I am writing this post to address the issues of carceral feminism and white savourism many of us POC and Black people faced recently when a notable white woman activist, Emma Jane Dempsey, an ex leader of the Victim’s Alliance, decided to mass block all of us for criticising her tweet. EJD’s original tweet encouraged people to look for signs that someone is trafficked and if they suspect they are trafficked to call the police.
Many of us (Black people, POC, migrants, concerned onlookers) very calmly told her that it is not realistic to call the police, and warned her of the dangers. However, we were tone policed of course and told we were naive, our genuine concerns dismissed, our lived experiences thrown back into our faces. She berated us by asking “what have you done?”. Or tried to tell us that we had bad attitudes, that we were just looking for a fight. We are all actually very busy people, with real lives and concerned that someone with over five thousand followers would use that platform to encourage others to call the police.
There are many resources out there that explain why the most marginalised and affected of us do not and cannot call the police, including our series on carceral feminism. It is tiring to say the same things over and over again, just to be dismissed and told we were just looking for a fight, and then blocked. Her white followers, friends were either silent, or supporting her, framing her as the victim and us as abusers.
Yesterday, she decided to “apologise” for dismissing us, but most of us couldn’t even see this apology as we were blocked. When this was pointed out by another group of Black people and POC, EJD decided to dismiss their concerns, blocked them all and deactivated her account. Today, she decided to make a new account, with her bio telling people who don’t like her to “chew rocks”. Here’s the thing, I don’t dislike her, I don’t know EJD. I don’t have anything against her, I just pointed out her politics were dangerous to people that I know and are in my community. But white people default to defensiveness so quickly they cannot see beyond that.
I would like to point out what I would like to see from all of us moving forward:
- Victims and survivors are not static identities. We are all capable of harm, and we should not use our experiences of harm as a shield for our behaviour to others, especially when they are directly impacted by your actions.
- It is disappointing to see that white people and white feminists continue down the path of carceral feminism, one that thinks reform of police or relying on the police as part of our solution to decreasing harm done to us. That is NOT a viable option for many of us who are not and have never been protected by the state or police.
- For the groups of people she works with asking what accountability looks like; ask yourselves how you immediately went to say everyone should “calm down” and how patronising that was for all of us POC. It’s an age old trope of white women playing the victim and classing POC, especially Black people as threatening. It has real life material consequences for people, who get killed by the same police you want to be called.
- Why did these issues occur in the first place? It’s not an individual issue, EJD is not the only supporter of calling the police in the leftist circles. Especially when it comes to abuse and violence, undocumented people, migrants, Minceiri, and POC often don’t call the police for a reason. There are lots of resources out there detailing why, and why we need alternatives, we’ve been sharing those constantly. You have to do some of the work as well.
- Accountability looks different for everyone. So while I’m looking for everyone to come away with more of a nuanced view and to de-individualise this whole EJD blocking, I don’t expect other people to react the exact same way as me. Reminder to not use one of our voices to contradict another POC’s experience.
- We have our own voices, you’re not our voice. It is patronising that EJD frames herself as a white saviour and that we were threatening. White people need to call this shit out amongst each other, instead of waiting for us to call stuff out. That is not speaking for us – that is solidarity and having skin in the game. We need to imagine what solidarity actually looks like and means to us, beyond this dominant oppressor as my saviour model.
- I don’t care about her unblocking or blocking me. The point is that I’m tired and have been let down by white feminists too many times to believe in your apologies (like her first), I know it’s not genuine until I see action. So don’t just issue a statement. What are you actually going to do if you’re in a community with other carceral feminists? Or if your organising is carceral? That means your organising is not for a huge group of the most marginalised people, and that you have not been listening to the right voices. That’s harm you need to undo, and not keep putting that burden on us. I do my bit to politically educate people in my community and interested in learning about abolition. It’s all free on MERJ youtube, our blog, etc. If you genuinely care to act then you will follow through and consider tools and ideas under transformative justice.
- In this instance, you’re causing harm to trafficked people. What does calling the police do? Put them in DP? Is that what they want? What if they’re not trafficked? You’re encouraging other white liberals to call the police on racialised people who might not be documented? How irresponsible is that?
- Ultimately, our organising should not be centered on state solutions or so called state justice. Because that will exclude many of us from “justice” and just benefits whiteness.
In January, 2020 we had decided at our MERJ strategy meeting that we would continue our series on “Beyond White Feminism” by examining another approach or reiteration of white feminism – which was carceral feminism. We wanted to talk about abolition and transformative justice in the Irish context. We ended up doing a virtual series instead of a once off in person event which is probably better in hindsight, as it gave us time to really delve into different topics of carceral logic each time. We try to not be reactionary and do our work at our pace, but it feels like shouting into the void sometimes. We’ve outlined time and time again why we don’t rely on policing and that it’s more harmful for us, but middle class, white feminists just tell us we’re being too angry and loud everytime, cis white women are the only ones allowed to define victimhood. I’m exhausted. I just want everyone to think bigger and do better.
Barry.
