Henze 00

Brent R.Henze 2000 “Who Says Who Says?: The Epistemological Grounds for Agency in Liberatory Political Projects.” Found in Reclaiming
Identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism. Edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia

Though I argue against efforts to speak for those otherwise able to produce and enact liberatory agendas for themselves ,“starting
off
thought” from the lives of the oppressed is useful for grounding the knowledge of outsiders seeking to
understand their own complex relations to systems of oppression. Outsiders cannot simply investigate
the effects of oppressive power structures in their own lives; on the contrary, their relationships to the
oppressed require them to understand systems of oppression from the perspective of the oppressed,
producing a less partial awareness of matrices of power, as well as their specific relationships with
those matrices (including the broader implications of their experiences of enablement). Only by becoming conscious of the
experiences of the garment worker can I properly understand my contribution to the power structure that
incongruously yields me a T-shirt and yields the laborer a penny on every dollar I spend. Without working to understand her perspective, my
by supplementing my perspective with hers, I am enabled to make
own partial perspective is ineffectual. But
better-informed choices about my own actions—actions that resist or contribute to the oppression
that I may only witness secondhand. Hence the first result of this approach is a more suitable platform from which to understand
and manage the effects of our own actions as they feed into and are shaped by systems of power that oppress others. Instead of seeing our
activity simply as a kind of transaction between ourselves and a system of power (which we may manipulate to our benefit), we may become
better able to understand the effects of our involvement in relation to the involvement of others. In other words, the standpoint of the
oppressed is necessary to manage our own involvement with systems of oppression so as most effectively to combat oppression as a systemic
yet particular effect of power.
 Friere 68
Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1, educator and director of the Department of Cultural Extension of Recife University,1970

For the truly humanist educator and the authentic revolutionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by them together with
other people — not other men and women themselves. The oppressors are the ones who act upon the people to
indoctrinate them and adjust them to a reality which must remain untouched. Unfortunately,
however, in their desire to obtain the support of the people for revolutionary action, revolutionary leaders often fall for the
banking line of planning program content from the top down. They approach the peasant or urban masses with
projects which may correspond to their own view of the world, but not to that of the people.[10] They
forget that their fundamental objective is to fight alongside the people for the recovery of the people’s stolen humanity, not
to “win the people over” to their side. Such a phrase does not belong in the vocabulary of revolutionary leaders, but in that of the
oppressor The revolutionary’s role is to liberate, and be liberated, with the people — not to win them over.
In their political activity, the dominant elites utilize the banking concept to encourage passivity in the
oppressed, corresponding with the latter’s “submerged” state of consciousness, and take advantage of that passivity to
“fill” that consciousness with slogans which create even more fear of freedom. This practice is
incompatible with a truly liberating course of action, which, by presenting the oppressor’s slogans as a problem, helps the oppressed to
“eject” those slogans from within themselves. After all the task of the humanists is surely not that of pitting their slogans against the slogans of
the oppressors, with the oppressed as the testing ground, “housing” the slogans of first one group and then the other. On the contrary, the
task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings,
“housing” the oppressors within themselves, they cannot be truly human. This task implies that revolutionary leaders do not go
to the people in order to bring them a message of “salvation,” but in order to come to know
through dialogue with them both their objective situation and their awareness of that situation —
the various levels of perception of themselves and of the world in which and with which they exist. One cannot expect positive
results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view
of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion,[11]good intentions notwithstanding
 Moya

First – the attempt to establish discussions of identity by utilizing a “collective” notion of

identity turns the project of identity debate. Paula Moya used the example of collectively
identifying women when she said.

Paula M. L. Moya (Introduction: Reclaiming Identity, http://clogic.eserver.org/3-1&2/moya.html)

The first problem with essentialist conceptions of identity that critics point to is the tendency to posit
one aspect of identity (say, gender) as the sole cause or determinant constituting the social meanings
of an individual's experience. The difficulty, critics of identity point out, is that identities are
constituted differently in different historical contexts. So, for example, a slave woman living in
ante-bellum America might experience her "womanness" very differently from a middle-class
housewife living in Victorian England. Moreover, the social meanings attached to each woman's gender
might be so different as to render the project of describing one woman in terms of the other
meaningless. Even two women living in close proximity to each other (such as a Zulu maid and her Afrikaner
madam) might be so differently situated in relation to the category of gender that their experiences,
and the social meanings inscribed in those experiences, cannot be usefully described in the same
terms. These examples illustrate that, contrary to an essentialist view, identity categories are
neither stable nor internally homogenous.

The affirmative’s attempt of positing a single authentic example of what it means to hold
am authentic identity homogenizes the experience of those who hold similar identities.
Moya continues –
Paula M. L. Moya (Introduction: Reclaiming Identity, http://clogic.eserver.org/3-1&2/moya.html)
  3. The instability and internal heterogeneity of identity categories (such as gender) have prompted
critics of identity to point to a range of additional problems. They remind us that insofar as every woman
differs from every other woman in more or less significant ways, it is impossible to determine the (racial,
class, cultural, etc.) identity of the "authentic woman" and thus to unify different women under the
signifier "woman." And because women's experiences are so varied, there can be no such thing as an
authentic or exemplary "woman's experience." This situation, the critic of identity suggests, creates an
epistemological difficulty: as we do not know exactly what experiences of women can be taken as
exemplary, we cannot know with certainty what criteria to apply in analyzing and understanding
women's actions, intentions and emotions. As a result, "women's experience" can only be understood as
an arbitrary construct. Indeed, any account of "women's experience" risks naturalizing one group of
women's experience as normative and thereby marginalizing that of another group's.
 Mumia Abu-Jamal 98 1/2
Mumia Abu-Jamal 1998[“A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE,” 9/19/98, http://www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm]
It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of social and
communal violence that occurs daily in the nation. Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and
additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the non lethal violence that Americans daily inflict on
each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and
degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent feature of living in the midst of the American empire. We live, equally
immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural" violence, of
a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness.  Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr.
James Gilligan observes; “By structural violence' I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by
those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them.  Those excess
deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of
society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting
`structural' with `behavioral violence' by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of
individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on." --
(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This
form of violence, not covered by any
of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more
insidious. How dangerous is it -- really? Gilligan notes: "[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because
of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to
three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide  of
the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact  accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade,  throughout
the world." [Gillitgan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized,
turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are
taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently  wrong with themselves, instead of the social
order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence
as when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son,  and the kids fight each other. This
vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media,  uncriticized
in substandard educational systems, and un- understood by the very  folks who suffer in its grips, feeds
on the spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes  damn sure -that we can recognize
and must react to it. This fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor.It is found in every country, submerged beneath the
sands of history, buried, yet ever present, as omnipotent as death. In the struggles over the commons in Europe, when the peasants struggled
and lost their battles for their commonal lands (a precursor to similar struggles throughout Africa and the Americas), this violence was
sanctified, by church and crown, as the 'Divine Right of Kings' to the spoils of class battle. Scholars Frances Fox-Piven and Richard A Cloward
wrote, in The New Class War (Pantheon, 1982/1985): They did not lose because landowners were immune to burning and preaching and rioting.
They lost because the usurpations of owners were regularly defended by the legal authority and the armed force of the state. It was the state
that imposed increased taxes or enforced the payment of increased rents, and evicted or jailed those who could not pay the resulting debts. It
was the state that made lawful the appropriation by landowners of the forests, streams, and commons, and imposed terrifying penalties on
those who persisted in claiming the old rights to these resources. It was the state that freed serfs or emancipated sharecroppers only to leave
them landless. (52) The "Law", then, was a tool of the powerful to protect their interests, then, as now. It was a weapon against the poor and
 Mumia Abu-Jamal 98 2/2

impoverished, then, as now. It punished retail violence, while turning a blind eye to the wholesale violence daily done by their class
masters. The law was, and is, a tool of state power, utilized to protect the status quo, no matter how
oppressive that status was, or is. Systems are essentially ways of doing things that have concretized into
tradition, and custom, without regard to the rightness of those ways. No system that causes this kind of
harm to people should be allowed to remain, based solely upon its time in existence. Systems must serve
life, or be discarded as a threat and a danger to life.  Such systems must pass away, so that their great and
terrible violence passes away with them. 
 Nagel and Nocella 13
Nagel and Nocella 13 (The End of Prisons: Reflections from the DecarcerationMovementedited by
Mechthild E. Nagel, Anthony J. Nocella II)

