Radical Scholars And Prison Abolition: A Conversation With Dr. Anthony Monteiro
On episode 2 of the Beyond Prisons podcast, Kim and Brian talk with Dr. Anthony Monteiro, who is a long-time prison abolitionist, activist, scholar, and one of the foremost authorities on the scholarship and life of W.E. B. Du Bois.
We discuss Dr. Monteiro 's work as a prison abolitionist, the influence that Du Bois and James Baldwin had on him, and how their writings remain relevant today. Dr. Monteiro answers the question "what does it mean to be human?"
Transcript
Brian: Welcome back to Beyond Prisons. I am one of your co-hosts Brian Sonenstein, and I am joined by my other co-host, Kim Wilson. How you doing, Kim?
Kim: I’m doing well Brian. How are you?
Brian: I’m doing alright. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who our guest is this week and what we’ll be talking about.
Kim: Well, I’m really excited this week to have Dr. Anthony Monteiro as our guest. Dr. Monteiro is an educator, an activist, and also one of the foremost authorities on the scholarship and life of W.E.B. Du Bois. Tony, as he is known to his friends, is also a dear friend and a former colleague of mine. He served as my external greeter on my dissertation committee. I’m deeply grateful for many years of friendship that I’ve had with Tony, and for his mentoring. I can honestly say that Tony has changed my life. He’s changed the direction of my scholarship and so I am really grateful that he has agreed to join us today and share with us what he knows, and so thank you so much, Tony. I really appreciate your time and your energy.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well, Kim, I can’t tell you how happy I am to join the two of you and I’m just really thrilled. I don’t know what to say or how to put it into words. We haven’t seen each other for a little while. I miss you. I miss our conversations and I just wish you were here on the east coast to join us in the work that we’re doing. I really do.
Kim: Same here. Same here. I definitely miss Philly and I miss the organizing, and everything that is going on there. I mean to tap into the energy of all the work that you’re doing and all the people that we know and are involved with is just incredible. So, it’s been months now. It was my birthday back in October when we all got together at my house and Woo, that was fun! That was fun! I mean we really had our own version of Saturday school right there in the living room. (Dr. Monteiro laughs) That's how birthday parties go at our house. That’s what happens when you get a bunch of activists together so that was awesome. I’m glad that you’re here and I wanted to kick this off. I’m going to ask you a few questions and the first one is what informs your work, what informs your views, and how do you see that in the context of prison abolition, and if you see it in the context of prison abolition? I know that you founded Educators for Mumia and you’ve done a lot of work with MOVE and folks like Pam Africa over the years. Your personal friends with Pam and a number of other folks in MOVE as well. And there’s a lot that you’ve been doing, a lot that you have going on. So I’d love for you to share with our listeners what informs your work.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: You know, Kim, that’s a very good question because I was involved in prison abolition before I knew I was involved in prison abolition, and before there was a movement for prison abolition. Going back to my teenage years, I was involved in the movements to free Huey P. Newton, and then the great international movement to free Angela Davis, and then of course when Mumia was arrested and convicted and put on death row. I’ve been involved for decades now for his freedom, and justice for him, and because of Mumia, that brought me closer to the struggle of the MOVE 9 and of course, the struggle to free Ramona Afrika, the only adult survivor of the May 13, 1985 bombing of an entire neighborhood, including the MOVE house, where eleven people were murdered. So I was involved without knowing the name of it and what we would today call prison abolition. The way I understand it now is more from the standpoint of the existential crisis of the system of the American capitalist and white supremacist social systems. By that, I basically mean this…Abolition is at the top of the agenda of the fight for new people’s democracy for justice, for the poor and working people, and for an end to these horrible, almost medieval institutions that are containing and drawing the life out of millions and millions of people who are in these places that we call prisons because really, they are poor. (Kim agrees) So when we talk about prison abolition, we’re really talking about a new stage not just of the struggle for democracy, but the struggle against the victimization of the poor, and hence a struggle to end poverty. Now all of this fits in this larger paradigm of the struggle for social justice. So, I mean that’s the way I see prison abolitionism. I think in a very profound sense prison abolition is at the center of the struggle for justice in this country.
