- Plantations no longer formally exist, but the systems that upheld them still exist in other ways, ie. white deputization
- Police had started as a system for British colonies to govern black bodies in Barbados to make sure they weren’t stealing sugarcane; the British applied the same system in Virginia and it spread in the rest of the colonies, whereby enforcing rules of how Black people should live. Police were inherently built on racism
- Even though we don’t have slave masters anymore, white people have a self-imposed responsibility to deputize and govern black bodies
- Abolishing racism starts with abolishing property; property is complex within Black communities and identity because Black people never owned themselves or their kin
- Carding, though still very present, historically was used for black people (slave or free) to give white people proof of their status; a reminder that black bodies cannot move freely and continuously struggle for autonomy and agency
- Abolition is recognizing that something has happened and mitigating harm or use of the police, not meeting harm with harm; awareness is central to any form of restitution or philosophical reworking of our present system