The original working title for this volume was Prison Abolition . After discussion among the
contributors however, we changed the title to The End of Prisons. First, we wish to raise discussions about
the telos of prisons – what purpose do they have?Second, Prison abolition is strongly related to a
particular movement to end the prison industrial complex. Following Michel Foucault(1977), we argue
that prisons are also institutions such as schools, nursing homes, jails, daycare centers, parks, zoos,
reservations and marriage, just to name a few. Prisons are all around us and constructed by those in
dominant oppressive authoritarian positions. There are many types of prisons – religious prisons,
social prisons, political prisons, economic prisons, educational prisons, and, of course, criminal prisons .
Individuals leave one prison only to enter another. From daycare to school to a nursing home, we are
a nation of instutionalized prisons. Criminal prisons in the United States are not officially referred to as such, but rather as
correctional facilities. A prison, as we define it in this volume, is an institution or system that oppresses and does
not allow freedom for a particular group. Within this definition, we include the imprisonment of non-
human animals and plants, which are too often overlooked. Michel Foucault (1977) famously said, “Is it
suprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (p.
288). We believe that this volume is one of the first to extend Foucault’s logica , by making a connection
between coercive institutions and all systems of domination as forms of prisons . We argue that the
conception of prison is far reaching, always changing and adapting to the times and the socio-political
environment. We expand the concept of prison from concrete walls, barbed wire, gates and fences to
many of the institutions and systems throughout society such as schools, mental hospitals,
reservations for indigenous Americans, zoos for non-human animals, and national parks and urban
cultivated green spaces for the ecological community. United States imperialism, which promotes
global domination and capitalism, not only imprisons convicted criminals by its people, land, non-
human animals, those that surround it (non-United States citizens) and those trapped within it
(American Indians and immigrants).
 Ross 00
Ross 2000 (Marlon B., Professor, Department of English and Carter G. Woodson Institute for African
American and African studies, “Commentary: Pleasuring Identity, or the Delicious Politics of Belonging,”
New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 4 pages 836-837

More to the point, Professor Michaels cleverly inverts the operative logic of the “politics of survival.”
People do not struggle to survive as a group in order to possess a culture – that is, they do not struggle to
survive in order to preserve their cultural identity. To the contrary, they struggle to preserve their cultural
identity as a way of surviving, as individuals, the acts committed against them as a cultural group. They
recognize that to survive as individuals depends on their ability to cohere, politick, and speak as a
collective body experiencing assault because of their group identity. That there is greater strength in
numbers and greatest strength in unified numbers is a harsh reality of politics, one not invented by
“identity politics”, but understood well by those who have had to practice “identity politics” in order to
survive and thus to increase the odds of garnering a fair share of the country’s resources. Moreover,
cultural practices often serve as the glue boding together disparate individuals in a group, oppressed or
otherwise, through an economy of pleasure in a sort of deliriously kindred know how. For racially
oppressed groups like American Blacks, for instance, such cultural practices constitute a means for
survival as well as pleasurable ends whereby the pleasure taken in identificatory cultural practices
cements the bonds enabling survival. Call and response, shouting, the spiritual, Black preaching, oratory,
signifying, blues, jazz, loud-talk churchiness, and many other culturally specified manners help to
perform and reproduce a will to struggle together against the common foe of racism, always under
conditions in which actual solidarity of identity, much less of purpose, is in fact impossible.
 Spanos 4
Spanos in 4 (William V., available online cross-x.com url:(http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=945110&high)
Dear Joe MIller, Yes, the statement about the American debate circuit you refer to was made by me, though some years ago. I strongly believed
debate in both the
then --and still do, even though a certain uneasiness about "objectivity" has crept into the "philosophy of debate" -- that
high schools and colleges in this country is assumed to take place nowhere, even though the issues that
are debated are profoundly historical, which means that positions are always represented from the
perspective of power, and a matter of life and death. I find it grotesque that in the debate world, it doesn't
matter which position you take on an issue -- say, the United States' unilateral wars of preemption -- as long as you "score
points". The world we live in is a world entirely dominated by an "exceptionalist" America which has
perennially claimed that it has been chosen by God or History to fulfill his/its "errand in the wilderness." That claim is powerful
because American economic and military power lies behind it. And any alternative position in such a world is virtually
powerless. Given this inexorable historical reality, to assume, as the protocols of debate do, that all positions are equal
is to efface the imbalances of power that are the fundamental condition of history and to annul the Moral
authority inhering in the position of the oppressed. This is why I have said that the appropriation of my interested work on
education and empire to this transcendental debate world constitute a travesty of my intentions. scholarship is not "disinterested." It
is militant and intended to ameliorate as much as possible the pain and suffering of those who have been
oppressed by the "democratic" institutions that have power precisely by way of showing that their language of
"truth," far from being "disinterested" or "objective" as it is always claimed, is informed by the will to power over
all manner of "others."  This is also why I told my interlocutor that he and those in the debate world who felt like him
should call into question the traditional "objective" debate protocols and the instrumentalist language they privilege in
favor of a concept of debate and of language in which life and death mattered. I am very much aware that the arrogant
neocons who now saturate the government of the Bush administration -- judges, pentagon planners, state
department officials, etc. learned their "disinterested" argumentative skills in the high school and college
debate societies and that, accordingly, they have become masters at disarming the just causes of the oppressed.
This kind leadership will reproduce itself (along with the invisible oppression it perpetrates) as long as the
training ground and the debate protocols from which it emerges remains in tact. A revolution in the debate
world must occur. It must force that unworldly world down into the historical arena where positions make
a difference.
 Bleiker language

Bleiker, 2000. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and
Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 216)

Language is one of the most fundamental aspects of human life. It is omnipresent. It penetrates every
aspect of transversal politics, from the local to the global. We speak, Heidegger stresses, when we are awake and when we
are asleep, even when we do not utter a single word. We speak when we listen, read or silently pursue an occupation. We are always speaking
because we cannot think without language, because 'language is the house of Being', the home within which we dwell. 2 But languages
are never neutral. They embody particular values and ideas. They are an integral part of transversal power relations
and of global politics in general. Languages impose sets of assumptions on us, frame our thoughts so subtly that
we are mostly unaware of the systems of exclusion that are being entrenched through this process. And
yet, a language is not just a form of domination that engulfs the speaker in a web of discursive constraints, it is also a terrain of
dissent, one that is not bound by the political logic of national boundaries. Language is itself a form of
action — the place where possibilities for social change emerge, where values are slowly transformed,
where individuals carve out thinking space and engage in everyday forms of resistance. In short,
language epitomizes the potential and limits of discursive forms of transversal dissent.
 LANGUAGE KEY
Mustapha Khayati 2009 (June 12 2009, Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary)
It is impossible to get rid of a world without getting rid of the language that
conceals and protects it, without laying bare its true nature. As the “social
truth” of power is permanent falsification, language is its permanent
guarantee and the Dictionary its universal reference. Every revolutionary
praxis has felt the need for a new semantic field and for expressing a new
truth; from the Encyclopédistes to the Polish intellectuals’ critique of Stalinist “wooden language” in 1956, this
demand has continually been asserted. Because language is the house of power, the
refuge of its police violence. Any dialogue with power is violence, whether
passively suffered or actively provoked. When power wants to avoid
resorting to its material arms, it relies on language to guard the oppressive
order. This collaboration is in fact the most natural expression of all power.
From words to ideas is only a step — a step always taken by power and its
theorists. All theories of language, from the simple-minded mysticism of
Being to the supreme (oppressive) rationality of the cybernetic machine,
belong to the same world: the discourse of power considered as the sole
possible frame of reference, as the universal mediation. Just as the Christian
God is the necessary mediation between two souls and between the soul and
the self, the discourse of power establishes itself at the heart of all
communication, becoming the necessary mediation between self and self.
This is how it is able to coopt oppositional movements, diverting them onto
its own terrain, infiltrating them and controlling them from within. The
critique of the dominant language, the détournement of it, is going to
become a permanent practice of the new revolutionary theory. Since any new
interpretation is called a misinterpretation by the authorities, the
situationists are going to establish the legitimacy of such misinterpretation
and denounce the fraudulence of the interpretations given and authorized by
power. Since the dictionary is the guardian of present meaning, we propose
to destroy it systematically. The replacement of the dictionary, that master
reference of all inherited and domesticated language, will find its adequate
expression in the revolutionary infiltration of language, in the détournement
extensively used by Marx, systematized by Lautréamont, and now being put within everyone’s reach by the SI.
 Economy
The idea that we are going to be able to fix the economy without resolving underlying
conditions that make economic collapse inevitable is a pipe dream. The effects of poverty
and the protection of wealth must be changed in a far more basic level than what the
affirmative proposes. This coupled with their impact discussion reveal the true aim of
their fear mongering…to maintain the oppressive order of the state.
Mumia Abu-Jamal in 09 (The Fallen. Transcriped from radio essay available online http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm [col. writ.
2/12/09] (c))

