“Trump’s America” IS America

It's important for us to understand that "Trump’s America" IS America. There is no differentiating. As a matter of fact, based on the country's history, Trump is about as "American" as it gets - greedy, racist, classist, misogynistic, corrupt, dominating, controlling, sadistic, elitist.

America is a settler-colonial nation that was built on the backs of Native genocide and African enslavement, continuing into modern times through intricate systems of institutional white supremacy. The founders of this country were elitists and aristocrats who used their wealth to dominate others while arranging a system of immense privilege for those like them. It is a capitalist country that has been built from the toil of the working majority for centuries - masses of people who have received very little (and continue to receive very little) in return. It is an imperialist country that has bombed, colonized, and obstructed democratic movements throughout the global south and middle east for over a century. It is a misogynistic country that waited 150 years before allowing women to vote, confined women to second-class status after, and continues to breed patriarchal values that are dangerous to working women in everyday life.

"Trump's America" IS America.

Trump has continued to oversee the corporate coup started under Reagan and carried forward under the Bushs, Clinton, and Obama - a coup that is merely an inevitable late stage of capitalism, whereas wealth and power have been concentrated into a fusion of corporate governance and creeping fascism.

Trump has continued America's illegal and immoral wars abroad, same as his predecessors.

Trump has continued "starving the beast," following the neoliberal blueprint of the last 40 years by siphoning public funds into private hands.

Trump has continued the mass deportation policies implemented under Obama.

Trump has continued the attack on civil liberties started under W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.

Trump, in his role as president, carries the torch of draconian, racist, classist criminal justice policies created under Reagan.

Trump carries the torch of mass incarceration and austerity policies created under Clinton.

Trump has continued serving Wall St. and his pals/donors in the profit industries, like all of his modern predecessors.

Trump, like all presidents before, SERVES CAPITAL - not people.

He may not be the polished statesman that we've become accustomed to - those who exhibit "stability" and "civility" while acting as the figureheads of systemic brutality - but make no mistake: Trump is as American as it gets. However, "America" is largely a myth in itself, something fed to the masses from above by the wealthy and powerful few who have always demanded our loyalty despite their everyday crimes against us and our class counterparts the world over. Most Americans are despised by those who run the country from their pedestals, those who benefit from its brutality, those who gouge us at every turn, those protected by an ever-thinning, reactionary, "middle-class" buffer.

To rid ourselves of Trump and all he represents, we must rid ourselves of "America" as we know it - the myth, the systems it facilitates (capitalism/imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy), and all of the severity that comes with it. This is a hard truth to accept, especially since it goes against everything we have been conditioned to believe. But it is a truth that must be understood and dealt with if we are to ever win a just world.

All power to the people.

A Tale of Two Cities: The Struggle to Build Generational Wealth Within Baltimore's Black Community

By Valecia Hanna

According to Michael Harriot, from as early as the 1910s minorities have been faced with the challenge of experiencing the downside of segregated housing (2019). Baltimore, one of the most historically black cities, was plagued by this institutionalized inequity which served as one of the main reasons of continued disadvantages for black residents. Redlining was essentially developed by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporations (HOLC) during the Great Depression as a solution to relieve America from its economic drought (Harriot 2019). However, as the government attempted to reconstruct the economy, redlining created disproportionate housing opportunities between whites and minorities. This practice resulted in the biased behaviors by realtors, who instead of concentrating on assessing the value of one’s property, selected to focus their attention on the race of the population of a given area.

Gentrification, which is usually sold as a “beacon of hope,” is now mirroring patterns of segregated housing that blacks thought they had overcome decades ago. As new developments begin to occupy low-income neighborhoods, black renters are not only being displaced by whites, but so are black homeowners. Homeowners are seeing the cultural and historic values of their neighborhood changing, leading to the feeling of being alienated from one’s own home and community. As a result, black homeowners in Baltimore are now searching for new ways to protect their home values in the midst of gentrification.

Shedding light on the systemic racism in housing is critical in the discussion of homeownership disadvantages experienced by blacks. Property values, both historically and currently, are calculated based on the concentration of blacks and whites in a geographical area, rather than the quality of the structure itself. Danyelle Solomon concluded in his 2019 study that the disproportionate rate of property values between blacks and whites is so severe that if the pattern continues the average black family would need over 200 years to match their white counterparts’ value of wealth. These findings are not surprising in light of the decades-long practice of redlining and other discriminatory practices.

In comparing two Baltimore neighborhoods, the relationship between property value and race is evident and shows that blacks are still haunted by the effects of redlining. According to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (2017), the Druid Hill area, which is predominantly black, has home values averaging around $127,000, whereas Bolton Hill, adjacent to Druid Hill and predominantly white, has homes averaging at $270,000. Homes in each neighborhood are similar in features, size, and structure; however, presumably, Druid Hill’s racial identity makes it disproportionately less valued. Over time, as values stay low, so too does the potential equity, which pales in comparison to homes in the white Bolton Hill neighborhood. These circumstances are barriers for blacks to move upward in their socioeconomic status and to establish generational wealth for those behind them. And as new development projects begin to flood black neighborhoods, the wealth gap between blacks and whites will remain disproportionate.

Some black homeowners recognize the inequality and are finding ways to beat the system. One unconventional trend that recently developed is anticipating new developments in the community for the sole purpose of increased property value to generate a profit from their home. Longtime resident of Druid Hill, Afrikiia Robertson, reflects on her family’s experience of living in a gentrified area: “I think with the influx of gentrification activities, it has made my family and others in my neighborhood hopeful that with the influx of white residents, [We don’t have a lot, but we have enough], they would help to raise the property value.’

Most news stories about gentrification focus on the impact, ignoring the factors that lead some Black homeowners to sell their homes. “I think my mom’s hope is that she will be able to see a return on a generational investment.” Robertson said, as she describes the tough decision her family plans to make. However, if more black homeowners follow this trend, black neighborhoods will lose both their cultural value and social importance. Unfortunately, the selling of homes provides greater opportunities to some who want to improve their social and economic situation at the expense of something perhaps even more valuable - history.

In city after city, the effects of redlining, and now gentrification, steadily perpetuates racial and ethnic inequality in homeownership. These practices, along with other social factors, devalues the cultural and historical importance of black spaces in major metropolitan areas. This issue is not deemed as a priority because the people impacted often have few options, little influence, and do not realize the extremity of this issue, which is the impact it has on black generational wealth. It can also be that the presence of inequality within neighborhoods limits the opportunity for minorities to have the platform for their voice to be heard. Nevertheless, this issue should be at the forefront of Baltimore’s efforts to defeat institutionalized racism.

Works Cited

Harriot, Michael. 2019. “Redlining: The Origin Story of Institutional Racism.” The Root, 25        April 2019.

Solomon, Danyelle, et al. “Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and       Segregation.” Center for American Progress, 7 Aug. 2019.

Against Akon's New Liberia: Class Remains The Key Link

By Christopher Winston

This was originally published at Hood Communist.

There has been much confusion regarding the character, purpose, and benefit of projects in Africa such as those launched by multimillionaire musical artist Akon in Senegal. This project is described by the New York Post as being “run entirely on renewable energy” and Akon himself is quoted as saying: “With the AKoin we are building cities, the first one being in Senegal…we’re securing the land and closing out all the legislation papers for the city. We want to make it a free zone and cryptocurrency-driven as a test market.” Essentially, this is a capitalist project. This is an old strategy, one of wealthy diasporic Africans (Akon himself is of Senegalese extraction) returning to the motherland, buying up property, and trying to construct little Wakandas. The recolonization movement in the early 1800s (backed by wealthy colonizers in the UK and US) led to the formation of two “independent states” on the West Coast of Africa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. These countries were not independent, they can be seen as the first neocolonial test cases. In the case of Sierra Leone, initially populated by diasporic Africans who self-liberated from slavery during the American “Revolution”, it remained a colony of Britain until 1961. Both countries lacked native control over their natural resources. Liberian rubber was the property of Yankee corporations, diamonds from Sierra Leone remained in the grasping hands of the British. One of the main reasons that the Americans sought to destroy the movement led by Marcus Garvey was that it promoted, encouraged, and developed strategies for African economic self-determination in the US, in the Caribbean and Latin America, and in the Continent. The imperialists simply could not allow this, and it is to the eternal demerit of Communists that we failed to develop mass links and a United Front with this movement which captured the energy and support of tens of millions of Africans, instead of working for its destruction because we saw it as an ideological and political rival. 

