In his attentive review of my book, Terrence Johnson notes that one of the fundamental animating arguments explores the tension between rights-based political appeals and those that seek to reimagine the scope and potential of economic and group-based power toward a fuller and more functional well-being in democracy. The Black Lives Matter movement, like many twenty-first-century movements, seeks to exceed thin rights-based conceptions of equality and aim instead for a liberatory politics that puts at the center an acknowledgement that rights are of little use if they are functionally inaccessible, systemically blocked, and structurally maldistributed. Instead, the Movement for Black Lives offers a radical Black feminist and pragmatist political philosophy that suggest that the solutions to the ills of systemic inequality of all types that plagued the twentieth century must be found via a reconception of what politics is for and what it can accomplish: Namely, that a liberatory politics must be a politics of care—an approach to power sharing and democratic governance that puts lived experience at the center of assessing the efficacy of policies, programs, and systems. Those who practice a politics of care seek to accomplish this by acknowledging that oppression causes social trauma that cannot be resolved by individuals on their own but must be addressed via political action; that interdependence is a fact that cannot and should not be avoided but should be supported by laws and policies that support its most beneficial manifestations; that accountability is a necessary corollary to healthy interdependence; that the unapologetic and joyful embodiment of selves that are marginalized and read as deviant by dominant culture and dominating socioeconomic and political structures are essential for the practice of freedom; and that abolition, restoration, and repair are the watchwords of a self-governing people in opposition to punishment, abandonment, and despair.
However, Professor Johnson wonders whether my treatment of this topic privileges public and secular institutions in a way that does not reflect the full range of the resources required for the long struggle against white supremacy, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, and unfettered capitalism. Johnson is quite right to point out that spiritual resources are key for Black political movements, including the Black Lives Matter movement, but despite the historical role of the Black church as an institution, and the involvement of some churches in some places (notably, St. John’s in Ferguson, MO), Black churches and Black Christianity seemed to be but one spiritual resource among many in the contemporary movement. Indeed, the plurality of religious and spiritual traditions—including a recovery and reinvigoration of traditionally West African practices like Ifa and Santeria—is one of the most striking things about this twenty-first-century movement. Additionally, Johnson suggests that the use of “nontraditional” political resources like literature could help to expand the tools of analysis for political movements. On this score, I can only agree. The literature and political philosophies of Black feminist writers are highly influential in M4BL spaces, particularly the work of Octavia Butler, whose quotes I use in epigraph but do not include in my analysis. I am still grappling with how to utilize this work methodologically and I appreciate Johnson’s goad and encouragement that it is worth figuring out.
There is one set of characterizations in Johnson’s review that I think requires me to clarify my position. Referring to the DuBoisian conception of “Negro problems” Johnson writes, “at issue is whether or not political actors at the individual or group level possess the political power to dismantle the living legacy of Negro problems.” Let me be clear—none of the problems discussed in the book or addressed by the movement are “Negro problems.” They are America’s problems. They are white supremacy’s problems. They are contemporary capitalism’s problems. They are patriarchy’s problems. It is Black movements, labor movements, feminist and queer movements, disability and environmental justice movements—particularly at their intersections of concern and organizing—that are addressing these problems and white supremacist, patriarchal, and reflexively capitalist institutions that refuse to do so and indeed perpetuate and deepen them at every turn. The most fundamental argument in Reckoning is that social movements are the source of the mitigation of these problems and are the best hope for their resolution. Unfortunately, we are in the midst of a familiar American cycle. After any advance in basic equality there is a ferocious white supremacist backlash that can last longer and go deeper than the previous progress. The backlash in this moment threatens not only the practice of equal democracy, which has always been incomplete, but also the commitment to equal democracy as an ideal. That means we are locked now in a recurrent battle at a dangerous inflection point that may re-shape the world to come. This is a struggle that is not only for an abstract “justice” but also, and more importantly, for the concrete possibility of twenty-first-century democracy in America and globally. The outcome is uncertain, and our choices are stark—multiracial/multiethnic democracy or fascist white Christian nationalism. The first cannot be had without reimagining and recommitting to enacting what would be necessary for freedom and justice for all, for the first time, in this time.
