The Unrealized Dream of Abolition

ABSTRACT

This article traces the origins and goals of the abolition movement in the United States that began during the era of chattel slavery to demonstrate that the true aspirations of this movement—a racially just society free of racism and oppression—remain aspirations that are not yet realized. Realizing these aspirations is the real work of abolition and this is the work that social work must embrace today. Yet for social work to truly work toward an anti-racist future, we must also be anti-capitalist. This requires that we work toward both the abolition of harmful, racist systems and abolition of the racial capitalism that maintains these systems. The article concludes with recommendations for scholars and leaders in human service organizations to engage in and advance this work.

KEYWORDS:

• abolition
• anti-racism
• liberation
• racial capitalism

Following the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877, which saw significant resistance to the many gains achieved during this period, mass incarceration and imprisonment became the primary tool of white Americans to maintain the oppression of the formerly enslaved. This period of mass imprisonment was made possible through the Black Codes that were passed immediately following emancipation, which turned crimes that were formerly misdemeanors into felonies only when they were committed by Black Americans, and criminalized issues such as homelessness and unemployment. This rapid system of criminalization and incarceration reversed much of the forward progress made during Reconstruction and reverted many Black Americans to an enslaved source of free labor for their former enslavers.

In 1888, Frederick Douglass revisited the South after spending many years away following the abolition of slavery and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Upon observing the conditions of those who were formerly enslaved, he said this in Washington, DC on the twenty-sixth anniversary of emancipation:

I admit that the Negro, and especially the plantation Negro, the tiller of the soil, has made little progress from barbarism to civilization, and that he is in a deplorable condition since his emancipation. That he is worse off, in many respects, then when he was a slave, I am compelled to admit, but I contend that the fault is not his, but that of his heartless accusers. He is the victim of a cunningly devised swindle, one which paralyzes his energies, suppresses his ambition, and blasts all his hopes; and though he is nominally free he is actually a slave. I here and now denounce his so-called emancipation as a stupendous fraud—a fraud upon him, a fraud upon the world.

(Douglass, 1888)

While this condemnation of emancipation may come as a surprise for many, an understanding of the abolitionist movement of the 1800s points to the roots of where this condemnation comes. Twenty-five years earlier, near the end of the Civil War, Douglass shared his vision of abolition with the American Anti-Slavery Society. In a speech titled, “Our Work Is Not Done,” he said:

I am one of those who believe that we should consent to no peace which shall not be an Abolition peace. I am, moreover, one of those who believe that the work of the American Anti-Slavery Society will not have been completed until the black men of the South, and the black men of the North, shall have been admitted, fully and completely, into the body politic of America. I look upon slavery as going the way of all the earth. It is the mission of the war to put it down. But a mightier work than the abolition of slavery now looms up before the Abolitionist. This Society was organized, if I remember rightly, for two distinct objects; one was the emancipation of the slave, and the other the elevation of the colored people. When we have taken the chains off the slave, as I believe we shall do, we shall find a harder resistance to the second purpose of this great association than we have found even upon slavery itself.

(Douglass, 1863)

Here Douglass clearly stated that the work of abolition was never intended to be complete with the ending of slavery; rather, the work of abolition was intended to continue toward the goal of achieving full liberation and equality of the formerly enslaved.

This idea of extending the work of abolition beyond the end of slavery was further advanced by W. E. B DuBois, who conceptualized the term “abolition democracy” in his 1935 work, “Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880,” and further interpreted by Angela Davis in “Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture.” According to DuBois (1935), abolition democracy was an idea for the United States where Black Americans were not only no longer enslaved, but they had the social, economic, and political capital to be full and equal members of society. Realizing this idea of America would require the creation of new systems and structures as the means of achieving the true goal of abolition – a racially just society. As Angela Davis elaborated, “DuBois argued that the abolition of slavery was accomplished only in the negative sense. In order to achieve the comprehensive abolition of slavery – after the institution was rendered illegal and black people were released from their chains – new institutions should have been created to incorporate black people into the social order” (Davis, 2005, p. 91).

Thus, the intention of abolition, from its earliest origins, has never been solely about ending harmful institutions or systems – abolition must also include building the new institutions and systems that will maintain freedom from oppression. Although backlash following passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the power of White supremacy prevented these new structures from being realized, the original aspirations of the abolitionist movement – a racially just society free of racism and oppression – remain aspirations that are not yet realized. Realizing this dream is the real work of abolition and this is the work that social work must embrace today.

