Adventures in Mommyland

here is an article about how the DSM changed the definition of schizophrenia in the 60s to use it against Black civil rights activists

First image is a screencap quote tweet from @/absurdistwords on Twitter, quoting @/aspienelle who says: “”White children are more likely to be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD than black children. Black children are over-diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. What does this tell us about how the education and medical systems view POC? #BlackDisabledLivesMatter”

absurdistwords says in this quote tweet: “In addition… Black children diagnosed with ODD regularly have their diagnoses upgraded to Antisocial Personality Disorder in adolescence. This frequently only reflects the lack of support they would have enjoyed had they been white kids diagnosed with ADHD instead.“

Second image is a tweet and reply from absurdistwords in reply to the intial quote tweet; first tweet says “What is seen in white children as: Hypersensitivity, trouble navigating emotions, tantrums, overexcitability, acting out, social anxiety or panic… In Black children are seen as: Paranoia, rage, aggressiveness, wildness, opposition/defiance, disrespect and dangerousness” and second tweet says “In addition to all this, children with a diagnosis of ODD are frequently treated more harshly by courts, as their behavior and actions are pathologized and seen as innate rather than situational. These kids are more likely to be incarcerated than to get treatment“

Final image is absurdistwords quote tweeting another twitter user, profanesnare. profanesnare writes: “one of the features of ASPD listed in the DSM 5 is *literally* “failure to obey laws and norms by engaging in behavior which results in criminal arrest, or would warrant criminal arrest” which is extremely telling i think, wrt white construction of crime and “laws and norms"”

and in the quote tweet absurdistwords writes: “This has always been the problem with ASPD. It’s a diagnosis that has long been defined by the violation of social norms without regard to the validity of those norms”

Now, while “Abolish police” is still fringe, the mainstream reaction is starting to be, “well, let’s talk about which parts we could remove…”

This is HUGE.

We do need a way to stop crime. A way to enforce the rules that we, as a society, have agreed are important.

We DON’T need that method to include “a large, armed group of people whose entire working career involves perceiving their fellow citizens as criminals.” We don’t need that method to include “the ones who are trained to enter dangerous situations and deal with violent criminals, are also the ones who deal with traffic tickets.” We don’t need it to include “the same people who investigate human trafficking will investigate embezzlement and internet harassment” - leading them to ignore the latter because after you’ve seen the former, everything else looks minor.

And we really really don’t need that to mean, “the people tasked with enforcing laws aren’t subject to public review and oversight of all of their activities and choices.” 

We can’t get rid of all law enforcement. We COULD get rid of all police departments - break those jobs up into many different forms of community service, tie them to the communities where they work, increase accountability, put them under surveillance while on the job, require them to have the same level of training as both teachers and EMTs (Gotta know the law and be able to convey the details to the people around you; gotta be able to cope with emergencies), fire anyone who’s found to break public trust by increasing hostility with the citizenry in their jurisdiction.

Even without big changes, we could increase their training in de-escalation, release the names of every cop on the Brady lists, and make failure to operate bodycams a firing offense. We could enact laws that any cop fired for misconduct, cannot serve in any form of law enforcement capacity. 

Gonna break down this response as clearly as possible. 

The origins of the police are evil. 

It has been shown repeatedly that the police were formed to oppress the working class and (1, 2) and enforce white supremacy (1, 2, 3). In fact, the early U.S. police grew directly out of slavery.

The police aren’t the people you think they are.

The police don’t care about you – they don’t even have a constitutional duty to protect you. They’re allowed to take your property without your consent (the NYPD seizes so much property they can’t even log it in their computers). In fact, cops are more likely to steal your property than burglars are. They commit hundreds of crimes and human rights violations against people like you & me and get away with it because they cover for each other.

Cops tend to be unusually aggressive, authoritarian, and secretive (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011). They are more than twice as likely to commit domestic violence than the rest of the population, and (once again) they cover for each other when doing so. The police are on the side of neo-Nazis (1, 2). In fact, many times the police themselves are the neo-Nazis/klansmen (1, 2, 3). And even besides all this, cops do all kinds of other shady shit – for instance, undercover police are used to instigate fights during protests and rallies.

The police terrorize those of us who are marginalized.

The police disproportionately arrest Black people for drugs even though white people use drugs more often. They disproportionately pull Black people over for traffic stops. The police terrorize people with disabilities.They are viciously anti-indigenous – and always have been. Police terrorize sex workers. There are countless examples of police brutalizing homeless people (1, 2, 3). The police have a lengthy history of brutality against the LGBT community (1, 2). They terrorize women of color and get away with it (1, 2, 3). They kill massive numbers of people each year – and a disproportionate number of their victims are Black and native. On top of that, recent data suggests cops may kill up to twice as many people as we even thought they did. And while police love to defend themselves by saying they have the most dangerous job, that’s not even close to being true.

The police’s best kept secret: We don’t need them! 

A world without the police is completely possible (1, 2, 3, 4). We have resources for resolving violence as communities without the need for state intervention (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – as some examples). We as communities are better capable of resolving violence than the police are, because we don’t have the vested interest in the status quo that they have. Even if a few cops are well-intentioned here or there, it doesn’t change that the role of the police is to work against the vast majority of us in the interests of the (white) elite few.