Back to the Akon City project. Akon’s goals, I believe, are not willfully malicious. I begrudge no African that thinks they are genuinely helping their people. However, this project is a capitalist project and thus is doomed to either fail or set up a wealthy utopia for Europeans and Africans with the means to play around with cryptocurrency and such. In essence, Akon is hamstrung by his class position and class stand. Rich Africans returning to the Continent and seeking to set up what are essentially little Liberias and little Wakandas is a strategy that does not take into account the presence and insidious machinations of neocolonialism and bureaucratic capitalism (compradorism). Africa is poor not because the people there are bad capitalists. Africa is poor because of capitalism and imperialism and its lackeys on the Continent who are installed to ensure the flow of resources to the old colonial metropoles. Akon City is closed to the tens of thousands of Congolese youth who mine the coltan which will fuel Akon’s cryptocurrency. Akon City is closed to the hundreds of thousands in Dakar who live in shipping containers and do not have running water, or electricity. Akon City is as real to the majority of Africans as Wakanda is. For all Africans to enjoy a high standard of living it is essential to replace capitalist pipe dreams with Pan-African socialist reality. Africans, working-class and peasant Africans, must have control of our wealth and our Continent. Neocolonialism and imperialism must be buried with armed force. As long as colonizers continue to loot our continent we will see no peace, millions of us will continue to die no matter how many glass and concrete monstrosities Akon constructs. Look to Liberia and Sierra Leone as negative examples, and study the works of those such as Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, and other Pan-African revolutionaries. Apply them to our day to day reality, analyze and criticize everything, and seize the time. Take class as the key link.

MLK and the Black Misleadership Class

By Glen Ford

Originally published at Black Agenda Report.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday is the greatest sheer spectacle of hypocrisy and historical duplicity of the year, as Black misleaders take center stage to claim his mandate and mission on behalf of a corporate party.

The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is commemorated each year at thousands of events in literally every U.S. city, yet the martyred human rights leader’s political philosophy is totally absent from the agenda of today’s Black Misleadership Class, a grasping cabal of hustlers and opportunists that have grown fat and infinitely corrupt through their collaboration with “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” Their “freedom train” was the Democratic Party, the half of the corporate electoral duopoly that allowed colored folks to ride as first class passengers – as long as they didn’t question the schedule or the destination. The budding Black misleaders hopped on board the Democratic Party express to the boardrooms of corporate power at about the same time that Dr. King was making his definitive break with the evil “triplets’” infernal machinery, including both corporate parties.  

In his April 4, 1967 “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence” speech  at New York City’s Riverside Church, Dr. King burned his bridges with the nation’s top Democrat, despite President Lyndon Johnson’s indispensable role in pushing civil and voting rights and anti-poverty bills through Congress and championing an affirmative action rationale that -- as spelled out in his 1965 speech  at Howard University -- was a principled endorsement of reparations for crimes committed against Black people by the U.S. society and State. Johnson went farther than any previous U.S. president in acknowledging Black American citizenship rights and grievances, even as the Republican half of the electoral duopoly was preparing to assume the role of White Man’s Party through Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy.” Yet, Dr. King, a proponent of peace and democratic socialism, understood that the way to the “Promised Land” was not through Black collaboration with the evils inherent in capitalism and its ceaseless, predatory wars. “I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house,” King told his friend , Harry Belafonte. 

By 1967, the War in Vietnam was consuming the promises of Johnson’s Great Society. America was undeniably the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” King declared. The U.S. had already killed a million Vietnamese, “mostly children,” but it was also a war on America’s poor. “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube,” King told the crowd at Riverside. “So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” That meant breaking with the Democrats and their president. More importantly, in his Riverside speech Dr. King framed the Vietnamese as engaged in a righteous struggle to complete their long quest for sovereignty and independence. King broke with imperialism, the consummate expression of the all three “triple evils.” So they killed him, the next year.

The National Security State, the protector of the capitalist order, to which both parties are beholden, then proceeded to crush the Black movement to the left of Dr. King – most fiercely in the Gestapo-like assault on the self-determinationist and staunchly anti-imperialist Black Panther Party in the bloody year of 1969. 

By 1970, the Black Radical Tradition lay mostly in the graveyard, and the way was clear for the Black Misleadership Class to monopolize Black politics on behalf of their corporate overseers. The first act of the first big city Black mayor, Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, was to put the police under the command of a Black retired general, whose first act was to issue the cops flesh- and bone-destroying hollow point bullets. 

The rise of the almost entirely Democrat-allied Black Misleadership Class is perfectly coterminous with construction of the Black Mass Incarceration State. The “New Jim Crow” was a bipartisan project, initiated under Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which vastly increased the manpower and funding for local police departments, and was put on hyper-drive by Republican President Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs” – a War on Blacks that never ended but was re-declared by Republican President Reagan and reinforced by Democrat President Bill Clinton. At the local level, the exponential growth of the Mass Black Incarceration regime was administered by increasingly Black city governments, which oversaw and processed the deportation of millions of Black men, women and children to the Prison Gulag. Virtually all of these Black operatives of race and class oppression are Democrats. And all of them are celebrating their own political ascension as the wondrous outcome of Dr. King’s “dream.”

By 2014, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus was voting to continue the Pentagon 1033 program that funnels billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. Four years later, 75 percent of the Black Caucus voted to make police a “protected class” and assault on cops a federal crime. (See BAR, “Black Caucus Sells Out Its Constituents Again – to the Cops.”)

Although the Black misleaders were quick to join the domestic war on the Black poor, African American public opinion remained war-averse, skeptical of U.S. motives on foreign shores. In 2003, only four Black members of Congress backed George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the advent of the Black Democratic President -- a misleader par excellence – gave much of the Black Caucus a free pass to play warmonger. Half of the Blacks in Congress voted to continue the bombing and regime change in Libya, an African nation, in the summer of 2011. None of the Caucus has raised serious objections to the U.S.-aided slaughter of more than six million Congolese under Presidents Clinton (Dem.), Bush (Rep.), Obama (Dem.), and Trump (Rep.). The American military occupation of much of the African continent through AFRICOM is a non-issue among the Black misleaders. 

RUSSIA!!! on the other hand, is an existential threat “to our democracy,” say the Black Democrats, who are eager to pledge their allegiance to the same CIA and National Security State that assassinated Patrice Lumumba, murdered Malcolm, King and scores of Black Panthers, and worked hand in glove with white-ruled South Africa to kill thousands of freedom fighters across the continent. Los Angeles Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who once (correctly) charged the CIA with flooding her city with crack cocaine, now struts around waving an American flag while denouncing “Russian” meddling in a U.S. election that was actually stolen by Republican suppression of Black votes, as usual – with no serious protest by Democrats, as usual. 

The Black misleaders are as silly as they are shameless, but they are not ineffectual. No white man could eviscerate Dr. King’s radical legacy, or make Malcolm X appear harmless to the imperial order – that’s a job for the Black Misleadershsip Class. While Dr. King rejected an alliance with the “triple evils,” Black Democratic misleaders describe their deal with the Devil as smart, “strategic” politics. They whip up war fever against small, non-white nations that seek only the right to govern themselves, behaving no differently on the world scene – and sometimes worse – than Donald Trump.

They shame and weaken Black America, and have joined the enemies of life on Earth. King would shake his head, mournfully. Malcolm would keep his tight smile, doggedly. Then both would organize to expose and depose the Black Misleadership Class. 

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Sorry to Bother You with Twelve Theses on Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You": Lessons for the Left

By Bryant William Sculos

Originally published in 2019 in Class, Race and Corporate Power.

1.   Films thus far have merely interpreted the world; the point however is to change it….

This would be more appropriate as thesis eleven, but it is a crucial starting point for what follows. No matter how radical, no matter how popular, a critical film is, a film by itself, not even one as prescient and valuable as Sorry to Bother You is, is enough to change the world. Not that anyone would suggest that it could be, but radical films can serve important purposes in the struggle against capitalism and various forms of oppression. A good radical film can inspire and even simply entertain those engaged in struggle—or those thinking about becoming more active. Sorry to Bother You will not change the world, but it can be an important basis for motivation, critical conversation, and necessary enjoyment for those in struggling to do just that.

2.   Tactics should always be informed by an organized strategy.

Sorry to Bother You highlights the difference between pure subversive tactics and an organized strategy for resistance. In the film there is a group of anarchist-types, of what size or of what degree of organization the audience never sees, whose primary role in the film is to highlight the impotence of pure tactics (in this film, this amounts to clever vandalism) disconnected from a coherent strategy for organized opposition. Juxtaposed to these tactics we see the hard work of organizing a workplace and an eventual strike. While the strike may not have heralded the end of capitalism, the audience bears witness to the clear difference in results (including both the response of the capitalist class and their police force as well as the ability of the strike to bring new layers of people into struggle).

3.   As important as the superiority of tactics informed by an organized strategy is, it is perhaps as important how those on the left address their internal disagreements about strategies and tactics.

There is a subtle scene between Squeeze (the labor activist attempting to organize the workers at the telemarketing firm, played by Steven Yeun) and Detroit (perhaps the best radical feminist of color ever seen in a popular US film, played superbly by Tessa Thompson). Squeeze becomes aware that Detroit is part of the anarchist group doing the anticapitalist vandalism and instead of criticizing Detroit’s tactics, Squeeze takes the opportunity to appreciate that they are both on the same side of the struggle. This solidaristic interaction serves as the basis to build deeper, more active solidarity in the future (some of which we see later in the film). It is often difficult for those on the left to ignore or at least put aside disagreements over tactics and strategy, and sometimes it is important that the Left not leave disagreements unaddressed, but Sorry to Bother You provides some insight into how the Left can deal with internal, and interpersonal, disagreements in ways that do not further alienate us from one another. After all, the Left needs all the comrades it can get. What makes someone a comrade is a contentious issue to be sure, but it is an important one that the Left should continue to reflect on.

