Resisting State Violence This page intentionally left blank Resisting State Violence Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture Joy James Foreword by Angela Y. Davis University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Copyright 1996 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press in Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data James, Joy, 1958— Resisting state violence : radicalism, gender, and race in U.S. culture / Joy James ; foreword by Angela Y. Davis, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-2812-2 (he) ISBN 0-8166-2813-0 (pb) i. Racism—United States. 2. Violence—United States. 3. Minority women—United States—Political activity. 4. Political culture—United States. 5. United States—Race relations. I. Title. E184.AIJ27 1996 305.8'00973—dc20 96-19868 The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. Contents Foreword Angela Y. Davis vii Preface / Reading . . . Resistance... ix Acknowledgments xi Part I. Rage and Resistance Lessons: Political Life and Theory Introduction 3 I / Erasing the Spectacle of Racialized State Violence 24 2 I Radicalizing Language and Law: Genocide, 44 Discrimination, and Human Rights Part II. Colonial Hangovers: U.S. Policies at Home and Abroad 5 / Hunting Prey: The U.S. Invasion of Panama 63 4 I The Color(s) of Eros: Cuba as American Obsession 84 s / Border-Crossing Alliances: Japanese and African 106 American Women in the State's Household vi / Contents Part III. Cultural Politics: Black Women and Sexual Violence 6 I Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and Gender 125 Abstractions 7 / Symbolic Rage: Prosecutorial Performances and 133 Racialized Representations of Sexual Violence 8 I Coalition Cross Fire: Antiviolence Organizing and 154 Interracial Rape Part IV. Teaching, Community, and Political Activism 9 I "Discredited Knowledge" in the Nonfiction of 171 Toni Morrison 10 / Teaching, Intersections, and the Integration of 189 Multiculturalism H / Gender, Race, and Radicalism: Reading the 204 Autobiographies of Native and African American Women Activists Conclusion / United Nations Conventions, Antiracist 227 Feminisms, and Coalition Politics Notes 245 Index 259 Foreword Angela Y Davis Recent debates on the role of the public intellectual have not always ex- plored the complex process of linking critical intellectual work with collec- tive organizing practices and consequently do not always reflect an appre- ciation of the role of the political activist. In this provocative collection of essays on state violence, Joy James foregrounds the work of radical activists during the decade of the 19805. As an actor herself in the movements she examines, her approach to political activism is one that demands incisive critical analyses, while her intellectual work is deeply informed by ques- tions that insist on radical structural and personal transformation. These essays serve as a powerful reminder to those who uncritically locate radical activism in the sixties (and sometimes seventies) that the era of Ronald Reagan was not monolithically conservative. James offers us a panoramic view of social movements headquartered in New York during the eighties that addressed local as well as national and international issues. She moves from organizing to solidarity campaigns with move- ments in Latin America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, and the Middle East. Her analysis compellingly links multiple forms of state violence— domestic and imperialist—with sexual violence, focusing on the state pro- cesses that privatize sexual violence. Such an acknowledgment of the resistance strategies of the eighties— with all their embedded contradictions—is particularly important in these contemporary times when conservatism has solidified an ideological ter- rain that renders it more difficult than ever to deploy radical strategies of resistance. At a time when we need to move beyond the black/white para- digm of race relations, beyond masculinist approaches to antiracist ac- tivism, and when histories of political activism in the eighties should point the way toward complex and multiple understandings of racism and anti- racist activism, racism is narrowly represented as the historical segregation Vii This page intentionally left blank Preface / Reading . . . Resistance. . . Written from 1989 to 1995, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture theorizes contemporary politics and activism. Its four parts examine political theory and language, domestic and foreign policies, culture, and education. Part I, "Rage and Resistance Lessons: Political Life and Theory," contains three essays. The Introduction, which describes my use of the terms radicalism, state, and state violence, provides a brief ethnographic-autobiographical account of political life and lessons among New York City activists in the 19805. "Erasing the Spectacle of Racialized State Violence," chapter I, contends that postmodern Foucauldian theories of punishment deflect from the prevalence of racist violence in U.S. poli- cies and progressive resistance to such violence. Its critique of historical lynching and contemporary policing and death-penalty politics traces the trajectory of U.S. political life and racialized violence. Chapter 2, "Radi- calizing Language and Law: Genocide, Discrimination, and Human Rights," examines language and human-rights conventions in relation to U.S. poli- cies, arguing that conventional "race" language creates another form of erasure by conceptually severing state racism from genocidal violence. Part II, "Colonial Hangovers: U.S. Policies at Home and Abroad," be- gins with chapter 3, "Hunting Prey: The U.S. Invasion of Panama," a cri- tique of the December 1989 bombing of Panama as part of an "antidrug" war. Another American nation with which the United States has had volatile relationships is the topic of the following chapter: "The Color(s) of Eros: Cuba as American Obsession." Chapter 4 contrasts State Depart- ment and conservative depictions of Cuba with free-trade advocates', pro- gressive activists', and Havana intellectuals' perspectives on contemporary Cuban society and political, ethnic, and national identities. Concluding Part II, "Border-Crossing Alliances: Japanese and African American Women in the State's Household," chapter 5, speculates on the potential of pro- ix