Angela Davis knows a thing or two about fighting for justice within the systems that uphold racism; after all, not only was she on the FBI’s most wanted list, and tried (and acquitted) of capital offences, she also ran a campaign to be Vice President of the United States in both 1980 and 1984.So in the September issue of Vanity Fair (the same issue that has
Breonna Taylor on the cover and is guest edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates), the iconic activist and philosophy professor spoke with director Ava DuVernay about the current moment we’re in when it comes to racial inequality, anti-Black racism, and mass incarceration.In their
conversation, Davis explains how the murder of George Floyd finally took the wool off of so many people’s eyes that previously were blind to the systemic racism and brutality in society against Black bodies.[video_embed id='2022350']RELATED: Can anger and protests spur meaningful change?[/video_embed]“When George Floyd was lynched, and we were all witnesses to that—we all watched as this white policeman held his knee on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds—I think that many people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, who had not necessarily understood the way in which history is present in our lives today, who had said, ‘Well, I never owned slaves, so what does slavery have to do with me?’ suddenly began to get it,” she explained in their conversation. “That there was work that should have happened in the immediate aftermath of slavery that could have prevented us from arriving at this moment. But it did not happen. And here we are. And now we have to begin.”Speaking about the power of dissent and disturbing the peace, she added, “The protests offered people an opportunity to join in this collective demand to bring about deep change, radical change. Defund the police, abolish policing as we know it now. These are the same arguments that we’ve been making for such a long time about the prison system and the whole criminal justice system. It was as if all of these decades of work by so many people, who received no credit at all, came to fruition.”When DuVernay asked about the terms “diversity” and “inclusion” and how they can be used as buzzwords or placeholders for true equality, Davis spoke about those words’ limitations when it comes to achieving justice.“Virtually every institution seized upon that term, ‘diversity.’ And I always ask, ‘Well, where is justice here?’ Are you simply going to ask those who have been marginalized or subjugated to come inside of the institution and participate in the same process that led precisely to their marginalization? Diversity and inclusion without substantive change, without radical change, accomplishes nothing,” she explained.Continuing her thought, she added, “'Justice’ is the key word. How do we begin to transform the institutions themselves? How do we change this society? We don’t want to be participants in the exploitation of capitalism. We don’t want to be participants in the marginalization of immigrants. And so there has to be a way to think about the connection among all of these issues and how we can begin to imagine a very different kind of society. That is what ‘defund the police’ means. That is what ‘abolish the police’ means.”You might remember DuVernay and Davis’s previous collab in the 2016 documentary
13th, which explores the effects of slavery on modern and contemporary legal and judicial institutions in the United States, such as mass incarceration, voter suppression, and political silencing (the film is currently
free to watch on YouTube, courtesy of Netflix).In an Instagram post announcing the Q&A interview with Davis, DuVernay praised the iconic activist with the caption, “I love learning from her. I encounter the unexpected whenever we speak. Unexpected treasures. Angela Davis effortlessly drops more knowledge than most folks have ever picked up. And her laugh is soft and musical and lovely.”
We would love to be able to just copy and paste their entire conversation here because the gold nuggets of knowledge and truth about the racist society in which we live are so eloquently explained by Davis, but really, you should just read the entire piece
here.[video_embed id='1997366']RELATED: Ava DuVernay making leap to unscripted TV with ‘social experiment’[/video_embed]
