More expendable than slaves? Racial justice and the after-life of slavery

Abstract

The contemporary context of the struggle for immigrant rights is characterized by the detention and deportation of children, ongoing militarization of the border, the demonization and criminalization of migrants, heavily armed vigilantes who kill, humiliate, and threaten immigrants with impunity. The public discourse on immigration is defined by racist anti-immigrant editorials, ballot measures, Congressional speeches, and public affairs “debates”, that are often more adequately described as hate speech. All these things contribute to an environment that definitely undercuts Latino voters and perhaps more importantly Latino non-voters including children, undocumented people, and people residing in detention. This stage of the struggle for immigrant rights reminds people of slavery, bondage, the convict lease system, and resistance to them as well as the direct action taken to mobilize after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and to press for Anti-Lynching legislation. It is not accidental that this toxic atmosphere reminds us of enslavement – because slavery has an afterlife of enduring gratuitous violence at its heart. Using Saidiyah Hartman's concept of the “after-life of slavery” and Dale Tomich's work on the “second slavery” this paper more fully articulates the relationship between slavery and myths about emancipation, on the one hand, and immigration from colonized places, on the other. Robust pan-ethnic coalitions must support immigration rights that are more keenly aware of their relationship to contemporary black survival, struggles for racial justice, and the role that race plays in US empire. The contemporary context of the struggle for immigrant rights is characterized by the detention and deportation of children, ongoing militarization of the border, the demonization and criminalization of migrants, heavily armed vigilantes who kill, humiliate, and threaten immigrants with impunity. The public discourse on immigration is defined by racist anti-immigrant editorials, ballot measures, Congressional speeches, and public affairs “debates”, that are often more adequately described as hate speech. All these things contribute to an environment that definitely undercuts Latino voters and perhaps more importantly Latino non-voters including children, undocumented people, and people residing in detention. This stage of the struggle for immigrant rights reminds people of slavery, bondage, the convict lease system, and resistance to them as well as the direct action taken to mobilize after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and to press for Anti-Lynching legislation. It is not accidental that this toxic atmosphere reminds us of enslavement – because slavery has an afterlife of enduring gratuitous violence at its heart. Using Saidiyah Hartman's concept of the “after-life of slavery” and Dale Tomich's work on the “second slavery” this paper more fully articulates the relationship between slavery and myths about emancipation, on the one hand, and immigration from colonized places, on the other. Robust pan-ethnic coalitions must support immigration rights that are more keenly aware of their relationship to contemporary black survival, struggles for racial justice, and the role that race plays in US empire. The contemporary context of the struggle for immigrant rights is characterized by detention and deportation of children, ongoing militarization of the border, demonization and criminalization of migrants, heavily armed vigilantes who humiliate, kill, and threaten immigrants with impunity, a racist public discourse that discourages electoral participation in the present and the future.