4.   Solidarity across identities is crucial.

Perhaps one of the most obvious—though no less important—lessons from Sorry to Bother You, with its awesome diverse cast and characters, is that class has colors and genders and a variety of other identities that come with their own unique oppressions that condition the experience of class in diverse ways. Not only does the film illuminate the intersections of racism and capitalism (the “white voices” are the stuff of film legend here), but we also see cross-racial, cross-gender, and even cross- (fictional) species solidarity. If Sorry to Bother You does one thing well (and it does way more than just one thing well), it is expressing the importance of building this kind of intersectional solidarity, as well as how the variable experiences of class can be navigated without chauvinism or exclusion. While the treatment of non-fictional racial and gender solidarity is powerful in its own right, Boots Riley’s use of the (for now…) fictional equisapiens drives the point home. Ending the exploitation of some group at the expense of others can never be an acceptable Left position.

5.   Art can be radical, but not all subversive art is radical, at least not on its own.

Detroit, in addition to her day job as a sign twirler and then as a telemarketer, is an artist. Beyond the politics of Sorry to Bother You, the film also delves into the difficulty of being a subversive artist within the confines of capitalism, which demands that all art be commodifiable in order to be of any value. Despite Detroit’s best efforts to resist this pressure, we see her engage in a powerful and uncomfortable piece of performance art where her audience is asked to throw things at her, including broken electronics and blood-filled balloons. The scene is a bit of a parody of ostensibly “radical” art that is consumed by a primarily bourgeois audience. Subversive art that challenges the commodity-form can itself become commodified, but it can still be useful as a foundation to challenge artistic norms and social conventions, break down the barrier between performer and audience. However, even at its best there is no guarantee that anything will fundamentally change because of these dissensual elements. Sorry to Bother You is a better example of what radical, subversive art can be than the artistic performances it portrays—though neither one is the basis for revolutionary activity. While the critical theorists and postmodernists of the late twentieth century are right to emphasize the importance of aesthetics in radical politics and resist the temptation, embodied most noticeably in socialist realism, to use art strictly instrumentally, art disconnected from organized struggle is bound to be as ineffective as any tactic disconnected from organized struggle. Sorry to Bother You does not provide a clear alternative, but it does provide a powerful basis to think through the question of how art can relate to radical politics, and radical politics to art, effectively.

6.   Material conditions are shaped by ideological conditions, which in turn affect our psychologies.

As the protagonist Cassius “Cash” Green (portrayed by Lakeith Stanfield with incredible complexity and skill to make the audience cringe in every instance they are supposed to) moves up the ladder at the telemarketing company, after living in poverty for years, his perspective on poverty and the plight of workers shifts in perverse but predictable directions. Consciousness is never one-to-one with class position, something that is perhaps still too obvious for the Left to effectively grapple with, but the radical beauty of Sorry to Bother You is how well Boots Riley is able to show how consciousness changes as wealth (though not always identical to class position) increases. Capitalism as a whole dehumanizes even those who benefit from it, though workers and the poor and oppressed should have little patience or sympathy for those who benefit unequally from the exploitation they reproduce. As difficult as it is, it is important to remember this, that even as capitalists and the defenders of capitalism come to personify the evils of capitalism, they too are driven by the heinous psycho-social incentives of the system. While this is, in itself, important to be cognizant of, it is more important to be aware of the process through which this happens to middle class people, and even workers fortunate enough to escape the dregs of poverty wages.

7.   Contacting your elected officials is not nearly enough and can actually be demoralizing and demobilizing.

One of the best scenes in the film, enhanced by the speed with which is begins and ends, is when Cash decides to make public the genetic alteration plans of Steve Lift (CEO of the Amazon-like WorryFree, played by Armie Hammer). Cash goes on an absurd reality TV show and various news programs to tell the world about the equisapien experiments and implores people to contact their elected officials. The montage ends with WorryFree’s stock rising and the general public excited about the new technological developments. Nothing changes. The lesson here is that Cash was relying on the representatives of the system that encourages the kinds of perversity that Steve Lift represents to solve the problem. Cash encouraged people to place their hope in decrepit politicians. The audience experiences the results too quickly. The montage is powerful as it stands, but it is worth questioning whether the full range of critical points here might be lost on even a well-focused self-reflective audience (though I noticed so perhaps I’m the one being too cynical). Cash placed his hope in the automatic negative reactions of people—people who have been conditioned by capitalism to view all technological developments as progressive and liberating—to resist those changes. Back in the real world, while there are some instances where outrage may seem (or even actually be) more or less automatic, there is often unseen or unacknowledged organizing and propagandistic work being done to produce an effective public reaction. The best recent example of this is from the 2017 airport protests/occupations in reaction to President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. While some of the people showed up at the airports spontaneously, there were also a number of left-wing groups, of diverse politics, working to make these actions effective. It is likely we would not have witnessed the positive results we saw from these actions had it not been for the quick, organized work of activists on the ground. And yet, it all appeared rather spontaneous.

8.  The truth is not enough, and it will not set us free. Truth is not irrelevant, but it is not enough for the Left simply to be “right.”

Related to thesis 7, Cash relies on his exposing the truth to the world to be the catalyst for widespread resistance to the practices of WorryFree. Mind you, this is all taking place in a world where all of the other dehumanizing practices of WorryFree, such as: lifetime contracts for workers, with all room and board provided but without pay, are deemed acceptable. Why would artificially producing human-horse hybrid workers be any different? While there is a vital educational role for the Left to play in providing the factual basis for the need for organized resistance and building an alternative to racist, patriarchal, imperialist capitalism, these facts are not enough. Facts can be interpreted in various ways and perverted by the mouthpieces of capitalism, often most egregiously by the ostensibly liberal vanguard of “progressive” capitalism. The Left needs to not only be “right” but it also needs to provide deeper context and present viable options to pursue. Put differently, in addition to having the truth on its side, the Left needs to be persuasive.

9.   Automation is complicated and likely will not take the forms or have the effects the public are often led to believe it will have.

The world has been browbeaten into thinking that the worst consequences of increased automation in the twenty-first century will be mass unemployment. Sorry to Bother You, believe it or not, provides a glimpse at one more realistic alternative—as well as a basis for a more honest look at the effects of automation. First, as we have seen throughout the history of capitalism, workers themselves, both physically and psychologically, are made into automatons. Second, the worst consequences of automation is not joblessness but deskilling. Part of the automation of human beings is the decreased cognitive and creative labor that more and more jobs will require or allow. Companies, whether it is WorryFree or Amazon, would much prefer the less expensive route of encouraging society, primarily through culture and schooling, to produce less thoughtful, more compliant workers, rather than spend huge sums of money on automation technologies that could become obsolete within a few years. Automation technology under capitalism is expensive. On the flipside, people under capitalism have been made to be quite inexpensive. Maybe we all will not be turned into human-horse hybrids, but given the trajectory of undemocratic automatic in the early years of the twenty-first century, we will not likely be looking at a Jetsons-esque lifestyle for everyone. People will likely continue to be subjected to intense pressures to physically, psychologically, and chemically alter themselves in order to acquire even slightly higher wages.

10.  People, especially workers within capitalism, are willing to accept very little money or benefits in exchange for their labor and even their lives.

Capitalist exploitation and oppressions degrade people. Capitalist ideology convinces people that they are merely worth whatever some boss is willing to pay them—and they are fortunate to have what little they have. After all, there are plenty of people with less. This reality puts impoverished workers in a terrible situation when bosses try to buy them off to undermine labor organizing or threaten a worker with firing for talking about politics at work. This reality is also part of the root cause of conservative labor union practices, which often sacrifice anything beyond moderate gains in wages and benefits for worker compliance. The promise of a more lavish lifestyle, new clothes and a new car (or really just a car that is reliable) is what motivates Cash to sell-out. Scabs may indeed be the scum of the Earth from a labor organizing perspective (and there’s no reason to think otherwise), but they are motivated by the very same things that motivate workers to sell their labor for a wage in the first place. So really, besides the immediacy of the betrayal, what is the difference between a scab and worker who refuses to join their union or a worker who does not vote to support a strike? The results and the motivations are fundamentally identical. This is not a defense of scabbing (as if such a defense were actually possible), but it is a lesson that needs to be learned. Capitalist ideology is extremely powerful, and it compels us all in various ways to become subjects of our exploitation and the exploitation of others. Scabs and other types of non-class-conscious workers are as much a product of capitalism as the credit card is.

