The middle passage inaugurated a world where enslaved people were “culturally

unmade” and “suspended” in the oceanic abyss- This is precisely the reason why racial
capitalism and coloniality are ongoing manifestations of whiteness and not merely
contingent events in history, this debt flows through a “lack of fixity” and no amount
of reparations can undo that
Chandler and Pugh 23 – Jonathan pugh, professor of Island Studies at the Department of
Geography at Newcastle University; David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at
the University of Westminster] 2-16-2023, "Abyssal geography†," Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjtg.12473 // AP

The abyssal paradigm problematizes or holds off the lure of the world, as constituted by a modern ontology of
fixed entities transparently available. This is vital to grasp because the lure of the world—as it appears transparently before us in
a modern ontology—constrains politics to what exists, to a debate on the terms of the world as a product of colonial, ecocidal and genocidal
destruction. This refusal of the world is anchored in a perspective that starts from the world as abyss. This shift to a deeper level of
problematization has often been most informed by and explicated in the field of critical Black studies. A highly influential figure for our thinking
in this area has been Fred Moten. One of the ways in which Moten
articulates the importance of shifting perspective to
the level of (para)ontology is in his argument for the need to go beyond the discourse of rights. He does
this in working through the limits of discussing race in a liberal register of rights and the distinction
between Human and Thing.

Sticking to the political level that limits discourse to ‘matters of fact’ means that the
question is limited to claiming rights on
the basis of inclusion in the category ‘Human’ and thus reproducing hierarchical understandings or
redistributing rights on the basis of giving agency to the ‘Thing’ (Moten, 2016). Where Latour would argue that
understandings of agency should be extended or redistributed to include ‘things’ as possessing agential powers, Moten, thinks in terms of
(what we describe here as) an abyssal paradigm. Moten refuses the debate at the level of Humans and Things and
the politics of inclusion and agency. Rather than a discourse of classifications of entities and (re)drawing of cuts and distinctions,
Moten argues that thinking from a position of ‘no-thingness’ as a social and aesthetic practice, as poetics, is more
productive (Moten, 2016: 11). Abyssal thought does not offer an alternative imaginary which seeks to rethink the human and the world but
is rather a (para)ontological approach, problematizing the ontological claims of the human and the world .

Central for a framing of abyssal geography is that the world as abyss cannot be separated from the making of the human and the world. In this
process of world-making, the world as perceived by thought is inseparable
from the violent renting of the Middle
Passage, the hold of the slave ship, and the new world of plantation logistics. For Harney and Moten (2013:
93−4):

Modernity is sutured by this hold. This movement of things, unformed objects, deformed subjects,
nothing yet and already. This movement of nothing is … the annunciation of modernity itself, and not just the annunciation of
modernity itself but the insurgent prophecy that all of modernity will have at its heart, in its hold, this movement of things, this interdicted,
outlawed social life of nothing … [B]orders grope their way toward the movement of things, bang on containers, kick at hostels, harass camps,
shout after fugitives, seeking all the time to harass this movement of things … But this fails to happen, borders fail to cohere, because the
movement of things will not cohere … the absence of coherence, but not of things, in the moving presence of absolutely nothing.

We glean much from Harney and Moten (2013) for our understanding of abyssal geography in the way in which they
do not seek to
redeem the ontological lack of humans made objects—slaves reduced to ‘nothing’ under modern and
colonial world-making—but rather refuse the terms of debate. Rather than refigure ontology, they think from the
‘absence of coherence’ of what we term the abyssal subject,2 of ‘no-thingness’ as a generative mode of practice. This section of the paper
draws out how certain aspects of Caribbean history and culture are figured in such contemporary debates to mark the condition of this
ontological lack and enable an understanding of the world as abyss.
An abyssal framing draws heavily upon the work of some of the most well-known and influential Caribbean writers of the last few decades.
Notable here is Glissant—prevalent in the work of Harney and Moten—who famously begins his Poetics of Relation with the ‘Open Boat’, the
Middle Passage, and the subject of the three abysses—the slave ship, the depths of the sea, and the forgetting of origins in Africa. Thus, firstly,
‘the belly of this boat dissolves you, precipitates you into a nonworld from which you cry out. This boat
is a womb, a womb abyss’ (Glissant, 1997: 6). Second, ‘the entire sea, gently collapsing in the end into the pleasures of sand, make
one vast beginning, but a beginning whose time is marked by these balls and chains gone green’ (Glissant, 1997: 6). Finally, the third abyss
‘projects a reverse image of all that had been left behind, not to be regained for generations except—more and more threadbare—in the blue
savannas of memory and imagination’ (Glissant, 1997: 7).

The lack of ontological security of the subject of these abysses is crucial for the contemporary work we draw upon for the development of an
abyssal analytic. As we learn from the work of Hortense Spillers (2003: 214−15, emphasis in original):

Those African
persons in the ‘Middle Passage’ were literally suspended in the oceanic … [having an] …
undifferentiated identity: removed from the indigenous land and culture, and not-yet ‘American’ either,
these captives, without names that their captors would recognize, were in movement across the Atlantic, but they were
also nowhere at all. Because, on any given day, we might imagine, the captive personality did not know where s/he was, we could say
they were culturally ‘unmade,’ … We might say that the slave ship, its crew, and its human-as-cargo stand for a wild and unclaimed
richness of possibility, that is not interrupted, not counted/accounted, or differentiated, until its movement gains the land thousands of miles
away from the point of departure.

Rather than provide us with a productive alternative to the subject as posited by modern world-making, the
subject of the abyss is
figured as lacking an ontological grounding; ‘suspended’ in ‘non-differentiation’ (see also Ibrahim, 2021: 15),
with no possibility of going back to ‘irretrievable selves’ after passing through ‘The Door of No Return’
(Brand, 2002: 224). This is ‘the absence of Black subjectivity (and homeland, and political sovereignty) that can never be
fully realized’ (Culp, 2021: 11). Thrown into a world in which it is never ‘at home’, the abyssal subject is unable to ontologically project itself
upon the world. Far from producing an alternative way of being for critical theory to put to work, the violent unmaking of
the subject of the abyss produces a lack of ‘ontological resistance’ (Fanon, 1986: 110).
It is precisely here that the violent imposition of colonialism's cuts and distinctions—what could be called the abyssal cut—becomes the
imposition of the ‘historical forms of limit’ that is colonial world-making (Chandler, 2010). This ‘historical form of limit’ is that of
the ‘global colour line’, that then becomes the materialized form in which this bifurcation of the world is put into question. Key for
abyssal work is how the abyssal cut ontologically constitutes the binary divides of the global ‘colour line’: on the one hand of ‘human
subjects’ understood as self-constituting, and on the other, of ‘objects’ understood as determined by
others, sutured and put to work on plantations (da Silva, 2016). Grounded in the Caribbean, it is the force of history which
matters and becomes important for rethinking the world as abyss; the force of colonial world-making, working at ‘the level of existence …
understood as ontological’ (Chandler, 2010). As Nahum Chandler (2010) remarks: ‘The Negro question, if there is such, is not first of all or only a
question about the Negro … it is first a fundamental and general question about the dominant conceptions of humanity’. The abyssal line of
thought we draw out in this paper foregrounds how the ‘ontological terror’ (Warren, 2018) of colonial world-making comes
to appear as ‘natural’ and ‘invisible’. Abyssal thought does not reveal ‘another reality’ beneath or other to this world but exposes
the world as the ongoing work of colonial violence and artifice.

An abyssal framing is not an abstract metaphysics but enabled by particular readings of Caribbean modes of resistance and survival. Drawn
from different parts of Africa, forced in the hold of the slave ship, slaves
are presented as sharing little in the way of
common identities, languages and dialects and forced to improvize; fusion on the move. Abyssal life thereby
harbours the sociality of what Glissant calls chaos-monde, involving ‘all the elements and forms of expression of this totality within us …
totality's reflection and agent in motion’ (Glissant, 1997: 94). Key here for distinguishing abyssal thought, is how it works very differently from
relational ontologies. In
relational ontologies of becoming, a ‘subject’ or ‘being’ is always and already in the
process of emergence, of actualization, grasped in terms of a rhizomic subject, open to the world. We see
this in how, for example, creolization often gets reduced to notions of hybridity and intersectionality, where the subject is the product of the
comings together of ongoing relational entanglements (for a critique see Glissant, 1989: 140 − 1). In direct contrast, the
subject of the
abyss, of the hold of the slave ship, is prized open by the world—suspended in what Moten (2017: 67) calls ‘eternally
alien immanence’.
As we draw out, the figurative abyssal subject of contemporary theoretical work is unable to ontologically project itself upon the world;
inhabiting an abyssal geography and an ‘untimely version of time’ (Ibrahim, 2021: 29). This
figurative subject is enabling for the
abyssal analytic because it is ‘less’ than the subject of modernity, in the sense that it lacks ontological security. At the
same time, for the generative purchase of an abyssal framing, it is also ‘more’, precisely because of this lack of fixity,
thereby possessing an awareness that the world as presently constituted is one of necessary and
gratuitous violence and one that can never be its home. For the work which enables us to draw out the abyssal line of
thought, staying with the hold and the Middle Passage as an abyssal geography is not then a flight from reality, but a piercing of the veil of
reality, through thinking from the world as abyss (Philip, 2008; Gumbs, 2020). It is through grounding critique in abyssal geography that abyssal
work theorizes from ‘behind’ the veil of modern and colonial world-making, beyond the assumptions of the world, as given, as ‘naturally’ there
for us, rather than a contingent social and material product of the abyssal cut. As M. NourbeSe Philip (2008) says, reflecting upon her
poem Zong! about slave traders working in Caribbean waters who drowned slaves to claim the insurance:

The descendants of that experience appear creatures of the word, apparently brought into ontological being by fiat and by law. The law it was
that said we were. Or were not. The fundamental resistance to this, whether or not it was being manifested in the many, many instances of
insurrection, was the belief and knowledge that we – the creatures of fiat and law – always knew we existed outside the law – that law – and
that our being was prior in time to fiat, law and word … So many of us continue to live … Unable to not-tell the story that must be told
(Philip, 2008: 206−7, emphasis in original).

To put it clearly, as we read Philip as stating here, for ‘abyssal work’, the Middle Passage and chattel slavery of the plantation form part of a
process of the forging of the world of modernity ontologically. We
say ‘ontologically’ to clarify that the birth of coloniality
and racial capitalism are not just historical events that took place ‘in’ the world that we are now living in
and therefore can be understood now as ‘events’, hundreds of years in the past. Understood as integral to the
world-making process—integral to the world that we experience now—the foundational violence of the carving of subjects from objects,
humans from non-humans, self-governing beings from other-determined (non-)beings remains as much part of the ‘world’ today as it was then.
The difference is that this world—with its cuts and divides—is now considered as natural and the foundational violence disavowed. The abyssal
approach deconstructs the givenness of the ‘world’ as differentiated across segmented spacetime and, in so doing, brings the foundational
violence essential to this world's making to the surface.

UBI is a debt trap that reinforces extraction inherent to racial capitalism – white
workers ability to refuse labor is predicated on stealing Black wealth through fines,
arrests and police ordinances.
Zats 21 (Noah Zats – Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. 2/16/21 “Basic Income and the Freedom
to Refuse” ) liz
Criminal legal debt provides a revealing lens through which to examine universal basic income (UBI). It
highlights a path to potential failure: fetishizing labor markets as the engine of economic inequality
ignores how today’s criminal legal system carries forward racial capitalism’s techniques of targeted
extraction. Yet recognizing this also opens a door to more robust visions of UBI that join together the
powers of and . UBI’s radical appeal has been staked to its potential to enable in practice and convey in
principle a refusal of the labor market. As Kathi Weeks explains in theorizing a this does not require an
absence of work but rather its decentering as an organizing institutional and cultural principle. And UBI
would simultaneously shift power relations within waged work (as well as between waged and in
families & ), the centerpiece of Erik Olin Wright’s embrace of UBI as over time. The work refusal analysis
focuses on income. UBI would relieve the “work or starve” dilemma that enables labor exploitation. To
do this, income must put food on the table. That places perhaps undue faith in consumer markets (as ).
But furthermore, income can be forcibly removed before it can be used, through debt collection. This
observation occasionally crops up with regard to taxation in analyses of UBI financing and tax-transfer
integration. There, however, the significance (setting aside broader critiques of a financing frame, )
involves how offsetting taxes on higher income people complicate the expressive and practical
commitment to . Of greater concern is how UBI might be taxed back from the most marginalized, those
for whom an independent income stream might be most empowering. This is where criminal legal
debt fits in. HOW CRIMINAL LEGAL DEBT COULD UNDERMINE UBI Criminal imposition and enforcement
of economic sanctions doubly amplifies the racial construction of economic inequality. It lies at the
intersection between racialized, and particularly anti-Black, policing and punishment and also the
vulnerability produced by racial structures operating within conventionally “economic” spaces of labor,
housing, credit markets and so on. Accounting for this goes beyond defending formal universalism by
including not only but also currently or formerly . A UBI responsive to systematically racialized economic
extraction must address not only historically-informed but also . Building on USDOJ’s , advocates in
California have a vicious cycle of fines and fees exacerbated by racial profiling in traffic stops, racially
concentrated inability to pay that triggers drivers’license suspensions, then arrests for driving without a
license after further racially targeted stops, and more debt and risk of incarceration. A multi-state of
formerly incarcerated people and their families found an average of $13,607 in criminal legal debt, more
than the entire annual value of presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s recent UBI proposal. And Alexes
Harris’ pathbreaking research found comparable –and pervasive inability to pay–among people with
felony convictions in Washington State. It would be ironic indeed if a UBI slipped quickly through the
fingers of lower-income people of color and into the coffers of jurisdictions most aggressively
criminalizing poverty. This would negate UBI’s ability to facilitate work refusal because UBI—devoured
by debt—would no longer be available to meet basic needs without a wage (or connection to a wage-
earner). Moreover, this negation’s radically unequal racial distribution would mock UBI’s pretensions to
universalism. Substantive universality requires more than formal inclusion and nominally equal
payments. It requires cash receipts that deliver equal capacity to refuse work. There are concrete
reasons to fear this grim outcome, given both the predominant frameworks for regulating criminal legal
debt and the loopholes built into some prototypes for UBI. The legal and conceptual architecture for
resisting criminal legal debt largely adopts an “ability-to-pay” framework that highlights the injustice of
incarcerating (or otherwise punishing) people who are unable to pay. But this same approach authorizes
arrest and incarceration of anyone who chooses to refuse, despite having the money to pay. Indeed,
some critics of the “new debtors prisons” might be tempted to embrace UBI precisely because it
enables payment: losing your basic income is . As Theresa Zhen has , the ability-to-pay framework risks
legitimizing the criminal legal system’s deployment as a tool of . UBI would provide a whopper of
racially stratified fiscal substitution, with state and local criminal legal systems able to (selectively)
capture national basic income payments. This also would blunt one of criminal debt abolitionists’ : that
these onerous debts are rarely collectible. Contrary both to UBI’s universalism and work refusal
goals, this would dynamically entrench racial labor stratification by creating racially differentiated
capacity to refuse work. Indeed, we can already glimpse that prospect in today’s coercive systems of
often styled as debt enforcement. And the differentially precarious economic circumstances of people
with criminal records already helps concentrate them in the . In complementary fashion, precedent
exists for diverting basic income to satisfy criminal legal debt. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (APFD)
program often is touted as a UBI prototype. But its garnishment protections are substantially weaker
than those currently applicable to . The vast majority (80%) of an individual’s dividend can be to satisfy
any creditor’s judgment. The remainder is protected against most ordinary civil debts but explicitly
exposed to certain collections–including of criminal legal debt. Another related, though less sweeping,
example is the of student loan and child support arrears from recent pandemic stimulus checks.