Kim: Well, thank you for that and there is so much in what you just said there and I’m thinking back to a number of things that you’ve written about the existential condition of people that society has chosen to place outside of what it considers quote-unquote normal. Right? What does this mean when we’re talking about it in terms of prison abolition, in terms of the broader question of carcerality, right? We’re talking not just about people in cages, but what does this do to people in the community, (Dr. Monteiro agrees) to people that are returning from prison, returning citizens if you will? But it implicates so many other institutions as well, so I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and explain to us this question of what it means to be human in this context and right now because I think that we’re at a really important moment in terms of history, in terms of politics in this country, and you talked about a new stage for democracy and the struggle. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: The three words or concepts that you introduced that I think I’d like to address or engage in… in attempting to answer or respond to your question and your assertions. One is the question, as you said returning citizens. The second is the question of humanity of people, and the third is the question of politics. You know, returning citizens, it seems to me, that for the most part, once a woman or man or child has been incarcerated and hence defined as criminal, they never are restored to full citizenship. (Kim agrees) And the importance of this when you look at it in a macro sense and not just the individual is that the carceral state and incarceration is itself by definition an attack upon citizenship.
Kim: Absolutely!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: We are back to a situation before the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. In other words, the carceral state so distorts political relationships and relationships of citizenship, of legal relationships, of legal rights, legal protections that tens of millions of people who are or who have been incarcerated in this country are less than second class citizens. They never are restored to full citizenship. In some instances, even being charged with a crime compromises one’s citizenship so we’re looking at perhaps upwards of 15% of the American population who are not full citizens in the country where they are supposed to be fully empowered as citizens. So that’s the first thing. Well, once in a bourgeois or liberal political system, you deprive a person of legal rights, of legal protections, which we identify of citizenship, you have thus reduced them to a lower status of human being just in the same way that the enslaved Africans without legal rights were considered less than human. I don’t know that I’m making this point clear enough. My point is this… that in a system that is in theory ruled by law and a human being is not just a human being by dint of his or her birth, but by the fact that he or she is a citizen. You take those rights away… he or she is less than human. The prison population is treated the way it is because it is viewed as less than human. Now, the third point is that of politics, of ideology, and of power. I think it is beyond question that the carceral state, the prison industrial complex, the police state is designed to maintain the power of a corporate managerial neo-liberal elite, and to demean and undermine the power of those who are not a part of that racial group, that racial elite, and are therefore defined as quote…minorities or marginalized people. So the carceral state at the end of the day is designed to uphold and maintain and enforce a certain set of political or power relationships. And finally, it exists after we say all of the things that we’ve already said as a visible, concrete, institutional, ever-present example for everybody to see of the fact that those who have power terrorize those who do not. (Kim agrees.) And most of us in one or another way live under conditions of fear and dread of being in prison, of being locked up, of being beaten, of being the victims of the carceral state, of the police state. That’s kind of the way I would begin to engage those points and those questions that you raised.
Kim: I want to go back to the first point…the language or the terminology of returning citizens has always bothered me because as you very well pointed out, doesn’t quite capture the reality of what is happening, right? So when we’re talking about formerly incarcerated people, the fact again as you pointed out is that they are civilly and legally considered dead. They lose many of those rights. Sometimes they don’t know that they lost these rights, and there’s really no force that is making it so that they are informed of these rights. Now there have been efforts to do this at the state level, and some states have done this so that incarcerated people understand what is at stake here. Without being informed of what they’re losing, I think people understand their own situation quite well. But, for the sake of the discussion and for what we’re talking about today, I think it’s important to point that out. You said something really critical here about the attack upon citizenship, right? When we think about incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people, a lot of politicians like to talk about second chances. The former vice-president championed the bill called “The Second Chance Act”. You know, that was very popular, and he had a lot of support for that legislation. But people aren’t really given second chances. They’re seen and they’re treated as if they don’t exist, as if they don’t belong, as if they should disappear, go away, and this is in my view one of the problems and one of the obstacles that we confront, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Yes, yes! I mean the more we talk about this, the more we are compelled to apply to the situation new language. Just what you described is the erasure of large parts of the U.S. population. By erasure, they become invisible, non-existent, almost the socially walking dead. Now once you take African-Americans whose enforced invisibility is almost a defining part of the system that we live in. In other words, be it the entertainment media, or the entertainment industrial complex, be it the news media, social media, be it the legal system or whatever, the African American people since the time of enslavement up until today, have lived in an enforced invisibility. That’s why you get in social science and popular discussions on the use of the word marginalized when applied to African-Americans. You are marginalized, which means that you are in a status of enforced invisibility. One of the struggles that black people have waged for a long time is to become visible. The carceral state is another way, the contemporary way of enforcing invisibility, a non-existence in terms of the society at large upon large parts of African American people. So you get this conjunction of deep impoverishment, and I suggest that close to 70-75% of African Americans either live in one level or stage of poverty or very close to it. The vast majority of African Americans live in this state. Poverty is a form of enforced invisibility. Now you add to that incarceration, long term incarceration and all of the stigma that one carries after leaving the prison, we’re talking about at least when you talk about the African American people and the African American people are like the canary and the mime. They are the symbol of what the future for more than African Americans will be. If we look at the African American people, the vast majority of us live in states of deep invisibility, of profound dehumanization, of a forced march to social death.