11.  Sorry to bother—and even betray—you, but apologies and forgiveness matter.

Even after Cash betrays his fellow-workers and friends by crossing their picket lines multiple times, once he realizes his grave error and is determined to join them in struggle, his friends forgive him. They accept his apology. The apology does not change what Cash did, but it reflects his commitment to doing the right things moving forward. This might be one of the hardest lessons for the Left to learn from this movie. How does one forgive someone who has betrayed them, especially when it was not just a friendship that was betrayed but an entire movement? However, put differently, how can the Left ever be successful moving forward without the capacity to forgive and work alongside those who have actively worked against the Left in their past? Where is the place for former liberals (or even former conservatives or reactionaries)? Where is the place for former scabs? Sorry to Bother You argues that despite the awfulness of one’s past positions and actions, the answer to these two preceding questions is: among the Left. Very few people are born into radical politics, and almost no one holds the right views from the start, and so people need time to learn and grow. Sometimes it is a very longtime filled with egregious beliefs and behaviors—but if the Left is to ever be effective, it will be populated mainly by these kinds of people.[1]

12.  The first win (or loss) is only a beginning…

Sorry to Bother You ends with a victory of sorts. A small one. Without spoiling too much, the lesson here is that strikes, whether successful or not, can only ever be the start of a revolutionary movement. Same for protests. Protests in and of themselves are not going to bring down a government or a political-economic system. Strikes will not either. There is plenty of debate on the Left about whether a mass general strike could do that, but even with something as powerful as a general strike (which is really only practically imaginable with preliminary strikes and protests preceding it) it would be unlikely on its own to replace capitalism with socialism (or whatever your preferred label for a democratic, egalitarian form of postcapitalism is). Revolutionary transformation is not something that can be won or lost overnight, with one victory—nor can it be lost with one loss, by one strike that fails or never happens, by one protest that has low turnout or fails to motivate further actions. Hope is crucial, but it must be tempered by a realistic pessimism regarding the struggle ahead. There will be many loses and hopefully many more wins—but the struggle continues. Even if capitalism were successfully dismantled, what replaces it will also be an object of struggle, one that will require that we learn as much as we can from all the struggles that precedes it.

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is Visiting Assistant Professor of global politics and theory at Worcester State University. He was formerly a Mellon-Sawyer postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 2019 Summer Fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at the New School for Social Research. Bryant is the Politics of Culture section editor for the open-access journal Class, Race and Corporate Power and contributing editor for the Hampton Institute. Beyond his work for the aforementioned outlets, his work has also appeared in New Politics, Dissident Voice, Truthout, Constellations, Capitalism, Communication, & Critique (tripleC), New Political Science, and Public Seminar. He is also the co-editor (with Prof. Mary Caputi) of Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century (Brill, 2019; paperback forthcoming July 2020 with Haymarket Books).

Notes

[1] Although she was writing about how socialists should deal with liberals at Women’s Marches, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s writings served as crucial inspiration for this point. See: “Don’t Shame the First Steps of a Resistance” in Socialist Worker, Jan. 24, 2017. Available online at: https://socialistworker.org/2017/01/24/dont-shame-the-first-steps-of-a-resistance.

The Importance of Political Education and Class Analysis in the Struggle for Black Liberation

By Erica Caines

This piece was originally published at Hood Communist.

What does organizing look like when Black radicals are being pushed out of spaces for ‘progressiveness’ that makes uncontested room for the centrist, right-wing and fascist narratives driving most platforms?  When examining the conflicts between those fighting oppression under capitalism and the capitalist state’s ruling class alongside those who subscribe to “success” and riches obtained at the expense of the oppressed, few things strike me as obvious disconnects and contradictions.

I am often asked about my relationship with the analytical science of Marxism-Leninism as it pertains to my studies, teachings, and praxis because it’s somehow shocking that a Black woman would align herself with a political ideology that’s been presented as predominantly white and male. I once used these moments as opportunities to flex my knowledge on the historical relationship between socialism/ communism and Black people (particularly Black women) as if I were a fact sheet. While it is important to highlight how many of those we’ve come to know as simply “civil rights activists” were politically and ideologically aligned with socialism/communism, what does that mean? Furthermore, why is that important? 

“Knowledge is power” is a familiar mantra. The Marxist Theory of Knowledge describes knowledge, or the idea of it, as socially constructed. Karl Marx details “power” (economic, intellectual and political) as something that stems from the ownership of the means of production. Simply put, a lot of what we *know* is predicated on the interests of the ruling class. It is in this country’s best interest to keep us ignorant. 

One way we combat ignorance is through active study and dialogue. One of the more frustrating things is the way reading is discussed as a pastime of the elite. That, in itself, highlights how comfortably ahistorical we’ve all become. We discuss accessibility and ability to study —-and by extension, obtain knowledge—- in bad faith. We fail to admit to our own intellectual laziness. It also highlights a misunderstanding of how knowledge and education should be used. 

Marx’s Dialectics of Theory and Practice assumes that none of us are “all-knowing”, but the practice of becoming politically educated, both understanding theories and using them in praxis to better conditions, ultimately improve and transform our conditions. One of the more famous examples of having done this can be found by studying members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. 

The BPP implemented collective actions that not only included providing much-needed resources but, more importantly, a political education. They believed in active study and debate and with that belief, went on to educate others enough to advocate for themselves. 

When communities advocate for themselves through breakfast programs, liberation schools and providing healthcare (the more prominent examples of the BPP’s work), ‘the group’ is prioritized over the individual. These small actions that result in transforming realities (material conditions) are what the practice and principle of collectivism are rooted in.

This differs from individualism, which is dependent solely on the best interest of the individual. Black people, in mass, seem to be engulfed in a state of individualism. Many have actively disconnected from our history of collectivism (and other tenets of socialism/ communism). This is made obvious with ‘celebrity culture’, the fixation on Black Capitalism as liberation and blatant misrepresentations of our “ancestors wildest dreams”. 

The lack of implementing class analysis (recognizing the significance of class) to understand our material conditions are major factors of the collective distortion of our material realities. I am not speaking on the problematic and dangerous ways white leftists ignore “whiteness” as a class issue to generically state “race and class” and ignore their innate racial prejudices. I am speaking on how our confrontations with racism, as Black people, have disallowed us to interrogate the Black people that exist within different class statuses. 

We live in a white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy so Black people are, undoubtedly, confronted with how oppressions manifest, particularly racism. Unfortunately, we do not leave room to have any introspection on how oppressions manifest through class. All Black people may experience racism, but not all Black people experience poverty. When overwhelming many experience poverty, combatting racism, solely, causes us to turn a blind eye to capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.That “blind eye” results in a failure to [not want to] understand or implement a class analysis.

The purpose of class analysis is to clarify the agendas between classes. When we discuss the class structure of capitalism in Marxist theory, the capitalist stage of production consists of two main classes: the bourgeoisie (the capitalists who own the means of production) and the proletariat ( the working class who must sell their own labor power). If we are applying class analysis to our material conditions we are acknowledging how these class groups work and function within our realities. When applying it to our communities it is evident that the [almost non-existent] middle class would much rather align with the bourgeoisie (the rich) than the working class. This presents huge contradictions. Not just in organizing, but the way that we view liberation. 

In order for the bourgeois class to thrive, there must be an oppressed working class to exploit. If there are Black people who would much rather align with the rich, what does that mean for the Black people under the thumb of economic oppression? How does that manifest when we are talking about Black political power? 

Capitalist state ruling classes resist change. They disguise their arbitrary privileges and power behind lies, dogma, half-truths, and fallacies. This is most evident through the use of celebrity-driven and identity reductionist activism that uses “socialist” rhetoric to push neoliberal agendas that don’t seek to transform realities but make them easier to digest and not disrupt the status quo. 

In a society plagued by communities of individualists, how can we approach collectivism in substantial ways? We must have a principled commitment to political education, cooperation, and concern for the welfare of each other. 

Workers Unite. 

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan and the Hypocrisy of Prosecutors

By Laila Aziz

At a pivotal time, when progressive constituents in the state of California are demanding criminal justice reform due to archaic, racist, classist policy, one of the reform movement’s most formidable detractors, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan, became a rape apologist. The criminal justice system is complex, and the District Attorney’s (DA’s) office exemplifies tremendous power within this framework by deciding which charges a person faces, which sentencing enhancements they will face, and the plea deal offered.

Pillars of the Community supports a local Participatory Defense hub created by Silicon Valley Debug. We are in the courtrooms daily observing and working closely with those closest to the pain. We court watch and aggregate data as it is happening around bail, enhancements, plea bargaining, stacking charges, and sentencing.  Our collective work with our partners and community drive policy, advocacy, and direct action.

Summer Stephan has continued San Diego’s legacy of utilizing the criminal justice system as a weapon of America’s lust for inequity and segregation. Her office piles Black, Brown, and Asian Pacific Islanders into prisons for low-level crimes regardless of the sentencing reforms we have demanded. Her office is strategic in how they charge, ensuring they pump the most inequities into our community.

When Summer Stephan was confronted with having to hold a Sheriff Deputy accountable who utilized his badge to terrorize women in San Diego County sexually, she utilized her power as the District Attorney and did the unfathomable. She turned her back on 16 women and reduced the officer’s sexual assault charges to non-serious misdemeanors and felonies. She wanted him to reap the benefits of reform; she repeatedly denies so many of us daily.

The Tale of Two Counties

Recently Summer Stephan’s office charged a young man for fights, based on mutual combat, which law enforcement viewed on another young man’s cell phone. There were no victims and no serious injuries. The DA charged the young man with two assaults. Her office strategically included two gang enhancements, which increased the underlying felony of assault to a mandatory prison term and two strikes. He was facing seventeen years and shortly before trial pled to 4-years in prison. This felony will follow him forever. He will never be able to expunge his record, and he will have to register as a gang member.