A nation's economy is always a work of complexity , which accounts for the divergent opinions of economists, who
often come down on different sides of the big issues, as in what works, and what doesn't. Broadly speaking, the conflict is between classic
and Keynesian economics, with the former of the view that the market is self-regulating, and the latter of the view that the market isn't self-
regulating, but must be massaged and managed by government fiscal policies. The latest stimulus package is Keynesian (after
British economist John  Maynard Keynes [1883-1946], as was the bailout of the banks and financial institutions . It
seeks to influence events by an aggressive expansionist fiscal policy. But it seems like this is less stimulus than stopgap,
for it seeks to stimulate something that is in almost deadly shape. Look at it this way; if your heart stops,
and you are given a powerful jolt of electricity, your heart may resume beating, but the problem is
hardly solved. You don't need a defibrillator unless the body (the system) is in an advanced state of
collapse.  And it's that state of serious illness that isn't being seriously addressed, for the American economy has been ill for quite some
time. Much can be traced to the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) era, which sought to
emphatically transform the economy to one run on information and financial services, with the
manufacturing to be exported to foreign markets where labor was cheaper. Unfortunately, no
serious educational efforts were undertaken to adjust to this dramatic economic shift , and instead, a
decade was wasted on largely irrelevant battles over No Child Left Behind, when millions of children experienced school as
a test-taking prison, instead of a site of substantive learning. With  manufacturing hollowed out, and real
wages falling annually, how could the economy not have a massive seizure? For, of all the money roaring
through the U.S. economy, over 70% is from personal consumption of goods and services, which means the economy is
consumer-driven. Let us illustrate; the U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for 2006 was over $13 trillion.   Personal consumption of
goods and services came to over $9 trillion. The net effect of joblessness and lowered wages is a hit at the heart
of the economy, that $750 billion could hardly touch. Until the fundamentals can be recognized
and corrected, these problems will continue, and the economy will sputter along, until the next
heart attack. --(c) '09 maj
 Racism root cause of conflict
Makhijani 06 (Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Racism, Resources and Nuclear Weapons: Some Reflections on the Rodney King Case By Arjun Makhijani An essay written in
1992 after the conclusion of the first trial of the police officers accused in the Rodney King beating at the request of the Military
Production Network (since re-named Alliance for Nuclear Accountability) )

U.S. governmental and corporate policies have led the international military and economic alliance,
across race and nationality, in order to create and maintain the structure of this violence in the period
after the Second World War. One of the main methods of U.S. policy has been to link up with the most
convenient local forces, democratic or dictatorial, to establish or maintain U.S. corporate economic
hegemony. This has included the training of armed forces and military dictators, the covert overthrow of democratically
elected governments, and the threat of the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear Third World
countries. These elements have often been combined. For instance, U.S. nuclear-capable bombers were put on alert as
the CIA was assisting the overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954. And
the institutions representing the rich in the Third World have often actively sought and collaborated in this system, which continues to result in
the devastation of their own countries and people. U.S. policy was spelled out in National Security Council Memorandum number 68 (NSC-68),
in 1950. The policy of containment that it developed was far beyond mere deterrence of a Soviet nuclear attack on the U.S. or even a Soviet
military attack on Europe. “Containment” according to this policy was linked to keeping the Soviet influence out of the rest of the world, and
fostering an economic system more conducive to U.S. capitalism — “attempting to create a healthy international community,” as NSC-68 put it.
NSC-68 advocated being ready for everything from local conventional wars to local nuclear wars to a war of “global annihilation” should the
U.S. not be able to “hold” any of the “critical points” in the world within its own orbit relative to the Soviet Union, directly or indirectly.The
history of the implementation of this policy shows that in practice every government (and even institutions within countries such as political
parties and labor unions), no matter how democratic, that sought local control over resources so as to exclude or even moderately limit
multinational corporations was vilified, subverted and opposed vigorously as “communist,” while governments that allowed an “open door” to
foreign capital were supported even when they were viciously dictatorial. Indeed, the U.S. has been instrumental in setting up or helping create
many dictatorial governments.The uranium of the Congo and Namibia, the gold and diamonds of South Africa
and other African countries, the oil of Iran and Arab countries like Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Libya, were
among the resources whose control occupied a large portion of U.S. policy, not only for itself. These
resources were also at the center of post-war recovery in Europe and Japan. They were essential to the success of
the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Western Europe. Many of the nuclear war scenarios that the Pentagon used for
planning purposes started with a crisis of control of oil in the Persian Gulf. It was the quest for control of
these same resources that caused the U.S. and Britain to overthrow the elected Iranian government,
headed by Mossadegh, in 1953 and replace it by a pliant dictator. This was the “Shah of Iran” who had initially been put there as
Britain’s puppet when his father supported the fascists during World War II. Through terror and torture, the Shah made protest outside the
mosques essentially impossible. This led to a radical Islamic revolution in 1979; the crisis that followed has not yet ended. Oil loomed so large in
these events that James Schlesinger, who had occupied various positions in government, including head of the CIA, Secretary of Defense and
Secretary of Energy, told Congress that the oil crisis of 1979 was more serious than that of 1973. He also advocated U.S. military action in Iran
to support the Shah.This pattern of exploitation of resources and cheap labor by the U.S. and Western Europe
was designed to keep social and economic conflict far away from the areas where Whites lived or came
to occupy and make their own. It was a pattern that emerged slowly, over a hundred years or so, after the poor in Europe became
very angry and began beheading the rich and the powerful during the French revolution in 1789. But aims and policies so cynical and
inhumane could not fail to be reflected in the home countries of their originators. It is difficult to
compartmentalize immorality. When profit and power are put before people (rather than in their service) then
we should expect to see expressions of this towards all people, including White people. Examples
abound all over the world. The nuclear establishment provides many graphic illustrations.
 High Theory 1/2
Their theoretical reliance absent the voices of the oppressed REPLICATES STRUCTURES OF
DOMINATION instead of solving for them and fails to realize the historical reality of the debate space -
STARK, CHAIR OF LAW, WEST VIRGINIA COLLEGE OF LAW; PROFESSOR OF LAW, HOFSTRA, 2009 (BARBARA, BRIGHAM
YOUNG UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 2009 B.Y.U.L. REV. 381) Theory is problematic in this context for the same
reasons that theory is always problematic. It sacrifices the messy complexity of reality for the clarity of
abstraction. John Rawls' A Theory of Justice 48 has been criticized, for example, because Rawls begins with the assumption that fair
decisions about how to structure society can only be made behind a "veil of ignorance." That is, those making the decisions should not know
their place in society and how they personally will be affected by their decisions. Rather, the decisions should be fair enough that they will be
They literally have no physical
satisfactory, however one is situated. Rawls' decision makers are disembodied and disconnected.
reality; they are not old, or hungry, or pregnant. 49 They are not part of any family, community, or social
network. As a corollary, theory inevitably omits or distorts the experience of some, while reifying that of
others. 50At the same time, theory is even more problematic in the context of global poverty than it is in
others because of both the limitations of liberal theory 51 and the political reality of liberal hegemony in an international
system of sovereign states. Theory is also problematic [*391] here because of its applications, the uses to which

theory has been put. Human rights are grounded in liberal theory, but so was colonialism . 52 Indeed,
some argue that the grand theory of the Enlightenment is oblivious to its own "will to power. " 53
The Enlightenment made "man" rather than God the center of the universe. But its purportedly

universal, objective, rational subject is in fact a Western white man. The Enlightenment's promised
Utopia, similarly, is the universalization of Western culture. 54 Thus, liberal theory has been used to justify
the colonialism and neocolonialism that, some suggest, is responsible for the ongoing impoverishment
of the global South.
 High Theory 2/2
Not only is our interrogation of these social situations a necessary pre requisite to the k, but also the
theoretical positions of all kritik needs to be grounded in social location and experience, otherwise the
movement is both doomed to failure and results in using the oppressed as pawns on a chess board in the
name of their movement, in other words their reliance on such knowledge production a direct link to the
1ac
RIMSTEAD, B.A. AT YORK UNIVERSITY, M.A. AT U. DE MONTRÉAL, PH.D. AT U. DE MONTRÉAL, 2001,
[ROXANNE, REMNANTS OF NATION ON POVERTY NARRATIVES BY WOMEN, PG. 259-260] <<<I would agree that it is useful to be vigilant about the dangers of mystifying subjectivity and
prioritizing it above other form of knowledge, practices which Chris Weedon links with assumptions in humanist discourse of the free, se lf-de termining individu al and those of certain radical

