top of page

Assimilation, Incarceration, or Assassination

Writer's picture: Audre SAudre S


When we consider revolutionaries, who are we talking about? Some think of revolutionaries as historic heroes long gone who fought for civil rights or an end to war. Some think of incarcerated folks researching the criminal-legal system, finding no justice. Today, I am not concerned with who is revolutionary; rather, I am deeply concerned with what happens to revolutionaries. Black and Indigenous revolutionaries, in particular, are often met with state violence, and there appear to be three outcomes to this struggle: assimilation, incarceration, or assassination. There is a cost to Black and Indigenous resistance – collective death – yet activists, intellectuals, and organizers alike continue to fight for auto-determination for their communities.


If they want to survive, many Black and Indigenous activists assimilate into institutions such as academia, politics, or even the very government they fought against. Activists like Bobby Seal, John Lewis, and Angela Davis never stopped believing in Black liberation. Instead, they changed the method and praxis to achieve liberation. John Lewis became a member of Congress, Angela Davis became a professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz, and Bobby Seale taught Black Studies at Temple in Philadelphia. As they became more embedded into systems, their strategies shifted and changed, sometimes straying from their radical roots. Instead of focusing on building a wider Black Liberation Movement, they were focused on publishing theory, passing laws, and teaching students. This is not to say that their work is illegitimate or moderate by any means. Angela Davis was a professor, a radical Black feminist, an activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and maintained ties to the Black Panther Party. While part of the academy, she was critical and continued pushing for revolutionary ideas such as prison abolition through her research, writing, and work outside academia. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an abolitionist organization that stands against the prison industrial complex. Like Davis, many revolutionaries give the appearance of assimilation and become accomplices to their revolutionary comrades working outside the system. There is a difference between assimilating into existing systems to continue to survive versus actively supporting institutional powers, essentially changing from activist to cop. The act of assimilating is a response to racialized anti-Black and anti-Indigenous violence that activists face. It is inherently safer to be an academic or politician than to be incarcerated or deceased. I would not call Angela Davis an assimilationist; she is an accomplice and uses her power to create opportunities for Black liberatory practices. However, there is a danger in assimilation: the co-option of revolutionary ideas and the reconstruction of revolutionary strategies into reformist blueprints.


Revolutionaries, activists, and organizers are constantly at risk of having their ideas and narratives co-opted and rewritten to fit the white supremacist narrative of progressiveness in a meritocratic white supremacist capitalist schema. Their ideas are often taken out of their original context and applied to other movements. For example, the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” created by queer Black women in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, was co-opted and changed to All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. Pro-Black liberatory ideas are taken and transformed into anti-Black catchphrases used to delegitimize the work of Black activists and their lives. Calls for prison abolition mutate into simple reforms. 

Another outcome for Black radicals is incarceration. In many ways, this is where many activists do meaningful work. When faced with state violence, surveillance, and captivity, many turn to reading and writing books, writing, and deep critical assessment of the current system. Incarcerated revolutionaries and Black radicals refuse to accept incarceration as a prescribed social death during Black August. Observers of Black August often adhere to strict discipline throughout the month, fasting, exercising, and studying the politics and history of Black Liberation, often engaging in political struggle. The main principles of Black August are "study, fast, train, fight." Incarcerated activists are deeply aware of the broken system and know their intellectual freedom can never be taken away. What does it mean to fight from a cell? What does it mean to train while on death row? Liberation and freedom are not to be given, but resistance is possible no matter the circumstance/location.


Other activists and revolutionaries faced exile. Revolutionaries like Assata Shakur were forced to flee the country, leaving friends, families, and comrades behind. The effect of exile is very similar to incarceration: both processes remove someone from their community and loved ones as punishment. Incarcerated folks and exiles are forced into isolation and segregated from society and their homes. While they are kept separate, many find alternative ways to connect to the movement they left behind. Whether they write, study, or organize within the space allowed, they continue to resist systemic racial inequality.


Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, John Africa, and 10 other MOVE members are some examples of Black activists who were assassinated. While the state did not technically assassinate Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., their politics made them targets to supporters of the state. The FBI's counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) investigated and surveilled Malcolm X for years, and four FBI agents were present at Malcolm’s assassination in 1965 at the age of 39. Fred Hampton was brutally murdered during a raid by the Chicago Police Department in 1969. The city of Philadelphia bombed John Africa and the other 10 MOVE members, killing men, women, and children and decimating 61 houses in a Black middle-class neighborhood in 1985. 


It is neither safe nor easy to be a Black radical. To live the Black Radical Tradition is to accept that disrupting white supremacist capitalist systems places a target on your back. This phenomenon is not over. Black radicalism is dangerous to hegemonic powers. However, we cannot let our ideas, visions, and organizing efforts be co-opted, changed, or dismantled. The past shows us that Black revolutionaries continue their struggle even when faced with immense adversity. We must continue to be critical of systems of power and domination while creating a future without fear of assassination, incarceration, exile, or assimilation because of our radical ideas. This is easy to say but much more challenging to enact. While we have much to lose, we cannot afford to let our fear get in the way of our fight for liberation. We might have more to lose than our chains, but remember, we were never meant to survive.

24 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


LET'S CONNECT

FOLLOW ON

  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
bottom of page