Aff - Reparations Hauntology - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

Hauntology AFF --- K
1AC
1AC --- Hauntology
Modern institutions of anti-blackness cannot be separated from their ghostly origins; civil society operates through a continuation of 400 years of enslavement onto Black life. Absent confronting this reality, the legacy of slavery and the anti-Black sins of the past will continue to plague our dark futures.
Bravo 19 [Karen Bravo, dean of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, 2019, “Black Interests in Slaveries”, Valparaiso University Law Review, Valpo Scholar, pgs. 620-630, JMH]
III. INTERESTS IN “SLAVERY” AND IN SLAVERIES OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE The Black Diaspora has interests in the word “slavery” and in slaveries of the past, present, and future. The ongoing legacy of diasporic enslavement gives a special status to Diasporic Blacks regarding matters of slavery. The Word “Slavery” My exploration of Black interests in slavery challenges the (mis)appropriation and (mis)use of “slavery” and the ways in which it is used to diminish understanding of and remove attention from Diasporic Black ancestral slavery and its continued legacies. I question the use of the word “slavery” where it is used to restrict the gaze to only the subset of severe forms of exploitation that elicit official outrage and funding and whose exposure serves the interests of the powerful, while ignoring endemic forms of exploitation in which states and economic, political, and social structures are involved and complicit.47 The inherited status embedded in genotype and phenotype and ongoing multigenerational trauma give to Diasporic Blacks a quasiownership interest in the word “slavery” as it is used in contemporary global society. Blacks have a particular interest in that use, rooted in the double-edged psychological harm of either remembering or not remembering (or misremembering) their ancestors’ slavery. Ancestral enslavement can be honored, and the Diaspora’s survival celebrated fully, only when the descendants are enjoying the fruits of freedom. The descendants experience psychological harm from hearing the word “slavery” as it is increasingly bandied about in the media, official reports, and everyday conversation. That harm stems from invocation of the dehumanization of Diasporic ancestors and reminders that the ancestors’ subordinated and exploited status was transmitted to and inherited by their descendants, including contemporary descendants. The psychological harm is intensified when the word is used instrumentally and superficially to appear to address contemporary forms of exploitation, while ignoring the ongoing harmful experiences of ancestral enslavement, including racism and its consequences. Already conflicted about remembering and honoring ancestral experiences, Diasporic Blacks now witness the contemporary exploitation of their ancestors’ experiences in the past, even while their own subordination (and, perhaps, enslavement48) is normalized in the dominant culture.49 “Slaveries” Contemporary reality is the legacy of the past and connects the past and the future. That legacy shapes perceptions, actions, and policies today and, unless challenged, reframed, and disrupted, will (mis)shape our futures. Black interests in slaveries include more widespread and knowledgeable individual, societal, and institutional understanding of and structural reckoning with both Diasporic ancestors’ exploitation as chattel slaves and the legacies of that exploitation in the present. Understanding and reckoning would entail, among other things, recognition of the globally relevant foundational nature of transatlantic slavery,50 including unearthing, connecting, and shining a light upon ancestral enslavement’s relationship to contemporary experiences, as well as identifying and warning about the prospectively damaging future legacies in order to disrupt their transmission to our descendants. To fulfill and implement these interests necessitates institutional (policy) and individual (interpersonal) recognition of the unique nature of the 400-year-long enslavement of Africans in the Western Hemisphere. This requires, for example, recognizing the unprecedentedly successful “innovation” of permanent subordination that was achieved through the intended and ongoing permanence of enslavement and enslaveability (signaled by dark skin and African genetic and racial heritage)51 and the depersonalization and dehumanization of human beings through imposition of positive law.52 Engagement with “slaveries” demands acknowledgement of the essential role played by positive law in service to economic and political empowerment of Western empires and in support of the lasting legacies of those empires. We must analyze the movement away from the dominance of natural law theories to the triumph of positivism and its use to construct permanent legal subordination and transmute human persons into chattel property.53 Past—Knowing and Understanding In an earlier article, I stated: “We should learn from the past, and not merely exploit it for emotional gain.”54 In the present, we must learn about and engage with historic slavery, including responding to the concept of whether “slavery” ever ended or, instead, endlessly evolves and mutates in place and time. The Role and Impact of Slavery Black interests in the past are centered around knowing and understanding ancestral enslavement in order to reclaim the humanity of enslaved Black ancestors and provide the means of challenging negative contemporary legacies. A central pillar of Black interests in slaveries is the incorporation of deeper contextualized knowledge of history and understanding of the constructed nature of our default perceptions and norms. This requires engagement with and deep inquiry into the who, when, what, where, and why of transatlantic enslavement, in all of its complexity. The inquiry goes beyond superficial knowledge and understanding of historic slavery. From a deeper knowledge of our ancestors’ chattel slavery, and its causes and contexts, and appreciation for transatlantic slavery as a fundamental and intrinsic part of the Industrial Revolution, Diasporic Blacks will gain and share a deeper understanding of the ways in which ancestral exploitation was founded upon economic imperatives of global labor demands, resource exploitation, and wealth creation and concentration. Knowledge of history and of slavery’s role in creating the powerful institutions and power structures of today will provide tools to reject perceptions of intrinsic racial subordination—so will understanding of the ways in