the fact remains that

and essentialist theories of gender (78-9) and which Catherine Belsey also links with assumptions of autonomous agency (1988, 51- 2). But

theories which are not informed by these subjectivities, even when acknowledging the voices of
working- class women as worthy objects of study, have tended to be too abstract or too idealist to bring
us much closer to any 'inside' knowledge of what Zandy referred to as 'th e boundaries and textures of working-class women's lives.' It
seems that the mundane and messy sphere of material struggle, class identification, complicity, and the

complexity of life in the concrete world have not been able to emerge through the highly abstract
language and theory of literary discourse whereas these subjectivities are palpable in testimonies about
the lived. Paulo Freire, the great Brazilian educator, has urged that academics engage in dialogue with the oppressed in
order to inform theory and praxis and avoid recolonizing the cultural spaces of oppressed people by
making them into objects of study. When dominant groups refuse to listen to oppressed people's
subjectivities, Freire observed, a form of 'cultural invasion ' takes place in support of systemic
oppression: '[i]n this enomenon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group , in disrespect of the latter
's potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of

the invaded by curbing their expression'. Freire maintained that cultural synthesis will take place not
when oppressed people become more familiar to intellectuals as objects of study but when they leave
behind their status as objects of someone else's cultural imaginings to become the subjects of their
own stories. Intellectuals play a bridging role between the oppressed and emerging it is important to remember, after all, that the Lirmingham School embraced marginalized
subjects not only by making them objects of study but also through an extensive university outreach program of adult education that sought to equip workingclass subjects with the tools for
analysing their own relation to culture (During). In Canada , similar efforts of outreach - say, for example, that of Frontier College to educate illiterate workers on the work site - have not aimed
for the same high level of critical analysis. I am not aware that any of the cultural studies programs in Canadian universities are currently invested in adult education outreach programs, unless
of course one counts the passive form of TV university. 260 Remnants of Nation oppositional culture during cultural revolution , according to both Freire and Gramsci, because they listen to
oppressed subjects who are capable of theorizing their own oppression and then lead the oppressed to greater subjecthood and greater cultural power in the public sphere. Freire describes
the bridging function as leading others to critical cultural analysis of their own lived experience of oppression: Thus cooperation leads dialogical Subjects to focus their attention on the reality

Let me
which mediates them and which - posed as a problem challenges them. The response to th at challenge is the action of the dialogical Subjects upon reality in order to transform it .

reemphasize that posing reality as a problem does not mean sloganizing: it means critical analysis is of a
problematic reality'. The shift of focus from orderly theory to the detailed consideration of disorderly
culture is crucial to breaking down the homogenizing image of the poor as Other. For example, it allows us to
regard marginalized narratives as alternative knowledge forms that are sufficiently complex in and of
themselves as testimonies and minority theories that they cannot be contained or made coherent by
theory alone. It also recognizes that many oppressed subjects have not had access to the production of cultural theory in any academically
legitimate sense, but that they are, none the less, capable of theorizing their own oppression from their own stand point. The most critical theoretical
position to take in interrogating the politics of representations of poverty is the position that no one theory of class or poverty, no single social
or literary theory, can explain adequately the complexity of classed experiences as they are lived and reproduced through culture.>>>
 WADIWEL
Wadiwel in 02 Dinesh Joesph, “Cows and Sovereignty: Biopower and Animal Life” Borderlands E-Journal Vol.1 #2)

But such a political program has far reaching consequences, both for Western sovereignty, and the way that the business of politics is
conducted. The living population of the earth has inherited a vision of sovereign power, which has spread
cancerously into even the most seemingly inaccessible aspects of everyday life. This vision commands all, claims legitimacy for all,
and determines the conduct of living for all within its domain. Politics ‘as we know it’ is caught
inextricably in the web of sovereign power, in such a way that it seems that modern political debate
cannot help but circulate around the same, routine issues: "What is the appropriate legislative
response?"; "Is it within the State’s powers to intervene in this particular conflict?"; "How can we ensure
the citizen’s rights are maintained in the face of the state?" . To challenge such an encompassing and
peremptory political discourse — where every question implies the sovereign absolutely, and every decision made refers to life itself
— would require the most intensive rethinking of the way in which territory, governance and economy
are imagined. In this sense, whilst Agamben’s analysis of bare life, and Foucault’s theory of bio-power, provide a
means by which to assess the condition of non-human life with respect to sovereign power, the political
project must reach beyond these terms, and embrace an intertwining of the human and the non-human:
an intersection which may be found in the animal life shared by both entities.
 Russell - Morris

RUSSELL-MORRIS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, 2009 (BRIANNE, THE LOGIC OF WELFARE REFORM:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE REAUTHORIZATION OF THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK
OPPORTUNITYRECONCILIATION ACT OF 1996)
Discourse and policy go hand in hand, and so both must change in order for inequalities and thus
poverty to be truly addressed. A change in poverty discourse must precede a change in antipoverty policy. New social welfare
policy should be based in a discourse that promotes an understanding that inequality and poverty are
entangled. The state must change fundamentally in order to address and to dismantle the sources of
structural inequalities, such as neoliberal capitalism and patriarchal gender relations, rather than
the individual outcomes of those inequalities. Both Schram (1995) and O’Connor (2001) call for a need to view discourse
and structure as connected. In other words, we must focus on how policy and the language that is used to
discuss and create that policy reinforce each other, and only then can we begin to move beyond
such a limited discourse. O’Connor argues that poverty researchers must work independently of the State so
that they “generate a genuinely independent and critical body of knowledge that aims to set rather
than follow the agenda for policy debate” (2001:293). If knowledge is understood as part of larger
cultural dynamics and their resulting economic, political, and social inequalities, poverty as a social
problem is “de-pauperized” and will be taken seriously as a problem with structural, not behavioral, roots.
Institutions, and not only the individual-level consequences of those institutions, would come under scrutiny and would be targeted for
change (O’Connor 2001).
 State Demands bad
Warner, Ede Jr. 02 (Director of the Malcolm X Debate Society at University of Louisville " GO
HOMERS, MAKEOVERS OR TAKEOVERS? A PRIVILEGE ANALYSIS OF DEBATE AS A GAMING
SIMULATION"

Although many teams are beginning to reject this notion of fiat and arguing for the importance of the
discourse being utilized, one might think these competitive frameworks are closer to the spirit of the gaming simulation. But they
too often fall into the trap of making claims like, “our rhetoric is a demand on the state,” usually without
a willingness to address the obvious question: how effective can a demand on the state be if the state fails
to hear it? In either case, the continued desire to call for the ballot for actions that will not occur as a result
of the actual signing of the ballot only fuels the fantastical speculation Snider argues against in earlier work. Again
privilege seems to play a role in these manifestations as those without privilege are probably less inclined
to role play, especially if involved in social justice struggles and interested in speaking to those issues.
 war impacts
Mumia Abu-Jamal in 09 (Ghosts of Vietnam. Transcriped from radio essay available online
http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm [col. writ. 11/29/09]  (c) )

If early news accounts are correct, President Barack Obama will send over 30,000 new troops into Afghanistan, to support and defend one of
the most corrupt governments on earth. He will do so, in part, because, during the last U.S. presidential election, liberals, while opposing the
ruinous and disastrous Iraq war, painted the Afghanistan was as 'the good war' -- perhaps because it was seen as winnable. But there is another
reason.Wars fought overseas are real life metaphors for political wars fought here at home . Wars
abroad are ultimately about domestic politics -- about the struggle for political supremacy in America.
"War," the old adage goes, "is the sport of kings." In the U.S., war has become the sport of political parties.  
She or he who sounds the most hawkish; who shows political 'toughness' (with other people's
children) will tend to prevail in the elections. Afghanistan is thus a prop in a great play -- of little
importance in and of itself, but of great symbolic value in the long wars between right and left in the
American body politic. It matters not one whit what Americans want, nor what party they belong to.  American
political parties are bought -and-paid for tools of great corporate and private wealth.  (If you question this
assertion, notice what happens when a pol leaves office.  They are swept up into the arms of big corporations, where they finally join the class
Thus we see the spectacle of people voting for ostensibly anti-war candidates, who, once in office,
they've served.)
bow to more war, more weapons and more troops. War is never about what politicians say war is
about. Afghanistan is no more about terrorism than Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction
(WMO's) Today, Britain is about to launch a rare parliamentary "Enquiry" into how it got into the Iraq war.  Isn't it remarkable that they can ask
questions after the war --but not before? Of course, they did so in fealty to their big brother (the U.S.) for the basest of reasons--for politics, and
for profits
 Dark 1/2
Pinkney 2007
Larry- veteran of the Black Panther Party, former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only
American to successfully self-author his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. “Liberals, Racism And The English Language In 21st Century America” November 2007 www.countercurrents.org Accessed 2-23-2014

