Black Lives Matter and the Struggle for Freedom

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Brian P. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black President ◽  
Black Movement ◽  
New Phase

In late April 2016, at a town hall-style event in London, President Obama complained about the rising movement against the state-sanctioned murder of black people often referred to as Black Lives Matter. Activists, he admonished, should "stop yelling" and instead push for incremental change through the official "process."… The spectacle of the first black president scolding black activists in the context of a rising rate of police murder (as of this writing, the police have killed 630 individuals, at least 155 of them black, nationwide in 2016) speaks volumes about the state of black politics today.… For those trying to understand the emergence of a new black movement—or, perhaps more accurately, a new phase of a longer, older movement—on the watch of the first black president, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's new book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is an essential starting point.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Black Art ◽  
And Gender

Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.

Prison Power

Prison Power ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Phase

This chapter traces rhetorical and political history of imprisonment before and after the birth of Black Power, focusing on major moments of activist imprisonment as well as movement discourses written from prison. In charting the role of prison in the movement, the chapter also discusses the emergence and legitimacy of Black Power as a slogan, as a theoretical device, and as a series of rhetorical strategies designed to be a particularly historical intervention into the stagnating discourses of “civil rights” and “law and order.” This chapter contends that incarceration became a major strategy used by both black activists and white conservatives during the Black Power era; consequently, the period following 1966 marked a new phase of Jim Crow as Black Power became a rallying cry against state repression. This chapter suggests that the legitimacy of Black Power as a term of art, as a series of vernacular signs, and as an organizing principle in a new phase of the black liberation movement, hinged upon whether the state or the activists controlled the frame and how closely it became associated with violence. Because the Black Power slogan and ideology were articulated by activists with extensive rap sheets as the state circumscribed their activism, Black Power ideology took up the relationship between state repression and incarceration as a place to excavate new arenas for the black liberation struggle, particularly in the memoirs of movement activists.

scholarly journals Black Lives Matter

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Paulo ◽  
Carlos Eduardo Oliveira De Souza ◽  
Bruna Guimarães Lima e Silva ◽  
Flávio Luiz Schiavoni ◽  
Adilson Siqueira
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The State ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Web Content ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
The World ◽  
Brazilian Culture

The Brazilian police killed 16 people per day in 2017 and 3/4 of the victims were black people. Recently, a Brazilian called Evaldo Rosa dos Santos, father, worker, musician, and black, was killed in Rio de Janeiro with 80 rifle bullets shot by the police. Everyday, the statistics and the news show that the police uses more force when dealing with black people and it seems obvious that, in Brazil, the state bullet uses to find a black skin to rest. Unfortunately, the brutal force and violence by the state and the police to black people is not a problem only in this country. It is a global reality that led to the creation of an international movement called Black Lives Matter (BLM), a movement against all types of racism towards the black people specially by the police and the state. The BLM movement also aims to connect black people of the entire world against the violence and for justice. In our work, we try to establish a link between the reality of black people in Brazil with the culture of black people around the world, connecting people and artists to perform a tribute to the black lives harved by the state force. For this, the piece uses web content, news, pictures, YouTube’s videos, and more, to create a collage of visual and musical environment merged with expressive movements of a dance, combining technology and gestures. Black culture beyond violence because we believe that black lives matter. such as the Ku Klux Klan, which bring the black population of the world into concern for possible setbacks in their rights. In Brazil, it is not different. Brazil is the non African country with the biggest afro descendant population in the world and one of the last country in the world to abolish slavery. Nowadays, a black person is 3 times more propense to be killed and most part of the murders in the country happened to afro Brazilians. Marielle Franco, a black city councillor from Rio, the only black female representative and one of seven women on the 51-seat council was killed in 2018. The killers were two former policeman. According to Human Rights Watch, the police force in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killed more than 8,000 people between 2005 and 2015, 3/4 of them were black men. At the same time, the African culture strongly influenced the Brazilian culture and most part of the traditional Brazilian music and rhythms can be considered black music.

scholarly journals Do All Black Lives Matter Equally to Black People? Respectability Politics and the Limitations of Linked Fate

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi ◽  
Candis Watts Smith
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Public Opinion ◽  
The Right

AbstractCathy Cohen’s (1999) theory of secondary marginalization helps to explain why the needs of some members of Black communities are not prioritized on “the” Black political agenda; indeed, some groups are ignored altogether as mainstream Black public opinion shifts to the right (Tate 2010). However, the contemporary movement for Black Lives calls for an intersectional approach to Black politics. Its platform requires participants to take seriously the notion that since Black communities are diverse, so are the needs of its members. To what extent are Blacks likely to believe that those who face secondary marginalization should be prioritized on the Black political agenda? What is the role of linked fate in galvanizing support around these marginalized Blacks? To what extent does respectability politics serve to hinder a broader embrace of Blacks who face different sets of interlocking systems of oppression, such as Black women, formerly incarcerated Blacks, undocumented Black people, and Black members of LBGTQ communities in an era marked by Black social movements? We analyze data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to assess whether all Black lives matter to Black Americans.

