Dean Spade Quotes About Focus

Quotes about: Focus

• Law reforms in the US, ostensibly enacted to prohibit racism, have proven ineffective because they focus on bad intentions of individuals and fail to comprehend population-level conditions.

  Dean Spade

  Law, Racism, Focus

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

• I am arguing that it is a mistake for trans activists to focus our resources and attention on winning inclusion in legal equality frameworks, such as anti-discrimination laws and hate crimes laws, that will not provide relief from the life-shortening conditions trans populations are facing. Winning legal equality - getting the law to cast us as victims of discrimination who the state will protect - will not support our survival.

  Dean Spade

  Hate, Mistake, Winning

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

• I wrote Normal Life using concepts that have been helpful to me, and hoping to offer those as accessible tools for thinking differently about the pitfalls trans resistance faces, in particular the temptation to focus on legal equality and the limitations of that approach, and the alternative approaches being taken by racial and economic justice focused trans activists.

  Dean Spade

  Taken, Thinking, Justice

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

• Critical Race Theory offers of discrimination frameworks as ways of understanding and eradicating racism. The focus on "discrimination" as the way to understand racism in the US has meant that racism is considered a question of discriminatory intentions - whether or not somebody intentionally left someone out or did something harmful because of their biased feelings about a person's race. This focus on individual racists with bad ideas hides the reality that racism exists wherever conditions of racialized maldistribution exist.

  Dean Spade

  Reality, Race, Ideas

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

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