The maintenance of subordination and control over we Black and other people of color goes far
beyond the brutal and sustained physical component. While it is certainly accurate that genocide, lynchings, and bloody invasions of
sovereign nation states, etc. by white America is accompanied by enormous and often unspeakable brutality, the fact of the matter is that it is the component of

mental colonization by white America of we people of color that assures our continued subordination. One of
the most powerful and devastating forms of mental colonization in America is the English language itself—
or more to the point the controlling definitions of said language. The esteemed activist, actor, director, orator, and artist extraordinaire,
the late Ossie Davis, put it this way in his poignant essay titled, ‘The English Language Is My Enemy:’ “I will say that language is the primary medium of

communication in the educational process and, in this case, the English language. I will indict the English language as one of the prime
carriers of racism from one person to another and discuss how the teacher and the student, especially the Negro student, are affected by
this fact. The English language is my enemy.” In elaborating upon the psychological aspects of “racism” Davis further notes: “Racism is a belief that human races have
distinctive characteristics, usually involving the idea that one’s own race has a right to rule others. Racism. The English language is my enemy.” Davis goes on to write,

“Theword ‘blackness’ has 120 synonyms, 60 of which are distinctly unfavorable, and none of them
even mildly positive…In addition, and this is what really hurts, 20 of those words [excluding the aforementioned 60] are related directly to race, such as
‘Negro,’ ‘Negress,’ ‘nigger,’ ‘darkey,’ ‘blackamoor,’ etc.” Thus, Ossie Davis correctly and horribly concludes that even “thinking itself is subvocal speech” which

generally requires the use of “words” and if those words are the “English language for the purpose of communication,” those
using said language
are forcing “the Negro child into 60 ways to despise himself [or herself], and the white child, 60 ways
to aid and abet” said Black child “in the crime” against her or himself .¶ To reiterate: One of the most powerful and
devastating forms of mental colonization in America is the English language itself—or more to the point the controlling definitions of said language. The so-called

conservatives and liberals alike of white America are well aware of this, and often actually count on it. Mental
colonization of we Black,
Brown, and Red peoples assures the continuance of our physical subordination and control.¶ Thus, it came as no
surprise when earlier this week, I heard the white person hosting a nationally syndicated , so called liberal/progressive

radio/television news program from New York City, blithely and whimsically engage in devastating white racist language as

she referred to the despicable, bloody, and exploitative “legacy” of a US fruit company in Central and South
America, as a “dark one.” A dark legacy indeed! Clearly, as a professional journalist she knows and knew the power of
the language of her words; “bananas” or other fruit notwithstanding. This was certainly not the first time she had engaged

in such linguistic lynching. Nevertheless, to all the millions upon millions of “dark” people in America and throughout
the world, and most especially to our beautiful “dark” youth; let us remind them of their dignity and
their worth. Let us remind them--and each other--that our darkness is an asset, not a negative. Any person or people
who constantly and consciously use color [i.e. ’dark,’ ‘black,’ etc.] as an equation of evil or negativity
are themselves not worthy of the trust or alliance of our with people of color.¶ We are, as Curtis Mayfield sang, the “people who
are darker than blue.” We are dark but we are not evil or negative, nor will we allow white America’s liberals

(masquerading as progressives) or conservatives to cunningly reinforce negative emotional and mental

stereotypes under the guise of being our allies.¶ It is difficult enough for we Black, Brown, and Red
peoples to consistently work at decolonizing our own minds and those of our youth, without the
guileful machinations of those white liberals who go about the business of reinforcing mental
colonization while pretending to be concerned about our liberation.¶ The first and most important step in decolonizing our minds is
 Dark 2/2

recognizing that we are, and have quite deliberately been, mentally colonized . This process of mental decolonization
can, like a prairie fire, be very rapid once it begins. There is enormous cause for hope, and it is only we ourselves who are best

suited to bring about our own liberation, which ultimately will positively affect the liberation of the entire
world. Sisters and brothers, let’s hold on to each other’s hopes and dreams as we struggle forward to
keep on keeping it real. We can do this because we must… ¶
 Domestic Violence
hooks 2k

hooks, bell. "Ending Violence." Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South
End, 2000. 61-66. Print.

Patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful
individual to control others through various forms of coercive force. This expanded definition of
domestic violence includes male violence against women, same-sex violence, and adult violence
against children. The term “patriarchal violence” is useful because unlike the more accepted phrase
“domestic violence” it continually reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to
sexism and sexist thinking, to male domination. For too long the term domestic violence has been used as
a “soft” term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and somehow less
threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the home . This is not so, since more
women are beaten and murdered in the home than on the outside. Also most people tend to see
domestic violence between adults as separate and distinct from violence against children when it is
not. Often children suffer abuse as they attempt to protect a mother who is being attacked by a male
companion or husband, or they are emotionally damaged by witnessing violence and abuse .¶ Just as a vast
majority of citizens in this nation believe in equal pay for equal work most folks believe that men should not beat women
and children. Yet when they are told that domestic violence is the direct outcome of sexism, that it will
not end until sexism ends, they are unable to make this logical leap because it requires challenging
and changing fundamental ways of thinking about gender .
 Social Death

Sexton 11
Jared,  Director, African American Studies, UC Irvine, “The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism”
http://www.yorku.ca/intent/issue5/articles/pdfs/jaredsextonarticle.pdf

Whereas Patterson’s detractors take to task his historical sociology for ¶ its inability and unwillingness to fully countenance the agency of the ¶
perspective and self-predicating activity of the slave, his supporters (or ¶ those engaging his work through generous critique) do not fail to
remark, ¶ even if they rarely highlight, that what is most stunning is the fact that the
concept of social death cannot be
¶

generalized. It is indexed to slavery and it ¶ does not travel. That is, there are problems in the formulation
of the relation ¶ of power from which slavery arises and there are problems in the ¶ formulation of the
relation of this relation of power to other relations of ¶ power. This split reading was evident immediately, as indicated
in a ¶ contemporaneous review by Ross K. Baker (professor of political science at ¶ Rutgers University and editor of a 1970 collected volume, The
Afro ¶ American). Baker observes, against the neoconservative backlash politics of ¶ “angry white males” and
the ascendance of another racialized immigration ¶ discourse alternating, post-civil rights, between model minority and ¶ barbarians at the gate:
“The mere fact of slavery makes black Americans ¶ different. No amount of tortured logic could permit
the analogy to be drawn ¶ between a former slave population and an immigrant population, no matter ¶ how low-flung the latter
group. Indeed, had the Great Society programs ¶ persisted at their highest levels until today, it is doubtful that the mass of ¶ American blacks
would be measurably better off than they are now” (Baker ¶ 1983: 21). Baker’s refusal
of analogy in the wake of his reading of Patterson
¶ is pegged to a certain realization “brought home,” as he puts it, “by the ¶ daunting force of Patterson’s description

of the bleak totality of the slave ¶ experience” (ibid).

