The Whole Damn System Is Guilty

Urban Violence, the Principal Contradiction of Racial Capitalism, and the Production of Premature Death in Oakland, California

Bibliographic Data

ID2370723
AuthorsCésar “che” Rodríguez (0000-0002-7016-9667, San Francisco State University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume46
Issue7-8
Pages1057-1074
Publication date2020-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0896-9205 • E-ISSN: 1569-1632
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0896920520923429
OpenAlexW3033394433
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited24

Discourses of 'urban violence' are deployed in reaction to the mobilizations advanced by working-class communities of color following extrajudicial police murders. This discourse delegitimates these mobilizations while pathologizing said communities by insisting that 'urban violence,' not police murders, is a more pertinent issue. This article takes seriously the claims made during the Oscar Grant 'moment'- a period of popular struggle - that 'the whole damn system is guilty.' This article uses Gramscian conceptualizations of socio-historical activity, organic and conjunctural, along with public health and socio-economic measures, to counter the obfuscating discourse of 'urban violence' by illustrating the structural violence that communities in Oakland endure and contest. The sum of this structural violence constitutes the principle contradiction of racial capitalism, which produces premature death for working-class communities of color in Oakland. The extrajudicial police murder of Grant in Oakland catalyzed the blossoming open of this contradiction into an intensified moment of struggle

Capitalism · Class conflict · CONTEST · Contradiction · Criminology · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Race, History, and American Society

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