The topic paper assumes

Students are interested in learning about economic inequality; however, they “face a lot of confusion” and “struggle to sift through the
literature and separate rigorous scientifically based research from opinion pieces” on this important topic.7 A season of debate,
focused specifically on economic inequality, can create an opportunity to fully engage with such an immense literature base
and form fully developed opinions on issues that directly impact their everyday lives. Doing so is a precondition for “healing
the wounds of the past, generating social solidarity and rebuilding a more just society.”8[1]1
But no form of fiscal redistribution will ever be able to heal the wounds of the past.

Racial capitalism requires the carceral continuum that sutures debt to policing –
predatory lending, racialized zones of poverty, and antiblackness subtend carcerality –
the neoliberal carceral state is parasitic on black exploitation and death in order to
secure civil society against the crises of financialization – financialization of life and
the future
Wang 18 [Jackie, da bomb, PhD African-American Studies @ Harvard, p. 63-85//ak47]
Mass Incarceration, the Debt Economy, and the Post-Work Society The purpose of the above summary of the Black Panther Party’s analysis of prisons and how technological innovation could lead to the lumpenization of the working class is to draw attention to the possibility that

labor-saving technologies will not necessarily liberate humans from work as we move toward a post-
scarcity and post-work society, but can lead to the creation of surplus populations that are housed—and
generate value—in prison or are folded into the economy as debtors. Although Cleaver hypothesized that the welfare state would prop up consumption as more
people were shunted from the production process, in the decades since he published his essay, the welfare state has contracted while the debt economy has ballooned. Maurizio Lazzarato, in The Making of the Indebted Man, analyzes the significance of this transition from social right to
social debt: “When social rights (unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, health care, etc.) are transformed into social debt and private debt, and beneficiaries into debtors whose repayment means adopting prescribed behavior, subjective relations between ‘creditor’ institutions,

For Lazzarato, debt should be conceptualized not

which allocate rights, and ‘debtors,’ who benefit from assistance or services, begin to function in a radically different way, just as Marx foresaw.”³¹

only in terms of money and repayment, but also in terms of the disciplinary function of debt and the
docile subjectivities produced by indebtedness. He writes: Unlike what happens on financial markets,
the beneficiary as “debtor” is not expected to reimburse in actual money but rather in conduct,
attitudes, ways of behaving, plans, subjective commitments, the time devoted to finding a job, the time
used for conforming oneself to the criteria dictated by the market and business, etc. Debt directly
entails life discipline and a way of life that requires “work on the self,” a permanent negotiation with
oneself, a specific form of subjectivity: that of the indebted man. In other words, debt reconfigures
biopolitical power by demanding a production of subjectivity specific to indebted man.³² Thus, as more
people join the ranks of the lumpen or the precariat, and as production migrates around the globe or
becomes more efficient, we have witnessed the expansion of the debt economy. Debt not only means
that the creditor essentially owns the future of the debt (which would unconsciously and consciously
affect the life choices made by the debtor), but that debt actually produces a specific kind of
subjectivity. While some
In Humans Need Not Apply, Jerry Kaplan—a futurist, entrepreneur, and fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics—predicts that 90 percent of the jobs that exist now will eventually be automated.

post-Marxist tech critics hypothesize that automation will inevitably lead to guaranteed basic income,
the monetization of the social value of our participation as users, and the creation of a post-work
society, it seems just as plausible—given recent trends—that the social and economic crisis of
unemployment caused by automation will lead to the creation of new debt and credit regimes . Such innovations are
already incubating in Silicon Valley. In his book Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Kaplan proposes job mortgages as a way to weather what he believes will be an economic transitional phase: I will propose an approach to this
problem in the form of a new type of financial instrument, the “job mortgage,” secured exclusively by your future labor (earned income) similar to the way your home mortgage is secured exclusively by your property. Out of work? Payments are suspended for some reasonable grace
period, until you find another job. In the proposed system, employers and schools will have incentives to collaborate in a new way. Employers will issue nonbinding letters of intent to hire you if you acquire specified skills, and they will get certain payroll tax breaks if they ultimately follow
through. These letters of intent will serve the same purpose for job mortgage lenders as an appraisal serves for a home mortgage lender. Training institutions will have to craft their curricula around the specific skills required by sponsoring employers in order to meet the requirements of
the loans, or else students won’t enroll. You won’t be committed in advance to accepting a particular position if someone else makes you a better offer, but at least you have the comfort of knowing that you are acquiring the skills valued by the marketplace. In effect, this scheme

Far from inaugurating the communist utopia many of us

introduces a new form of feedback and liquidity into labor markets, enforced through the discipline of the free market.³³

wish for, technological innovations that reduce the need for human labor may just become an
opportunity for financial institutions to have broader ownership of our futures through the creation of

1
Bricker et al ’23 –(Brett. “2023-2024 Topic Proposal: Economic Inequality”. 2023.
https://www.nfhs.org/media/5919630/economic-inequality-paper.pdf)
new credit instruments. Such an instrument as the job mortgage would not merely be a way to inject
liquidity into labor markets, it would be a disciplinary apparatus that comes with a set of terms and
requirements. Although the job mortgage would make lending institutions entitled to a percentage of borrowers’ future income, if borrowers don’t find a job, they would still have to pay back a portion of the loan. But questions remain about how borrowers
would be punished if they failed to meet the requirements of the job mortgage. What if a borrower takes out a loan and decides to switch career paths? What if the debtor drops out and decides to live in a punk house and hitchhike across the country? What if, after learning how to
program the software for selfdriving cars, a borrower decides it’s not for them and instead gets into producing electronic music? Will we even be able to imagine such futures for ourselves as the credit system colonizes all areas of our lives and constrains our futures? Will these

credit instruments and the “discipline of the free market” reduce our lives to the acquisition of
“marketable skills” and make it impossible to explore, wander, create, invent, learn (as opposed to
“acquiring skills”), relax, form non-instrumentalized social bonds, loaf, and daydream Without a ?

revolution or a social movement to overturn or counter the direction of the debt economy and
techno-capitalism, we might be catapulted into a future where our lives are disciplined and
determined by our dependency on credit. The New Racial Capitalism The essays included in this book—which are more suggestive than they are conclusive—attempt to update the analytic of racial capitalism for a

Rather than focusing on the axis of production by analyzing how racism operates via wage
contemporary context.

differentials, this work attempts to identify and analyze the two main modalities of contemporary what I consider

racial capitalism: predatory lending and parasitic governance. These racialized economic practices and
modes of governance are linked insofar as they both emerge to temporarily stave off crises generated
by finance capital. Carceral Capitalism draw attention to the ways in which the carceral
By titling this book , I hope to

techniques of the state are shaped by— and work in tandem with—the imperatives of global capitalism.
Predatory lending is a form of bad-faith lending that uses the extension of credit as a method of
dispossession. When analyzing contemporary economic practices, a distinction can be made between good-faith and bad-faith forms of credit. Good-faith lending might have a fixed interest rate and be designed such that there is a possibility of the loan being
paid. It enables borrowers to accumulate wealth, though as the debt economy expands, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to ever get out of debt. Bad-faith lending might be a high-interest or free-floating interest rate loan (often offered with a “hook” rate that eventually

In the United States, the kind of credit a

expires) and is designed such that the borrowers will likely default and thus their property will be taken away (their goods repossessed, their homes foreclosed, etc.).

borrower has access to depends in part on the race of the borrower. Today, before working on this introduction, I read an article in The New York Times about how the
largest bank in the U.S.—JP Morgan—will pay $55 million in damages for discriminatory lending practices that targeted blacks and Latinxs for higher-interest mortgage loans than whites of the same income bracket (Wells Fargo also had to pay $175 million for engaging in the same

As predatory lending systematically prevents mostly poor black Americans from accumulating
practices).

wealth or private property, it is a form of social exclusion that operates via the inclusion of marginalized
populations as borrowers. For it is as borrowers that they are eventually marked for further social
exclusion (through credit and e-scores). Predatory lending exists in many forms, including subprime mortgage loans, student loans for sham for-profit colleges (which Obama attempted to regulate, but may be revived
by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos), car loans, and so forth. Predatory lending practices also have a decidedly spatialized character. In impoverished urban areas, predatory lending exists in the form of rent-to-own scams, payday loans, commercial bail bonds, and other practices.

Overall, predatory lending enables profit maximization when growth is stagnant, but this form of credit
will always be plagued by realization problems, which are resolved using state force. sometimes Parasitic forms of governance—which have
intensified in the wake of the 2008 crash—are actually rooted in decades-old problems that are coming to a head only now. Beginning in the 1970s, there was a revolt in the capitalist class that undermined the tax state and led to the transformation of public finance. During the
subsequent decades the tax state was gradually transformed into the debt state—“that is, a state which covers a large, possibly rising, part of its expenditure through borrowing rather than taxation, thereby accumulating a debt mountain that it has to finance with an ever greater share

The hegemony of finance is antidemocratic not

of its revenue.”³⁴ This model of public finance creates a situation where creditors, rather than the public, become the privileged constituency of governments.

only because financial institutions are opaque and can influence finance through their ownership of the
public debt, but also because fiscal crises authorize the use of state power to extract (which can be induced by the financial sector)

from the public. Parasitic governance, as a modality of the new racial capitalism, uses five primary
techniques: 1) financial states of exception, 2) automated processing, 3) extraction and looting, 4)
confinement, and 5) gratuitous violence a financial state of (with execution as an extreme manifestation of this technique). The Financial State of Exception Perhaps what I would call

exception entail a suspension of the so-called normal

would be best exemplified by the recent cases of the Flint water crisis and the Puerto Rican fiscal crisis. They both

democratic modes of governance (where decisions are made by elected officials) and the
implementation of rule by emergency managers (EMs) who represent the interests of the financial
sector. Usually it is a state, municipal, or sovereign debt crisis that authorizes the financial takeover of governance (but it can also be a “natural” disaster, as we saw in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina). A financial state of emergency can also be induced when banks create

Flint, Michigan, is a perfect example of how a

a liquidity shortage by abruptly refusing to lend money to government bodies (which is what occurred in the 1975 bankruptcy of New York City).

financial state of exception can produce a nightmarish outcome. it has been more than a thousand As I write this,

days since Flint had clean water —but what does this have to do with the financial and government processes I have described above? In 2011, Governor Rick Snyder appointed emergency managers to seize control of the financial
affairs of the city in the name of the public good. Like many other ailing postindustrial cities in Michigan that have experienced depopulation and the collapse of the tax base, Flint was facing a fiscal crisis. In 2014, to cut costs, the city switched its water source from Detroit’s Lake Huron

The untreated water corroded the pipes,

system to the Flint River. Officials—including the emergency financial managers—did this knowing that the city did not have the infrastructure to properly treat the water.

and high levels of lead leaked into the water, poisoning the primarily black residents of the city. To give
you a sense of how toxic the water was, consider that at five thousand parts per billion of lead, water is
regarded as hazardous waste. When the Flint resident LeeAnne Walters had her water tested, the lead
level was at 13,200 ppb. children and infants exposed to the contaminated water
Like many of the was , Walters’s son Gavin

diagnosed with lead poisoning. In short, the financial state of exception created by the budget crisis authorized the implementation of emergency financial managers whose primary goal was to make Flint solvent by any means
necessary, even if it meant endangering the health of the residents. Under the auspices of the EMs, Flint was barred from borrowing money or issuing bonds. Given that, under the current fiscal paradigm, the federal government no longer provides significant funds to cities, the residents

we see in the case of the Flint water crisis that

were left to suffer the consequences of the dramatic spending cuts. As dry and technical and boring as the topic of municipal finance and fiscal retrenchment is,

these matters form the invisible backdrop of our lives: they directly determine our quality of life and
even our health outcomes. We cannot, even on a bodily level, flourish under these conditions. But it
should be emphasized that vulnerability to parasitic government practices is not equally distributed in
the country. The practices you are exposed to depend on where you live which is ( , given how segregated our country is,

determined by race and class . The second technique of the parasitic governance model
in large part your is
) Automation I am outlining

automation. The privileged, we’ll see time and again, are processed more by
In Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil points out that “

people, the masses by machines.” When government bodies are strapped for cash, they can raise ³⁵

revenue by implementing software that automates the process of fining people; garnishing wages, Social
Security, and tax returns; ticketing people; and extracting wealth—all while avoiding the cost of hiring
personnel to individually file cases against people. To cite a common example: tickets for traffic violations such as running a red light can be issued by mail when sensors and cameras are affixed to

Though this practice seems benign, it can become a nightmarish scenario when a person (perhaps
traffic lights.

because they have moved) never receives the ticket and thus has a warrant out for their arrest. the But perhaps

most paradigmatic example came to light during the

of this practice is a situation that recently in—again—Michigan. In 2013— peak of the same fiscal crisis that led to the

bankruptcy of Detroit and the Flint water crisis—the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA)

implemented a system that automatically issued more than twenty thousand accusations of fraud
against people who were applying for unemployment benefits. 93 percent of After a class-action lawsuit was filed, a review of the cases found that

the fraud claims issued were false. by the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (Midas) After the implementation of Midas, the balance of the UIA’s contingent fund (which consists mostly of funds generated from fraud
fines) ballooned from $3.1 million to $155 million. Just a week before the report was released, Michigan passed legislation that enabled the state to use money from the UIA’s contingent fund to balance the state budget. As the attorney David Blanchard put it, “It’s literally balancing the

Racialized
books on the backs of Michigan’s poorest and jobless.”³⁶ Unfortunately, because the social consequences of automated processing are difficult to make legible and identify, cases such as the Midas case often fail to register as scandals. Extraction and Looting

expropriation, extraction and looting are the

as a tool of both finance capital and the parasitic state, is discussed in greater depth in my chapters on the debt economy and municipal finance. While

lifeblood of global capitalism government bodies—out of pressure to satisfy their

, it occurs domestically in the public sphere when

private creditors—harm the public not only by gutting social services, but also by looting the public
through regressive taxation, fee and fine farming, offender-funded criminal justice “services” such as
private probation services, and so forth. While in the private sector the extension of subprime credit is
often deployed as a racialized form of expropriation, in the public sector municipal governments (in tandem with or on

use the police and the criminal justice system to loot residents of primarily black
behalf of financial institutions)

jurisdictions. advanced global economies— and the U.S. in particular—

Many Marxist and post- Marxist thinkers, including David Harvey, have analyzed how the

use their military, economic, and political might to secure access to natural resources and cheap labor,
whether it is through lending, military force, brokering deals with corrupt autocrats, sponsoring coups,
or international trade agreements made on the terms of the Global North. the expansion of Some have argued that

capitalism necessitates the use of force to expropriate wealth from areas “outside” its formal sphere. Harvey

In a postcolonial world, expropriation must proceed along lines

has called this dynamic of late capitalism the “new imperialism.” other than brute territorial expansion. I will

of the expropriation of wealth

return to this theoretical debate in my chapter on the debt economy, but first I would like to briefly turn to Brandon Terry’s analysis what could be described as a domestic staging of a similar process:

from black America. In “Insurgency and Imagination in an Age of Debt,” Terry uses Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton’s conceptualization of black America as an “internal colony” to elucidate finance capital’s predatory relationship to black

Since the neoliberalization of the U.S. economy, household debt has ballooned, and this debt load is
America.

disproportionately borne by black Americans and the poor. Between 1980 and 2006, “household debt as a percentage of disposable personal income has grown from 72.1% to

centering “debt
139.7%.”³⁷ Given this unequal debt load among urbanized black Americans who have lost access to secure employment (owing to the loss of unionized manufacturing jobs and the scaling back of the public sector), Terry is justified in his of

and financialization” over “labor and production” as axis of analysis This debt regime operates not his main .