Kim: Absolutely! Wow! There’s so much that you just said there that I’m…do you want to chime in, Brian? Go ahead.
Brian: Yeah, actually, I was …just switching gears slightly but really just kind of reacting to a lot of what you just said which I completely agree with. I was wondering if you had any comments or insight on how our listeners…with all of what you just said in mind…might be able to differentiate between what kind of work is being done in the community that has an eye towards abolition versus what is sort of trapped in sort of this effort to maintain, like you said, this neo-liberal, bourgeois system or order? In preparing for this, I watched some of your lectures and I thought you had some really compelling and interesting things to say about the bourgeois economy and how it forces all responsibility and blame on the individual. You know, I was wondering if…with all that in mind..if you could sort of talk about the difference between abolition work in the community versus this sort of neo-liberal maintenance of the system.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well, you know Brian, my thinking is very deeply indebted to the theorizing and phenomenologies of W.E. B Du Bois and James Baldwin. I really recommend them to everyone who is trying to conceptualize just what all of this is about. James Baldwin, especially in an essay entitled Down at the Cross, which is subtitled A Letter From a Region of my Mind, points out that the African American is forced into a life and death struggle for his mere human dignity. That whether there is a movement that calls itself abolitionism or civil rights or the new civil rights or whatever, the African American people in their churches, in their sororities, in their communities and their mosques…wherever they are…are engaged in a day to day struggle for visibility, for humanity, and for dignity. I mean, at the very essence of this..I guess what I’m trying to say is there is no immediate or quick answer, but at the very essence of this is the African American people’s fight against the white supremacist social system. And by white supremacist social system, I’m talking about a social arrangement that reproduces white privilege, but more than white privilege, the identity of whiteness which itself is a negation of the humanity of black folk. So we have to put a name on this at some point, and I think abolitionism is a good name. I think new civil rights is a good name, anti-death penalty is a good name, but I think at its essence, at its core, we’re talking about the fight against the most horrific forms of marginalization and demonization, criminalization of an entire people. That’s the way I would put it. I think that this struggle is far larger than just the United States. This is a struggle that can only be legally expressed under International Human Rights laws and U.N. Declarations against genocide and for human rights. That is how severe and dangerous the situation is in my mind.
Kim: Yeah, I think if I can go back for just a second to what you were saying about Baldwin. I know I re-read that essay…
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Oh you did?
Kim: I did…I had to. It was just so necessary. I did it last week after we talked. And what struck me about it..and it’s been so long…I don’t remember when I read it the first time or the third time or whatever…but reading it again post Michael Brown, post Treyvon, post Tamir Rice, and particularly Tamir Rice and the children that are being murdered by police. And reading the part where he’s describing the incident where the police are muttering to themselves, “why don’t you stay up town where you belong”, right? Then he describes that instant when he was ten years old of being harassed by two cops and being left in the parking lot there face up. It’s just…he’s ten…he’s ten, right? (Dr. Monteiro agrees) And it parallels for me the video of Tamir Rice. It just kept replaying in my mind as I’m reading this and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness.” I see what Baldwin is doing and you talk about this quite a bit, he’s really challenging the white world’s assumptions, and he is pushing back against this, and he’s unapologetic, right? (Dr. Monteiro agrees and says “right”) And that pisses people off, right. That really bothers people, and I want you to talk a little bit more not just about Baldwin, but between Baldwin and Du Bois, because I’m seeing something that is happening with Baldwin that especially now after the documentary…and full disclosure, I haven’t seen it yet..but I plan on it. But what I’m seeing in terms of conversation around Baldwin and Du Bois is the same thing that happened to King. They’re turning them into benign figures, and they’re trying to take the sting out of Baldwin in ways that make particularly white people feel comfortable with this black radical. I think that as we’re having these conversations and as we’re turning to the literature and the black radical tradition, that it’s important to note this…to take stock of this so that we’re not….
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Right, but you know those who would attempt to appropriate Baldwin or Du Bois to be used against Baldwin and Du Bois [both laugh], I think it’s going to be difficult, but for example, what you describe in that essay and what I think Baldwin gives us is a phenomenology of racial predation… that this is not a benign system of white people wanting to be white and black people wanting to be black and racial differences producing conflict that has occurred throughout history. That’s not what we’re looking at. We’re looking at a predatory, aggressive, and violent system of racial oppression that in many ways surpasses even the worst forms of direct colonialism. That’s what he described and he describes the mechanisms of terror against ordinary black folk including black children.
Kim: Absolutely!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: And Baldwin is probably the greatest essayist in the English language. There is nothing to compare to him, so he not only brings his own life experience to the table to point out what the system looks like for real, but he is able to use language and conceptualizations and to take the human intellect where it had never been before. And I think it’s the same for Du Bois. Now, of course, Du Bois introduces the concept of the color line. The color line is a metaphor not just for racial division but for racial oppression. And what Du Bois says, and I think this Du Bois…and you probably know this…I think this is in your dissertation, that Du Bois points out that the color line and racial oppression is a threat to bourgeois or liberal democracy in general itself. You know what I’m saying? Which is the point I was trying to make earlier, that this carceral state, this police state, is an attack upon democracy. So the hypocrisy, and this is one of the great things about Baldwin…Baldwin is always uncovering the deep hypocrisy of the white world, of the white mind, of the white life world and the hypocrisy of white people to claim that they are the upholders of democracy and that democracy is somehow a white invention. You know, while they are carrying out the most brutal forms of anti-democratic repression of millions and tens of millions of people based nearly upon the fact that their skin is not white.
Kim: Yes, yes, absolutely! And I think that…and yes I did talk about that in my dissertation. Wow! I’m surprised you even remembered that. [Both laugh]
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Are you saying to me that you’ve forgotten it?
Kim: Uh, no I didn’t forget, but speaking to that point specifically about the color line, one of the things that I did in my research was to draw upon Lewis Gordon. And he talks about the color line as being both concrete and metaphorical. I think that was a really important point because as he put it, the malleability of the color line meant that it could be redrawn, right? And this was a really profound sort of move because if the color line could be redrawn in terms of not just race, but also in terms of gender, etc… that that had profound implications, right? So we could think about the color line more broadly and the other thing that you mentioned here and I want to go back to it because I think it’s also an important point, is this notion about racialized subjects, and part of what is happening here is that when we think about Du Bois as you pointed out, and I want you to define phenomenology for people because I think that we can use these terms and toss them around, but there may be a few people who don’t know what that means, so do you mind giving a brief definition of what you mean by phenomenology?
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Oh, yeah. First of all, let me say the word phenomenology is very important and it’s not a word or concept that cannot be understood. Very simply, phenomenology is a way of knowing the world that we inhabit based not just upon a quote-unquote objective observation of things, but based upon the fact of our direct involvement in this world. For example, you remember in Du Bois’ ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ in the foreword to it…the last sentence he says..”and need I mention, I who write am flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone of those within the veil.’ By which he meant, at this time you know he has a PhD in History, he’s written foundational sociological work and foundational work in the African Slave trade. He’s an established social scientist. But then when he writes ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, he upsets the social science establishment by saying as a social scientist…”I will not view black people from the standpoint of being disengaged from them, but I will view them and analyze the situation as one of them.” That’s the same thing that Baldwin does. (Kim agrees) It is phenomenology at its best. That to know the world, you must be in it or better yet, to know the world you must be involved in the struggle to change the world. There is no academic knowledge that trumps the great knowledge of people who think, write, and analyze the situation as they are involved in it and are involved in changing it. So when you talk about Baldwin or Du Bois, you’re talking about great phenomenologists. I would say innovative phenomenologists. That’s kind of what I meant by it. I don’t know that my definition works for everybody or whether I was being clear enough, but that’s the way I define phenomenology: a way of knowing the world by being engaged in the world and by being engaged in transforming the world.
Kim: Yeah, I think that’s a really helpful way to understand it and to proceed with the conversation. I also think that…going back to something that you talked about earlier in terms of invisibility, right? And one of the things that really struck me when I first encountered Du Bois and when you and I first met way back when….
Dr. Anthony Monteiro:Well, not that long ago. (laughs) But it seems …it’s been such a rich relationship that it seems like forever.
Kim: It does. It does. But one of the things that you made me see in terms of how I was reading Du Bois and how we should be thinking about this, and that really had a profound impact in terms of my approach to the study of community was this notion of invisibility. And invisibility meaning denied humanity, right? (Dr. Monteiro agrees) And Du Bois sought to make visible those things that a racist society wants to make invisible. I found that so relevant to what is happening at the level of communities but also inside of prisons and under the rubric of carcerality so that we can look at…and we’re talking simultaneously about not just incarcerated people, but racialized subjects, but also we’re talking about gender, we’re talking about issues of disability, we’re talking about a number of different things. We’re talking about class so when you mention that Du Bois is innovative in this way, as is Baldwin, one of the things that I remember you saying in that first lecture. And for folks that don’t know the backstory and this may not be interesting to everybody, but I happened to go to one of Tony’s lectures a number of years ago at Temple University after a very long day of teaching. If I recall correctly, it was supposed to be the spring semester, but spring in Philly is like February. It doesn’t feel springy outside. And you were doing your Du Bois series. It was cold. It was rainy. It was dark and I wanted to go home so badly. And I go, ‘let me go check this out’, and you had been teaching at Temple for a number of years and I had been teaching at Temple for a number of years. But I had never been to one of your lectures. And I went there and my mind was blown. I can literally say that. My mind was blown. I sat in the back and I nearly filled up an entire notebook taking notes not just during your lecture, but afterwards on Du Bois. Then I went back and I re-read ‘Souls of Black Folk’, which I had been teaching by the way. I felt like, Wow, I had missed so much. I say all of that but the main thing that I recall from that lecture was that you pointed out that what Du Bois is doing is really challenging the centrality of European thought, right..as a universal model for knowledge construction. (Dr. Monteiro agrees.) And that shift is really profoundly important, not just in terms of the study of racialized subjects, but for social science more broadly, right? And these just seems to get glossed over, so this just seems to get neglected. It’s not something that makes the white academy very comfortable. So can you talk a little bit about that right there? Not so much the story of me coming to the lecture.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well, I have to say something about your being at that lecture, because people that don’t know you probably don’t know the type of enthusiasm you're capable of expressing. (laughs)
Kim: (laughs) Nicely put, Tony! Okay!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: And I’ll tell Brian this and others because I was standing up there and Kim was all the way in the back.
Kim: Back row, I sure was!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Back row, and you know Kim always has a lot of hair. (laughs) But Kim she just kind of leapt out of her seat at points. I couldn’t understand it. And on the basis of that, she re-framed her dissertation, and had to debate with her advisors and others on her committee about whether this was plausible as a research framing and whether or not data supported Du Bois’ assertions, or whether or not you could use a Du-Boisian approach.
Kim: What they basically said was that Du Bois was not relevant to the study of communities, and that was definitely a ‘what the fuck’ moment!! Are you kidding me? (Brian and Dr. Monteiro laugh) Have you read the Philadelphia Negro? I just could not believe this and I’m thinking, Wow! How did you all get PhDs and you're putting me through changes just to get one? Man!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: I think my point about Kim’s enthusiasm is being validated. But then I remember you doing all this literature review and finding all of these articles and obscure journals from all over the world that were talking about Du Bois and social science, Du Bois and community studies, Du Bois and a whole range of things, but so much of what we would call Du-Boisian studies is suppressed, especially now more Kim that when you were doing your work. (Kim agrees) Because of the repression in this new neo-liberal environment in these universities…this new McCarthyism where Du Bois challenges the epistemologies of the European approach to knowing society, especially the American society. You used the word racialized subjects, which I’m not completely comfortable with…it’s too academic for me…it kind of takes the edge off of what the real situation is. We are not just racialized subjects. We are profoundly dehumanized living under a system of unimagined horror and fear, especially if you are poor. And everybody who is “racialized” does not suffer this horror in the same ways. That’s why the study of incarceration is so important because the incarcerated are the symbols, the manifestations of the future of a society and a system that has reached a moment of decadence. It is in decline so in one or another way, most Americans will experience precisely what the incarcerated are experiencing right now, and this is why Du Bois is important. You put your finger on something very important. Du Bois, as an essayist, is probably one of the great examples of the invention of metaphor to describe social reality. The color line, another metaphor that he used to describe this is the veil, and the veil to me is as striking as the metaphor ‘the color line’. Why is it? Those in the penitentiary live behind a veil. Those outside don’t see them, but they see the society far clearer than most people who are not in prison. (Kim agrees.) You know the veil? Think of the veil. Think of the Muslim woman who is veiled. She is veiled so the outside world cannot see most of her physical features, but she can see the outside world. You know, Du Bois used another concept when speaking of African Americans and what he called ‘double-sidedness’. You know, the incarcerated have a double-sidedness. They are in a sense a seventh son, that metaphorical son born with a veil, a membrane over his eyes, who can see far more than others. In a lot of ways, you can compare it to Plato’s allegory of the cave. (Kim agrees) You know, the incarcerated are special people. They have special sightedness and you take Mumia Abu- Jamal as probably the best known example of this. He sees the world far clearer than most people who live in it every day. (Kim agrees) So your work has been very important to me, and the enthusiasm that you brought to it, and the tenaciousness and every time they told you ‘no’, you became more busy, more committed.
Kim: That’s a word, that’s a way to describe it right there.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: And I just want to get a copy of your literature review if you don’t mind. (laughs)
Kim: (laughs) Like you need it.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: (laughs) Very badly!
Kim: But I think that one of the things that Du Bois does and you say this is the language that I’ve heard you use, is that he gives us the emancipatory tools that we need to fight this racist society…to combat that. And I think that when we’re talking about the study of these questions and of these issues, and I don’t want to get too deeply into the academy and those struggles right now. We can certainly have you back to talk about that because I think that actually does fit in with our broader goal of situating this podcast in terms of abolition. But right now for the discussion that we’re having, one of the problems that we confront is that some of us are seen as not being able to engage in the questioning, and our questions are seen as not being legitimate, right? So can you say something about that in how you see Du Bois informing that and how we might think about this in terms of…and I know this is a big question…in terms of abolition in general?
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well…
Kim: Yeah, and that’s it! And if you could do that in 30 seconds. I’m kidding! (Kim and Dr. Monteiro laugh)
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: You know, this is another characteristic of Kim that the audience should know. (Everyone laughs) She starts off very formal but then her sense of humor asserts itself as she becomes comfortable. But you know, this question of academic knowledge is very important. I think academic knowledge is important in a very limited way in this whole struggle to understand what we are up against. I think it is the non-academic or the researcher that is not connected to most academic institutions who will do the best work. Let me give you an example. I mean, like I said, I believe prisoners..those behind the bars…have a insight on the society in which we live and its future that few outsiders have. In other words, that idea of flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone of those within the veil…we could say of those who are incarcerated. You have to have a connection, an engagement, and not just in passing, not just through government statistics or not just through archival evidence. (Kim and Brian agree) You have to get closer to the situation. In fact, I would say a great project for social science is to encourage and to teach social scientific thinking and methods to people who are incarcerated so that they can begin to do the phenomenological work of explaining just what we’re looking at. I don’t think you can be outside of a prison, outside of incarceration, outside of the invisibility that goes with all of that in the prison or outside of the prison. I don’t think you can do that and you’re living a bourgeois or upper middle class life. You just don’t have it. And that’s the way I would go about it. But I think the social science we need today is not going to come from academic departments or from academics, certainly not from most tenured professors who have to go through a vetting process, which at the end of the day, that’s the tenure …the least capable of understanding the system.
Kim: Oh! Oh! You went there? Okay. I’m glad you did. You opened that door so now I’m going to put my foot right through it. So that said, I think that there is also, hopefully this is interesting for listeners, but the notion of an unbiased researcher. That informs a lot of the ways that we approach the study of problems so whether we are talking about incarceration, whether we are talking about how incarceration impacts communities or what have you. That the notion of the unbiased researcher is really the prevailing view in the sciences, and that presents obstacles for the study that we are saying that we need and that give us the richest, the most thick information that we can possibly get. So do you mind saying something about that part of it?
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well, you know, on the one side, yeah I will try to say something. And this is a bigger question of understanding the topic at hand than might appear at first. You know, assumptions about race, class, and gender and even sexuality that one brings to the table are very important because assumptions about things like that are rooted in one’s assumptions about justice, democracy, citizenship, and the nature and quality of the social system that we live under. If as a …and I’ll put quotes around this…victim of the system…one knows it as an oppressed or victimized person…you know something about oppression, and you take oppression as a given, as a constant. The person that does not experience that takes it as something that’s malleable…something that we can reform our way out of. So most academics…and here you have to place them within their class positionality, most academics are upper middle class or aspire to be upper middle class. And I know that there is a precarious academic label for us, but most are either upper middle class or aspire to be upper middle class and most of the ones who are published are in that upper middle class category. For them, the system works. (Kim and Brian agree.) And, therefore, what they wish to do is reform the system rather than to fundamentally change the system.
Kim: Absolutely!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: So I think in the struggle to end the carceral state, the police state, the prison industrial complex, really at the vanguard of that will be the incarcerated. We’ve seen instances of this before. I mean one need only mention the name George Jackson or the name Mumia Abu-Jamal, or talk about the Attica uprising or other prison uprisings over the years. I mean, they were sending a message from behind the walls to those outside. And the establishment moved quickly to silence, crush, or murder those people. And I think that indicates…that’s symbolic of the truth that they were telling.
Kim: Absolutely, and I think that the other thing that you have me thinking about as you’re talking there is this intersection of scholarship and activism. We’re narrowly defining scholarship (Dr. Monteiro agrees.) and you know, being outside of the academy now for two years has been healing. I’ll put it that way. It’s been extremely healing for me and it has given me an opportunity to kind of distance myself from a lot of the ways in which the academy conditions you to think that things should be. So separating activism and scholarship, for example, but Du Bois is working at that intersection so he’s merging these two things together, and there have been a lot of people who have written about Du Bois. I’m thinking of Michael Katz, the historian who wrote about Du Bois’ importance to public policy. And how we can use good social science research to inform public policy because if our notions, as you said, our assumptions…if our assumptions are trash, the solutions that we come up with are going to be trash. We’re not really going to formulate good public policy in light of trash assumptions. How do you bring together those two worlds? How do you bring together activism and scholarship? How do they inform each other, and I’m thinking specifically about the work that you’re doing with the Saturday Free school, and I would love for you to say something about that.
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Well, Wow! (laughs) You don’t ask just one question! (Brian laughs)
Kim: I don’t. It’s like a 12-part question. I’m that person at the conference right now that is like, Ok I have one question and that question has 12 parts. I’m already giving you part of the answer but really I want to hear more what you have to say. So, yes, I did that. Oh, Wow! (laughs)
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: You know, one thing being myself away from the academy for three years has made me a bit contemptuous of academic language. And I don’t mean to be too critical, but the scholar activist is not just one who has discovered the intersection between scholarship and activism. I think we talk about a scholar activist or a radical scholar. We’re talking about all of this in the same package, in the same person. There are people who cannot conceive of research and scholarship outside of practical results.
