employ Black men and white women. The court split the discrimination into two strict categories: race and gender, never stating that there could be an overlap between the two. As Human Rights Careers puts it, "The five auto workers were told to choose between being Black or being women, while in reality, their experiences were shaped by both identities."
    Movements focused on a single form of oppression can only be truly effective if they account for ALL forms of oppression. America's women's suffrage movement, for example, would often exclude or marginalize Black women to appeal to White southerners. Black women had to continue to fight for voting rights even after the 19th Amendment passed, meaning the women's suffrage movement didn't adequately secure the right to vote for ALL women.

HER STORY, PT. 2
    In 1968, Davis joined the Che-Lumumba club, a Black chapter of the Communist Party of the USA. That same year, she started a teaching position at UCLA, but was fired for her communist beliefs. A judge found this firing unconstitutional so she was reinstated, only to be fired again due to other political reasons. A NYT article reported on this string of events, bringing nationwide attention to Davis. She used this platform to promote and educate people about communism.

COMMUNISM
    Kimberlé Crenshaw (who coined "intersectionality," remember?) was critical of ideologies that only focused on a single issue of oppression. This included Marxism, which only focused on class divides. Angela Davis similarly distances herself from Marx. She considers herself a "small 'c' communist," meaning she is focused on critiquing capitalism and advocating for a better way as opposed to a capital-C communist, who strictly adheres to Marx's works. This was largely because, in her lifetime, she witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union, which she went on a tour of in 1972. In a recent CBS interview, she stated "Historical experiments don't necessarily produce what we want them to."
    Davis sees communism as a way to challenge the ubiquity of capitalism in America. It has been said (by Frederic Jameson in his book, The Seeds Of Time, though later popularized by Mark Fisher's book, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?) that "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." A depressingly resonant statement, but communists would say that it only hits so hard because of how entrenched we are in capitalism. From an early age, we have the drive to make money and the fear of not having money chiseled into our skulls. Our lives are in no small part defined by our financial status, and because of that, we can't have the capacity to imagine what a drastically different system could be.
    Communism is an imperfect system, like all the rest. Capitalism's imperfections are actively starving, oppressing, and killing its citizens. For Davis, communism is not necessarily an end goal, but instead a weapon with which capitalism can be fought.

HER STORY, PT. 3
    In 1970, an armed gunman raided a courthouse, killing four people and holding several more hostage. The gunman used a weapon that Davis had bought for self-defense days earlier. Davis has maintained to this day that she had no connection to this event, but under California law, she could be charged with murder and kidnapping as if she committed the crime herself.
    So Davis went into hiding, fearful of police brutality she may face of caught. The FBI placed her on their Most Wanted list. 

    The FBI arrested her two months later, on October 13th. Richard Nixon would refer to her as a "dangerous terrorist." Davis was denied bail and kept in solitary confinement for much of her time in jail.
    This sparked a nationwide movement to get her freed. John Lennon and Yoko Ono made a song in support of her release, as did the Rolling Stones. Aretha Franklin publicly offered to pay her entire bail. Thousands of people rallied for her freedom over the 18 months of her incarceration, up until she was declared not guilty on all charges by an all-white jury.

    While she was in prison, she studied the injustices of the prison system firsthand, developing her philosophies of prison abolition.

PRISON ABOLOTION
    Prison abolition is NOT the idea that we should just let all prisoners roam free and face no justice for their crimes. It is the philosophy that the perceived necessity for prisons only exists because capitalism creates the conditions that create criminals, and that if our society had more support for disadvantaged people, crimes of desperation would be nonexistent. In a society where no one would have to resort to crime to stay alive, prisons would be far less necessary.
    Prisons, as they exist now, are more focused on profit from government contracts and indentured labor from prisoners than actual rehabilitation. Private prison contracts, for example, often operate on a "minimum occupancy clause," requiring government entities to pay for a set percentage of beds in the prison, regardless of whether those beds are actually filled. These clauses are often around 80 or 90 percent, meaning the government is taking an immense amount of financial risk for potentially empty cells. That is a true reason why prisons are created, not for the earnest reformation of unfortunate people.
    Prison abolitionists believe that the justice system should be less retributive and more restorative, meaning it would focus less on punishing the offender and more on empowering the offended while educating the offender. Restorative justice systems have existing frameworks in several indigenous societies of America.

HER STORY, PT. 4
    Davis continued to work in higher education until her retirement in 2008, but she continues to be a public speaker and activist. She has also written twelve books, including works on intersectionality, liberation, abolition, and history. She has shown extreme resilience in the face of racist violence, misogyny, the FBI, and solitary confinement. Her work for intersectional theory, critique of capitalism, and prison abolition are still resonant all these years later. 

More on Angela Davis's story: https://wams.nyhistory.org/life-story/angela-davis/

Angela Davis's first post-acquittal interview: