Source: Final Review, Prof. Victoria Robinson | UC Berkeley
Tags: racialized gender violence, feminized labour, Black Panther Party, BPP, self-determination, COINTELPRO, surveillance, virtual internment, Beyonce Lemonade, Harriet Tubman, body politics, Muslim surveillance, SAMAH
The course connects racialized gender violence, the politics of the body, and state surveillance as overlapping systems of control. From the "illegal alien body" constructed by immigration law to the Black body as a site of self-determination (the Black Panther Party), to the virtual internment of Muslim communities through surveillance, the body is where race, gender, and state power converge. The campus itself is framed as a site of racialized gender violence.
Racialized gender violence
Violence that operates at the intersection of race and gender, where the targeting of bodies is shaped by both racial categorisation and gendered assumptions. Immigration law, sexual assault on campus, and feminised labour are all examples in the course.
Feminized labour
Work that is devalued, underpaid, and associated with women and people of colour, particularly in the context of globalisation. Connected to how borders create pools of exploitable labour.
Self-determination
The right of a community to define, control, and defend itself on its own terms. In the course, this is primarily discussed through the Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program.
Black Panther Party (BPP) 10-Point Program
A platform of demands for self-determination including education, housing, employment, and an end to police brutality. The course frames the BPP as asserting that the Black body is defensible – that Black people have the right to defend their bodies against state violence.
COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program)
The FBI's covert programme to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt domestic political organisations, particularly Black liberation movements. In the course, it is connected to contemporary surveillance of Muslim communities.
Virtual internment
The condition of being effectively confined through surveillance, profiling, and restricted movement without physical incarceration. Applied in the course to Muslim communities, especially in the context of airports and public spaces.
Racialization of space
The process by which physical spaces (neighbourhoods, campuses, public areas) become coded by race, so that certain bodies are marked as belonging or not belonging. Connected to the criminalisation of the body.
Respectability politics
The strategy of performing "respectable" behaviour to gain acceptance from dominant groups. The course critiques this as reinforcing the hierarchy it claims to navigate.
The professor frames the university campus itself as a site of racialized gender violence.
Conversations about sexual assault and sexual tension are suppressed, making the violence invisible.
Prop 187 (also covered in the immigration notes) constructs the "illegal alien body," which is both racialised and gendered – the Page Act of 1875 specifically targeted Chinese women.
Kitty Calavita's work on state and federal government and immigration is flagged as a key source for understanding how the state produces racialised and gendered categories.
Feminised labour connects to border militarization: borders create pools of workers (disproportionately women and people of colour) who can be exploited because their legal status is precarious.
This is a reoccurring theme across weeks of the course – it links to capital penetration and accumulation by dispossession (covered in the immigration notes).
The course asserts that the Black body is defensible – people have the right to defend their own bodies.
The Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program is the primary example: a platform for self-determination that includes the right to control community resources, education, and security.
The framing is about what a community is trying to control, self-determine, and defend, rather than about individual acts of resistance.
The criminalisation of the body and the racialization of space work together: certain bodies in certain spaces are automatically read as criminal or out of place.
Two cultural touchstones from the course:
The conversation about putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill – what does it mean to put a Black woman who escaped slavery on the currency of the state that enslaved her?
Beyonce's "Lemonade" – a cultural text about Black womanhood, anger, and reclamation.
These examples ask how race, gender, and space interact in public culture, not just in law and policy.
COINTELPRO is the historical foundation: the FBI's programme to surveil and disrupt Black liberation movements is a template for contemporary surveillance.
Muslim communities experience what the course calls "virtual internment" – effective confinement through surveillance, profiling, and restricted movement, especially at airports.
SAMAH is referenced as a key source or concept (likely Samah Sisay or a related scholar/activist).
The airport is a specific site where surveillance, racial profiling, and the state's power over bodies converge.
Respectability politics asks marginalised people to perform "worthiness" in order to receive rights.
The course critiques this across multiple contexts:
The "deserving" DREAMer (immigration)
The "poster child victim" in advocacy (abolition)
The "respectable" queer subject (LGBTQ rights)
In each case, the small group granted visibility reinforces the exclusion of everyone who does not conform.
⚠️ Racialized gender violence is flagged at the top of the review notes as a cross-cutting theme. Be prepared to connect it to immigration, carcerality, and body politics across essay questions.
⚠️ The professor expects you to use Kitty C.'s (Calavita's) work on state power and immigration – know the argument well enough to cite it by author.
⚠️ The BPP 10-Point Program (Q8) and COINTELPRO/surveillance (Q10) are likely short-answer topics. Know the specific connection between historical COINTELPRO and contemporary Muslim surveillance.
⚠️ "Be complex" is an explicit instruction from the professor. For the essays, avoid simple narratives – connect racialized gender violence to economic structures, state policy, and cultural production simultaneously.
⚠️ The campus as a site of racialized gender violence is a point the professor raises directly. It can be used as a concrete example in essays to demonstrate the everyday operation of these systems.
Q: How does the course connect the Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program to the concept of self-determination?
A: The BPP's 10-Point Program asserted that Black communities have the right to control their own education, housing, employment, and security. The course frames this as a claim that the Black body is defensible – that self-determination means defining what a community is trying to protect and building the structures to do so, rather than appealing to the state for protection.
Q: What is "virtual internment" and how does it apply to Muslim communities?
A: Virtual internment describes a condition of effective confinement through surveillance, profiling, and restricted movement, without physical walls. Muslim communities experience this through airport profiling, government surveillance programmes (modelled on COINTELPRO), and the constant monitoring of community spaces. The person is technically free but functionally contained.
Q: How does the course use Beyonce's "Lemonade" and the Harriet Tubman $20 bill debate as examples of body politics?
A: Both examples illustrate the criminalisation of the body and the racialization of space in public culture. The Tubman debate asks what it means to place a formerly enslaved Black woman on state currency – is it liberation or co-option? "Lemonade" centres Black womanhood, anger, and reclamation in a mainstream cultural space. Both push on who is allowed to occupy which symbolic spaces and on what terms.
Q: What does it mean to describe the campus as a site of racialized gender violence?
A: The professor argues that the university is not a neutral space but one where conversations about sexual assault and sexual tension are suppressed, where certain bodies are surveilled or marginalised, and where the same structures of racialised and gendered power that operate in broader society are reproduced. The campus is not outside these systems; it is a site where they operate.
Q: Explain how respectability politics functions across the different topics in the course.
A: Respectability politics appears in immigration (the "deserving" DREAMer who earns inclusion through productivity), in abolition (the "poster child victim" who must be sympathetic to deserve advocacy), and in LGBTQ rights (the respectable queer subject who mirrors heteronormative values). In each case, a narrow group is granted visibility and partial inclusion, while everyone who does not conform to the "respectable" image remains excluded. The hierarchy itself is never challenged.
racialized gender violence, feminized labour, feminised labor, body politics, Black Panther Party, BPP, 10-Point Program, self-determination, COINTELPRO, counter intelligence program, surveillance, virtual internment, Muslim surveillance, SAMAH, Prop 187, illegal alien body, Kitty Calavita, Page Act, Beyonce Lemonade, Harriet Tubman, racialization of space, criminalisation of the body, respectability politics, politics of respectability, campus sexual assault, ethnic studies, Prof. Victoria Robinson, UC Berkeley