 VICTIM

Mosley 2013
Carol, director of We End Violence, “The language we use: Victim and Survivor” June 4, 2013 www.weendviolence.com Accessed 2-23-2014

The language we use: Victim and Survivor¶ At the recent training for campus law enforcement officers sponsored by the Texas Association
Against Sexual Assault, I talked about the history and use of the terms survivor and victim. Law enforcement officers have historically used the
word victim when referring to those who have been sexually assaulted. While this term is technically accurate, it contributes to a
feeling of powerlessness for those who have been assaulted . For the people around them–friends, family,
classmates–the word victim contributes to the feeling that their friend is irreparably damaged, which can
become, at least temporarily, an image that replaces their true image of their friend. And for the general
population, the word victim contributes to a feeling of horror about rape that interferes with thinking
about why it happens and how it can be prevented. It contributes to keeping the focus on the person
who has been assaulted rather than the person who is committing the crime .¶ Advocates and activists working to
support those who have been assaulted–and to end sexual violence–realized these problems with the word victim and began using, and asking
others to use, the word survivor. Survivor imparts a sense of movement, of moving on beyond the event, and of
reclamation, taking back your life. It’s a strong word and can help those who have been assaulted begin to regain the power that
was taken from them. It distinguishes them from people who did not survive. The strength of the word offers others an
image of a person who has been through a traumatic event, but who will, with time, overcome
adversity and heal.¶ Survivor has become accepted and widely used, including in the world of law enforcement. I believe it has made a
difference. I think it has done, is doing, what advocates and activists hoped it would do, and I would like to see that continue.
 RACISM CAUSES WAR

UNHR 2012
UN Human Rights “Racism still igniting and fuelling violence and conflict” 20 March 2012
http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=11991&LangID=E

GENEVA (21 March 2012) – Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are often among
the root causes of internal and international conflicts, including armed conflicts, due to the
marginalization, discrimination and sometimes dehumanization that they foster within societies and
between population groups, stated two United Nations experts in the fields of racism and minority issues on the International Day
for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. ¶ “The struggle against racism must be intensified and given higher
priority by all States and at all levels as a key human rights objective and a means to prevent conflict and maintain peace,” said the experts. ¶
The United Nations experts stated that “racism continues to be a major obstacle to friendly and peaceful relations
among peoples and nations. Similarly the absence of democratic structures, the weakness of the rule of law, and political institutions
which are not representative of the entire population, may in the long run contribute to triggering conflicts along group lines, if not handled in
an adequate and comprehensive manner.”¶ “All relevant actors should pay attention to early
warning signs, including the
marginalization and social exclusion of specific groups of individuals; discriminatory legislation and
policies; the persistence of racial prejudice and negative stereotypes; hate speech by public officials
and the media; and violent attacks and harassment targeting ethnic groups ,” said Mr. Mutuma Ruteere, the UN
Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. ¶ According to the UN experts,
greater attention to prevention is essential and early action is needed in response to the first warning signs of tensions caused by racism and
discrimination that may lead to violence and conflict situation with serious violations of human rights. ¶ “Ensuring equality for all in the
enjoyment of civil, cultural, economic, social and political rights including the rights of minorities, without any discrimination based on race,
colour, descent, national or ethnic origin is indeed one effective way through which a State may prevent and address the rise of tension and
conflict. Good governance, democracy, respect for the rule of law, and meaningful participation of minorities in political institutions are also
essential to prevent and defuse tensions which may lead to situations of conflict,” stated Ms. Rita Izsák, the UN’s Independent Expert on
minority issues.¶ Ms.
Izsák and Mr. Ruteere drew attention to the important role of non-States actors
including civil society, the media, national human rights institutions, and political parties. Indeed these non-State actors can
serve as watchdogs for discriminatory government policies and play an important role in the
promotion of tolerance, mutual understanding and respect for diversity.
 COLONIAL ALIENATION

Weedon 2002
Chris, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Director of Postgraduate Studies and Head of the Centre for Critical and Cultural
Theory, Cardiff University, “Key Issues in Postcolonial Feminism: A Western Perspective.” Gender Forum, an online, peer reviewed academic
journal dedicated to the discussion of gender issues. 2002

8 In acknowledging and acting upon differences that are hierarchically structured through racialised
relations of power, white women need to avoid alienating and marginalising other women by
objectifying them or speaking for them. This is particularly important where colonial relations are
involved. Moraga argues, for example, that:¶ Some white people who take up multicultural and cultural plurality
issues mean well but often they push to the fringes once more the very cultures and ethnic groups
about whom they want to disseminate knowledge. For example, the white writing about Native
peoples or cultures displaces the Native writer and often appropriates the culture instead of
proliferating information about it. The difference between appropriation and proliferation is that the
first steals and harms; the second helps heal breaches of knowledge . (Moraga 1981a: xxi)¶ 9 The project of
postcolonial feminism encompasses women in both the developing and developed world. Whereas the Eurocentric tendencies of
women in the West lead them to see their societies and cultures as models for the rest of the world ,
Third World countries have their own active indigenous women's movements concerned with the specificities of their countries. Much of the
feminist theory and scholarship produced by Third World women remains invisible in the West , though
some feminists from the Third World who live in the West are increasingly making their voices heard. In addition to analysing their own
situations, Third World women are articulating powerful critiques of the Eurocentrism of much Western feminism, its amnesia about colonial
history and its tendency to reproduce colonial modes of representation. ¶ 10 A knowledge of history is important to acknowledging and
confronting Eurocentrism. To be without this knowledge is to be without the tools with which to understand how the present has been formed
by the past.
 COLONIAL VICTIMIZATION

Weedon 2002
Chris, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Director of Postgraduate Studies and Head of the Centre for Critical and Cultural
Theory, Cardiff University, “Key Issues in Postcolonial Feminism: A Western Perspective.” Gender Forum, an online, peer reviewed academic
journal dedicated to the discussion of gender issues. 2002

The development of a feminism which can take due account of the structural relations that constitute
difference, must recognize the often brutal history of colonialism and its role in shaping the modern
world. As Uma Narayan argues:¶ Colonial history is the terrain where the project of 'Western' culture's self-
definition became a project heavily dependent upon its 'difference' from its 'Others' both internal and
external. The contemporary self-definition of many Third-World cultures and communities are also in profound ways political responses to
this history. Working together to develop a rich feminist account of this history that divides and connects us might well provide Western and
Third-World feminists [with] some difficult but interesting common ground, and be a project that is crucial and central to any truly
'international' feminist politics. (Narayan 1997: 80)¶ Post-colonial feminists are still in the process of contesting the
Eurocentric gaze that privileges Western notions of liberation and progress and portrays Third World
women primarily as victims of ignorance and restrictive cultures and religions . This was a key focus of Chandra
Mohanty's influential essay 'Under Western Eyes' (1991) which argues that much Western feminist writing about Third
World women 'discursively colonize[s] the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of
women in the third world, thereby producing/re-presenting a composite, singular "third world
woman"-an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the
authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse' (Mohanty 1991: 53). Mohanty points out how Third World
women tend to be depicted as victims of male control and of traditional cultures. In these characterizations little
attention is paid to history and difference . Rather Western feminism comes to function as the norm
against which the Third World is judged. If Third World women's issues are analysed in detail within
the precise social relations in which they occur, then more complex pictures emerge . Mohanty argues that
Third World women, like Western women, are produced as subjects in historically and culturally
specific ways by the societies in which they live and act as agents. Moreover they have both voice and agency.
 COLONIAL SILENCING

Weedon 2002
Chris, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Director of Postgraduate Studies and Head of the Centre for Critical and Cultural
Theory, Cardiff University, “Key Issues in Postcolonial Feminism: A Western Perspective.” Gender Forum, an online, peer reviewed academic
journal dedicated to the discussion of gender issues. 2002

13 Another key question in postcolonial feminism is who speaks for whom and whose voices are heard
in discussions of Third World women's issues. The lack of voice given to Third World women remains a
problem as does the failure of Western women to problematise the role of the West in the issues
discussed. The question of voice was raised by Gayatri Spivak in her influential essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988) in which she
analyses 'the relations between the discourses of the West and the possibility of speaking of (or for) the subaltern woman' (Spivak 1988: 271). ¶
Reporting on, or better still, participating in, antisexist work among women of color or women in class oppression in the First World or the Third
World is undeniably on the agenda. We should also welcome all the information retrieval in these silenced areas that is taking place in
anthropology, political science, history and sociology. Yet the
assumption and construction of a consciousness or
subject sustains such work and will, in the long run, cohere with the work of imperialist-subject
constitution, mingling epistemic violence with the advancement of learning and civilization . And the
subaltern woman will be as mute as ever. (Spivak 1988: 295)¶ Although Spivak is profoundly pessimistic about the possibility of
giving voice to the subaltern woman, she argues that Western women can do better. It is crucial, she suggests, not to
make the commonplace mistake of assuming transparent objectivity on the part of the researcher .
Feminists need to engage with their subjects: 'In learning to speak to (rather than listen to or speak for) the historically muted
subject of the subaltern woman, the postcolonial intellectual sytematically unlearns female privilege. This systematic unlearning involves
learning to critique postcolonial discourse with the best tools it can provide and not simply substituting the lost figure of the colonized'(295). ¶
14 Difference as inequality is produced by economic, political, social and cultural factors . In the global
context these include the division of the world into radically different economic zones characterised by extremes of wealth and poverty. Yet
these relations of inequality are often reproduced within developed societies where non-white women
most often find themselves at the bottom of the pile . Factors which produce difference as oppression
include class, ethnocentric and racist practices, and heterosexism . Islamophobia, for example, is a real threat in
Western Europe and the United States. The position in which women are located within any society often
determines what they see as political problems. A key question for postcolonial feminism is how to go beyond the
limitations that come from one's location in a particular place at a particular moment in history and the experience derived from this. This
transcending of ethnocentrism requires effort-the effort to listen to others, to learn about the histories
of other women and the social and cultural conditions within which they are placed . It requires what
bell hooks calls 'strategies of communication and inclusion that allow for the successful enactment of
this feminist vision', that is a vision that takes diversity seriously (hooks 1989: 24). For Western feminists it requires
above all, reading and listening to what Third World women have to say . ¶
 SEXISM FIRST

hooks 2k
hooks, bell. "Ending Violence." Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South
End, 2000. 61-66. Print.