only through categorizing and targeting certain racialized subjects for loans that are essentially scams—
it is also territorializing insofar as it relies on spatialized segregation in order to function. In his description of the “consumer life of
the ghetto,” Terry provides a number of examples of predatory scams that are only possible vis-à-vis the ghetto as a spatial configuration: a Playstation 4 console bundle, as of the writing of this essay, costs $299.99 from the electronics retailer, Best Buy. From the rent-to-own retailer,
Rent-A-Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the same electronics bundle costs $122 per month, with insurance charges, over a term of sixteen months—amounting to $1,952—an over 650% price increase. When consumers fall short—even if many hundreds of dollars have already been
 profits are parasitic on many of the conditions
paid—late fees are charged, the police may be called, and goods can be repossessed and resold again for the same exorbitant price. Such

constitutive of ghettoization—precarious employment, inherited and cumulative disadvantages in

wealth, inferior education, information asymmetries rooted in discrimination and social marginalization,
and lack of mobility and access to commerce. In urban ghettos, Where these phenomena do not exist, rent-to-own is a negligible feature of consumer life.³⁸

ethically dubious extractive methods prevail because residents are spatially exposed to predation. Terry suggests

given the territorializing and expropriative character of capital’s relation to black America,
that, the colonial analogy in

Carmichael and Hamilton’s conceptualization of black America as an internal colony is apt in the domains of geography and

Some theorists—and particularly Afro-pessimists such as Jared Sexton—would

economics (precisely where the analogy seems “ill-fitting”).³⁹

likely cavil at the use of colonialism as an analytic to understand antiblack social dynamics, as black
racialization historically occurred on the axis of enslavement (by associating blackness with the
transferrable condition of enslavement) and not colonization or territorial conquest. Nonetheless,
Terry’s analysis is convincing insofar as it shows how racial segregation and the spatial concentration of
poverty essentially create zones that are marked lootable. The looting persists because residents in these zones have access to neither “good-faith” credit nor the material means to

While the first three categories (of financialization, automation, and looting)
escape spatial exposure to predation. Confinement

represent exclusionary processes that proceed by way of inclusion (subjectivation as citizen debtors,
incorporation through the extension of credit), confinement and gratuitous violence are examples of
exclusionary processes that result in civic and actual death. In other words, in the first three instances
the parasitic state and predatory credit system must keep people alive in order to extract from them; in
the latter two instances it must confine and kill to maintain the current racial order. the fourth and As we move to

fifth techniques of parasitic governance—confinement and gratuitous violence reach the point at —we

which political economy fails as a lens through which to analyze racial dynamics in the United States. Although
the concept of the prison-industrial complex draws attention to the industries that benefit from the prison boom of the last several decades—including the construction companies contracted to build the prisons, the companies contracted to supply food and commissary items, the

the profit motive

predatory phone and video companies contracted to provide communication services, and private prison companies such as GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America (which has recently rebranded itself as CoreCivic)—

itself is not sufficient in explaining the phenomenon of racialized mass incarceration. Nonetheless, an
economic analysis of prisons should not be wholly abandoned. In addition to drawing attention to the private companies that benefit from the existence of prisons, there is much

the economies of rural white America were revived through the

that political economy can tell us about prisons in the U.S.: it can elucidate how

construction of prisons and the employment of displaced white workers as prison guards; it can explain how

deindustrialization and the migration of jobs to the suburbs and abroad created zones of concentrated
black urban poverty; the expansion of prisons “solved” the surplus population crisis caused by
and it can show how

the wave of unemployment that followed the restructuring of the U.S. economy. Political economy also gives us a way to understand the growth
of private prisons in the last several decades (particularly in the arena of juvenile detention) and the use of prison labor to produce goods at an average cost of 93 cents per hour.⁴⁰ The lens of political economy can even shed light on why there has been a marginal decrease in the prison

Yet to reduce mass incarceration to the profit motive

population in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, which led to revenue shortfalls that left many states desperate to slash public spending.

would be misleading, considering that most inmates are held in publicly operated state and federal
facilities as well as public local jails. Though as many as seven hundred thousand prisoners are employed in a variety of jobs (ranging from facility maintenance to manufacturing jobs in industries such as furniture production),

A question that a purely economistic view fails

the majority of those in prisons and jails don’t work. At the end of the day, the cost of housing prisoners is high, and the public bears the burden of the cost.

to address is why, when the welfare state was being dismantled and there was an ideological pivot away
from “big government,” was the public induced to believe that a prison binge was legitimate while
spending on social services, education, and job creation was not? Is it possible that, as the government
withdrew from the arena of social welfare and the revolt among those in the capitalist class reorganized
politics such that the government was no longer allowed to regulate the economy, the only remaining
social entitlement—the entitlement that has come to give the state as an entity its coherence—is the
entitlement of security? As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in his March 8, 1965, speech to Congress
on the eve of the era of mass incarceration, “No right is more elemental to our society than the right to
personal security Our streets must be safe. Our homes and places of business must be
and no right needs more urgent protection.

secure. Experience and wisdom dictate that one of the most legitimate functions of government is the
preservation of law and order.” This evolution in the social function of the state from provider of social
⁴¹
services to provider of security also represented an evolution in how racialized populations in the United
States would be managed. The project of dismantling the welfare state gained legitimacy through the
association of social entitlements with blackness. If black Americans were seen as the primary beneficiaries of social programs (whether affirmative action, Medicaid, or food stamps), then the post–civil
rights era conservative view that black Americans were getting ahead at the expense of white Americans would conveniently delegitimize the welfare function of the state as a whole. This is perhaps why many poor and workingclass Americans can rail against welfare and “greedy
minorities” while not even being aware that they are beneficiaries of the very services and programs undermined by their sentiments. It is hardly surprising that today, a survey found that 43 percent of Republicans said that whites, rather than blacks, experience a lot of discrimination,
while only 27 percent of Republicans believed that blacks experience a lot of discrimination.⁴² Given that white conservatives feel that blacks have a social advantage over whites, and that this “unfair advantage” is, in their view, facilitated by the state, it follows that gutting social

antiblack racism is at the core of mass incarceration and the

entitlements will bring about their warped version of “equality.” All this is to say that

transformation of the welfare state not only into the (neoliberal) debt state, but into the penal state
as well. At the dawn of the carceral era, the United States chose the path of divestment in social entitlements and investment in prisons and police. There was nothing inevitable about this policy path, as Elizabeth Hinton captures in her brilliant book From the War on

The project of dismantling the welfare state was intimately tied to

Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.

constructing urban black Americans trapped in zones of concentrated poverty as deserving of their
situation. Coded racism was used to construct poverty as a personal moral failure. a A structural analysis of urban poverty was set aside, and

racialized narrative of cultural pathology was taken up. In holding those hit hardest by cataclysmic changes in the economy responsible for their suffering (attributing their situation to laziness,

The conversion of poverty into a personal moral failure

criminal proclivities, and cultural inferiority), black Americans were simultaneously constructed as deserving of punishment.

was intimately tied to the construction of black Americans as disposable and subject to mass
incarceration. Antiblack racism, and not merely the profit motive, is at the heart of mass incarceration.
Carceral Capitalism, is not an attempt to posit carcerality as an effect of capitalism, but to
Thus, the title of this book,

think about the carceral continuum alongside and in conjunction with the dynamics of late capitalism.

Thus, Arjun and I affirm a mode of mutual indebtedness existing in the fugitive public.
The resolution works within a backwards notion of indebtedness – the creditor seeks
credit but our fugitivity is never repaid – they want to tear down the site of bad debt –
refuse that logic of credit
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney (2013). The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. 4:
58-68; https://criticaltheory.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Harney-Moten_cho04-Debt-
and-Study_The-Undercommons.pdf //nina

They say we have too much debt. We need better credit, more credit, less spending. They offer us credit
repair, credit counseling, microcredit, personal financial planning. They promise to match credit and debt again, debt and credit. But
our debts stay bad. We keep buying another song, another round. It is not credit that we seek, nor even debt, but bad
debt—which is to say real debt, the debt that cannot be repaid, the debt at a distance, the debt without creditor,
the black debt, the queer debt, the criminal debt. Excessive debt, incalculable debt, debt for no reason, debt broken from credit, debt as its own
principle.

Credit is a means of privatization and debt a means of socialization. So long as debt and credit are paired
in the monogamous violence of the home, the pension, the government, or the university, debt can
only feed credit, debt can only desire credit. And credit can only expand by means of debt. But debt is
social and credit is asocial. Debt is mutual. Credit runs only one way. Debt runs in every direction,
scattering, escaping, seeking refuge. The debtor seeks refuge among other debtors, acquires debt from
them, offers debt to them. The place of refuge is the place to which you can only owe more, because
there is no creditor, no payment possible. This refuge, this place of bad debt, is what we would call the
fugitive public. Running through the public and the private, the state and the economy, the fugitive
public can be identified by its bad debt—but only by its debtors. To creditors, it is just a place where
something is wrong, though that something—the invaluable thing that has no value—is desired.
Creditors seek to demolish that place, that project, in order to save those who live there from
themselves and from their lives.
They research it, gather information on it, try to calculate it. They want to save it. They want to break
its concentration and store the fragments in the bank. All of a sudden, the thing credit cannot know—the fugitive thing for which it gets no
credit—is inescapable.

Once you start to see bad debt, you start to see it everywhere, hear it everywhere, feel it everywhere.
This is the real crisis for credit, its real crisis of accumulation. Now debt begins to accumulate without it. That’s what
makes it so bad. We saw it yesterday in the way someone stepped, in the hips, a smile, the way the hand
moved. We heard it in a break, a cut, a lilt, the way the words leapt. We felt it in the way someone saves the best
part just for you, and then it’s gone, given, a debt. They don’t want nothing. You got to accept it, you got to accept
that. You’re in debt but you can’t give credit because they won’t hold it. Then the phone rings. It’s the
creditors. Credit keeps track. Debt forgets. You’re not home, you’re not you, you moved without leaving a forwarding address called refuge.

The student is a bad debtor threatened with credit. The

The student is not home, out of time, out of place, without credit, in bad debt.

student runs from credit. Credit pursues the student, offering to match credit for debt until enough
debts and enough credits have piled up. But the student has a habit, a bad habit. She studies. She studies but she does
not learn. If she learned, they could measure her progress, confirm her attributes, give her credit. But the student keeps studying, keeps planning to study, keeps running to study, keeps

studying a plan, keeps building a debt. The student does not intend to pay.

Debt cannot be forgiven, it can only be forgotten and remembered. To forgive debt is to restore credit. It
is restorative justice. Debt can be abandoned for bad debt, it can be forgotten, but it cannot be forgiven.
Only creditors can forgive, and only debtors, bad debtors, can offer justice. Creditors forgive debt by
offering credit, by offering more from the very source of the pain of debt, a pain for which there is only
one source of justice: bad debt, forgetting, remembering again, remembering it cannot be paid, cannot
be credited, stamped “received.” There will be a celebration when the North spends its own money and
is left with nothing, and spends again, on credit, on stolen cards, on account of a friend who knows he
will never again see what he lent. There will be a celebration when the Global South does not get credit
for discounted contributions to world civilization and commerce, but keeps its debts, changes them only
for the debts of others, a swap between those who never intend to pay, who will never be allowed to
pay, in a bar in Penang, in Port of Spain, in Bandung, where your credit is no good.

Credit can be restored, restructured, rehabilitated, but debt forgiven is always unjust, always
unforgiven. Restored credit is restored justice and restorative justice is always the renewed reign of
credit, a reign of terror, a hail of obligations to be met, measured, dispensed, endured. Justice is only
possible where debt never obliges, never demands, never equals credit, payment, payback. Justice is
possible only where it is never expected, in the refuge of bad debt, in the fugitive public of strangers and
not of communities, of undercommons and not neighborhoods, among those who have been there all
along from somewhere. To seek justice through restoration is to return debt to the balance sheet and the balance sheet never
balances. It plunges toward risk, volatility, uncertainty, more credit chasing more debt, more debt shackled to more credit. To restore is to not
conserve again. There is no refuge in restoration. Conservation is always new. It comes from the place we stopped on the run. It’s made from
the people who took us in. It’s the space they say is wrong, the practice they say needs fixing, the homeless aneconomics of visiting.

Communities do not need to be restored. They need to be conserved, which is to say they need to be moved, hidden, restarted with the same
joke, the same story, always somewhere other than where the long arm of the creditor seeks them—conserved from restoration, beyond
justice, beyond law, in bad country, in bad debt. Communities are planned when they are least expected, planned when they don’t follow the
process, when they escape policy, evade governance, forget themselves, remember themselves, have no need of forgiveness. They are never
wrong. They are not actually communities, but debtors at a distance—bad debtors, forgotten but never forgiven. Give
credit where
credit is due, and render unto bad debtors only debt, only that mutuality that tells you what you can’t
do. You can’t pay me back, give me credit, get free of me, and I can’t let you go when you’re gone. If you want to
do something, then forget this debt, and remember it later.
Debt at a distance is forgotten, and remembered again. Think of autonomia, its debt at a distance to the black radical tradition. In autonomia, in
the militancy of post-workerism, there is no outside, refusal takes place inside and makes its break, its flight, its exodus from the inside. There is
biopolitical production and there is empire. There is even what Franco “Bifo” Berardi calls “soul trouble.” In
other words, there is this
debt at a distance to a global politics of blackness emerging out of slavery and colonialism, a black
radical politics, a politics of debt without payment, without credit, without limit. This debt was built in a
struggle with empire before empire, when power was not held by institutions or governments alone,
where any owner or colonizer had the violent power of a ubiquitous state. This debt attached to those who,
through dumb insolence or nocturnal planning, ran away without leaving, left without getting out. This debt was shared with anyone whose
soul was sought for labor power, whose spirit was born marked with a price. And it is still shared, never credited and never abiding credit, a
debt you play, a debt you walk, a debt you love. And without credit, this debt is infinitely complex. It does not resolve into profit, seized assets,
or a balance in payment. The
black radical tradition is a movement that works through this debt. The black
radical tradition is debt work. It works in the bad debt of those in bad debt. It works intimately and at a distance
until autonomia, for instance, remembers, and then forgets. The black radical tradition is unconsolidated debt.

Shelby County vs Holder – the voting rights act passed in 1965 restricted several forms
of infringement that cause voted disenfranchisement, but the most influential portion
was section 4b. The section made it so that states with a history of voter suppression,
mainly in the south, would have to clear new alterations to voting policy before
enacting these changes to prevent voter suppression based on race. This allowed the
federal government to prevent harm to voting rights before it was implemented – in
2013 the supreme court gutted the voting rights act by deeming section 4b
unconstitutional. This ruling allowed the states affected to immediately enact voter ID
laws, proof of citizenship laws, restrict polling locations, and increase discriminatory
gerrymandering. The ruling demonstrates capability and willingness of the federal
government to roll back “progressive” reform when it is advantageous.
Criminalizing the Samaritan -- in California and other states and cities it’s becoming
illegal to give homeless people food on the street – the government has banned
interpersonal mutual aid – many regulations require organizations to register with the
local government in order to distribute food, and can be written up and fined by police
if they don’t comply. Many laws cite concerns of “public safety” and “the need to
unify charitable efforts.” People can be arrested for giving out food to the homeless in
private and public spaces in over 70 cities. Governmental intervention within
community based solutions shows that they want us to have to go through the state
to try and provide any form of aid, either within religious or other institutions that are
regulated by state tax cuts and advertise to the state who is giving out food, where,
when, and to whom.
Thinking of debate as contingent on stasis captures black suffering to ontologize
rhetoric of war posited against the “groundless outside.” We should refuse the call to
order that prevents black utterance and continually adjusts the demands on blackness
to be impossibly acceptable within debate.
Amber Kelsie, 19 Kelsie, Amber E. “Blackened Debate at the End of the World.” Philosophy &
Rhetoric, vol. 52, no. 1, 2019, pp. 63–70. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.52.1.0063. Accessed 13
Oct. 2023.