In another incident, her office charged a young man with vandalism under $400, a misdemeanor, for writing on property. Misdemeanors are always completed locally, not in prison. Summer Stephan’s office strategically added the gang enhancement, giving him a felony and sentenced the young man to three years in prison. He will never be able to expunge his record and will have to register as a gang member upon release. This young man’s life will be affected for decades for writing on a wall. It is unconscionable to send a young man to prison, where he will be around violence, trauma, and rape for writing on a wall!

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, former San Diego Sheriff Deputy Richard Fischer faced “20 charges involving 16 accusers. Most of the charges involved allegations of assault and battery under the color of authority, but there was one allegation that he forced a woman to perform a sex act.” These charges included groping, stroking, hugging, and kissing women who expressed fear and severe trauma due to his acts.

On the day of trial, the San Diego District Attorney’s office struck a deal with the defendant. They dropped all of the sexual assault charges and refiled an amended complaint.  The DA paved the way for a man who fondled handcuffed women to avoid prison and sex offender registration.

“The Police Scorecard” a recent report published by Campaign Zero, found that the San Diego Sheriff’s Department was 47% more likely to use force on Blacks than Whites. San Diego is preparing to decide a ballot measure in 2020, which will make an independent police commission with both subpoena power and an independent investigator. Summer Stephan, in her recent decisions, has demonstrated that regardless of the proof, as long as she is in office, she will never hold law enforcement accountable for police brutality or sexual assault. Summer Stephan has proven that as long as she remains top cop in San Diego County, she will fight to maintain the status quo -the New Jim Crow.

Laila Aziz
Program Director
Pillars of the Community

Racism on College Campuses: Understanding It and How to Fight Back

By Collin Chambers

“Racism is a fundamental characteristic of monopoly capitalism”

- George L. Jackson, 1971

White supremacy and settler colonialism have always undergirded US society from its very origins and foundations. Since the election of Trump in 2016, however, the systems of white supremacy and settler colonialism have taken off their “progressive neoliberal” (Fraser 2017) masks. This is evident through the increasing blatant acts of white nationalism and hate crimes. For instance, the rate and frequency of hate crimes on college campuses continue to rise (Bauer-Wolf 2019). To give a recent concrete and on-going example, towards the end of the Fall 2019 semester Syracuse University campus went through “two weeks of hate” as one student put it (McMahon 2019). In a 13-day period, there were 12 acts of racist hate-crimes. This series of racist graffiti has emboldened white supremacists on campus, which has recently culminated in a white nationalist manifesto being “airdropped” to individuals at a university library, the same one shared by the gunman in the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand. The Syracuse University Administration claims this is a myth, but it is a proven fact that the white supremacist manifesto was circulated and viewed within a Greek-life online platform/blog. 

In direct response to these events a POC-led group emerged. #NotAgainSU occupied the Barnes Center, a brand-new $50 million student/gym/wellness center for seven days and seven nights. Though it is a self-described “nameless and faceless” group, there is group of around 15 students who can be characterized as the leadership. From my understanding, and from discussions with those more enmeshed in the group, two-thirds of the 15 can be classified as more liberal and rooted in identity politics, and thus understand racism from this lens. I think the dominance of the more liberal-minded is shown through the list of 18 demands that the group wants met by the administration. I highlight the leadership because the leadership of any organization, group, or movement plays the determining role in characterizing the type of politics the organization has. The theoretical-political framework used to understand oppressions based on identity, like race, determines the politics and effectiveness in challenging/overthrowing structures of power. I do not intend for the essay to be a sectarian/outsider critique of #NotAgainSU—when there are direct actions/spontaneous protest against reactionary structures of power a revolutionary must participate despite any political-ideological limitations to the action/protest. I simply wish to offer what I think is the most efficient (i.e., most revolutionary) theoretical-political framework to deploy to understand racism in contemporary global capitalism. How we understand the world shapes how we act upon it. Identity politics is limiting in the sense that is “an integral part of the dominant ideology; it makes opposition impossible” (Haider 2018, 40). Identity politics needs to be left behind. Below, I offer my thoughts on what type of politics and strategy is necessary to productively fight against racism. 

Following the Geographer, Raju Das (2012), I do indeed privilege class in this analysis, but “do so in a manner in which race and gender are taken very seriously.” Class is, as Das says, “the dominant social relation” (Das 2012, 31), it cuts across all forms of social difference. Thus, in relation to the question of race, an anti-racist working-class politics and strategy needs to be developed and perpetuated. In this essay I argue in order to struggle against the structures of racism there needs to be an anti-racist working-class politic that is global in scope. This means centering imperialism. I emphasize imperialism because all imperialist wars are predicated and justified through racialized logics (both ideological and economical). Imperialist war and racism are inherently linked—one cannot exist without the other (see Du Bois 1933). As Andrea Smith (2012, 69) says nicely: “For the system of white supremacy to stay in place, the United States must always be at war.” I will first do this—though unpopular it may be in our post-structural times—by re-emphasizing the centrality of class. Then, I will offer a brief historical materialist understanding of racism in the age of imperialism (I do indeed argue that imperialism still exists, but that we are in a new unipolar era). Additionally, going against much “post-colonial” thought I emphasize the need to use the nation-state as a form of sovereignty that can fight against racism. With this understanding of racism, I will argue that Asad Haider’s (2018, 111) idea of “insurgent universalism,” which says: “I fight for my own liberation precisely because I fight for that of the stranger,” is a useful strategy/method to fight racism. 

Re-centering Class to Fight Racism

The current political economic situation necessitates for a return to more traditional conceptions of class. Living and growing up in a social formation dominated by the capitalist mode of production, we are not taught or trained to think in class terms i.e., to have class consciousness. If class is mentioned at all it is usually deployed to point out an individual’s identity and status i.e., in the non-Marxist sense. Class is typically thought of as either based on income or status/identity i.e., if someone is blue collared or white collared. It is a common misconception to think of class as just another identity that exists along the different axes and vectors of oppression. In popular parlance, when one talks about a working-class identity one commonly conceives of a white male with a hardhat working on the construction site. While a white male in a hardhat is indeed within the working class, this view is problematic in two senses. First, it ignores how labor/the working class has increasingly been feminized and racialized (Sanmiguel-Valderrama 2007). Secondly, by treating “the working-class” as just another identity alongside gender and race is faulty from a Marxist perspective which sees class as one’s objective relationship to the means of production (see Heideman 2019 for more on all of this). This objective conception of class simply means that on one side there exists the capitalist class which owns and controls the means of production, and on the other side the working class who own nothing but their ability to work and who work within a workplace that is controlled and dominated by the capitalist class. Class from this perspective is understood as a social relation of power (Zweig 2005). 

Obviously, in the capitalist mode of production, capitalists have a lot of “power to” (Glassman 2003). Capital has the power to appropriate surplus product, dictate what is produced within the production process and how, and by what pace. However, as Glassman (2003, 682) points out nicely, “[c]apitalists are not the only actors who can exercise ‘power to.’ Workers, though less empowered than capitalists because of their specific positions within processes of surplus value production and appropriation, also possess structural power in their collective ability to provide or withhold labor.” The inert power workers have exists at all times, even in eras of global working-class defeat and retreat, workers can shut the production and labor process down. In relation to the question of racism, the working class can use their power to fight racism through their latent power and ability to stop the production process. In order to end “extra-economic”-based oppressions the power of capital must be struggled against by with the latent power the working-class has (Heideman 2019; Wood 2002). For example, stopping production (i.e., striking) can be deployed as a method to fight against racism, sexism, heteronormativity, etc. 

Raju Das (2012, 31) lays out clearly the power class analysis and a class perspective can provide for social movements: 

Class analysis necessarily says that: class is the most important cause, and condition for, major global problems…and that workers and semi-proletarians who suffer from these problems have the power to fundamentally transcend the system to solve these problems. Class analysis includes in it the idea of the possibility and the necessity of abolition of class and its replacement with optimal direct-democratic control on the part of the proletariat and semi-proletarian workers over society’s resources and political affairs, at local, national and global scale. Class is about power, which is rooted in the control over productive forces including labor. Class analysis articulates and performs this power.

As the reader can see, Marxists point out the objective nature of class out at nauseam (e.g., Foley 2018; Heideman 2019), but they have done so within the confines of the nation-state scale of the United States and tend to ignore or downplay global scale race relations, in particular the race relations involved in contemporary imperialism. 

A Historical Materialist Understanding of Racism in the Age of Imperialism

Even within the anti-Marxist early 2000s Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2002) argued that we still need the historical materialist method to understand racism. Historical materialism is Marx’s method of understanding historical and contemporary social formations. This method seeks to explicate what is historically specific about a dominant mode of production within a particular social formation (Ollman 1993). It is a common misconception that Marx ignored race, gender and other forms of oppression, but this is certainly false especially if one examines his more historical work (see Anderson 2010 79-114 for Marx’s writings on race, slavery, and US Civil War). A mode of production can be briefly defined as the “complex unity” (Althusser 2014) between the productive forces (i.e., means of production and labor-power) and relations of production, which Bettelheim (1975, 55) defines as a “system of positions assigned to agents of production in relation to the principal means of production.” Non-economistic Marxists like Lenin, Mao, etc., emphasize that the relations of production play the determining role in shaping the mode of production (Althusser 2014). On top of the mode of production arises a political and cultural superstructure that works in dialectical relation/tension with the economic base (mode of production). Social change occurs do this dialectical relation with the economic base (see Marx 1979). This historical materialist method allows us to see the historically specific form racism takes on in particular modes of production, and even within different forms of the capitalist mode of production. Understanding the specific forms racism takes in particular historical is essential if one wants to successfully struggle against racism. Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002, 282) points out that 

Capitalism will always have a working class, and it will always produce underclasses, whatever their extra-economic identity. It can adopt to changing conditions by changing the meaning of race and ethnicity, so that one group can displace another at the bottom of the ladder (as Hispanic groups have in some cases replaced African-Americans); or the boundaries of racial categories can, if necessary, be redrawn.

