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.

scholarly journals Making Whiteness Visible and Felt in Fairview

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Michael Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Political Context ◽  
White People ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article I analyse how Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play Fairview makes white audience members feel white. As a play that exposes whiteness and calls white people to account for their racism, Fairview speaks to contemporary global antiracist activism efforts. Therefore, I begin by situating Fairview in the transatlantic cultural and political context of Black Lives Matter. I then discuss the theatrical devices Drury employs in Fairview in order to make whiteness felt before going on to analyse a range of white audience responses to the production at London’s Young Vic Theatre in 2019/2020. I reflect on these responses in relation to how white people react to accusations of white privilege and power in the public sphere and identify shared strategies for sustaining whiteness. In conclusion, I consider Fairview as a model of affective antiracist activism.

scholarly journals Active Solidarity: Centering the Demands and Vision of the Black Lives Matter Movement in Teacher Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Mayorga ◽  
Bree Picower
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The State ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Urban Teacher Education ◽  
Urban Teacher

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), urban teacher education does not exist in isolation. The White supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this article, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political framework, share a vision of what it means to be an urban teacher who actively understands and teaches in solidarity with #BLM. The authors unpack their theoretical framework and the vision of #BLM while examining the state of teacher education in this era of neoliberal multiculturalism. The authors contemplate what a race radical, #BLM-aligned, approach to urban teacher education might look like. The article concludes by addressing ways that teacher educators must be in active solidarity with the #BLM movement to better prepare teachers who understand that the lives of their students matter within and outside of their classrooms.

scholarly journals Cultivating the Soil of White Nationalism: Settler Violence and Whiteness as Territory

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Dallas Jokic
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The State ◽  
White People ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Fear Mongering ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Property Regime

This paper considers the emergence of white nationalist movements in Canada and their relationship to settler colonialism. How do ideas of Canada as a white nation, and fear mongering about white Canadians being “replaced” come to be so effective in a context in which white people have typically been the replacers themselves? While the Canadian state frames itself as multicultural, many of its laws and practices cultivate white nationalist beliefs, affects, and feelings. The state informally deputizes white settlers as owners and protectors of private property and uses them to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their land in order to appropriate it. This deputization protects both the material territory of the state and the affective and ideological justification for the continuation of settler colonialism. Private ownership of land cannot be understood merely as a legal capitalist relation, but is feltby many settlers as a deep, primordial connection to the land. Acts of settler violence both express and shape the racialized core of Canada. I propose thinking about settler private property as what I call “settler whitespace,” which is not only protective and expansive, but also involves the fabrication of an idea of white nativity to Canadian territory. This racialization of space serves to naturalize racist violence, cultivate hypermasculine expressions of whiteness, and ground white claims of exclusive belonging to Canada, all characteristic of the resurgent far-right. The property regime of Canada is not just part of its territorializing project; it lays the groundwork for white nationalist movements.

Insane Negroes in the United States

1868 ◽  
Vol 13 (64) ◽  
pp. 552-553
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
White People ◽  
Medical Superintendent ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hamilton County

The annual report of the Superintendent of Longview Asylum, in the State of Ohio, contains a striking illustration of the deep-rooted repulsion which is felt to a black skin in the United States. A very heavy item in the year's expenditure has been caused by the purchase and fitting up of a house for the coloured insane, who had hitherto, as appears, been confined in the common jail. The superintendent expresses his gratification at the provision of accommodation more in accordance with the dictates of justice and humanity. “Two of the greatest misfortunes that humanity is liable to-insanity and a coloured skin-did not seem to me good and sufficient reason for classing the person so afflicted with malefactors, and it is therefore a matter of sincere rejoicing that a change in the disposition of these persons has been made, and especially that Hamilton County has taken the lead in this matter.” After the passage of a law enforcing suitable provision for the coloured insane, application was made for their reception into the building occupied by the whites. This was thought out of the question by the authorities of the asylum, the strong prejudice against the negro felt by most white people being particularly strong among the inmates of the asylum, It became necessary, therefore, in order to carry out the intention of the legislature, to purchase a separate building, and to fit it up specially for the coloured insane. This was done; and the medical superintendent can now point with pride to the circumstance that all the insane negroes belonging to the county are freely received and kindly treated.

HISTORIAN AND PHILOSOPHER M.S. VOSLENSKY ABOUT THE RULING CLASS OF THE SOVIET SOCIETY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-73
Author(s):  
A.V. GORLOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social System ◽  
The State ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Dominant Class ◽  
The Soviet Union

The purpose of the article is to analyze M.S. Voslensky’s historical and philosophical views, summa-rized in his work “Nomenclature. The dominant class of the Soviet Union”. In this work, Voslensky using the Marxist class analysis demonstrates the antagonistic nature of the Soviet society. The author of the article agrees with Voslensky’s thesis that the ruling class in the Soviet society was not the bureaucracy. The article illustrates that he mistakenly describes the origin of the Soviet nomen-clature in the framework of his artificially created conspiracy theory, according to which the nomen-clature members are feudal lords who seek to stop capitalist development. The author suggests that the basis of the historical groundlessness of Voslensky’s views is the false interpretation of capital-ism as a social system under which the liberal (classically interpreted) bourgeoisie dominates. That is why Voslensky desires to show that the Soviet ruling class is not bourgeois. According to the au-thor of the article, Voslensky was mistaken, because he did not see that not the liberal but the state bourgeoisie dominated in the Soviet society.

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.

“No Solution Offers Except Coercion”

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mickey
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
White People ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
White Community ◽  
Rate Capacity

There is no one way, but many. … The South proposes to use all of them that make for resistance. [Brown] tortured the Constitution—the South will torture the decision. —John Temple Graves, strategist of massive resistance (1955) Must South Carolina indulge bluster and vituperation in place of summoning candor and courage? Have ignorance, poverty, and prejudice fed on each other until the white community has sunk to second-rate capacity? … Some will say that the conscience of the state is dead. … If that is true, no solution offers except coercion, while we entertain the hope that prudent acquiescence will substitute for more valorous self-correction. If the white people of South Carolina furnish no worthy response in the crisis, then humiliation and rehabilitation by other hands is their portion....

Scared Sheetless

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Newton ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Ku Klux Klan ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
White People ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The U.S

The ideology of white supremacy is alive and well in the U.S. This paper argues that those attempting to understand how white supremacy works should delve into recent justifications of anti-black violence rather than simply waiting to spot the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan. Doing so requires scholars to disabuse themselves of taking for granted the descriptions of what may be characterized as a U.S. Christian-White imaginary and to observe the dynamic, discursive shifts that Jean-Franc̜ois Bayart calls “operational acts of identification.” Drawing on incidents from antebellum slavery to the Black Lives Matter era and beyond, it is argued that white people have long been able to justify anti-black violence by appealing to a biblicist “Negrophobia,” wherein black people are rendered as frightening, even demonic creatures that must be stopped for the good of God’s kingdom. This paper presents a critical history of violence in America that is representative of a devastatingly effective strategy that continues to fortify the functional primacy of whiteness despite popular rejections of racism.

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