We are haunted by the specter of civil war. Liberal and conservative politicians and commentators
openly express anxiety about the possibility of outright hostilities and the “unravelling [of] our national
fabric” (Gambino 2017). Increasing polarization, identity politics that destroys persuasion, an
atmosphere of conspiracy regarding the deep state or foreign puppet masters, apparent
disenchantment with institutions, general mistrust in electoral politics, a gridlocked and weak congress,
and open skirmishes between white nationalist and antifascists are put forth as signs of the end times
(see, e.g., Blight 2017; Wright 2017; DeGroot 2018; Smith 2018). The looming crisis of the end of politics
that everywhere drives the nostalgic desire for a return to a normalcy and civility invites us to rethink
debate and to pose a different question that does not seek to redeem a past that never was and
continues to come at too high a cost for the wretched of the earth. Rather than “make debate great
again,” I’d like to sit with the vertigo so as to consider debate’s (im)possible outside. Such a quest for a
horizon that is before-after-immanent to the End (of politics or history or the world) will require that we
rethink the spatiotemporal coordinates of the entire liberal project that secures the parameters of
debate as the dialectical and agonistic contestation of the possible. My central interlocutor here will be
black- ness: that (non-)ontological constitutive outside of the modern grammar that is relegated to the
realm of absolute necessity, negativity, incapacity, and pathology that subtends the political and the
rhetorical. As that which is always already outside the World/History, blackness provides an anoriginary
nonplace from which to think crisis and a politics of actualizing the impossible.

Imminent civil war is an interesting but unsurprising anxiety; it is unsurprising because the U.S. Civil War
informs so much of the popular narrative of the United States and its ethical position that confirms the
progressive nature of time, and because liberal sovereignty was always a war waged against civil war.1
And it is interesting because the Greeks referred to civil war as “stasis.” Today standing, state, and
stability are also meanings of stasis, as it emerges from histemi. Stasis then doubles both as sovereignty
and as sovereignty’s undoing and evokes a constant permanence of war even in peace. Stasis in
rhetorical studies takes on the meaning of “issue” and serves as a hermeneutic for coming to consensus
on the point of contention from which debate proceeds. Stasis here also means stand- ing in the sense
that there is some “ground” in the form of prior consensus on the nature of the disagreement.2 The
somewhat paradoxical relationship between consensus and dissensus found in stasis speaks to a kind of
disavowal of ungroundedness that precedes even the point from which to begin speaking. Must one
have a presupposed potentiality for a common ground to be able to proceed in argument? Refusing this
disavowal of groundless- ness as it emerges in contemporary figurations of agonistic debate might
enable us to more accurately think of rhetoric in its modern inflection as the presupposition of a ground
as a war against its own void via antiblackness. The inversion of Clausewitz’s proposition is salient:
rhetoric is the continuation of war by other means; rhetoric as a mode of war in an effort to
ontologize itself against its groundless outside .3

The (im)possible is always at stake in debate since rhetoric regards the contingent as its necessary
presupposition. According to Dilip Gaonkar, this “key, but largely unnoticed, assumption in
contemporary rhetorical theory” finds its basis in Aristotle’s response to Plato’s charge of the
unspecifiability of rhetoric (2004, 5). Instead of freeing us to reflect explicitly on the nature of
contingency, Aristotle’s domestication of rhetoric by placing rhetoric within the domain of the
“contingent, yet probable” has prompted most rhetorical scholars to forgo consideration of contingency
in favor of the thematic of probability: doxa, constraints, norms, ideology. Contingency in these schemas
tends to be considered as a property ascribed to statements, propositions, and rhetorical acts—to the
ontic world that constitutes the context of the rhetor—rather than as a mode of the subject or the
singular encounter that constitutes a rhetorical situation. The possibility of rhetorical dialectic, that
exigency that provides the opportunity for agonistic argument that can be sublated into judgment,
animates historical progress and places debate as the ground for civic life. In the liberal understanding of
contemporary debate, contingency takes on an interior spatial dimension as the possible content
through a disavowal of the contingency of debate’s outside that is rendered impossible .

To say that debate is impossible is then to beckon to war on the horizon. It is to recognize the state of
emergency as the end of the state of debate. The historical legacy of the U.S. Civil War will not let us end
it there how- ever, because blackness haunts even civil war, and threatens stasis in both its senses with
incoherence. To leave raciality by the wayside is to repeat the endless disavowal that what we are
threatened with is civil war and not race war. It is to still recuperate this World though the dialectical
resolution that can adjust antagonism to agonism. It is to wage liberal sovereignty’s war against civil war
all over again. Polite discussions that acknowledge racial terror only so as to explain
away racial violence as the unique domain of extremists maintain a sense of white
innocence that not only individuates a structural condition, but also pathologizes and
prohibits black utterance (especially when that utterance might take on the form of
rage) by adjusting the impossible demands of blackness back to the acceptable terms
of debate. Within such discussions, blackness can only appear as an afterthought, as what Denise
Ferreira da Silva terms the affectable I or outer-determined rather than self-determined subject in the
onto-epistemological modern text (da Silva 2007). Raciality is intrinsic to modernity because it is
necessary for the construction of the Subject—it names the materialization of the spatiotemporal forms
that make the modern grammar. It creates the grounds for the self-determined subject. For da Silva,
nothing short of a subtend historical and scientific knowledge will redress the totality of racial violence,
especially as it concerns black folk.

Let us then take seriously Du Bois’s insight into the actual U.S. Civil War that animates so many antiblack
pathologies today: that it was the black slaves, not Lincoln nor the Union, who won the war; and that it
was the slaves, and not the South, who ultimately lost. For it was in the chaos and crisis of civil war that
fugitivity realized freedom only to have it snatched away in Reconstruction: “The slave went free; stood
a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. Democracy died save in the hearts of
black folk” (Du Bois 1935, 30).

In Black Reconstruction, we are gifted a tale of the violence of antiblack dialectic and the potential of
black fugitivity. The common narrative that the North fought a war to end slavery and to preserve the
Union figures the U.S. Civil War as a political battle concerning sovereignty and succession, or in the
radical imagination as a battle for the future of capital between an industrial North and a pastoral
planter economy in the South. For Du Bois this cannot be the whole or even essential part of the story,
as both narratives naturalize the position of the slave and her nominal emancipation as derivative rather
than active. In Du Bois’s account, black liberation was never the terms on which the war was fought; the
war was fought over competing concerns to limit the competition that black people posed to whites,
both as slave labor and as free labor. The North for its part desired neither the abolition of slavery nor
its expansion into the western territories. Northerners desired a resolution to an untenable status quo
thrown into disequilibrium by competing visions for how best to subjugate the black population to
secure the white settlerist way of life. It was not until the slaves, through the waging of the General
Strike, showed the North the way to win the war that Lincoln reluctantly issued the Emancipation
Proclamation (Du Bois 1935, 82). The General Strike was the moment in which the impossible was
actualized, through an incisive refusal to continue under the terms presented: “This was not merely the
desire to stop work. It was a strike on a wide basis against the conditions of work. It was a general strike
that involved directly in the end perhaps a half million people. They wanted to stop the economy of the
plantation system, and to do that they left the plantations” (Du Bois 1935, 68).

Significantly, Du Bois’s analysis of the Civil War extends beyond the Confederacy’s surrender in 1865 to
the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow in 1878. The democracy to come was quickly
sealed off Reconstruction. Here debate, both as contestation on common ground and as the resolution
to war, could only re-elaborate black suffering through nominal emancipation. In Reconstruction we
witness how the bargain was struck for a newly transformed American whiteness produced through the
sublation of the “Southern way of life” (the fantasy of which still animates grievances on the Right), but
against black life. The reinstantiation of master-slave relationships in confederate amnesty, black codes,
the Thir- teenth Amendment, vagrancy laws, convict leasing, extralegal terror, and the ongoing
sentimental and material expropriation of total value from the slave that sustains global capital
constitutes the emergence of the “afterlife of slavery” that characterizes our present (Hartman 1997).

Du Bois’s analysis disrupts the spatiotemporal coordinates of the political to think the (im)possibility
of black politics and liberation. To think with and through blackness means that we cannot think the
Civil War as a demarcated event distinct from Reconstruction and Jim Crow, or think the stasis of
contestation between the divisions of a polity. We must abandon the liberal notion of progress that
“accumulates . . . [and] . . . captures” black suffering in the name of securing an antiblack future as
well as the appeal of universality and particularity which spatially “arrests Blackness’s creative
potential” (Dillon 2013, 42; da Silva 2014, 84). According to da Silva, “such an understanding of total
value [of slavery for the creation of the World] requires a suspension of the view that all there is is in
Time and Space . . . the radical force of Blackness lies at the turn of thought—that is, Blackness knowing
and studying announces the End of the World as we know it” (2014, 84, emphasis mine).

Da Silva joins a growing number of black scholars in many different disciplinary homes thinking through
the metaphysics of blackness as that which is ungrounded and ontologically null with respect to the
modern onto-epistemological paradigm.4 In the World that ontologizes antiblack- ness and racial
capitalism, the calculus of racial terror exceeds and makes possible recognition through the reduction of
blackness to the figure of the Slave. The middle passage here is metonymic, naming the production of
anagrammatical blackness through the ongoing logistic of being captured and shipped, that reduces
blackness from body to flesh, “that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape
concealment under the brush of discourse” (Sharpe 2016; Spillers 1987, 67). Such a proposition returns
raciality, specifically blackness and antiblackness, to the analysis of what grounds debate’s
(im)possibility.
What would it mean to think debate as a praxis of the impossible? To think a blackened debate not as
the presupposition of a ground through approximation to an antiblack human genre of Man, the Subject
or the transparent I, but as Harney and Moten say, “jurisgenerative black social life” (2017, 15)? We
would need to rethink the cherished terms of rhetoric itself . We might think debate
not as dialectic that both precedes and pro- ceeds from stasis, but as the refusal of
“the call to order” that opens up black forms of life, even as form is placed under
erasure (Halberstam 2013, 9). From this vantage point of blackness, which is not really a vantage point
at all, but a being out of place and time, of Being under erasure in the condition of mutual dispossession,
we might begin to sketch other visions that deactivate rhetoric’s ontologizing premises , to hold for a
moment, in the hold and in the wake, not grounded but oceanic movement, decay and life, where even
dead things become something else. It is here and happening all the time in the marooned spaces of the
world. In studying debate’s (im)possibility, we might theorize at the End of the World as a praxis
oriented toward its abolition.

We must imagine avenues for resistance outside the state with the understanding that
state capacity for progress is limited, conditional, and exclusionary – refusal to engage
necessitates opacity
Spencer 16 Megan Spencer MA in Gender Studies at Oregon State University, Cartographies of
Haunting: Black Feminist Refusal in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Octavia Butler’s Kindred,
file:///C:/Users/sharris/Downloads/SpencerMeganH2016.pdf

