Abstract
White supremacy has been a foundational premise of U.S. sociopolitical systems since the country’s inception. One of the clearest manifestations of this framework is the disproportionate impact of our criminal justice systems on Black people. The same racist ideologies that were used to justify slavery—that African people were inferior godless souls, with a high threshold for pain and savage instincts—have been used to justify the incarceration of millions of Black men, women, and children.
On a more subtle level, criminal justice systems promote White supremacy by constructing binary categories that do not reflect the true diversity of human identity and experience. A core premise of White supremacy is that people can be defined as White or Black, good or evil. While there is no evidence in the science of biology, psychology, or sociology to support these fixed categories, their utility in creating hierarchies that rationalize the inequitable distribution of resources is so powerful that the mythology persists. Binary categories rationalize correctional systems by suggesting that people are either innocent or guilty, violent or nonviolent, repentant or incorrigible. To move beyond these categories toward the complicated shades of gray that more accurately describe our shared humanity would completely disrupt our social constructions of justice. A system that confines innocent people or pardons the guilty is unsustainable, and so we lean into the idea that there are real, measureable distinctions between incarcerated and nonincarcerated people that justify forcing over 2 million people to live behind bars.
Cyntoia Brown-Long’s courageous autobiography, Free Cyntoia, explodes this charade by challenging the reader to see her entire self, brimming with strengths, vulnerabilities, grace, selfishness, wisdom, and ignorance. From the start, her narrative unravels the myth of the binary when she describes her racial identity—her mother is White and her father is Black—as a central source of angst: “My whole life, nothing set me off like somebody calling me White” (p. 257). Her physical self defies the racial categories that have been so deeply instilled in us and she refuses to be boxed in. Similarly, in one of the most powerful segments of the story, she shares her evolving understandings of human trafficking: “When I thought of trafficking, I thought of girls being stuffed into suitcases, or kidnapped by Russian mobsters. It never occurred to me that you could be trafficked by someone you thought was your boyfriend” (p. 240). She consistently resists simple stories that would frame her as a young innocent victim, inserting her own agency and taking responsibility for both harm and compassion. She also casts corrections in a nonbinary light, thrashing out against the conditions of confinement while also recognizing that incarceration may have saved her life. Her willingness to allow all of the people and institutions in her story to be nonbinary constellations of complexity is a refreshing, honest, and brave approach that undermines the tropes of White supremacy and destabilizes the criminal justice and social service systems at the center of her narrative.
Given social work’s undeniable role in buttressing the socially constructed binaries that wreak havoc on individuals, families, and communities, Free Cyntoia is an excellent reminder of the complexity that we strive to surface in our classrooms, research, and practice settings. The book also highlights the enormous impact of education in Brown-Long’s life (she earned an associate’s degree while incarcerated) and is a call to action for academic institutions to offer college courses to incarcerated people. Finally, the book reminds readers that incarcerated people are in desperate need of allies who are willing to engage with the complexities of their lived experiences and fight for systemic change. The criminal justice system’s mandate to define people as guilty/innocent when people are not binary beings makes errors and overreach inevitable. Brown-Long’s story illustrates how a persistent spirit, devoted family, legal resources, and a national celebrity-fueled social media campaign can correct these mistakes. While inspiring, her story is also disheartening as each page makes clear that her release was nothing short of a miracle. Rihanna’s Instagram feed cannot fix our criminal justice system. Brown-Long’s story underscores the need for systemic sentencing reform that rejects binaries and acknowledges the impact of domestic violence and adverse childhood events on human behavior.