This othered “underclass” that Wood points to can exist on many different scales and not just within the nation-state scale of the Unites States. In the era of imperialism and global capitalism, the underclass are the oppressed nationalities who are struggling for self-determination against the global imperialist class camp (i.e., the US, Europe, and Japan). This will be explored more below. First, I must lay out how to understand racism as a historical materialist i.e., how it functions within the “complex social whole” (McNally 2017). 

In Black Marxism Cedric Robinson (1983) critiqued Eurocentric Marxists for ignoring the Black Radical Tradition, and for not paying close enough attention to how logics of racism structures capitalism itself. Robinson emphasizes that ideas of race and otherness is culturally ingrained in European Civilization itself and thus precedes the development of the capitalist mode of production and in turn structures it. However, the form racism changes within different modes of production. Racism adapts “to the political and material exigencies of the moment” as Robinson (1983, 66) himself says. Thus, we must understand the “political and material exigencies” of the unipolar imperialist era (Becker and Puryear 2015). To help through this the relations of production need be thought of in a non-economistic way. The relations of production are traditionally thought of as class relations (see above). However, in order to think of race as being integral to the social whole of the capitalist mode of production is to consider race relations as being a component of the relations of production that help reproduce capitalist relations of exploitation and oppression on an extended scale (see also Bhattacharya 2017).  When the capitalist mode of emerges on the historical scene it emerges in an already existing racialized European social formation. At first it incorporates the existing racial relations and ideologies, but as the capitalist mode of production becomes the dominant mode of production in the social formation it totally transforms them to serve the interest of capitalist relations of exploitation and oppression because capital is “coercive relation” and bends all social relations to its will (Marx 1990, 425). Capitalism and the new race relations/ideologies that develop become inseparable from each other and cannot function without each other (see also McNally 2017). Understanding racism (and also sexism, heteronormativity, etc) as existing within the relations of production themselves allows one to understand the “distributions of power throughout a structure” along different forms of oppression such as race. (Gilmore 2002, 17). 

In order to explicate this historical-materialist view we turn to W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois (1933) is able to show clearly the particular form racial relations of production take on in the monopoly/imperialist era of the capitalist mode of production. Here he lays out two material factors that produce and reproduce racism within the white labor movement during this particular form of the capitalist mode of production (monopoly/imperialist). Firstly, he talks about the development of a labor aristocracy that began to emerge in the monopoly era of capitalism and through the class struggle itself. In this era, Du Bois (1933, 6) says that “a new class of technical engineers and managers has arisen forming a working-class aristocracy” who “have deposits in savable banks and small holdings in stocks and bonds.” These kind of investments and material vested interests in the capitalist system give rise to “capitalistic ideology” which is ingrained in the heads labor aristocracy. Du Bois (1933, 6-7) says that these “engineers and the saving better-paid workers form a new petty bourgeois class, whose interests are bound up with those of the capitalists and antagonistic to those of common labor.” This labor aristocracy is a direct consequence of monopoly/imperialist phase of capitalism.

Secondly, in the era of monopoly capitalism (i.e., imperialism) we see “the extension of the world market” through “imperial expanding industry” which has produced a “world-wide new proletariat of colored workers.” The capitalists are able to bribe “the white worker by high wages, visions of wealth and opportunity” to fight militarily, politically, and economically against colored workers across the world, i.e., to serve the interests of the imperialist-capitalist class. As Du Bois (1933, 7) says: “Soldiers and sailors from the white workers are used to keep ‘darkies’ in their ‘places.’ Imperialist war and racism are inseparable and are two sides of the same coin and are produced and reproduced by global imperialist class camp. The othered underclass in the monopoly/imperialist era of capitalism is indeed the oppressed nationalities across the world (and within the US) who are constantly targeted by the global imperialist class camp. To make this more concrete, the police departments that terrorize, murder, and target people of color in the US purchase weapon surpluses from the US military! This displays clearly a direct connection between people of color within the US nation-state and oppresses nationalities that US imperialism oppresses. 

Marx and Engels (1978, 474, my emphasis) say in the Manifesto: “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with clash antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.” Thinking about racism in this sense, as being a part of the relations of production helps us see that racism is an integral part in reproducing the capitalist system as a whole. Racism has been so completely transformed and integrated by the capitalist mode of production that one cannot imagine ending racism without struggling against the capitalist system. Mao said: “Racism is a product of colonialism and imperialism. Only by overthrowing the capitalist class and destroying colonialism and imperialism [can complete emancipation be won]” (quoted in Kelley 2008, 100-101) Additionally, because “[w]age-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers,” racism plays a fundamental role in maintaining the class power of capital by continuing to divide workers along racial lines (Marx and Engels 1978, 483). At least for me, it is clear that racism does not just exist in air in the superstructure but is produced and reproduced in the mode of production itself. If the structural and root causes of racism are superseded, then overtime—through more political struggle—so will all micro-forms of racism (e.g., racist language).

The Nation-State still matters! Imperialism still exists!

From many different theoretical frameworks/positions the nation-state is seen as inherently problematic for being racist and perpetuating settler colonialism (e.g., A. Smith 2012; Anthias 2018). “Post-colonial” scholars who emphasize decolonization argue that decolonization is impossible within the confines of the nation-state as it is a colonial European invention. Even scholars focused on solving climate change are critical and skeptical of the nation-state in regards to creating a global post-carbon energy regime, and for obvious and important reasons (see Mann and Wainwright 2019). Additionally, many argue that imperialism, understood from the Leninist tradition, no longer exists in the contemporary post-Soviet world. For example, Hardt and Negri (2000, 9), who many draw from, say: 

we think it is important to note that what used to be conflict or competition among several imperialist powers has in important respects been replaced by the idea of a single power that overdetermines them all, structures them in a unitary way, and treats them under one common notion of right that is decidedly postcolonial and postimperialist. This is really the point of departure for our study of Empire: a new notion of right, or rather, a new inscription of authority.

This is only half correct. We are indeed living in world where there is no longer the type of inter-imperialist rivalry that characterized the WWI and WWII eras, but that does not mean in any sense that we are living in a “postimperialist” world where the nation-state no longer matters. Rather, we are currently just in a new phase of imperialism, namely a unipolar era of imperialism (see Becker and Puryear 2015), in which the United States is the global hegemonic leader. Since the collapse of the former USSR, the United States has become the hegemonic leader on a global scale. In this era every newly independent nationalist country has to play by the rules that the United States has set through so-called international political-economic apparatuses. Countries have to try to arise in a global political economic system dominated by the interests of the United States. This creates serious limits for what specific countries can do. Cuba, for example, has chosen to maintain its socialist political economic system at the continued expense of the embargo enforced by the US. Evo Morales was just overthrown by a coup that was funded and supported by the United States for being a leader who does not want to play by the rules that the United States enforces through different “international” political/economic apparatuses. The development of the UN, NATO, EU, etc., does not mark an end of nation-state rule and “toward a new notion of global order.” The UN is an “international” organization that, in the last instance, represents and perpetuates the interests of the US, western Europe, and Japan. 

Nation-states still matter for global capital. The rules and regulations needed for continued capital accumulation are largely enforced by nation-states themselves, not a decentralized Empire. In addition, the nation-state still matters in regard to resisting imperialism and racism, especially in the imperial core of the United States. Nation-states and the apparatuses of nation-states can be seized and used for successfully struggling against imperialism and racism. The faulty idea that we are living in a decentralized global Empire makes it seem that capitalism so ubiquitous and penetrating it cannot be directly opposed, that there are no alternatives. 

Kelley and Betsy (2008) in a chapter titled “Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution” shows how oppressed nations constructed political solidarity with each other that functioned on an international scale, but was also made possible because one oppressed nation was able to take power on the nation-state scale, and used the power gained from doing so to spread anti-racist working-class power outside its own nation-state. In the 1960s the Black Nationalist movement in the United States had close political-ideological ties with the Chinese Communist Party, and Mao Zedong and other Maoists more specifically. It is commonly known that the Black Panthers would sell Mao’s book of quotations i.e., “the little red book” to fund themselves, but this is only the surface appearance of the connection Maoists in China had with the Black Panthers and groups like Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). As Kelley and Betsy (2008, 103) point out, Maoism was not exported from China to the Black Nationalist movement. Rather, “[m]ost black radicals of the late 1950s and early 1960s discovered China by way of anti- colonial struggles in Africa and the Cuban revolution.” The example of national liberation/communist struggles taking state power on the nation-scale inspired oppressed nationalities within the United States. Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought provided the theoretical foundations on which to view nationalism relatively. Nationalism from the oppressor nation is reactionary, but nationalism from oppressed nations is revolutionary and necessary. Revolutionary nationalism of an oppressed nation is “proletarian in content, national in form” as Harry Haywood (1978) says. In fact, the RAM argued that black nationalism “‘is really internationalism.’ Only by demolishing white nationalism and white power can liberation be achieved for everyone. Not only will national boundaries be eliminated with the ‘‘dictatorship of the Black Underclass,’’ but ‘‘the need for nationalism in its aggressive form will be eliminated’’ (Kelley and Betsy 2008, 115-116). 