In this thesis, I have presented an argument that there

exists a haunting to contemporary U.S. society based on its
foundations in transatlantic slavery and settler colonialism. This haunting is rooted in both time and space, that is, it
remains present through various historical moments despite chronopolitical apparatuses that insist on slavery’s end. This haunting is also
geographic, since slavery and settler colonialism are the foundational bones upon which the United States is
built, both ideologically and materially speaking. Through readings of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Octavia Butler’s Kindred, I have
demonstrated that Black women’s relationship to the landscape of the United States is in many ways shaped by the originating metaphors of
conquest and slavery, in which Black women were understood as fungible forms of property that signified spatial units available to the
settler/master to attain capital and accumulate the land. In this way, constructions
of race and gender in the U.S. emerge
from and are inextricably linked to racial slavery, antiblackness, settler colonialism, and dispossessing
Indigenous people of their land. There is a kind of cartography of haunting to be found in Black women’s literature that focuses on
gender formation in the context of slavery. If cartography can be understood as a colonial project in its attempts to name and demarcate
territory and make land inherently knowable, this notion of a cartography of haunting is meant to speak back to colonial cartographies and map
out possibilities for their disruption. Eve Tuck and C. Ree suggest that the
haunting of the United States that has resulted
from its foundations in slavery and settler colonialism cannot be undone. They write, “Haunting lies precisely in its
refusal to stop. Alien (to settlers) and generative for (ghosts), this refusal to stop is its own form of resolving. For ghosts, the haunting is the
resolving, it is not what needs to be resolved” (642). As long as the United States and the genres of the human continue to
exist as such, they will remain haunted.
This thesis on this haunting and its spatial and temporal manifestations, explained through A Mercy and Kindred, respectively, is meant to insist, particularly in the
fields gender and feminist studies that these histories are integral to our understandings of race, gender, and sexuality, and that we must locate these and other
identity categories/assemblages in the world that slavery, conquest, and settler colonialism has created. There is no way to adequately or thoroughly theorize
gender or gender oppression without taking into account how gender categories have been created, defined, and normalized through the structures of slavery and
settler colonialism, against Black and Indigenous people. Thinking about slavery and settler colonialism as histories which are ongoing, are haunting, necessarily
means interrogating how these histories exist in relation to the present and contemporary efforts at dismantling systems of oppression and creating spaces of
liberation. In Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, Dionne Brand grapples with the irrecoverable losses and ruptures that have resulted for Black
diasporic peoples whose ancestors passed through ‘the door of no return’, the space marking an exit from the coast of West Africa during transatlantic slavery.
Brand writes, Flung out and dispersed in the Diaspora, one has a sense of being touched by or glimpsed from this door. As if walking down the street someone
touches you on the shoulder but when you look around there is no one, yet the air is oddly warm with some live presence. That touch is full of ambivalence; it is
partly comforting but mostly discomforting, tortured, burning with angered, unknowable remembrance. More disturbing, it does not confine itself to remembrance;
you look around you and present in embraces are equally discomforting, present glimpses are equally hostile. Art, perhaps music, perhaps poetry, perhaps stories,
perhaps aching constant movement -- dance and speed-- are the only comforts. Being in the diaspora braces itself in virtuosity or despair (26). Brand articulates the
sense of haunting experienced in the personal and collective consciousness of Black people in the diaspora. The ambivalent touch which she describes, “partly
comforting but mostly discomforting” does not confine itself to memory, but rather continues to present itself anew, suggesting that the violence which produced
this haunting is not rooted only in the past, but representative of something far more elusive and persistent. Brand does not center a pursuit for belonging to a
particular geographic space or nation-state, but instead suggests that one can glimpse moments of comfort or reprieve in creative work, emphasizing again the
radical potential of Black women’s poetics and the kind of imaginative, liberatory space that can be carved out when Black women create art. Brand’s suggestion
that ephemeral, fleeting moments of comfort can be found in art, music, poetry, stories, and movement has shaped my decision to explore these issues through
literature and to let myself be moved by the chaos of Morrison’s and Butler’s writing. I am thinking about Brand’s point about Black aesthetics not only in the
context of the work that Morrison’s and Butler’s novels do in the world, but also in the way that within each text, writing and literacy are risky and contested spaces
for the characters. A Mercy and Kindred both represent the precarious relationship enslaved Black people had to literacy, and in each novel, under great risk slaves
are taught to read. Alice Walker discusses this in her essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”, in which she theorizes about the ability of Black women to create
art while living under antiblack racism and misogynoir, systems which have been extremely invested in inhibiting the creative expression of Black people, since often
art, music, drumming, stories, and dance are woven into struggles for freedom. In Kindred, Dana begins the novel as a writer, and throughout her trips to the past
she teaches Rufus, as well as enslaved children to read, an act that results in her being brutally beaten. Her ability to read, write, and teach, informed by her life as a
writer, give her additional skills to help navigate her enslavement. After returning to present-day Maryland, Dana is left with few answers and an unresolved
relationship with her ancestors. While some scholars have argued that Butler’s novel suggests just how much progress has been made since the days of legalized
slavery, this thesis’ critical reading of Dana’s body suggests otherwise. Instead, Kindred demonstrates an unresolved relationship with the past. Saidiya Hartman
points out, “Dana finds to her surprise that she is not able to rescue her kin or escape the entangled relations of violence and domination, but instead comes to
accept that they have made her own existence possible” (Two Acts, 14). Hartman suggests that Kindred provides a model for thinking about a relationship to the
past that does not center resolution or demanding answers from the dead, advocating instead framing the past in terms of responsibility. If reading Dana’s narrative
evokes the question of what our accountability or responsibility to the dead is, perhaps the answer, per Florens’s narrative, is refusal. Hartman also articulates a
debt to the dead that is rooted in refusal. She eschews the framework of racial justice that centers seeking reparations or recognition of wrongdoing from the state.
She rejects this framework with the concern that it may reify the abject position of Black people, in the way that asking for or petitioning those responsible for
subjection does not pose a fundamental challenge to the positionality of the oppressor. She writes: This is the intimacy of our age with theirs—an unfinished
struggle. To what end does one conjure the ghost of slavery, if not to incite the hopes of transforming the present? Given this, I refuse to believe that the slave’s
most capacious political claims or wildest imaginings are for back wages or debt relief. There are too many lives in peril to recycle the forms of appeal that, at best,
have delivered the limited emancipation against which we now struggle (170). Hartman
suggests a reimagining and transformation of
society. She is less interested in nationhood than in autonomy. This is to say that Hartman’s sentiments reflect a rejection of a politics of
inclusion into nationhood or nationalist belongings. Her move towards autonomy transcends the limits of the nation-state by reaching for
a notion of belonging that is instead centered on collective struggle. In this way, Hartman’s desire for autonomy exists as a response to living in
the afterlife of slavery and in the legacy of the genealogical rupture of uprooting African people and enslaving them in settler landscapes.
Hartman reminds the reader that there exists no return to a life before conquest, colonialism, and slavery, but rather, the
responsibility
to ancestors who endured such violences is a radical one, which she explores in her writing on the archive and its inability
to produce the closure, or perhaps the resolutions to haunting, that may be desired. Instead, for Hartman, these gaps in the archive are the
point of departure for rethinking resolution. For Florens, it is storytelling and her ability to read and to write that ultimately figure as a means
by which she takes possession of herself and disrupts the discursive domination of herself and of the land. The haunting which results from
Florens’s experiences of subjugation occurs through her “flavoring the soil of the earth”. All that is built on top of the ashes will necessarily be
flavored by her story, her experiences.Florens uses her ability to write to speak back to the multiple ways that her racialized and gendered
body becomes defined through empire. Her writing articulates a new relationship with place and to the land, not a relationship
based on property, ownership, or the replication of settler claims to land, but actually to disrupt them, and to imagine something
other than the nation-state. Florens’s disidentification with the colonial trope of wilderness reveals a mode of Black feminist
refusal that abandons belonging within the settler state or within Man, and in doing so imagines Black liberation along side
the freedom of land from the clutches of settler colonialism and its inherent ecological violence. In the foreword of The Undercommons, Jack
Halberstam suggests that we must refuse what has been refused, arguing that “The path to the wild beyond is paved with
refusal” (8). This notion of the wild beyond refers to the space that exists beyond the structures that shape the word. When recognition,
inclusion, and the ability to attain normative gendered colonial notions of humanness are withheld or denied, this
refusal is a move away
from appeals for recognition or inclusion into the realm of the human, and instead an insistence on rejecting the antiblack
structure of humanity. Refusal is essential, when the state is assumed to be an appropriate and sufficient
resolution for seeking reparation from racism. In the closing chapter of In the Clearing, Tiffany King also discusses the politics
of refusal, particularly as a Black feminist mode of critique that positions itself alongside Native self-determination and decolonization. While I
think of this project as a Black feminist inquiry that centers a critical pursuit of Black women’s ontological position as it is produced through
processes of racialization and (un)-gendering, the ideas here are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to move in the direction of theorizing
Black feminism in the context of/in conversation with settler colonialism, which is to say, in relation to the discursive and material erasure and
genocide of Indigenous people, and to Indigenous theorizing and resistance. Doing so allows for an understanding of the complex, overlapping,
and interwoven histories of Black and Native people in the United States, illuminating both shared struggles and contradictions, tensions, and
conflict, as well as possibilities for coalition and solidarity in contemporary movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #IdleNoMore, #SayHerName,
and the campaign for missing and murdered Indigenous women under the hashtag #MMIW. For King, a politics of refusal holds
the possibility to disrupt relationships that are rooted in violence, and to create new ones, with the land and with
people, that are constantly in flux and always willing to be transformed. King writes, “The choice to be unsettled, to rest nowhere comfortably
is also a choice to be vulnerable and relational” (230). Refusal in this sense insists on an unknown futurity and calls for a constant
interrogation of where liberation and belonging are assumed to be found. A politics of refusal demands abolition, , rejects the
narrow and limited potential for freedom from violence offered by the very state that
produced such violence and is indeed structured by it, recognizing that any version of
liberation granted by the state can always be taken away again, and that inclusion
into the state is always already at the expense of someone else’s exclusion . Fred Moten and
Stefano Harney offer the following take on the issue of abolition. They write, “What is, so to speak, the object of abolition?

Normative debate is exclusionary politics

Dillard-Knox, 14, (Tiffany Yvonne Dillard-Knox (B.A., University of Louisville), December 2014, “Against
the grain : the challenges of black discourse within intercollegiate policy debate.”,
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3166&context=etd)//ag:) [edited for
derogatory language]

The Intercollegiate Policy Debate community can be conceived of as a speech community. The highly
technical procedures and jargon laden aspects of Debate have a language that can be specific to
Debate itself and can be exclusionary to underrepresented populations. By using the speech community model of analysis, this
can help one understand the challenges of working with demographically diverse populations. Therefore, this project will use the Debate community as a site for examining how speech
communities (un)intentionally suppress and exclude minority members, particularly Blacks.

Membership in a particular identity group occurs when two or more individuals have a shared linguistic system that would include some or all of their language, practices, norms, beliefs, and values. Speech community as defined by Patrick (2002) as being a socially-based unit of linguistic analysis is the term that some linguists have used to refer to these groups. A speech community could be bound geographically (Labov, 1989; Feagin, 1996), nationally (Dittmar, 1976), and socio-culturally (Morgan, 2002).

Verbal communication is not the only tool used to make up a system of communication. According to Rosina Lippi-Green (1997), ―language is more than a tool for communication of the facts between two or more persons. It is the most salient way we have of establishing and advertising our social identities (p. 5).‖ This is done in a variety of ways; for instance, through verbal communication, ways of dressing, gestures, signs, facial expressions, written text and symbols. All of these things combine to make up communication between people possible. Particular language
patterns and meanings are understood according to the meaning prescribed by factors such as culture (Boas, 1911; Sapir, 1921; Whorf, 1956); the economy (Bourdieu, 1977; Irvine, 1989); cognition (Lakoff, 1988; Croft & Cruse, 2004); and social constructions (Gumperz, 1982; Hymes 1967).

Michael Silverstein (1985) argues that ―language is an unstable mutual interaction of meaningful sign forms contextualized to situations of interested human use mediated by the fact of cultural ideology (p. 220).‖ The dialogue between speakers of different backgrounds is constantly reiterating and constituting language codes and patterns meaningful to each particular speaker. This is particularly true for Debate. Debate is inherently an oral exchange of ideas and world views from people of diverse backgrounds. Naturally debaters will come across various ideas and world
views over the course of their careers. During this time period debaters take from these exchanges aspects that they find productive and useful, thus altering their original language patterns. However, the process for determining what is productive and useful is guided by their particular ideologies. These ideologies are shaped by each individual‘s relationship to society at large. Therefore, as Silverstein contends, ―we must look at their ideas about the meaning, function, and value of language in order to understand the degree of socially shared systematicity in empirically
occurring linguistic forms‖ (p.220). This meaning, function, and value can be analyzed in the context of what Norman Fairclough (1989) calls discourse, ―a social practice determined by social structures (p. 17).‖ Fairclough argues that discourse is determined by socially constituted orders of discourse, or sets of conventions associated with social institutions.

Historically, traditional norms and procedures within Debate have determined the orders of discourse
for the Debate community. These norms and procedures of debate developed out of a culture of a
relatively homogenous group of wealthy, white males. However, the increase in diversity—defined as
race, class, gender, sexuality, and those with disabilities—in recent years has shifted Debate into a more heterogeneous community. With the influx of each group
has come the potential of different ways of communicating, thus creating a need to shift the norms and
procedures of debate to account for these differences. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in place
to guide this shift. As a result, there have been tense conflicts over what constitutes ―appropriate‖ or
―productive‖ language use within Debate. Recognizing that each of these groups has its own relationship to Debate, each group would warrant independent research. This project however, will focus on the conflicts associated with the membership of Blacks in the Debate community. It is important to note that some Black debaters have chosen to participate in the normative

practices of debate; therefore, the emphasis here will be on those Black debaters who have elected to engage in alternative debate methods. These methods vary in performance and presentation and thus should not be reduced to an essentialized notion of ―Black Debate.‖ Nevertheless, there are cultural discourse patterns that can be found in most of the variations of alternative styles.

The Debate literature suggests that some of the methods utilized by alternative debaters victimize Debate (Zompetti, 2004), are less productive for the goals of debate competition (Atchison and Panetta, 2009), and do not maximize the benefits that Debate can provide (Harrigan, 2008). Therefore, this research seeks to enter that dialogue and offer an alternative view of the clash of civilizations that is occurring in Debate by arguing that some of the traditional norms and procedures of debate can have the unintended effect of excluding Blacks.[black people]15

African American English

African American English (AAE) or African American Vernacular English

(AAVE) is the term most commonly used to refer to the dialect of English spoken by urban working class Blacks in the United States. While not all Blacks speak AAE, the majority do. AAE traditions have been studied extensively in a variety of disciplines such as Linguistics, Communication, Anthropology, and Education (Labov, 1972; Dillard, 1973; Kochman, 1981; Smitherman, 1986; Morgan, 1994; Norment, 1995; DeCastro-Ambrosetti, 2003). The literature just cited first appeared in the early 1970s; however, prior researchers of AAE had little knowledge of African American
speech communities as they attempted to theorize about the language patterns that existed in said community. As a result, the conclusions offered in much of the earlier studies explained the language patterns and behaviors associated with AAE to be a consequence of various social pathologies (Abrahams, 1963). This work failed to take into consideration earlier works by African Americans, particularly Carter G. Woodson. Woodson (1933) in The

15 African American and Black will be used interchangeably in order to maintain the integrity of the linguistics literature that uses the phrase African American.

Mis-Education of the Negro, offered key insights on the subject of language that deserves examination by arguing that there is a connection to the African languages that were brought over by enslaved Africans centuries ago. However, it important to recognize that during the era that Woodson wrote this, success for Blacks was demonstrated by the capability of one to pattern oneself as closely as possible to the communicative norms of educated white elites.

In 1972 William Labov was one of the earliest linguists to introduce AAE, then termed Black English Vernacular, to mainstream education and serve to legitimize its study as a scholarly discipline. In his seminal text, Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular, he argued that Black children of the inner city ―have the same basic vocabulary, possess the same capacity for conceptual learning and use the same logic as anyone else who learns to speak and understand English (p. 201).‖ This set the stage for a more comprehensive and affirming study of AAE
as a legitimate English dialect with historical foundations in the languages of West Africa. Although the literature on AAE has expanded to provide a thorough understanding of its use, there remains a challenge to find value in its use when it conflicts with dominant discourse practices. Therefore, the emergence of AAE within Debate provides a unique opportunity to analyze how normative discourse strategies in Debate create value barriers to the use of AAE. Generally speaking, in communication, people use their own cultural rules and values to guide their words and
deeds, even thoughts, and they also use these as standards to judge the words and deeds of others (Zhou, 2008). This makes the following analysis particularly important to understanding debate practices in an increasing multicultural environment.

In her seminal text, Talkin’ and Testifyin’: the Languages of Black America, Geneva Smitherman (1986) defined AAE as ―verbal strategies, rhetorical devices, and folk expressive rituals which derive from a mutually understood notion of modes of discourse (p. 103).‖ She identifies four major categories of discourse modes: signifying, call and response, tonal semantics, and narrative sequencing. Signifying is the ―verbal art of insult in which a speaker humorously puts down, talks about, needles—signifies on—the listener (p. 118).‖ This is done either to make a point or just
for fun, but it is understood that whomever is signified on should never take it to heart. Signifying is considered an art because it requires skill and creativity. The better a person‘s signifying skills, the better his/her rep—reputation. ―Signifying may also be synonymous with the following: dropping lugs, joanin, capping, and sounding (p. 119).‖ The major difference between signifying and the other types is the subtlety of signifying. The message is indirect, hidden. Other characteristics of ―signifying include verbal posturing, teaching or sending a message, elements of
sarcasm, indirection, circumlocution, metaphorical- imagistic, humor, irony, rhythmic fluency and sound, directed at person(s) present in the situational context, puns, play on words, and introduction of the semantically or logically unexpected (p. 121).‖ This discourse type can be exhibited through short verbal quips or extended dialogue.

The second discourse type, call and response, is defined by Smitherman as ―spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker‘s statements (calls) are punctuated by expressions (responses) from the listener (p. 104).‖ It is important to note the verbal comments made while the speaker is talking within the process of call and response is not regarded as discourteous behavior.

―This discourse type can be used to achieve one or more of the following: co-signing, encouraging, repetition, completer, on ―time‖—psychological time not literal time. Call and response seeks to synthesize speakers and listeners in a unified movement (p.107- 108).‖

Tonal Semantics is the third discourse type identified by Smitherman. It is the ―use of voice rhythm and vocal inflection to convey meaning in African American communication. The voice is employed like a musical instrument with improvisations, riffs, and all kinds of playing between the notes. The rhythmic pattern becomes a kind of acoustical phonetic alphabet and gives black speech its songified or musical quality. Black rappers use word sound to tap their listeners‘ souls and inner beings in the same way that the musician uses the symbolic language of music to strike
inward responsive chords in his listeners‘ hearts (p. 134).‖ Tonal semantics can be identified by ―talk- singing, repetition and alliterative word play, intonational contouring, and rhyme (p. 137).‖

The final discourse type is narrative sequencing. Smitherman defines narrative sequencing as the relating of events (real or hypothetical) to explain a point, to persuade holders of opposing views to one‘s own point of view, and in general to ―win friends and influence people‖ (p. 148). Within this discourse style, speakers use their voice, body, and movement as tools to bring the tale to life. ―Narrative sequencing may be found in the following: preaching and testifying, folk stories, ̳tall‘ tales, and Toasts (p. 149).‖ There are several narrative forms that include ghost stories,
human interest stories, stories that explain the origin of events and men, and folk tales.

While there is a discussion still occurring within the linguistic literature as to the value of these discourse types in pedagogical practice that is not the focus of this research. However, examining the use of these discourse types within a specific realm of academia could offer a better understanding of the effects of dismissing AAE. Referring to these discourse types, the next section will provide an analysis of the different communicative strategies between traditional debaters and Black debaters who choose to use alternative strategies.

Black Discourse in Debate

Prior to the analysis of Black discourse in Debate, it is important to note the differences between rules in Debate and the norms and procedures of debate. As discussed in Chapter Three, Snider (2003) defined the terms as follows, ―Rules are required actions and systems, while procedures are generally accepted conventions (p. 27).‖ There are very few rules, formal requirements, in Debate to which one must adhere. Those rules include time constraints, speaking order and the awarding of one win and one loss per debate by the judge. Everything else is, as one would say
in Debate, debatable. Therefore, the practitioners of the Debate community determine which norms and procedures will be adopted, thus which ones have value. As such, an analysis of how those norms and procedures interact with the increase in diversity, particularly Blacks, within the Debate community is a very important one.