As social workers, we have been called to challenge injustice and oppression. This defining aspect of social work has been enshrined in our Code of Ethics for decades and fundamentally distinguishes us from other professions. Yet since its earliest origins, the profession of social work has been deeply invested in the systems and structures that maintain injustice and oppression – primary among these, systems of policing, prisons, and child welfare. In recent years, as the racism inherent in these systems and the harm that results have been more widely understood, social work’s involvement in these systems has been called into question. Yet social work has steadfastly maintained its involvement in these systems, and in some instances, has strengthened this involvement. Today, we exist as a profession with a code of ethics that challenges us to take action against injustice and oppression while simultaneously perpetuating injustice and oppression through our involvement in harmful, racist systems. Although many have called on the profession to reconsider social work’s support of these systems and to embrace an abolitionist approach toward addressing the harm these systems cause, the profession – primarily as represented by our professional organizations – has ignored these calls.

Today, the work of abolition remains largely misunderstood within the profession of social work. Several social work researchers have been overtly critical of those who have advanced abolitionist ideas and have chosen to singularly focus on the dismantling aspects of abolition, using scare tactics to warn of those who will be harmed if abolitionist ideas are implemented. These researchers fundamentally, and perhaps intentionally, misunderstand the true goals of abolition. Yet, if social work has any intention of being a profession whose actions match our purported values – if we aspire to be part of creating a racially just society, thereby realizing the goals of the original abolitionists – we must remove ourselves from the systems that maintain racism and oppression and work from outside these systems toward their end. We must also then begin the real work of abolition by imagining and building the new foundations of society that will ensure a society free of racism and oppression – a society where true liberation and equality and fully realized.

As we begin to engage in this work, we must also understand the real problems that prevent this vision from being realized. As social workers, and as a society, when faced with a problem, we are often challenged by the limits of our imagination that have been shaped by our experiences and socialization within our current society – we tend to think of solutions to our problems that exist within the realm of what we know to be possible. For example, when we consider the problem of poverty – a fundamental problem that facilitates injustice and oppression – we are able to think of what many would consider necessary solutions to address poverty – universal basic income, living wages, guaranteed child allowances, and other solutions. In other words, if the problem we face is that people do not have enough money, we can imagine solutions that provide money. Yet we do not ask ourselves why we live in a society where people are required to have money in order to survive.

This is the limitation from which we must break free. The problem is not that people do not have enough money to survive – the problem is that money exists as a means of deciding who gets to survive and who does not. The problem we are ultimately faced with as a society is not how to provide people with more money, but rather how to end a system of racial capitalism that allows money and poverty – and thereby injustice and oppression – to exist.

At its core, racial capitalism is the social order upon which the United States was founded that is built on the idea of capitalist accumulation – accumulation that requires the maintenance and subjugation of an exploitable labor class that is confined to poverty for the purpose of enabling their exploitation (Robinson, 1983). This labor class exists to maintain a system whereby those with wealth continue to gain wealth, and those who produce wealth through their work remain in poverty. Since the earliest origins of the United States, this condition has been maintained through violence – violence that is inflicted directly and violence that is inflicted through policy as a means of maintaining the oppression of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people – oppression upon which the system depends and oppression that is perpetuated by prisons, the police, and the child welfare system.

If the profession of social work truly wishes to be a part of creating a racially just society, a society free of injustice and oppression – in other words, a society that fulfills the promise of the original abolitionists – we must abolish the system of racial capitalism that allows injustice and oppression to exist. A society based on racial capitalism will always require the subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people, and racial capitalism will always maintain the systems that bring about this subjugation.

As social workers, we must broaden our understanding of the real problems we face. These problems do not lie among the individuals, families, and communities with whom social workers interact. The real problems we face lie in our systems and our structures – systems and structures that over centuries have been designed to create the oppression and inequality we experience today. The real problems we face lie in a government that for centuries has been designed to support these systems and structures for the purpose of maintaining the oppression and inequality they create. Bringing about the society we wish to see first requires an understanding of the real problems we face as it is only when we understand the true sources of our oppression that we can begin to develop the strategies to take action against them.