Male violence against women has received much ongoing media attention (highlighted by real-life court cases like
the trial against O.J. Simpson) but awareness has not led the American public to challenge the underlying
causes of this violence, to challenge patriarchy. Sexist thinking continues to support male domination
and the violence that is a consequence . Since masses of unemployed and working-class men do not feel
powerful on their jobs within white supremacist patriarchy they are encouraged to feel that the one place
where they will have absolute authority and respect is in the home. Men are socialized by ruling-class groups
of men to accept domination in the public world of work and to believe that the private world of
home and intimate relationships will restore to them the sense of power they equate with
masculinity. As more men have entered the ranks of the unemployed or receive low wages and more women have entered the world of
work, some men feel that the use of violence is the only way they can establish and maintain power and
dominance within the sexist sex role hierarchy. Until they unlearn the sexist thinking that tells them
they have a right to rule over women by any means, male violence against women will continue to be a
norm. Early on in feminist thinking activists often failed to liken male violence against women to
imperialist militarism. This linkage was often not made because those who were against male violence were often
accepting and even supportive of militarism . As long as sexist thinking socializes boys to be “killers,”
whether in imaginary good guy, bad guy fights or as soldiers in imperialism to maintain coercive
power over nations, patriarchal violence against women and children will continue . In recent years as
young males from diverse class backgrounds have committed horrendous acts of violence there has
been national condemnation of these acts but few attempts to link this violence to sexist thinking .
 FEMALE VICTIMIZATION

hooks 2k
hooks, bell. "Ending Violence." Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South
End, 2000. 61-66. Print.
Significantly, I am among those rare feminist theorists who believe that it is crucial for feminist movement to have as an overriding agenda
ending all forms of violence. Feminist focus on patriarchal violence against women should remain a primary
concern. However emphasizing male violence against women in a manner which implies that it is
more horrendous than all other forms of patriarchal violence does not serve to further the interests of
feminist movement. It obscures the reality that much patriarchal violence is directed at children by sexist women and men.¶ In a
zealous effort to call attention to male violence against women reformist feminist thinkers still choose often to portray
females as always and only victims. The fact that many violent attacks on children are perpetrated by women is not equally
highlighted and seen as another expression of patriarchal violence. We know now that children are violated not only when they are the direct
targets of patriarchal violence but as well when they are forced to witness violent acts. Had
all feminist thinkers expressed
outrage at patriarchal violence perpetrated by women, placing it on an equal footing with male violence against women,
it would have been and will be harder for the public to dismiss attention given patriarchal violence by
seeing it as an anti-male agenda.¶ Adults who have been the victims of patriarchal violence perpetrated by females know that
women are not nonviolent no matter the number of surveys that tell us women often are more inclined to use nonviolence. The truth is that
children have no organized collective voice to speak the reality of how often they are the objects of female violence. Were it not for the huge
numbers of children seeking medical attention because of violence done by women and men, there might be no evidence documenting female
violence.¶ I first raised these concerns in the chapter “Feminist Movement to End Violence” in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, stating:
“Itis essential for continued feminist struggle to end violence against women that this struggle be viewed as a
component of an overall movement to end violence. So far feminist movement has primarily focused
on male violence, and as a consequence lends credibility to sexist stereotypes that suggest men are
violent, women are not; men are abusers, women are victims . This type of thinking allows us to ignore the
extent to which women (with men) in this society accept and perpetuate the idea that it is acceptable
for a dominant party or group to maintain power over the dominated by using coercive force . It allows
us to overlook or ignore the extent to which women exert coercive authority over others or act
violently. The fact that women may not commit violent acts as often as men does not negate the reality of female violence. We must
see both men and women in this society as groups who support the use of violence if we are to
eliminate it.Ӧ A mother who might never be violent but who teaches her children, especially her sons, that violence is an acceptable
means of exerting social control, is still in collusion with patriarchal violence. Her thinking must be changed. ¶ Clearly most women do not use
violence to dominate men (even though small numbers of women batter the men in their lives) but lots of women believe that a person in
authority has the right to use force to maintain authority. A huge majority of parents use some form of physical or verbal aggression against
children. Since women remain the primary caretakers of children, the facts confirm the reality that given a hierarchal system in a culture of
domination which empowers females (like the parent-child relationship) all too often they use coercive force to maintain dominance. In
a
culture of domination everyone is socialized to see violence as an acceptable means of social control .
Dominant parties maintain power by the threat (acted upon or not) that abusive punishment , physical or
psychological, will be used whenever the hierarchal structures in place are threatened , whether that be in male-
female relationships, or parent and child bonds.
 NECESSARY FOCUS ON MASCULINITY

hooks 2k
hooks, bell. "Feminist Masculinity." Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA:
South End, 2000. 67-71. Print.

Even though anti-male factions within feminist movement were small in number it has been difficult
to change the image of feminist women as man-hating in the public imagination . Of course by
characterizing feminism as being man-hating males could deflect attention away from the
accountability for male domination. If feminist theory had offered more liberatory visions of masculinity
it would have been impossible for anyone to dismiss the movement as anti-male . To a grave extent feminist
movement failed to attract a large body of females and males because our theory did not effectively
address the issue of not just what males might do to be anti-sexist but also what an alternative
masculinity might look like. Often the only alternative to patriarchal masculinity presented by feminist movement or the men’s
movement was a vision of men becoming more “feminine.” The idea of the feminine that was evoked emerged from sexist thinking and did not
represent an alternative to it.
 GOOD INTENTIONS DON’T SOLVE

Milstein 2013
Sarah, “5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism” Huffington Post, September 24, 2013

Last month, the

hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen erupted on Twitter . Started by Mikki Kendall, it immediately
became a channel for women of color to call out how implicit racial bias, double standards for women
of different races and overt racism are all baked into mainstream white feminism . If you've been following
feminism for the past 150 years, you probably weren't surprised by the range of grievances. But if you're a white feminist and you were
surprised or you felt defensive or you think you're not part of the problem, then now is the time to woman up, rethink your own
role and help reshape feminism.¶ While there are many reasons white feminists have to do this work, Kendall's hashtag highlighted
an important one: we cannot credibly or successfully seek societal change when we ourselves create the
same injustices we rail against. In other words, the problems we face as women are often the problems we
create as white people.¶ Since #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen trended, I have seen excellent pieces by women of color, many
suggesting steps white women can take to be better allies. Their insights are leading us toward a more conscious feminism.
White women, however, need to take responsibility for educating ourselves , too. So, here are five steps white
feminists -- myself included -- can take to check ourselves, connect more genuinely with women of color and improve feminist outcomes for
people of all races. As a test of the need for these actions, consider whether you'd want the men in your life to try each step in confronting their
own sexism.¶ 1. Recognize that even when your good intentions are truly good, that's totally meaningless .
This idea is hard to accept, because our culture suggests that we should feel like heroes just for wanting not to be racist. (Plus, it's maddening to
be misunderstood.) I have gotten hung up on those two horns frequently. But what matters is your impact, not your intentions, and
you don't get credit for thinking good thoughts.¶ Try this on for size: when you accidentally step on somebody else's foot,
you do not make your good intentions the focus of the episode. Instead, you check to make sure the other person is OK, you apologize, and you
watch where you're going. You don't get annoyed with the person you stepped on because you caused her pain or declare that she is too
sensitive or defend yourself by explaining that you meant to step to the left of her foot. When you crush another person's toes, as Franchesca
Ramsey has pointed out, everyone recognizes that your impact, not your intention, is what's important. ¶ Why isn't that the standard for saying
something when you didn't intend to cause harm? For
white women interacting with women of color, we may
reflexively, unwittingly assume our experience -- and therefore our intentions -- are (or should be) primary. I'd
argue that's rooted in our internalizing cultural messages. But whatever the root, we have to get wise if we expect women of color to take us
seriously.¶ So, when somebody points out that you've said or done something racist, perhaps something
that hurt them personally, the game-changing response is first to understand that your intentions are
not the centerpiece of the interaction. In other words: it's not about you, which can be a genuinely hard to see. Once
you let your intentions fall away, you can focus on what the other person is saying (recommended: assume
she has a very valid point and try to understand where you went wrong). It changes no games to insist that you meant to
be perfectly graceful.
 Third world victimization

