an ex of mine, a progressive dude, talked abt “criminals,” so I told him there was no such thing, just people who have committed a crime. we had a long convo about it & his perspective shifted, but it made me realize how ppl unconsciously think of “criminal” as an innate identity https://twitter.com/noname/status/1288488739065327616

in his mind it was almost like there were these “criminals,” always on the prowl looking for their next crime/victim, as opposed to ppl responding to specific situations in their lives in specific ways

this vision of the world is very cartoonish, very simplistic, and a lot more common than we’d like to admit. it’s simpler to chalk crime up to “bad people who do bad things” than see crime as a natural symptom of capitalist oppression

because if we see crime as a symptom, we’re forced to confront the disease. much neater to push “criminals” aside as aberrant

at the same time, what we even identify as “crime” is incredibly othered and racialized. he didn’t think of *US* as “criminals,” even though weed wasn’t decrim in DC yet - we were breaking the law when we bought/smoked, but we weren’t the criminal archetype he invisioned

(in this particularly case what he was saying without saying it, without even consciously acknowledging the thought, was that he wanted me to carry pepper spray because he lived in a majority Black neighborhood)