This analysis will isolate several norms and procedures that are at the heart of the debate about Debate across styles and ideologies. Utilizing the debate arguments by the University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate program, the following norms have been selected as variables: the flow, speed, and line by line refutation. In terms of procedural arguments made in the clash of civilizations debates, the analysis will focus on the criticisms of these new methods taken from the literature.

Norms: The Flow, Speed, and Line by Line Refutation There are three traditional debate norms when in contrast with the above discourse types, identified by Smitherman, create barriers to the understanding and evaluation of those discourse types: the flow, speed, and line by line refutation. If the purpose of the flow sheet is to track the debate and is the primary tool used to evaluate the debate, then it would follow that it provides the framework for the stylistic and strategic choices that debaters make in an effort to win the debate. The linear nature of the flow sheet
organizes the debate, offering a justification for line by line refutation, as defined in Chapter One. It becomes the mechanism by which judges can claim objectivity in their evaluation process. Unfortunately, identifying what gets transcribed onto the flow sheet is a subjective process that could lead to misunderstanding and devaluation of the intended message. If one is unfamiliar with signifying, the indirect nature of this discourse type increases the likelihood that there will be notational error from what is said and how it is said to what gets put onto the flow sheet. For
example, ―The Louisville debaters repeat traditional practices and engage in a strategic reversal of those practices in an effort to create new meanings and norms (Reid-Brinkley, 2008, p.79).‖ Unless the judge has a particular way of notating the strategic reversal with the new meanings and norms, a notational error is possible. A notational error of this type

could have significant implications for the judge‘s ability to assess the arguments being made.

Additionally, the flow in combination with the speed of delivery, suppresses an integral part of the message that is being communicated in speeches. ―The speech rhythms and tonal inflections of Black English (AAE) are, of course, impossible to capture in print (Smitherman, 1986, p. 134)‖. The effect of tonal semantics is to convey a psychocognitive message. The value is placed on word sound, thus words alone cannot achieve this same effect. Within tone languages, which constitute much of West African languages, speakers rely on the tone with which they pronounce
syllables, sounds, and words to convey meaning. The functionality of tone is that it offers sociocultural context to the words being spoken. In other words, it is not just about what is said, but how it is said, who says it, and to whom it is said. ―Tonal semantics, in effect, combines emotion and intellect—word sound and word meaning (Smitherman, p. 137).‖

As previously mentioned, speed, a common traditional debate practice, is the process of debaters speaking at a rate up to 400 words per minute. The use of speed in debate could change how one would interpret word sound. Since the focus is on maximizing the amount of information presented within the speech, the use of sound to convey meaning is minimized. The importance lies more in what is said as opposed to how it is said.

On the other hand, alternative debaters rely on tonal semantics to convey various levels of meaning. This use of tonal semantics as an important component of oral delivery can lead to those who are not accustomed to listening for those meanings to miss those meanings. For example, the delivery of alternative debaters takes on a holistic structure as opposed to the traditional, linear one. Thus, tonal semantics is used to indicate when a speaker has moved to a new point, creating structure for a speech that appears to flow together as one singular thought. Traditional
debaters utilize words such as ―and‖ or ―next‖ to indicate this shift. The inability to interpret tonal semantics in this way can lead to notational error.

Additionally, speed can be used to mute emotion making traditional debaters appear to be objective advocates. Decreasing the function of tonal semantics as part of the speech presentation severs the emotional aspects of the words being spoken by removing the word sound. This in turn leaves only the word meaning and could affect the sociolinguistic context of the intended message. On the other hand, the use of tonal semantics for alternative debaters makes their emotion hyper-visible and could be misinterpreted as unnecessary emotion in contrast to the muted
speed reading of traditional debaters. The hyper-visibility of these emotions could also lead to a misunderstanding of what emotion is being conveyed and the function of that emotion. For example, speaking loudly could be used to emphasize a particular point or show passion for a particular subject but could be misinterpreted as angry or rude. This has led to alternative debaters being blamed for increasing the hostility within Debate.

As a consequence of line by line refutation being the normative practice for organizing and processing a debate, different presentational structures often create room for notational error. Signifying and narrative sequencing both rely on a holistic, thematic presentation of ideas. This presentation style is in direct contrast to the linear logic used in traditional debate. Attempting to flow these narratives in the traditional sense compartmentalizes and displaces the theme of the narratives being presented, thus distorting the intended message of the speaker. Testifying, as a
form of narrative sequencing, conveys a theme, is interactive, uses metaphors and analogies, as well as utilizes images and symbols. This creative use of language conflicts with the outline structure of line by line refutation. Therefore, this holistic approach to presentation also increases the likelihood of notational error on the flow.

Procedures: The Personalization of Debate and Topical Engagement Debate scholars agree that debating is a form of empowerment for all of its participants, but especially for those from marginalized populations. However, the gaming aspect of debating creates competition for access to that empowerment across ideologies. The most productive way to understand this power struggle in Debate is to examine the writing of Debate scholars that problematize alternative debate, in general, and alternative Black Debate, more specifically.

First, what does it mean to be alternative? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2014) offers three definitions of the term alternative. The first definition is ―offering or expressing a choice.‖ The second is ―not usual or traditional.‖ Lastly, alternative could mean ―existing or functioning outside of the established society (para.1,2,3).‖ Any and all of these definitions could be true when discussing the new phenomenon of debate

practices. It really depends on what perspective one chooses, in other words, the lens by which one comes to know Debate. The first definition implies that those who choose to participate in Debate have a choice as to how they want to engage. While the phrase ―not usual or traditional‖ implies that there is a historical way that participants have engaged in debate and anything outside of those normal means of engaging would be considered unusual. Finally, the third definition suggests that anyone debating in ways other than what the community has deemed as
acceptable norms would be considered outsiders. The literature has defined three markers of alternative debate: personalizing debate, alternative forms of evidence, and lack of a topical focus (Woods, 2003; Speice and Lyle, 2003; Zompetti, 2004; Newnam, 2005; Harrigan, 2008; and Young, 2011). While alternative forms of evidence have become more widely ―accepted‖ in the community,

whether or not they are considered valuable or evaluated properly based on their intended function is still unclear. The other two, personalizing debate and lack of a topical focus, continue to be overt points of contestation within CEDA/NDT Debate, as evidenced by the framework arguments made by more traditional teams.

Joseph Zompetti, a Debate scholar, wrote an article in 2004 that examined the personalized nature of the arguments that the University of Louisville initiated within the Debate community. Zompetti agrees that Debate struggles with diversity but argues that Louisville‘s claims, that ―the traditional norms of debate are exclusionary‖, are unverifiable and do not justify by themselves the insertion of personalized arguments in debates. Situating the goal of debates to be a forum meant for hypothetical policy- making, Zompetti contends that making debates personal
victimizes Debate and ignores deeper, perhaps more important structural problems within the Debate community such as resource disparities.

There are three types of arguments that Zompetti (2004) used to define personalized arguments: ―traditional debate excludes certain types of evidence, traditional debate privileges affluent individuals, and traditional debate ignores the reality of many individuals who are already at a disadvantage in the activity (p.28).‖ The first argument type, that ―debate excludes certain types of evidence,‖ maintains that the Debate community values academic evidence and devalues other forms of knowledge that come from what Antonio Gramsci (1978) calls organic intellectuals.
The type of organic intellectuals being referred to here are the ones that Gramsci identifies as the permanent persuaders, a group of organic intellectuals that grows within the subordinated class(es). He goes on to state, ―Organic intellectuals in the subordinated class(es) are defined by social function rather than the characteristics of formal education, cultural distinction, or social status (p. 42).‖ Alternative debaters have introduced some forms of hip hop as a source of organic intellectualism that provides a perspective that is counter to that of the dominant ideological
constructs of the world.

The second argument type argues that ―traditional debate privileges affluent individuals.‖ This argument encompasses things associated with material privileges. Some of the material privileges include things such as the financial costs associated with attending debate camps, travelling to a large number of national tournaments, access to the amount of ―free time‖ to prepare for debate tournaments in order to be nationally competitive, etc. As mentioned above, learning the language of Debate requires extensive training, debate camp is one of the mechanisms used to
train debaters but camps generally cost between $1500-3000 to attend. Additionally, competitive success typically depends upon one‘s ability to travel to the national circuit tournaments. The reasoning is that the best of the best compete at these tournaments, as opposed to the regional tournament circuit. Lastly, debaters spend anywhere from 40-100 hours per week in preparation for tournaments. Unfortunately, there are many debaters who have academic, familial and work obligations outside of Debate that prohibit them from being able to commit that amount of
time towards preparing for debates.

that traditional
Finally, the argument that ―debate ignores the reality of many individuals who are already at a disadvantage in the activity‖ makes claims about the way

debate does not allow for the implications that race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability can have
on how Debate, in general, and debate tournaments, more specifically, function. These arguments typically make claims about what types of perspectives and Debate norms
develop from positions of privilege. Tim Wise (2005) while discussing his experiences in Debate argues that Debate is an ―extraordinarily white‖

activity (p. 69). He goes on to state, the reason that I call this process a white one is because white
people (and especially affluent ones), much more so than folks of color, have the luxury of looking at
life or death issues of war, peace, famine, unemployment or criminal justice as a game, a mere
exercise in intellectual and rhetorical banter...kids of color and working class youth of all colors are simply not as likely
to gravitate to an activity where pretty much half the time they‘ll be forced to take positions
devastate their communities (p. 71-72).
that, if implemented in the real world, might

These three argument types are usually made by debaters identifying themselves as being affected by these patterns of exclusion. Thus, it is believed by debate scholars that these debaters are using their ―victimage‖ to gain a competitive advantage in debate rounds (Zompetti, 2004. p. 30). These scholars have argued that these narratives of exclusion are not contestable because one cannot effectively debate another‘s personal experience.

Recalling Smitherman‘s definition of narrative sequencing, as the relating of events (real or hypothetical) to explain a point, to persuade holders of opposing views to one‘s own point of view, and in general to ―win friends and influence people‖ (p. 148), narratives should be considered valuable components of debate strategy and technique. However, while these scholars acknowledge these narratives as important, they fail to accurately understand and portray the function of these narratives, thus missing the value in using narratives in debates. The sociolinguistics
literature offers an alternative perspective for understanding the function of these narrative discourses. While most Debate scholars would argue that these narratives in debate only serve as personal testimony, or complaints of oppression, the sociolinguistic literature surrounding identity and language would suggest that these narratives are ways of positioning the self in the context of a larger interactional scheme. Therefore, as Bucholtz and Hall (2005) suggests, when approaching identity—in Debate—to ―consider a relational and sociocultural phenomenon (p. 585).
This phenomenon emerges and circulates in discourse contexts of interaction rather than as a stable structure located primarily in the individual psyche or in fixed social categories (p. 586).‖ Conceptualizing personalized arguments in this way allows one to understand that all language interactions in debates communicate at least part of one‘s identity, whether it is explicit or implicit. Therefore, debates are always ―personal‖. However, criticizing one group of students for positioning their arguments within a larger social, political, or cultural context creates an unfair
barrier for inclusion into Debate for that group.

While acknowledging that there is merit in these personalized arguments, Zompetti and others (Atchison and Panetta, 2009) contend that making these arguments inside of the competitive debate rounds personalizes debate, therefore increasing hostility within the activity. These scholars suggest that it would be more productive to situate these dialogues outside of competition in a more ―community-based‖ discussion.

However, there are two assumptions embedded in this suggestion. One is that there is a clear line of demarcation for when competition begins and when it ends. Unfortunately, the boundaries of competition that are defined as ―in a debate round‖ versus ―out of a debate round‖ are false boundaries. With the proliferation of social media usage, these debates are continuously occurring. While they occur outside of competition, most of these discussions are the same ones occurring within the competition setting. Debaters

and coaches are often concerned with how their words and actions can affect their competitive success, whether consciously or subconsciously. The second assumption is that there is a universal sense of community. Unfortunately, when Zompetti (2004) and others minimize these arguments to ―complaints‖, ―soliloquies‖, ―ad hominem attacks‖, ―fallacies of composition‖, ―guilt appeals‖, and ultimately ―victimage‖, they diminish the ability of the discourse used by alternative debate teams to communicate a very complex set of arguments (p.28). This in turn
fractures that sense of community because it communicates to alternative debaters that their discourse choices are not valued within the Debate ―community‖.

The second objection to alternative debate involves the lack of topical engagement in debate rounds. Those who oppose alternative debate often argue that their frustrations stem from alternative debaters‘ ―refusal‖ to debate the topic. There have been a range of suggestions made as to what it means to debate the topic. Some say that broad discussions around the general topic area are sufficient, while others argue that one must defend the hypothetical implementation of United States Federal Government action. The former realizes that debaters come to Debate
with various experiences and those experiences help to shape how they choose to debate the topic. This interpretation provides debaters with the flexibility to choose the best method for debating the topic. On the other hand, the latter interpretation prescribes a set rubric for debating the topic. This rubric stems from a particular discoursal style—one most associated with traditional debate.

The linguistic literature on the difference of discoursal style between white and Black students is the notion of topic centered versus topic association (Michaels, 1981; Erickson, 1971). This same distinction could be applied to the different ways that debaters choose to debate the topic. According to Michaels, in a topic centered approach, discourse is centered on a single, clearly identifiable topic. Generally, topic centered discourse is tightly organized, utilizing a linear progression of information that is focused on the description of a single event. She goes on to explain that
in a topic association approach, the discourse uses a series of implicitly associated personal anecdotes to discuss the topic. Speakers using this approach mostly have implicit themes, implicit topic shifts and anecdotal association rather than linear description. This overall difference in discourse style could lead one to believe that one is debating the topic and the other isn‘t when, in fact, both styles would be engaged in topical debate.

The implicit nature of the topic association approach occurs through signifying. Henry Louis Gates (1988) discusses signifying in terms of the Black literary tradition in Chapter Three of his text, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Gates argues that signifying manifests in literature in three ways: an explicit theme or subject matter, an implicit rhetorical strategy, and/or a principle of literary history. Within debates, an implicit rhetorical strategy is most often used to engage debates about the topic. This implicit strategy unfolds through
parody, which could include repetition, dissemblance and/or imitation. There are two forms of parody: A) pastiche, which ―caricatures the manner of an original without adherence to its actual words‖ (p. 107), and B) parody proper, ―in which an original, usually well known, is distorted, with the minimum of verbal or literal change, to convey a new sense, often incongruous with the form‖ (p. 107). One of the major functions of the use of such parody in Debate is a phrased coined by M. Mikhai Bakhtin and used by Gates, called hidden polemics. In hidden polemics, the
other speech act remains outside the bounds of the author‘s speech, but is implied or alluded to in that speech. The other speech act is not reproduced with a new intention, but shapes the author‘s speech while remaining outside its boundaries. . . . In hidden polemics, the author‘s discourse is oriented towards its referential object, as in any other discourse, but at the same time each assertion about that object is constructed in such a way that, besides its referential meaning, the author‘s discourse brings a polemical attack to bear against another speech act, another
assertion on the same topic (Gates, p. 111).
 the
Therefore, literal interpretations of the topical discussions using the association approach, causes the listener to miss or misinterpret the meaning of the words being spoken. However,

benefit of such approach is that it allows a new narrative space for the ―Black Experience.‖ This new
narrative space is used to alter or challenge the inaccurate or inadequate representations held about
the ―Black Experience‖ from those who are not Black.
The biggest defense for the set prescriptive rubric for debating the topic is the theory of switch-side debate (SSD). According to Casey Harrigan (2008) that rubric ―requires students to argue
both for and against a given topic during the course of a season. As part of this process, it has been generally accepted that student debaters are allowed, if not encouraged, to ̳step outside of

Aside from the

the box‘ and gain additional insight into controversial issues during contest rounds by arguing on the behalf of positions that they do not personally hold (p. 37).‖

fact that SSD does not account for difference in discoursal styles, there are a couple of other reasons
that SSD does not account for difference. The premise behind the benefits of SSD is that this format
encourages debaters to argue on behalf of positions that they do not personally hold; allowing for
pragmatic, pedagogical, and social benefits. In theory, SSD is productive and beneficial. However, the
way that the topic is constructed limits the pedagogical and social possibilities of SSD.