Marsha, Oct 26, 2009 (ARE WE STILL SAYING THAT? BECAUSE WE SHOULD STOP.http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/10/26/guest-post-are-we-still-saying-that-
because-we-should-stop/)

Further, the term Third World obscures all parts of a country’s culture apart from those which are to be pitied or improved. By no
great coincidence, so does the mainstream media. Back in March, I highlighted the efforts of Chioma and Oluchi Ogwuegbu: two
Nigerian sisters who had purposed to tell the story of the Africa behind all that media footage of distended bellies and power-
hungry rebels. It’s not that a discussion of the problems of developing nations is not needed. It is. But when you commit to
systematically representing a country solely as victims, you show only one part of who its people are, and not the greatest
part. Third World also implies homogeneity across all the countries that are meant to comprise this class, one which
simply does not exist economically, socially or politically. It suggests that regardless of level of economic and social
development, comparative advantages or system of governance, they are all to be singularly treated always as less than.
 Cambell

Fiona Cambell, , Open Lecture Certificate IV in Community Services,Melton Campus, Victoria University
of Technology Thursday November 4th 1997

The ‘word’ in spoken or written

So who am I - to speak, to be listened to? And why is it important to identify my speaking position?
form (sometimes referred to as Discourse), is the site that both power and knowledge meet. Which is why speech
acts can be inherently dangerous. Furthermore, a person in a privileged speaking position, such as myself, has a
political/ethical responsibility to interrogate his/her relationship” to subordinated and disadvantaged
peoples and declare their ‘interest’. On this point, La Trobe University, Professor Margaret Thornton states “assumed
objectivity of knowledge itself camouflage not only the fact that it always has a standpoint, but that it
also serves an ideological purpose” (Thornton 1989: 125). Refusing to declare one’s speaking position, I argue
constitutes not only a flagrant denial of the privileging effect of speech, but must be considered as an act
of complicity to systematically mislead. I speak tonight from what I would term, a privileged speaking position. As someone who
has been exposed to tertiary education, had an opportunity to read and reflect on many books and ideas, with a job and more particularly, as a
teacher. Indeed, for some I act as a mentor - the one who ‘knows something about knowledge’. On the other hand, I am deeply ambivalent
about my ‘expertise’ to engage in the act of public speech talk. For am from the margins, the client, patient, the ‘riff raff’, flotsam and jetsam of
society and might say - somewhat ‘deviant’. It is important to come clean about my speaking position, my knowledge
standpoint and declare my interests: I speak for myself as a woman who has experienced youth homelessness, childhood violence
and later ‘disability’. Before I speak I am required to undertake a process of self-examination, to scrutinise my
representational politics, to immerse myself in a self-reflexive interrogation and discern “what [my]
representational politics authorises and who it erases … “(Howe 1994: 217). Do I speak for myself or others? Am I making
gross generalisations about groups in the community? Does my speech contain unacknowledged assumptions and values? More specifically ,
within this process of reflection, I am required to examine the context and location from which I speak,
in order to ascertain whether it is “allied with structures of oppression … [or] … allied with resistance to
oppression ( Alcoff: 1991: 15). We need to ask before we speak, ‘who is doing what to whom’ (Howe 1994: 105-106), in other words,
examine the issue of what is termed ‘agency’, for my and your ‘speech acts’ have the capacity to “define [my/your] possibilities and limitations
…” (Black & Coward, in Lees 1986: 159). African American activist and academic Bell hooks asks us to decide where we ‘stand in the struggle’:
 CLIMATE RACE DENIAL
DENIAL IS EVEN WORSE THAN COLORBLINDNESS. CONCERNS ABOUT
CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING THAT OMIT DISCUSSIONS OF
RACE AND RACISM REINFORCE WHITE PRIVILEGE. THIS IS NOT A MERE LINK
OF OMISSION, BUT A FORM OF RACIST MARGINALIZING THAT UNDERMINES
SURVIVAL
Tim Wise, international lecturer and anti-racist essayist, August 17, 2010

http://www.timwise.org/2010/08/with-friends-like-these-who-needs-glenn-beck-racism-and-white-privilege-on-the-liberal-left/

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and White Privilege on the Liberal-Left, acc. 11-9-10,

Liberal Colormuteness and the Perpetuation of Racism

But as troubling as colorblindness can be when evinced by liberals , colormuteness may be even
worse. Colormuteness comes into play in the way many on the white liberal-left fail to give voice to
the connections between a given issue about which they are passionate, and the issue of racism and
racial inequity. So, for instance, when environmental activists focus on the harms of pollution to the planet in the
abstract, or to non-human species, but largely ignore the day-to-day environmental issues facing people of color,
like disproportionate exposure to lead paint, or municipal, medical and toxic waste, they marginalize black and
brown folks within the movement, and in so doing, reinforce racial division and inequity. Likewise, when climate
change activists focus on the ecological costs of global warming, but fail to discuss the way in which
climate change disproportionately affects people of color around the globe, they undermine the
ability of the green movement to gain strength, and they reinforce white privilege.

How many climate change activists, for instance, really connect the dots between global warming and
racism? Even as people of color are twice as likely as whites to live in the congested communities that
experience the most smog and toxic concentration thanks to fossil fuel use ? Even as heat waves
connected to climate change kill people of color at twice the rate of their white counterparts? Even as
agricultural disruptions due to warming — caused disproportionately by the white west — cost African nations
$600 billion annually? Even as the contribution to fossil fuel emissions by people of color is 20 percent below that
of whites, on average? Sadly, these facts are typically subordinated within climate activism to simple “the
world is ending” rhetoric, or predictions (accurate though they may be) that unless emissions are brought
under control global warming will eventually kill millions. Fact is, warming is killing a lot of
people now, and most of them are black and brown. To build a global movement to roll back the
ecological catastrophe facing us, environmentalists and clean energy advocates must connect the dots
between planetary destruction and the real lives being destroyed currently, which are
disproportionately of color. To do anything less is not only to engage in a form of racist marginalizing
of people of color and their concerns, but is to weaken the fight for survival.
 CLIMATE CHANGE = RACE ISSUE
CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENS DISPROPORTIONATELY AT THE INTERSECTIONS
OF RACE & POVERTY
Julie Mitchell, May 29, 2K9

http://www.celsias.com/article/new-report-reveals-climate-gap-among-minorities-an/, “New Report Reveals

“Climate Gap” Among Minorities and Poor in U.S,” ACC. 3-3-11, JT

While most Americans would now agree that climate change is real, a new study was just released
uncovering what researchers call a "climate gap" or hidden pattern revealing that the poor and people
of color in the United States will suffer more from environmental changes than other Americans.  
The research team behind the report also released an analysis of the global warming legislation currently moving
through Congress, calling it a critical first step toward solving climate change and suggesting ways it could close the
climate gap.  The research team was comprised of environmental science professors at three different American
universities: the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Southern
California's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at USC's Center for Sustainable Cities and Center for
Study of Immigrant population; and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

According to the study, climate change will disproportionately affect certain populations in the U.S.,
from increased air pollution to job loss and paying higher prices for the basic necessities of life.   For
example, extreme weather events such as heat waves are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the
next hundred years, resulting in a higher risk of illness and death. 

FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE THE DISPARATE IMPACT CLIMATE CHANGE HAS ON

MINORITY AND INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES COMPOUNDS THOSE IMPACTS AT
EVERY LEVEL
Rachel Baird, UN HCHR, Oct. 8, 2K8

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/climatechange/docs/submissions/Minority_Rights_Group_International.pd
f, “The Impact of Climate Change on Minorities and Indigenous Peoples,” ACC. 4-3-11, JT

Climate change is attracting ever more attention from the media, academics, politicians and even businesses,
as evidence mounts about its scale and seriousness, and the speed at which it is affecting the world . But rarely
does its impact on minorities and indigenous groups get a mention, even though they are among the
worst affected.

The effects of the changing climate are bad enough in themselves – more frequent hurricanes and droughts,
burning temperatures, new plagues of diseases and worse floods, for instance. But the general failure to
recognize and respond to minorities’ resulting problems greatly exacerbates their suffering.
Disadvantage and discrimination affect them at every stage, including in the immediate aftermath of
climate-related disasters and during official planning at local, national and international levels for coping with the
current and future impacts of climate change.