Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or pacifists achieve that legendary “critical mass.
-Peter Gelderlos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State- Nonviolence is Racist (via tahlalaliaaa)
Note gelderloos is white and an activist who went to jail and learned a lot from within the system. Learned a lot from poc in prison and is pretty young too. I think he makes a lot of credits to poc and Black people make a large part of the biblio of this book from what I remember
(via strugglingtobeheard)
I like this. People always talk shit about the (old) Black Panthers, but they never consider that (1) the Black Panthers didn’t threaten violence until they were threatened themselves and (2) they were threatened all the fucking time.