Understanding the process of topic selection is a pre-requisite for examining the implications of topic
construction on the benefits of SSD. The topic selection process occurs in several stages. The first stage is an open call for papers, where any member of the community can submit a controversy paper. According to the CEDA National website, the goal of this stage of the process is to develop papers that outline the 'problem areas' involved with a public policy controversy and provide some guidance as to how

such a topic might develop. A controversy paper is then selected by a mail ballot of all CEDA member schools. During the second stage the selected controversy is researched with an interest in developing the possible specific propositions (or resolutions) for the coming season in the form of wording papers. The committee and community will both be invited to prepare such wording papers. Finally there is a topic meeting, open to the membership, to finalize the slate of specific propositions to be voted on by all of the CEDA member schools.

On face, this is a neutral process that allows for all of the CEDA membership to have an ―equal‖ voice
in the process of topic selection. Unfortunately, the break down occurs at the level of the voting, much
like in the larger ―democratic‖ society. Voting becomes a numbers game whereas, the majority has
voting power. While this is true of any democratic voting process, the ability to maintain a majority has
historically advantaged traditional debaters and coaches. Thus the language of the topic has been
constructed in ways that reinforce the pedagogical and social values of traditional debate. At the heart
of the arguments in favor of or against SSD lies the topic.
Historically, the topics that have been selected have been constructed utilizing the active voice as opposed to a passive voice. An active voice example would be, ―Resolved: The United States
Federal Government should substantially increase statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the war powers authority of the President of the United States.‖ A passive voice example would be,
―Resolved: The war powers authority of the President of the United States should be substantially restricted.‖ The active voice topics require debaters to defend that the United States
Federal Government ―do something‖ in a more limited capacity, whereas a passive voice topic could allow debaters the opportunity to defend a variety of interpretations of ―something

. The active voice topic always gives the agency to act to the
being done‖ by or to the United States Federal Government

United States Government. For students that see themselves as having the possibility to access
these positions of power, acquiring these skills become empowering. However, many
marginalized students come to Debate from communities that have historically been excluded
from these positions of power. Having a passive topic that removes the agency from the United
States Federal Government and allows debaters the flexibility to choose who has agency thus
becomes more empowering to this population of students. These students would then be more
motivated to participate in the process of debate through which they can acquire a variety of
skill sets from politician to community activist.
Secondly, the literature base used to construct the topic has failed to include perspectives found within
the race literature, such as the legal and political scholarship of Derrick Bell (1992), Cornel West (1994),
and bell hooks (1995). Very little, if any, attention has been given to Critical Race Theory or Critical Legal
Studies within the chosen controversy areas, such as Immigration and Supreme Court Cases. Even when
topic papers are submitted that do include this literature, they are rarely, if ever selected in the voting
process. This is important to the conversation of debating the topic in that the topic paper sets the
definitional guidelines of what is considered topical. If the topic paper is limited to the language and
perspective of the dominant, then so too will the debates be limited to the language and perspective of
the dominant. Thus, it could be argued that the topic does not account for the discourse strategies of
marginalized populations and could be an additional source of exclusion from Debate.