Conclusion: Towards an Anti-Racist Working-Class Strategy

Asad Haider (2018, 61) tells the story about Harry Haywood’s critique of the CPUSA as it became increasingly conservative in the post-World War II years. Throughout the first half of the 20th century the CPUSA was at the forefront of anti-racist/black liberation struggles both politically and theoretically (see Kelley 2002). However, as the CPUSA became more conservative, the Party “distanced itself from the project of black liberation,” and white chauvinism increased within the Party. Haider (2018, 61) points out that the Party had previously been able to combat white chauvinism and racism effectively “through mass antiracist organizing: by joining different people and disparate demands in a common struggle.” After this practice ceased, the “party launched what Haywood called a ‘phony war against white chauvinism’…In Haywood’s analysis, this phony war only ended up strengthening the foundations of white chauvinism, now uprooted from its structural foundations and seen a free-floating set of ideas” (Haider 2018, 61). Harry Haywood argued that a better strategy to fight white chauvinism in the party is to reaffirm the “division of labor among communists in relation to the national question. This division of labor, long ago established in our party and the international communist movement, places main responsibility for combatting white chauvinism on the white comrades, with Blacks having main responsibility for combating narrow nationalist deviations” (Haywood quoted in Haider 2018, 61-62). 

A “phony war” (i.e., one that plays into the logics of the dominant ideology and structures) against racism must be avoided. Given what has been said above, the strategy I propose to fight racism, imperialism, and capitalism is to perpetuate what Asad Haider (2018, 108-114) calls “insurgent universalism.” Insurgent universalism “says we are not passive victims but active agents of a politics that demands freedom for everyone” (Haider 2018, 109). It is a universality that “necessarily confronts and opposes capitalism” (Haider 2018, 113). It is a universality that “is created and recreated in the act of insurgency, which does not demand emancipation solely for those who share my identity but for everyone; it says no one will be enslaved” (Haider 2018, 113). The working class can use its power within the realm of production to not only struggle against capital in the economic sense, but also against all “extra-economic” oppressions that exist within the global imperialist-capitalist social whole. We need to fight for the strangers who are being targeted by the global imperialist class camp. We may not know “the other” that is being targeted by US imperialism, we may even have some preconceived notions of that “other” through the media ideological state apparatus (e.g., demonization), however, and despite this we must principally be against any form of US intervention in sovereign nations. Being anti-racist means being anti-imperialist at the same time! Self-determination for all oppressed nationalities!

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A Tribute to Toni Morrison

By Cherise Charleswell

On August 5th, 2019 we lost Chloe Anthony Wofford, better known as Toni Morrison. This brilliant Griot, who was one of America's most venerated novelists, essayists, editors, social critics, teachers, and professors, died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 88.

One of her first great feats happened during the 1960s, a period of time where the United States of America was still caught up and resisting through the Civil Rights Movement's call for equity and dismantling of oppressive barriers and discrimination. Against this backdrop, Toni Morrison became the first Black female editor of fiction at Random House, and in this capacity she played a vital role in bringing Black literature and authors into the mainstream.

She got a seat at the table and not only took up space, but dragged other seats over to the table to allow room for other marginalized voices. She later described the importance of "Taking Up & Creating Space" in one of the many interviews that she conducted over her many years in the spotlight:

"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game."

She left behind a remarkable and award-winning body of work, beginning with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970. And went on to publish ten additional novels, numerous short stories and essays, as well as works of non-fiction.

Toni Morrison's work will forever entertain, inspire, and challenge us to reflect as individuals and as a society, and it is for those reasons and more that we pay tribute to this formidable woman who epitomized Black Girl Magic long before the phrase was first used. There was magic in her pen and tongue, and it casted spells on our psyche.

So, in this tribute I will lift up her voice and unpack the impact and legacy of Toni Morrison.

The Honors

"I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is―a politician."

― Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was a prolific writer who approached writing with intentions and a purpose that went far beyond storytelling. She recognized that the Political has always been Personal, and didn't shy away from using characters, themes, and language (whether engaging dialogue or thought-provoking monologue) to provide social commentary and criticism, and challenge readers to truly reflect on what they've read. Because of this, her work can't be described as "light reading," but it was certainly captivating. And thus, the honors rolled in.

Those honors included:

• Honorary degrees from Oxford University and Rutgers University

• In 1979 she was awarded Barnard College's high-test honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.

• She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her citation reads that she, " who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." [ She was the first black woman of any nationality to win the prize

• In 1996, the National Endowment for Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. Federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.

• In 1996, she also received the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

• She received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Beloved, which was adapted into a movie, starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998.

• Her novel Song of Solomon received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• In 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American fiction in 2016.

Unapologetic About Centering Black Characters and Experiences

"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form."

― Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's work builds on the legacy and body of work of the prolific Black authors, novelists, and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, an important artistic movement which The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture described as :

"A movement that brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience."

The Harlem Renaissance - thought art, music, fashion, and literature - left an undeniable mark on American culture, but it did not end the marginalization of the Black experience in America, and this what Toni Morrison was referring to when pointing out the fact that Black literature wasn't to be taught or viewed as a rigorous art form. This occurred whether Black writers wrote novels and stories using African American Vernacular English, such as the work of Nora Zeale Hurston, or writing in standard American English.

Not only did Toni Morrison's work build on the creativity, critical, and impactful work of authors from the Harlem Renaissance, throughout her career she remained unapologetic about centering Black characters and experiences in her work. There were no White Saviors. She instead displayed the fullness of the Black experience - the good, bad, ugly, and painful. While other writers seemed to abhor labels, such as "Black writer," and didn't want their work assigned to a marginalized classification and shelf that was/is often at the back of a bookstore, Toni Morrison welcomed the term.

And being a "Black writer" didn't diminish her career. It didn't stop her from being presented with esteemed awards, or having her work adapted into a film. She remained an unapologetic "Black writer" who took up space on the highly coveted "Literature" shelves of bookstores as her work was fantastically displayed in stores, outside of and beyond February (Black History Month).

When the question about when she was going to write about and/or center non-Black characters came up, Toni Morrison didn't waste a second, immediately pointing out that those types of questions were inherently racist and were never asked of White writers. They were never asked about when they would center Black characters. And she often went on to explain her exact intentions.

Below is the explanation in her own words:

"I don't have to apologize or consider myself limited because I don't [write about white people] - which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books.

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."

When we look closer, there is one sub-group that Toni Morrison truly wrote for, and that is Black women and girls. Her books allowed us to see our stories come to life on a page in such a meaningful way. She once shared the following:

"I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes."

Her work was intersectional and didn't attempt to make us choose between our Blackness and womanhood. It all-at-once exposed our vulnerabilities, insecurities, strengths, and resilience. And being a Black woman in the United States, or any part of the world, certainly requires a level of resilience. Malcolm X's statement made during the 1960s, remains true today: "The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman."

The ubiquitous and constant disrespect that Malcolm X was describing and what Toni Morrison highlighted in her books is the effect of misogynoir. Misogynoir is something that has always existed, even before we had a word for it. It is a term coined by queer Black feminist Moya Bailey, in 2010, to describe a special form of misogyny that is explicitly directed towards Black women, where race and gender both play roles in bias. Misogynoir makes Black women the most "disrespected, unprotected, and neglected" people globally - not only in the United States. And this is due to the marginalization of our multiple identities, and the fact that every " Ism" that one can think of, whether sexism, racism, colorism, texturism, ableism, classism, along with homophobia, impacts Black women.

Toni Morrison's work gave us vivid examples of this unique form of prejudice, bias, and hatred throughout her work. In fact, it is fitting that her first and last novels, The Bluest Eyes and God Help The Child, both centered Black girls/women whose self-images were negatively impacted by misogynoir. The characters Pecola Breedlove and Bride were both made to feel like the color of their skin and eyes, as well as their features, were undesirable. While Pecola literally prayed for blue eyes, Bride depended on surface beautification that didn't lead to the acceptance or celebration of her beauty, but to fetishization.

Toni Morrison wrote an updated foreword to The Bluest Eyes in 2007, explaining her reason to create a character like Pecola, who was so deeply impacted by misogynoir: She wanted to focus "on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female"

Gifts of Wisdom

Ultimately, through her novels, essays, interviews, and statements, Toni Morrison left us with gifts of wisdom. Words to reflect on and to better interrogate the world that we live in. Her words also can serve as a tool to reject misogynoir and any feelings of inferiority - a world where Black people and our experiences are at the Center, and not marginalized.

