To many of us, #BlackLivesMatter is a movement we reflexively support. Police brutality and other functions of systemic racism need to be opposed, our nation needs to be transformed from one that adheres to the assumption of white superiority to one of justice and egalitarianism among all people.
Which is all very easy to say, but many of us also seem confused on how to get there. Do we buy Nike shoes to show solidarity with Kaepernick? Do we post Now This videos on social media? Do we show up to anti-racism rallies? Is simply educating ourselves enough? Is this allyship?
To Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, destroying white supremacy means liberating ourselves from the systems that most utilize it. She contextualizes the #BlackLivesMatter movement in a way that illuminates what ideologies and methods have hit their limits and which ones can work to dismantle institutions premised on white supremacy.
While From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation reads more like a history book than an instruction manual, it is a very insightful text to guide one towards the sort of activist work that needs to be done. Taylor is a Marxist so the activism she promotes will be steeped in that tradition. However, this is because, as Taylor goes on to discuss at length, the efforts of liberalism (you can just forget about conservatism) have failed to unroot white supremacy and, in many cases, only served to sustain it.
There is a lot of sharp discussion on the concept of "black faces in high places" and Barack Obama. Here, Taylor demonstrates that without radical vision, the liberal ideation of diversity becomes a mere platitude. What could changing the race of the machine operator do if the levers being pulled only produce more racism? Taylor's ensuing chapters are more complex and well evidenced than that, but the point rings true.
Taylor also takes aim at our ability to address systemic white supremacy through merely changing the culture or the law. Communities ravaged by the power of racism are designed to keep people down regardless of how hard the individuals within that community work. Further, even when one accepts the racist premise of a prescriptive, "good" culture, an individual succeeding despite obstacles does nothing to dismantle the obstacles themselves, which would not be true liberation.
Discrimination is illegal in the United States, but clearly still practiced. While it is good to have the law on the side of justice, clearly it has its limits as well. In many cases, now that we have civil rights legislation, the goal is to make the law colorblind. This too is a failure, since the enforcement of laws are subject to the enforcer's biases, and therefore communities of color are more aggressively policed, as we've seen. Taylor's chapter on the country's move from civil rights to color blindness is among one of the most informative things I have ever read.
So where do we go when all the mechanisms for change we were taught in high school civics classes have reached their limits? Taylor's book is so vital a read that I don't want to risk giving you an excuse not to read it by taking a crack at what she feels the movement demands. I will say that it has a lot to do with solidarity over the universal issues of democracy, labor, and dignity in life. If you consider yourself someone who cares about ending racism in this country you have no excuse; you need to read this book.
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