Transformative Justice Can Only Exist If It’s Black

Mia Mingus of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective defines transformative justice as “a way to respond to violence within our communities in ways that 1.) don’t create more harm and violence and 2.) actively work to cultivate the very things that we know will prevent violence, such as accountability, healing, trust, connection, safety.”

How can Transformative Justice ever be a multiracial framework when ‘violence’ is globally defined as Blackness/ Black people? How could we ever address the roots of abuse when the carceral foundation of our society is designed for the purpose of hunting and killing Black people? How could the intimacies we share in relationships be transformed if we aren’t committed to protecting Black people (Black life) as the ultimate undertaking for accountability?

If Transformative Justice doesn’t start with ending anti-Blackness, it’s inherently a failed project of white supremacy that will never unearth the climate of abuse, but instead perpetuate it. And therefore, we all still die. There is no possibility of a culture of accountability in a world where Black death is the foundation. When the soil is anti-Blackness, only death grows. When the ground is built from Black cadavers, the only way to freedom is centering Black life.