which slavery was integral to the economic, social, cultural, and political structures upon which New World colonization relied and slavery’s role in facilitating Western colonization and Western monopolization of global resources. Claiming the Ancestor Ancestors experienced the theft of their persons, their children, the fruits of their labor, and their descendants’ futures and future prosperity. Black interests in slaveries past include reclaiming the humanity of their ancestors. To do so, Blacks must recognize that transatlantic slavery took place within the context of a brutal world. Transatlantic slavery arose and became a dominant form of exploitation in an era of many forms of contemporaneous exploitation (i.e., slaveries) that would fit within contemporary definitions of human trafficking and of “modern forms of slavery.”55 These included systems of serfdom in some European countries, British press gangs that kidnapped individuals to become sailors aboard British Navy vessels, public executions, Barbary piracy, and the permanent deportation by English authorities of their fellow English persons convicted of minor offenses into virtual slavery across the globe (first the American colonies, then Australia).56 The “innovation” of transatlantic slavery and a major cause of its ongoing negative effects is the permanence of the subjugation and exploitation enabled by the dark skin color and African features of Africans and their descendants. Role of Law Laws shape default understanding of human and other interactions. International law was conceptualized and structured to permit and facilitate slavery, as well as colonize and exploit non-Europeans.57 The dominance and longevity of the transatlantic slave trade was made possible by the triumph of positive law over natural law.58 Black de jure and de facto demotion from persons to quasi- and non-persons through the mechanism of legal enactments and interpretations,59 as well as customary practices,60 led to the entrenchment of quasi- and nonpersonhood in historic and contemporary social and cultural norms and mores. Pursuant to the concepts of positivism, enforceable law was produced only through the enactments of human legislators and entities, not pursuant to natural laws—rights and obligations inhering in all humanity that were superior to the enactments of sovereigns and legislators. As a result, since no natural law mandated recognition of nonwhite humanity and legal personhood, neither the prior occupation of territory nor the equal humanity of non-Europeans had to be recognized and protected. It is through the conveniently expanding dominance of theories of positive law that the non-European indigenous people of the world were dispossessed of their territories, personhood, and labor. It is through the power of positive law that the humanity and rights of nonEuropean “others,” including Africans, could be ignored, circumscribed, and then eliminated. Social and cultural reactions to the legal reordering of humanity gave full permission for and implemented the dehumanization of Africans, Native Americans, and Asians. Economic might earned through the industrialization fueled by slave trade proceeds61 funded expansion into other areas of the globe. Military conquest and use of force were the de facto mechanisms that allowed the imposition of legal non-personhood.62 Cognitive Dissonance and Racial Discrimination Black interests in slaveries include the imperative to understand the origins and nature of racism in the individual countries where the Black Diaspora resides. Although hostility to the outsider appears to be rooted in human DNA, with a seemingly automatic “us versus them” heritage of humanity’s tribal past, anti-Black racism has a special place in contemporary global life. American and Western European anti-black racism and its enduring virulence was entrenched by the cognitive dissonance engendered by the contradictions between the Enlightenment era’s theories and soaring language about human equality and the de facto dehumanization of fellow human beings. Commitment to the economic and power benefits of African enslavement, however, demanded that White Americans and Europeans construct a rationale and theoretical foundation that legitimized the exploitation of Africans. That theoretical foundation was and continues to be racism. AntiBlackness was built on a scaffolding of legal mechanisms that extinguished African humanity in the eyes of Western law and transmuted Africans and those of African descent into chattel beasts and the normative consequences of those laws on individual, social, and institutional mores.63 From working side by side with Africans while in conditions of indentured servitude, lower-class whites’ status rose inevitably with their acceptance and support of the legislative, physical, and psychological theft of their former companions’ legal personhood and humanity. The scientific racism that undergirded Europeans’ theoretical understanding of their place in the world during much of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries was another reaction to that cognitive dissonance, one that facilitated acceptance of the permanent enslavement and inferiority of Africans and their descendants.64 The legacies of the construction of anti-Black racism continue to be experienced worldwide today. The historic dehumanization of the dark other lay the groundwork for contemporary forms of exploitation and the default expectations of inferiority and subordination of non-whites and created and structured the vulnerabilities that give rise to contemporary forms of exploitation. Present—Today’s Slaveries: Identification and Placement in Historical Context Contemporary systems of Black subordination and human exploitation are the progeny of transatlantic slavery and the concentration of wealth and power that founded the modern world. Black interests in the present include identifying contemporary slaveries and mapping their relationship to ancestral enslavement. The forms of exploitation that have elicited concern and contemporary use of the word “slavery” include, for example, sexual exploitation of women and minors, coerced and indebted labor, child labor, and underage marriage. Those efforts and condemnations have been focused on individual private actors and the wrongdoings of transnational organized crime syndicates. For the most part, the slaveries that states, NGOs, and other activists seek to eliminate turn a blind eye to contemporary slaveries committed and facilitated by state actors—today’s black slaveries. Today’s Black Slaveries? Blacks are pathologized and criminalized throughout legacy slave