Angela Davis

(1944–) · American Activist

American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Angela Davis

(1944–) · American Activist

American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
I'm suggesting that we abolish the social function of prisons.
I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities.
But at the same time you can't assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life.
Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated.
What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.
First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons.
In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.

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