Brian: Yep!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: And who is not first and primarily interested in writing to win prizes or get a higher paycheck, a larger paycheck from the university. There are people who write and research and think because they’re interested in the truth, because they’re interested in using the truth or whatever parts of the truth that we can discover to transform the world, to make it better for human beings. That type of individual is…and you see it in Du Bois….and you really see it in Baldwin…are so in love with humanity that the love of the truth and the love of humanity are inseparable. And that’s….. in that essay that you were mentioning: Down at the Cross, that’s kind of at the core of what Baldwin does. You know, let me just give you an example. Western philosophy, even in the 20th and 21st century is defined as something that very, very smart people do who set themselves away from the madding crowd or the wretched of the earth, and who meditate, and who think, and who come up with systems of thought. Well, Baldwin felt as we’ve said before…first of all, he could not have isolated himself that way. He had to be …he had to take his own life world and his own struggles as the starting point for his thinking about humanity. And I take my lead from people like that. I’m not that interested these days in what academics do or what they think. I think the academy is in many ways adversarial to those who are incarcerated, and many use the incarcerated as a way to advance their own careers. So this rank careerism is a big problem in the construction of knowledge, especially about the incarcerated and about the poor. I mean, that’s the way I would approach it. That’s why I think if you take the least of these…the incarcerated, and they become the intellectual vanguard. There is not a separation of scholarship and activism because if you’re behind the walls, it’s all the same.
Kim: Indeed. Indeed. Absolutely. And I think that, to the point that you just made about the adversarial relationship between the academy and incarcerated people, there are a lot of programs that are behind the walls…that are started, that are led by academics and those are the programs that get funded. Those are the programs that are esteemed and held up as models for how to do this work. Critiqued many of these programs over the years and one in particular, and I’m not going to name it right now. Maybe for another episode and we can talk about that later, but basically has as one its rules the fact that you cannot criticize the prison or the prison officials or prison policy within a context of the classroom inside of prison, which frustrates me to absolutely no end because on the one hand, it’s like we know that incarcerated people are asking for more education. We saw this coming out of the Vaughn Rebellion as one of the demands that incarcerated people have, that they want so badly to have educational programs. Then, on the other hand, you have educational programs that are one of the requirements for participating in that program not just as a facilitator, but also as a student on the inside, is that you can’t discuss what is actually happening. And I find that such a …there’s a cognitive dissonance for me in terms of trying to bring these two things together which is why I would never get approval for having a program inside a prison because obviously with my research, my commitments and what have you….it’s like I’d be the trouble maker. They’re like, No, absolutely not! This is not the kind of thing that we want. So can you talk a little bit about that because I could see…..
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: Yeah, I can give you a couple examples , at least one example of one person that has two sides to it and that’s Mumia Abu-Jamal. You know, here in Philly and in Temple, we fought for him to be admitted to the PhD program in African American studies. Of course, Mumia Abu-Jamal is a world known and a world class intellectual, and why would Temple not be interested in having him as a student in a PhD program? Of course it would bring great fame and interest to the African American Studies department. He would enrich it with his insights and so on and so forth. Students, undergraduates and graduates, and the faculty would be enriched by it. And we went about getting all of his stuff in. I think it cost $300 to get his application in and suddenly we find out that he’s rejected. I’m not completely convinced that he was rejected. I think Molefi Asante and his allies on the faculty literally tore the application up, didn’t admit it, didn’t submit it.
Kim: Oh, Wow! Wow!
Dr. Anthony Monteiro: And even if they had let us say, and the dean’s office turned it down. What was the fight that you put up afterwards? But I think it was the former rather than the latter. They tore it up because if you know anything about Molefi Asante, he wants the department to be a cult, rather than a center of research and the production of knowledge. The second thing is that Mumia applied to the department of Comparative Literature I think at Ohio State University. The faculty supported it. He was admitted, but then the Board of Trustees turned his application down. The interesting thing is that Mumia is now taking classes in spite of the Board of Trustees turning his application down, is taking classes in the PhD program in the hope that the decision of the Board of Trustees will be overturned. This gets to this point that I was trying to make. Who better to understand this class of human beings who are non-citizens, dehumanized, who are behind the bar, who are behind the walls, and those who have been released from behind the walls but still carry the stigma of having been incarcerated? Who best to understand that than a person like Mumia? Who best to understand the impact of solitary confinement? You know, he was on death row in solitary confinement for 30 years. Who best to understand the medical conditions and all that goes on in prisons and the legal smothering and strangulation of the rights of prisoners? So, look, we need a revolution not just in the society, but a radical transformation of the academy.