Even if you don’t think their interp is racist- it’s perceived by marginalized debaters as
a microaggression that demonizes Ks of racialization as unfair -- this exacerbates
health disparities, physiological stress, and psychological violence against black
debaters
Clark ’99 [Rodney; 1999; Professor and Researcher for Wayne State; “Racism as a Stressor for African
Americans”, American Psychologist, October 1999, https://www.isr.umich.edu/williams/All
%20Publications/DRW%20pubs%201999/racism%20as%20a%20stressor%20for%20african
%20americans.pdf]
Biopsychosocial Effects of Perceived Racism in African Americans: A Contextual Model Examining the effects of intergroup racism and
intragroup racism in African Americans is warranted for at least three important reasons. First, if exposure to racism is perceived as stressful, it
may have negative biopsychosocial sequelae (N. B. Anderson, McNeilly, & Myers, 1991; Burchfield, 1979; Herd, 1991; James, 1993; Lazarus &
Folkman, 1984; Selye, 1983) that might help explain intergroup differences in health outcomes (Dressier, 1991; Klag, Whelton, Coresh, Grim, &
Kuller, 1991; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1985). Second, differential exposure to and coping responses
following perceptions of racism may help account for the wide within-group
variability in health outcomes among African Americans. Third, if exposure to racism is among the factors related to
negative health outcomes in African Americans, specific intervention and prevention strategies could be developed
and implemented to lessen its deleterious impact. These strategies would provide a needed supplement to efforts aimed at
reducing health disparities in American society. Despite hypothesized links between perceptions of racism and health outcomes (Browman,
1996; Cooper, 1993; Jones, 1997; King & Williams, 1995; Klag et al., 1991; Krieger, Rowley, Herman, Avery, & Phillips, 1993; Krieger & Sidney,
1996; Landrine & Klonoff, 1996; Tyroler & James, 1978; Williams, Yu, Jackson, & Anderson, 1997), few studies have examined the effects of
perceived racism within a comprehensive and empirically testable biopsychosocial model (see Figure 1). This proposed model is
consistent with the conceptualizations of other researchers (e.g., Andersen, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser, 1994; N. B. Anderson et al., 1991;
Jorgensen, Johnson, Kolodziej, & Schreer, 1996) who have proposed relationships between biopsychosocial factors and specific health
outcomes. Although unique in that it is tailored to apply to perceptions of racism, the model builds on the more general stress-coping model
proposed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984). The principal tenet of this proposed model is that the perception of an
environmental stimulus as racist results in exaggerated psychological and physiological stress responses
that are influenced by constitutional factors, sociodemographic factors, psychological and behavioral factors, and coping responses. Over
time, these stress responses are posited to influence health outcomes. Furthermore, the perception of
environmental stimuli as racist and ensuing coping responses are postulated to be a function of a complex interplay between an array of
psychological, behavioral, constitutional, and sociodemographic factors. Although it is possible for psychological, behavioral, constitutional, and
sociodemographic factors to influence coping responses directly, for simplicity of illustration these connections are not included in Figure 1. The
remainder of this section is devoted to explicating each component of the model and highlighting its relevance to research on health outcomes
in African Americans. Following the discussion of "environmental stimuli," the section is divided into subsections delineating the moderator and
mediator variables in the proposed model. Consistent with the work of Baron and Kenny (1986), moderator variables are defined herein as
factors that influence the direction or magnitude of the relationship between predictor and criterion variables. Mediator variables, on the other
hand, are operationalized herein as factors that may account, at least in part, for the relationship between predictor and criterion variables.
Environmental Stimuli African Americans are disproportionately exposed to environmental stimuli that may be
sources of chronic and acute stress (James, 1993; Outlaw, 1993; Sears, 1991; V. L. S. Thompson, 1996). The historical basis for
many of these exposures has been experienced by few, if any, other ethnic groups to the extent it has by African Americans (James, 1993;
Jones, 1997). A myriad of these stimuli (especially interpersonal) could be perceived as involving racism. For
example, more than 50% of African Americans attribute substandard housing, lack of skilled labor and managerial jobs, and lower wages for
African Americans to ethnic discrimination (Sigelman & Welch, 1991). Moreover, given
that psychological and physiological
stress responses are more sensitive to an individual's perception of stressfulness than objective
demands (Burchfield, 1979; Matheny, Aycock, Pugh, Curlette, & Cannella, 1986), there is no a priori way of determining if
an environmental stimulus will be perceived as racist by an individual (Adams & Dressier, 1988). Distinguishing between
chronic and acute sources of perceived racism may be particularly instructive, given that these two sources of stress may differentially predict
selfreported health status (Williams, Yu, & Jackson, 1997). Moreover, the
combined effects of chronic and acute
perceptions have the potential to contribute to psychological and physiological sequelae that may be particularly
toxic in African Americans (Cooper, 1993; Feagin, 1991; Sigelman & Welch, 1991). Therefore, perceived racism as a potential
source of stress should be viewed as having both chronic and acute dimensions. Moderator Variables Constitutional
factors. Numerous constitutional factors are hypothesized to influence the relationship between exposure to environmental stimuli and health
outcomes. For example, among many African Americans, skin tone has been associated with perceptions of ethnic discrimination (Keith &
Herring, 1991; Udry, Bauman, & Chase, 1971), occupational status (Hughes & Hertel, 1990; Keith & Herring, 1991), and personal income (Keith
& Herring, 1991). In addition to skin tone, family history of hypertension has been the focus of studies examining intergroup and intragroup
differences in cardiovascular reactivity, resting blood pressure, and the prevalence of essential hypertension. Findings from studies examining
the predictive utility of these markers to independently differentiate groups at varying levels of hypertension risk have been mixed (N. B.
Anderson, Lane, Taguchi, & Williams, 1989; Hohn et al., 1983; Klag et al.( 1991; Korol, Bergfeld, & McLaughlin, 1975; Lawler & Allen, 1981;
Tyroler & James, 1978). A growing body of research suggests, however, that family history of hypertension and skin tone influence the
development of hypertension indirectly. That is, these constitutional factors may interact with sociodemographic variables to increase the risk
of negative health outcomes like hypertension (N. B. Anderson & Armstead, 1995; Ernst, Jackson, Robertson, Nevels, & Watts, 1997; Harburg,
Gleiberman, Russell, & Cooper, 1991; Harburg, Gleiberman, Roeper, Schork, & Schull, 1978; Klag et al., 1991). Sociodemographic factors. One
sociodemographic factor that is particularly relevant to the proposed model is socioeconomic status (SES). SES is associated with perceptions of
racism (Forman, Williams, & Jackson, 1997), ethnicity (Jaynes & Williams, 1989; Williams & Collins, 1995), and biopsychosocial functioning (N. B.
Anderson & Armstead, 1995; Williams, Yu, Jackson, & Anderson, 1997). Research has suggested that the relationship between SES and the
other components of this model is complex (Forman et al., 1997). That is, some research has found a positive relationship between SES and
discrimination, whereas other studies suggest that SES is inversely related to experiences of discrimination among African Americans (Sigelman
& Welch, 1991). It is plausible that the pattern of association between SES and racism among African Americans depends, in part, on what
dimension of racism is assessed. For example, with measures that tap subtler expressions of racism, it is probable that higher SES African
Americans report perceiving their environments as more discriminatory because of their tendency to negotiate environments where racism is
less overt. Conversely, lower SES African Americans may be more sensitive to overt racism and as a result report more racism with measures
that assess more overt expressions of racism and those that assess institutionally mediated dimensions of racism (e.g., access to good jobs).
Moreover, SES has been found to interact with ethnicity, such that lower SES African Americans appear to be more vulnerable to some negative
health outcomes than higher SES African Americans and many other ethnicitySES groups. At least two explanations can be forwarded to help
explain findings that African Americans at comparable educational levels have a higher prevalence of hypertension and all-cause mortality than
do Caucasians (Pappas, Queen, Hadden, & Fisher, 1993). First, within SES groups, the distribution of wealth among African Americans and
Caucasians is not comparable (N. B. Anderson & Armstead, 1995; Williams & Collins, 1995). Second, relative to Caucasians, African Americans
report exposure to more stressors like racism and other unfair treatment (Krieger, 1990; Williams, Yu, Jackson, & Anderson, 1997). As a
consequence, African
Americans may have to utilize coping responses more frequently to deal with these added
stressors than do Caucasians, thereby
increasing the likelihood of both resource strain-behavioral exhaustion and
psychological and physiological distress. It is probable therefore that lower SES African Americans are not only exposed to more
chronic stressors than higher SES African Americans, but they may also have fewer resources with which to cope with these stressors, leading to
more deleterious health outcomes (Feagin, 1991). Relative to other components of this model, there has been less research exploring
associations between perceived racism, other sociodemographic factors, and health outcomes. For example, age and gender may influence
health outcomes through their association with the amount and frequency of potential stress exposure, the cognitive appraisal process, coping
responses, and stress responses (N. B. Anderson & Armstead, 1995; Herd, 1991; Keith & Herring, 1991; Neal & Wilson, 1989). Adams and
Dressier (1988) reported that age was inversely related to perceptions of racism and injustice in a community sample of African Americans.
Although paradoxical, these authors reasoned that older African Americans may have come to accept discriminatory treatment and not label it
as such. This subsample may be similar to those in Krieger (1990) and Krieger and Sidney (1996), who did not report being recipients of unfair
treatment yet showed elevated resting blood pressure levels. Kriegerand Sidney (1996) suggested that denial may be one
important coping response members of ethnic minority groups may use in dealing with racism that may have health
consequences. Psychological and behavioral factors. Depending on individual factors, any event could be perceived as stressful (Pearlin,
1989) and involving racism (Adams & Dressier, 1988). Various psychological and behavioral factors may influence how
individuals perceive and respond to environmental stimuli (Adams & Dressier, 1988; V. R. Clark & Harrell, 1982; Pearlin,
1989; Wiebe & Williams, 1992). Additionally, these factors may "play a potential role in the presentation or treatment of almost every general
medical condition" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 676). Type A behavior, cynical hostility, neuroticism, self-esteem, obsessive-
compulsive disorder, hardiness, perceived control, and anger expressionsuppression are among the psychological and behavioral factors that
are postulated to influence the stress process, cardiovascular outcomes, and immune functioning (Adams & Dressier, 1988; Bandura, Taylor, &
Williams, 1985; Everson, Goldberg, Kaplan, Julkunen, & Solonen, 1998; Larkin, Semenchuk, Frazer, Suchday, & Taylor, 1998; Miller, Dopp,
Myers, Stevens, & Fahey, 1999; Pearlin, 1989; Wiebe & Williams, 1992). For example, research has suggested that of the
usual ways by
which African Americans cope with anger, the affective state most commonly reported to follow perceptions of racism (Bullock &
Houston, 1987) is related to cardiovascular reactivity and resting blood pressure (Armstead, Lawler, Gorden, Cross, &
Gibbons, 1989; Johnson & Browman, 1987). It remains to be determined if and how these psychological and behavioral factors influence the
relationship between perceived racism and health status. Mediator Variables Racism as a perceived stressor. Perceived
racism refers
to the subjective experience of prejudice or discrimination. Therefore, perceived racism is not limited to
those experiences that may "objectively" be viewed as representing racism. For example, subtler forms of
racism include belief systems and symbolic behaviors that promulgate the ideology of "free will"
(McConahay & Hough, 1976; Sears, 1991). Although the ideology of free will may not be inherently racist, Yetman (1985)
remarked, when applied to black Americans, the belief system of free will is racist in that it refuses to
recognize or acknowledge the existence of external impingements and disabilities (such as prejudice and discrimination) and
instead imputes the primary responsibility for black disadvantages to blacks themselves , (p. 15) Although many
Caucasians who are proponents of free will may not view their beliefs or actions as racist, such beliefs and actions may
be perceived as serious or threatening (e.g., involving racism) by some African Americans. During the past 20 years,
several self-report measures have been developed to assess perceived racism. These include scales by Allan-Claiborne and Taylor (1981),
Barbarin (1996), Harrell (1997), Landrine and Klonoff (1996), McNeilly, Anderson, Armstead, et al. (1996), C. E. Thompson, Neville, Weathers,
Poston, and Atkinson (1990), and Utsey and Ponterotto (1996). Although these scales vary in their multidimensionality, each one has the
potential to facilitate empirical investigations that disentangle the complex relationship between ethnically relevant stressors and health
outcomes. Whereas other self-report measures of stress have been accepted widely (e.g., those assessing job strain, life events, and daily
hassles), there
may be a tendency to discount reports of racism simply because they involve a subjective
component. Such a tendency to discount perceptions of racism as stressful is inconsistent with the stress
literature, which highlights the importance of the appraisal process. For example, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) noted that it is both the
individual's evaluation of the seriousness of an event and his or her coping responses that determine whether
a psychological stress response will ensue. That is, the perception of demands as stressful is more
important in initiating stress responses than objective demands that may or may not be perceived as stressful
(Burchfield, 1985; Matheny et al., 1986). With this in mind, the initiation of psychological stress responses as a result of perceiving
environmental stimuli as involving racism would qualify these stimuli as stressors. Coping responses. Even among African Americans who
perceive certain stimuli as stressful, whether ethnically based or not, there are likely to be wide individual differences in psychological and
physiological stress responses. The magnitude and duration of these stress responses will depend on the availability and use of coping
responses. Coping responses that do not attenuate stress responses are considered maladaptive and may
negatively affect health (Burchfield, 1985; Clark & Harrell, 1982). That is, when maladaptive coping responses are
used, the perception of an environmental event as racist will trigger psychological and physiological stress
responses. If an individual fails to replace these maladaptive coping responses with more adaptive ones, this model further
predicts a continued state of heightened psychological and physiological activity (Selye, 1976). A similar stress
response pattern would be expected in African Americans who perceive the stimulus as a stressor without racist content. Adaptive coping
responses, on the other hand, are postulated to mitigate enduring psychological and physiological stress
responses, thereby reducing the potentially untoward effects of racism on health. As such, it may be possible to identify coping responses
that influence the relationship between perceived racism and stress responses. Both adaptive and maladaptive coping responses would be
expected to influence the duration and intensity of psychological and physiological stress responses (Burchfield, 1979). A potential limitation of
this model is that some individuals may not report perceiving any stressor or may inhibit the expression of psychological
responses (e.g., anger) yet show exaggerated physiological responses to stimuli (Jorgensen, Gelling, & Kliner, 1992;
Jorgensen et al., 1996; Ruggiero & Taylor, 1997; Sommers-Flanagan & Greenberg, 1989). To partially address this potential limitation, social
desirability and repression measurements could be used to help identify individuals who exhibit this response pattern. Coping responses to
ethnically relevant stimuli have been conceptualized as general (e.g., Armstead et al., 1989; Clark & Harrell, 1982; Sutherland & Harrell, 1986-
1987) or specific (e.g., Armstead et al., 1989; Bullock & Houston, 1987; Clark & Harrell, 1982; Krieger, 1990; Krieger & Sidney, 1996; Myers,
Stokes, & Speight, 1989). General coping responses refer to strategies that are usually used to deal with stressful stimuli—irrespective of their
nature. In the only published study to investigate the efficacy of general coping strategies as moderators of the perceived racism-cardiovascular
reactivity relationship, Armstead et al. (1989) found that as Anger Out scores on the Framingham and Anger Expression scales increased, blood
pressure levels decreased after viewing racist video scenes. Research has suggested that the effects of more general coping responses, such as
"John Henryism" (James, Hartnett, & Kalsbeek, 1983), social support (McNeilly, Anderson, Robinson, et al., 1996), and religious
participation (Jones, 1997), may be particularly relevant for African Americans and interact with sociodemographic factors to modify risk for
negative health outcomes like elevated blood pressure (N. B. Anderson et al., 1991; James et al., 1983; James, Strogatz, Wing, & Ramsey, 1987).
Racism-specific coping responses refer to cognitions and behaviors used to mitigate the effects (e.g.,
psychological and physiological) of perceived racism. Although numerous investigators have examined the relationship between general
coping responses and health outcomes, few have sought to identify specific coping responses African Americans use in response to perceptions
of racism. Two notable exceptions include recent studies by McNeilly, Anderson, Armstead, et al. (1996) and Harrell (1997) that outlined a
broad range of emotional and coping responses to racism and a method for measuring them. Given their recent addition to the literature,
published research examining the efficacy of these coping measures as predictors of health outcomes does not yet exist. To date, only six
published studies (Armstead et al., 1989; Clark & Harrell, 1982; Krieger, 1990; Krieger & Sidney, 1996; Myers et al., 1989; Williams, Yu, Jackson,
& Anderson, 1997) have examined the relationship between racism-specific coping responses and physiological responses and health status.
The observed association between racism-specific coping responses and health outcomes varies depending on the outcome under
consideration. For example, after adjusting for sociodemographic and psychological factors, Williams, Yu, Jackson, and Anderson (1997) found
that passive and active coping responses to discrimination (including ethnic-group discrimination) were related to increased psychological
distress, poorer well-being, and more chronic conditions among African Americans. In two of the laboratory studies, racism-specific coping
responses were not related to cardiovascular responses to ethnically relevant stressors (Armstead et al., 1989; Myers et al., 1989). Conversely,
Clark and Harrell (1982) found that scores on the "cognitive flexibility" dimension of a coping scale were positively associated with initial resting
systolic blood pressure and time to recovery for diastolic blood pressure. Their findings suggest that individuals who use the cognitive flexibility
style to cope with perceived racism may process the racist content of the stimulus longer than do individuals using more active coping
responses. Over time, chronic perceptions of racism coupled with more passive coping responses may lead to frequent increases in and
prolonged activation of sympathetic functioning resulting in higher resting systolic blood pressure levels. Many authors have proposed that
such chronic stress-induced sympathetic activation may be among the factors that lead to hypertension (for a review see Manuck, Kasprowicz,
& Muldoon, 1990). For instance, Krieger
(1990) found that African Americans women (45+ years old) who responded
to unfair treatment (e.g., racism and gender discrimination) with passive coping responses (e.g., keeping quiet
and accepting treatment) were 4.4 times more likely to have self-reported hypertension than African American
women whose coping techniques were more active. Similarly, Krieger and Sidney (1996) found that among African American working class men
and women, passive coping responses were associated with markedly higher resting blood pressure levels.
Additionally, the efficacy of various coping strategies in reducing the chronic and acute psychological and physiological effects of ethnically
relevant stimuli may depend, in part, on the frequency of the perceived stressor and the context or setting in which racism is perceived. For
example, although coping responses like projection and denial may be adaptive with acute stressors, they may be maladaptive when used to
negotiate chronic stressors (Burch field, 1979; Jorgensen et al., 1992; Krieger & Sidney, 1996; Sommers-Flanagan & Greenberg, 1989). Similarly,
whereas expressing emotional reactions to peers may be adaptive in some contexts, this approach may be maladaptive in others. Psychological
and physiological stress responses. Numerous psychological stress responses may follow perceptions of racism.
These responses include anger, paranoia, anxiety, helplessness-hopelessness, frustration, resentment, and
fear (Armstead et al., 1989; Bullock & Houston, 1987). Psychological stress responses may, in turn, influence the use of subsequent coping
responses (Burchfield, 1979; James, 1993; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Pearlin, 1989). For example, perceptions of racism that engender anger
may lead to coping responses that include anger suppression, hostility, aggression, verbal expression of the anger, or the use of alcohol or other
substances to blunt angry feelings (Armstead et al., 1989; Cooper, 1993; Cornell, Peterson, & Richards, 1999; Grier & Cobbs, 1968; Harris, 1992;
Novaco, 1985). These psychological responses are not necessarily independently occurring phenomena, given that responses to primary
stressors may elicit prolonged psychological responsiveness and sociocultural adjustment (L. P. Anderson, 1991; Pearlin, 1989). For example,
chronic feelings of helplessnesshopelessness may evoke feelings of frustration, depression, resentment, distrust, or paranoia (Fernando, 1984;
Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993; Seligman, 1975) that lead to passivity, overeating, avoidance, or efforts to gain control (Bullock & Houston,
1987). Physiological
responses following exposure to psychologically stressful stimuli most notably involve immune,
neuroendocrine, and cardiovascular functioning (Andersen et al., 1994; Cacioppo, 1994; S. Cohen & Herbert, 1996; Herd,
1991). In the immune system, for example, two immune reactions (humoral and cellular) may be affected. In response to chronic stress, the
adrenal gland produces hormones that suppress the activity of B- and T-lymphocytes, thereby preventing the body from destroying or
one meta-
neutralizing foreign substances (e.g., bacteria and viruses) and increasing vulnerability to disease (S. Cohen & Herbert, 1996). In
analysis of the stressimmune literature, Herbert and Cohen (1993) found that chronic and interpersonal
stressors are related to lower natural-killer cell activity. Research suggests that immune responses to these chronic and
acute stressors are not transient (Stone, Valdimarsdottir, Katkin, Burns, & Cox, 1993). For example, in studies examining the chronic stress
associated with caregiving and immune functioning, researchers have found that spouses who are caring for partners with Alzheimer's
dementia show decreased cellular immunity and prolonged respiratory infections (KiecoltGlaser, Dura, Speicher, Trask, & Glaser, 1991) and
decreased expression of the growth hormone mRNA (Wu et al., 1999). Results from immune-function tests on blood samples have also shown
that laboratory-induced conflict among married couples is associated with lowered immune functioning that persists well after the
experimental session (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1993). Additionally, it has recently been demonstrated that stress-induced immune
changes may slow the healing process (Kiecolt-Glaser, Marucha, Malarkey, Mercado, & Glaser, 1995). Although tentative, these
studies suggest that perceived stress is related to decreases in immune functioning (e.g., lower helper Tcells, lower
natural-killer cell cytotoxic activity, and higher antibody titers to the Epstein-Barr virus) that may increase susceptibility for an array of health
outcomes (S. Cohen et al., 1998; S. Cohen, Tyrrell, & Smith, 1991; Kiecolt-Glaser & Glaser, 1995). Stress-induced neuroendocrine responses
include activation of the pituitary-adrenocortical and hypothalamicsympathetic-adrenal medullary systems (Burchfield, 1979; Herd, 1991).
Findings from human and animal studies have suggested that the activation of the these systems results in numerous physiological changes. For
example, in response to acute stressors, these changes include the release of antidiuretic hormone, prolactin, growth hormone, glucocorticoids,
epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenocorticotropic hormone (which influences the production of cortisol via the adrenal gland), cortisol, and /3-
endorphin (Anisman, Kokkinidis, & Sklar, 1985; Herd, 1991; McCance, 1990). Concurrent with these neuroendocrine changes, there is an
increase in cardiovascular activity. According to Herd (1991), the cardiovascular responses include "increased rate and force of cardiac
contraction, skeletal muscle vasodilation, venoconstriction, splanchnic vasoconstriction, renal vasoconstriction, and decreased renal excretion
of sodium" (p. 326). Upon repeated exposure to acute stressors, the
magnitude and duration of these neuroendocrine and
cardiovascular responses would depend, in part, on an individual's ability to successfully cope with the stressor
(Brandenberger, Follenius, Wittersheim, & Salame, 1980; Burchfield, 1979; F. Cohen & Lazarus, 1979; Light & Obrist, 1980; Ursin, Baade, &
Levine, 1978). Health outcomes. Psychological
and physiological responses to perceptions of racism may, over time,
be related to numerous health outcomes. For example, Fernando (1984) postulated that as a potential added stressor for many
African Americans, perceived racism may influence the genesis of depression by (a) posing transient threats to self-esteem, (b)
making the group's failure to receive normative returns more salient, and (c) contributing to a sense of helplessness. Although some research
has suggested that reports and expectations of discrimination are associated with depressive symptomatology among African Americans
(McNeilly, Anderson, Robinson, et al., 1996) and adolescent immigrants (Rumbaut, 1994), other reports have questioned the validity of these
discriminatory reports and expectations. For example, Taylor, Wright, and Ruggiero (1991) concluded that mental health problems like
depression could affect perceptions of life experiences and lead individuals to perceive discriminatory practices that do not exist. Although
studies explicating the long-term health effects of perceived racism remain limited, there is a growing body of research in the more general
stress literature that documents the relationship between stress and health. For example, stress
has been linked to low birth
weight and infant mortality (James, 1993), depression (Kendler et al., 1995), the healing process (Kiecolt-Glaser et al.,
1995), breast cancer survival (Spiegel, Bloom, Kraemer, & Gottheil, 1989), heart disease (Jiang et al., 1996; Kamarck & Jennings,
1991; Rozanski, Blumenthal, & Kaplan, 1999), mean arterial blood pressure changes (R. Clark & Armstead, in press), and chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease (Narsavage & Weaver, 1994). Additionally, research suggests that exposure to stress is related to
upper respiratory infections and the development of clinical colds (S. Cohen et al., 1991). There is some suggestion, however, that
the duration of stress exposure moderates the relationship between stress exposure and cold susceptibility. For example, S. Cohen et al. (1998)
found that exposure to chronic psychological stressors (lasting 1 month or longer)—not acute stressors—is related to cold susceptibility.
Although not all studies have found support for the hypothesized perceived racism-health status association (Browman, 1996), significant
relationships between perceptions of racism and resting blood pressure (Krieger & Sidney, 1996) and subjective well-being (Jackson et al., 1996;
V. L. S. Thompson, 1996) have been documented. In one multistage area probability sample of 1,106 African American and Caucasian adults in
the Detroit metropolitan area, Williams, Yu, Jackson, and Anderson (1997) found that unfair treatment attributed to racial or ethnic
discrimination and racial or ethnic discrimination over the lifetime predicted psychological distress, well-being, number of bed days, and chronic
conditions for African Americans. Among Caucasians, racial or ethnic discrimination over the lifetime predicted psychological distress and well-
being. The focus of this article has been on the role of racism as a perceived stressor and its implications for health. It is also possible however,
that racism may affect health even when it is not perceived as a stressor. For example, institutional racism (Jones, 1997; Williams, Yu, &
Jackson, 1997) may reduce access to goods, services, and opportunities for African Americans in ways that have important health
consequences. In a recent study, for example, it was found that ethnicity is a strong determinant of physicians' recommendations for critical
cardiac assessments for patients experiencing chest pain, even among patients with similar risk factors, clinical features, and economic
resources (Schulman et al., 1999). In this instance, institutional racism in health care may have dire consequences for the health of African
Americans—even when no individual racism may be perceived. Therefore, perceived racism may be one of several possible pathways by which
racism may affect health. Summary Despite the different sampling schemes and data quantification methodologies and the paucity of studies,
the results of the research reviewed in this section were generally consistent. The
perception of racism usually resulted in
psychological and physiological stress responses. To deal with the effects of perceived racism, African
Americans were found to use various coping strategies. These strategies were associated with physiological reactivity and
health status. The research reviewed in this section does provide a basis for a stress and coping approach to the study of the effects of
perceived racism. Conclusions and Recommendations The purpose of this article was to provide a discussion of the potential usefulness of
studying the biopsychosocial effects of perceived racism within a stress and coping model. Research examining the psychological, physiological,
and social effects of perceived racism were presented. Overall, research in this area is lacking, and the research that has been conducted is
without conceptual and methodological cohesion. As a step toward advancing this field of study, a contextual model was presented that may
serve as a guide for systematic investigations of perceived racism and its biopsychosocial concomitants and sequelae. On the basis of the
proposed model, research examining the effects of ethnically relevant stressors like racism may contribute to a better understanding of
interethnic and intraethnic group health disparities. Given that available research also suggests that non-African Americans not only perceive
racism but that such perceptions also adversely affect their psychological well-being (Serafica, Schwebel, Russell, Isaac, & Myers, 1990;
Williams, Yu, Jackson, & Anderson, 1997), this stress and coping analysis could be expanded to include other populations. Interdisciplinary
investigations, examining the following questions, are encouraged to broaden the knowledge base in this area.