societies and in the broader global structure. Members of the Black Diaspora are the target of institutional racial subordination in all aspects of their contemporary existence. They experience the subordination from birth through death and include, among other things, health disparities (such as medical apartheid),65 housing segregation, and criminalized existence (e.g., mass incarceration66 and unlawful killings). The Black Diaspora’s criminalized existence is perhaps the starkest example of today’s black slaveries. Black life is policed such as to facilitate the continued weight of the state, which, even after the legal abolition of slavery, has continued to take the lead in facilitating enslavement and exploitation in accordance with positive law. This includes, for example, traffic stops and unlawful killings.67 United States law enforcement shoot and kill unarmed black persons at a high rate.68 High profile shootings include the killings of Michael Brown, Philando Castille, and Tamir Rice.69 If indicted, officers are usually found not guilty.70 It is Blackness and its permanent link to ancestral enslavement that is the key. In one of the latest of such incidents, a Black immigrant from the Caribbean was shot and killed by a white officer who claimed to have mistakenly entered his apartment, believing that it was hers.71 Consider also the killing of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999.72 His black skin, and its presence and meanings in the United States, not ancestral enslavement, made him law enforcement prey. Although the state constructs, implements, and polices the contemporary iterations of Black slaveries, private actors also play their role in policing the lines of subordination, unbelonging, and quasipersonhood.73 White-identified U.S. residents’ roles have been exposed through the prevalence of cell phones and the dissemination of video images through social media that show in vivid color their policing of Black subordination (“living while Black”). These incidents include going to Starbucks while Black, sleeping in one’s own college dorm while Black, barbequing while Black, selling lemonade while Black, and renting an Airbnb while Black.74 Diasporic Blacks and the societies in which they live subordinated lives need to understand and treat these as part of a systemic legacy, not as disaggregated singular acts driven only by individual animus. Exploration of Black interests in today’s slaveries reveals the need to focus on linking the slaveries identified as part of the anti-human trafficking movement and today’s Black slaveries. Isolated attempts to combat a subset of severe forms of contemporary exploitation can yield only superficial results. The real work of contemporary anti-slavery is to unearth the historic roots of vulnerability, map their relationship to contemporary structures and cultures of exploitation, dispel the foundations of the racist ideologies, and apply pressure to the structures. Additional Consequences It is time to acknowledge the ways in which slavery harms both the descendants of the enslaved and of the enslaver. Those tools of subordination of members of the Black Diaspora have had far-reaching effects and have also swept in poor whites. State and private mechanisms deployed to subordinate Blacks can be, and have been, used to subordinate other groups. Acceptance of and participation in the targeting of Blackness is linked to the targeting of other groups. This includes the imposition on them of some of the economic disadvantages intended to target Blacks. For example, poor housing policies may target Blacks but also have consequences for economically disadvantaged whites.75 Other examples include anti-Blackness social welfare policies that have negative consequences for and increase the vulnerability of persons of all racial and ethnic origins.76 Contemporary structures depend on exploitation of racial animus to gain and maintain support of lower-class whites for policies that are against their interests. They play a role in policing the boundaries of human and non-human through the reproduction and innovation of laws and social norms whose origin is transatlantic slavery. Future—Disruption A fundamental interest of the Black Diaspora is universal liberation from the current and future negative legacies of ancestral enslavement. Negative effects of historic and contemporary slaveries will continue to fall most heavily on the Black Diaspora and other people of color and affect our descendants. Black interests in future slaveries focus on disrupting and challenging the engrained racist assumptions of Black inferiority built into contemporary global structures. If we unearth the relationships among contemporary slaveries, historic slaveries, and today’s Black slaveries, the vulnerability of people of all races and genders reveals that discrimination and racial hatred is both a product of and justification for enslavement and exploitation. Knowledge about historic slavery and its contemporary legacies will contribute to the fight against future slavery and can be used to disrupt the negative legacies. This will be attained through enriched and more widespread understanding of law and its limitations. Law and the legal system created and policed slavery and exploitation—and continue to do so today. However, contemporary legal prohibition of slavery coexists with state and private systems that facilitate exploitation. We must uncover the ways in which laws and private behavior create a web of vulnerability and disadvantage. Today’s Black slaveries are the canary in the coal mine: they reveal the inadequacy of legal prohibition, where innovative laws are adopted, interpreted, and implemented to continue the subordination. They reveal the intricate interweaving of legal, economic, cultural, and social actions that create a web of subordination and contemporary exploitation. Other similar webs that ensnare the vulnerable of any race will be more easily identified through methodologies adopted to disrupt future Black slaveries. Lastly, will the prevalence and identification of the severe forms of contemporary enslavements lead toward an understanding of a global humanity that could challenge the conceptual foundations of white racial supremacy? That is, if anyone can be enslaved or exploited, no matter race, ethnicity, national origin, or other origin, might the foundational concepts of racial superiority and inferiority be shaken? IV. CONCLUSION In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela said: “The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. . . . I kn

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