scholarly journals Black Lives Matter! Nigerian Lives Matter!: Language and Why Black Performance Matters

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Adelakun
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Performance ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Production

This essay explores performance as a language by looking at its appropriation by other cultures, and the associated history of the crafted phrases that are borrowed along. I start by noting that to create awareness of the massacres that have recently occurred in some parts of Nigeria, commentators, both in and out of the country, and activist-cum-protesters created the term “Nigerian Lives Matter.” They appropriated from “Black Lives Matter,” the American-originated advocacy movement that campaigns against violence and brutality against black people. I show that these forms of lexical interchange are possible because of non-Americans’ familiarity with America’s racial history, and black performance liberation expressivity, which they have been acculturated into as a result of their long exposure to American culture. Beyond phrases however, I argue that black performance itself is a language that has a global resonance among minorities. To illustrate this further, I do a close reading of This is Nigeria, a recent music video released by Nigerian lawyer turned artist, Folarin Falana (Falz), alongside a version of the original production, This is America, also recently released by Donald Glover (Childish Gambino). Both songs continue in the older tradition of African and African American transatlantic political relations through music, the shared understanding of the similarities of anti-black oppression, and the formation of aesthetics that mediate the advocacy of black liberation. The songs are also a pointer to how black advocacy might continue to unfold in contemporary era.

scholarly journals State Racism, State Violence, and Vulnerable Solidarity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myisha Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Law

What makes #BlackLivesMatter unique is the implication that it isn’t only some black lives that matter, that is, not only the mostly commonly referenced male lives. Rather, the hashtag suggests that all black lives matter, including queer, trans, disabled, and female. This movement includes all those black lives who have been marginalized within the black liberation tradition, as well as in greater society. The movement highlights the ways in which black people have been traditionally deprived of dignity and human rights. State racism and state violence are sustained together. The law creates a “subrace” out of those whom white society fears and holds in contempt. This leaves not only black Americans, but all citizens vulnerable. A way to fight this form of racism is not only to create a solidarity among the oppressed members of the subrace but to create a solidarity with all members, in “vulnerable solidarity.”

scholarly journals Do Black Lives Matter in Post-Brexit Britain?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G. Reddie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Liberation Theologian

This article speaks to existential challenges facing Black people, predominantly of Caribbean descent, to live in what continues to be a White dominated and White entitled society. Working against the backdrop of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that originated in the United States, this article analyses the socio-political and cultural frameworks that affirm Whiteness whilst concomitantly, denigrating Blackness. The author, a well-known Black liberation theologian, who is a child of the Windrush Generation, argues that Western Mission Christianity has always exemplified a deep-seated form of anti-Blackness that has helped to shape the agency of Black bodies, essentially marking them as ‘less than’. This theological base has created the frameworks that have dictated the sematic belief that Black bodies do not really matter and if they do, then they are invariably second-class ones when compared to White bodies. In the final part of the article, the author outlines the ways in which Black theology in Britain, drawing on postcolonial theological and biblical optics, has sought to critique the ethnocentrism of White Christianity in Britain in order to assert that ‘Black Lives Do Matter’.

Beyond Black Lives Matter

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin D. G. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
White People ◽  
Dominant Class ◽  
Black Lives Matter

Few activists who march behind the banner of Black Lives Matter conceive of their struggle as an appeal to white people for recognition, but until recently the movement’s objective echoed this implicit line of reasoning: if the dominant class, and/or the state, could just recognize that our lives matter, we would be treated differently. Such assumptions can easily lead us down a slippery slope of reducing five centuries of racism, slavery, and colonialism to a fixed ideology of anti-Blackness intrinsic to the European mind, or worse, mistaking a dynamic racial regime for negligence, ignorance, or “blindness” to our humanity, a humanity that requires a visible struggle to be seen. They can lead, that is to say, to a politics in which recognition takes precedence over revolution and reconstruction.

The Prophetic Voice of the Church in a Democratic South Africa – A Theological Reflection

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

The Black Lives Matter movement: A call to action: Acts 10:11–16, 25–28, 34–35

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Alfred Smith
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Black Christians ◽  
American Society ◽  
Justice Movements

The Black Lives Matter movement is one of the most dynamic social justice movements currently emerging in the USA. This movement led by young Blacks unapologetically calls out the shameful, historical legacy of American racism and White supremacy while asserting the humanity and sacredness of Black lives, particularly those of unarmed persons senselessly murdered by police officers. While Black Lives Matter is a new movement, it is also an extension of the 400-year struggle of Black people in America to affirm Black dignity, equality, and human rights, even while the major institutions of American society have propagated doctrines and enforced unjust rules/laws to denigrate Black life. Black Christians have found hope and inspiration from the Gospel to claim their humanity and to struggle to gain justice for Black lives and for the lives of all oppressed people. In addition, the Black Lives Matter movement provides a helpful critique of many Black churches, challenging them to confront their biases, which label young Black males as “thugs” (the new N-word) and which cruelly demonize the LGBTQ community. The story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 provides a scriptural basis for Christian introspection and responses to God’s vision for beloved community, and for the call to action from the Black Lives Matter movement.

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