Potential directions for HSO scholars and leaders to advance the promise of abolition

Abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2020) has said, “Capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it.” For social work to truly be anti-racist, we must also be anti-capitalist. This requires that we work toward both the abolition of harmful, racist systems and the abolition of racial capitalism that is maintained by the inequality these systems produce. For social work researchers and scholars, particularly those in academic spaces, this work can begin in the classroom and in social work curricula. An anti-racist social work curricula should be grounded in the acknowledgment that the most urgent challenges impacting our society – poverty, houselessness, joblessness, health disparities, mental health concerns, and many others – are all the direct products of racial capitalism. Too often, we pathologize individuals as the source of these problems and focus on micro-level solutions to alleviate them, with little acknowledgment of the role of racial capitalism as the root cause of each of these problems. Although we should continue to explore and advocate for the short-term policy solutions that can address these issues – policies such as universal basic income, universal healthcare, and others – our analysis of societal challenges and the policy solutions needed to address them should always center the harms of racial capitalism and the long-term policy goal to dismantle this.

Schools of social work also need to acknowledge that there is a disconnect between the education students want and the education schools are providing, particularly when it comes to education on abolition as a theory of change and the role of social work in the rapidly growing abolitionist movement. For many students, the understanding of our service systems, and particularly the role of social workers within these systems, fundamentally shifted following the uprisings of 2020, the rise of the defund the police movement and subsequent conversations on social work’s role in policing, the rapidly growing acknowledgment of the harm caused by state child welfare systems, and the rise of the abolitionist movement. Yet social work faculty and social work curricula have been slow to embrace abolition and abolitionist principles as a legitimate and necessary component of social work education and scholarship. This cannot continue. A racially just society will never be realized with the presence of racially unjust systems, and if social work has any intention of bringing about a racially just society, we must begin to acknowledge abolition as a theory of change that can bring about this society.

For leaders and managers within service systems, particularly those working within carceral systems who seek change, we can begin to move toward an abolitionist approach by acknowledging that reform efforts often do not address the racism and harm our systems produce. In part, this is because our systems do not acknowledge the racism and harm they produce, and thus reforms are not intended to address them, but also because reforms begin with the wrong presumptions. Reforms often begin with the presumption that the services provided by our systems are needed and beneficial, and thus our reforms focus on means of improving service delivery or making services more welcoming to clients. For example, in the child welfare system, reforms seek answers to questions such as “how can the system provide better services for children and families?” or “how can social workers separate families in ways that cause less trauma?” instead of asking “why do families need to be surveilled and separated at all?” Until we begin to acknowledge the racism and harm embedded in our systems and services and ask questions that lead to reforms that shrink the scope and impact of these systems and services, we will continue to perpetuate the harm they were designed to produce within a society built on white supremacy and racial capitalism.

But beyond a needed shift in how we think of reform, to truly embrace an abolitionist theory of change, social workers need to begin to ask, “Is it truly possible to create change from the inside?” We also must be willing to accept that the answer to this question may be “No.” For decades, social workers have worked within and upheld systems that produce harm with the belief that we can bring about change through our presence within these systems. What if this is fundamentally untrue? What if the idea of “creating change from the inside” was created by the elites who control society as a means of fooling us so they can continue to benefit from the capitalist accumulation these systems were designed to maintain? It is time for social work to acknowledge that despite well-intentioned and commendable efforts to realize change, these efforts simply have not worked. They have not worked and will never work in a capitalist society that depends on the harm and inequality these systems exist to produce. Social workers have the power to bring about change, but our efforts need to shift to work that is outside of these systems that move us toward their elimination.

Lastly, as a profession, social workers across the academic and service spectrum need to acknowledge that a society free of racial capitalism will never exist within the confines of the duopoly that controls our system of government. This duopoly fully supports the maintenance of racial capitalism and is inherently designed to ensure that racial capitalism persists. Recent evidence of economic conditions that were significantly improved through temporary measures in response to the pandemic and then reverted once those measures expired show us that the government knows exactly how to end poverty, yet deliberately chooses not to (Chotiner, 2023; Sy, 2023). We cannot continue to support either of the parties within this duopoly that knowingly allow poverty and inequality to persist, and in fact, depend on poverty and inequality to persist in order to maintain their power. Once again, change will only come when we begin to work outside the systems that perpetuate harm and work to realize the dream developed by those who fought for their freedom centuries ago.

Disclosure statement

I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.