In fact, the entire notion of white supremacy, despite its horrible history, was laughable to her. She pointed out its illegitimacy or historical inaccuracy by asking, "Where was the lecture on how slavery alone catapulted the whole country from agriculture into the industrial age in two decades? White folks' hatred, their violence, was the gasoline that kept the profit motors running." And really poked holes at the entire premise by stating, "I always knew that I had the moral high ground all my life. If you can only be tall when someone is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. White people have a serious problem."

And White people, particularly White Americans have certainly proved they have a serious problem. It is a problem linked to the decades-long mass shootings that plague the country that are predominantly carried out by White men, who the media, politicians, and others immediately address with sympathetic treatment. Something "had to happen to them" or "make them" carry out these atrocious acts. That something may be mental illness, trauma, broken homes, and yes, even video games. Just a plethora of ridiculous excuses that ignores the fact that other groups in the country experience and are exposed to the same conditions (or worse), but do not go on these murderous rampages. White privilege created these mass shooters and white privilege protects them long after the dead have been buried.

For instance the Los Angeles Times published this horrible and disingenuous Op-Ed that listed four commonalities seen in mass shooters per some research study, but never once mentions the fact that they are White men. That omission of this obvious factor leaves the research as being nothing more than bias garbage, and the "journalism" lacks any credibility since the obvious is going to be ignored.

America's problems of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege continues to hurt all Americans. Those shooters are also killing white people. And the feat of losing that privilege, of having to live in a changing country led many voters to choose a president (45) whose vision of America resembles the days of decades past, that they deem to have been "Great". Much of Toni Morrison's work is based in those periods. We can just check her written record to prove that those days were far from great.

As pointed out by Toni Morrison, far too many White Americans require others to be on their knees in order for them to be tall and feel secure. Thus, for them, equality (resulting from the loss of white privilege) feels like oppression.

During Toni Morrison' 80+ years of life, she witnessed these changes in America and released the essay " Making America White Again " for The New Yorker, shortly after the 2016 presidential election. This is one of the last essays that she wrote and it is certainly a gift of wisdom that describes the cultural anxiety which motivated most White Americans to vote for Trump:

"So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters-both the poorly educated and the well-educated-embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan."

Among the Ancestors

Toni Morrison was a national treasure and literary genius who garnered global acclaim for her ability to vividly and honestly tell the story of the Black American experience. She was unwavering in her centering of Blackness, and courageously highlighted the damaging effects of racism and colorism when few authors with national platforms were willing to address these issues. Her stories had depth, and were intersectional and thought-provoking.

She is a foremother, an ancestor, whose shoulders - we must now stand on - left behind a body of work that will entertain, challenge, and educate us.

And I will leave you with this challenge that Toni Morrison has left behind - it is the challenge that she first presented to herself, and it led her to write her first novel at 39 years of age:

" If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

Black Metamodernism: The Metapolitics of Economic Justice and Racial Equality

By Brent Cooper

I'd been thinking about this idea for a while before a redditor asked the very pointed question: Are there any black metamodernists? I didn't really have a complete answer yet, which is 'yes and no.' It's a complicated question, and it doesn't seem like many are rushing to answer it. Mostly no in the explicit sense like Hanzi , of developing the "metamodern" concept and advancing a program beyond the discourse of the Dutch school . But yes in many other ways, both explicit and implict.

Black to the Future

For starters, there is one obscure but direct source for 'black metamodernism,' in Transatlantic dialogue: contemporary art in and out of Africa , 1999 (limited to a snippet view). Art history professor Moyo Okediji described contemporary African-American art in terms of metamodernism as an "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism." Without access I cannot offer a thorough review, but the point is clear; black metamodernism exists and was another one mostly missed.

The book jacket lists a number of black artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is considered a type of black metamodernist described as 'returnee artists'; "African-American artists who return from Africa with a new awareness of their identiy that affects their work." (from Monni Adams book review ). This concept could certainly apply to Malcolm X or Dave Chappelle as well, who were forever changed and radicalized by their pilgrimages to Africa. I think metanoia, a fundamental change of mind, plays such a role in metamodern sensibility. All of this seems to align with metamodern critique, art, praxis, and values, and yet we do not hear much about a black metamodernism today.

Martin Luther King has already been accurately characterized as metamodern by Alexandra Dumitrescu, who thinks "he might have been a metamodernist avant la lettre ," and I couldn't agree more. King had a vision so progressive that it is only just being fully realized (actualized) today. The dream was cut short by his assassination, for which the white establishment is necessarily implicated. Even though he's gone and from a different era, his actions and ideas resonate now in a crucial way because they are still not achieved, so it's a battleground issue (conservatives try to co-opt and re-write MLK). And if we are going to mention MLK, perhaps we should also include Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Fred Hampton and countless other black activists ahead of their time, as implicitly metamodern.

Cornel West could be a metamodern thinker, pictured above, but he has never used the term, and this distinction matters, given its history at this point and his ability to wax on postmodernism. As I addressed in Gonzálezean Metamodernism, West is a good candidate to embrace the discourse, not only because he is invoked by González in that context, but because more broadly black theology is at the root of Hispanic liberation theology, and West is a cutting edge philosopher of sorts. Now is as good a time as any to (re-)introduce black metamodernism, as it builds on the turn González proposed for Hispanic Americans. Black people too are metamodern aliens in the postmodern promise land.

In Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018), James Brunton asks the right question, but also misses the source material I've mentioned. He draws his theory from Vermeulen and van den Akker, and David James and Urmila Seshagiri (2014), as well as many black poets, but he is yet another scholar 'missing metamodernism' in the broader sense I describe, and Okediji 's black metamodernism specifically.

This is a call to action to implicit black metamodernists, many of whom I discuss here, to cross over, to represent, and join the paradigm shift explicitly; my inspiration for metamodernism has in part already come from many of them. Wolfgenghis_Khan wants you; and so do we. I have written just two other articles about race/ black issues; one about black abstract art (where Basquiat is mentioned), and one about how racism is "abstracted " (made obscure), particularly by white racism against black people in the US. These are facets of my approach to metamodernism, and how abstraction can reveal or obscure the nature of racial politics and discourse. And in those I also have missed much of what I describe in this article, so it is all (re)combining into a broader black metamodernism.

Green Metamodernism

In terms of metamodern theory itself we can consider Nordic or Dutch as varieties of green metamodernism. The are green by being or having moved from the left beyond the liberal status-quo, but also green in the sense of being inexperienced or naive. To be sure, they are brilliant, but green (new, fresh) compared to their metamodern forebearers who have been missed. In the dominant Dutch School (art/ history/ culture) mode, the artist Reggie Watts is considered metamodern for his mind-boggling and heart-warming sincere absurdism. Donald Glover is metamodern too, as described here (2014), and here (2017), not least for his meta-humour in the metamodern show Community. Also, here is very comprehensive site, Metamodernity and Because the Internet , dedicated to the study of Donald Glover/ Childish Gambino and metamodernism. And this is all before his song/video " This is America " (2018) made a profound statement about race. After, we can understand him better through a lens of black metamodernism.

Green metamodernists generally do not theorize race directly or explicitly, although Hanzi has deconstructed the alt-right at some length . The general aversion is probably in part because the importance of the subject is generally implied as metamodernism is ostensibly about synthesizing and transcending both the postmodern critique (which includes the intersectionality of race, gender, class, etc) and its target, modernism. Race just becomes a smaller but still important detail in a broader context of meta-theory, planetary crisis, and metamorphosis (systems-change). But race theory is also peripheral in part because these metamodern epistemic communities are mostly white people who are tacit allies.

On the other hand, 'black metamodern' discourse has not been maintained or linked up with contemporary metamodern discourse. So the problem is two-way. This crossover should happen for two reasons: 1) by metamodernism not addressing it, it appears racialized, ignorant, or biased, and 2) by black discourses not combining with the broader paradigm shift, it remains disempowered and marginalized by the anti-postmodern and white nationalist political climate.

Metamodernism, from its Dutch and Nordic schools of origin, appears to have a eurocentric and white bias, though they have a global orientation and sensibility, as well as tacit understanding and concern about systemic racism. As we've seen in all versions, metamodernism doesn't ignorantly deny the merits of postmodern critique, or abandon social justice that conservatives and centrists have written off, nor does it embrace the full excesses of SJW culture and what has been termed 'grievance studies' literature by some determined IDW-adjacent academic hoaxers - The whole problem there is that they don't realize that all academia/ scholarship has similar problems (even their own fields, which aren't social science), but they are singling out and mocking social justice while social justice isn't being achieved in reality.

But metamodernism hasn't yet provided a clear or viral enough answer for the postmodern impasse. Or at least we've tried, and few have paid attention. Meanwhile, the new centrism of the Intellectual Dark Web has filled the void (or rather spoke over the Other) with anti-postmodern and anti-social justice diatribes that actually inflame systemic racism (which they deny exists). Those on the left who have already united against the IDW would do better to understand their moves as metamodern, and generate greater collective coherence as such.

The IDW would have you believe progressivism is a lost cause, yet they stand in the way, provide no alternative, and tune out the people actually working on those problems. The IDW remain do not engage with actual leftist politics, let alone black sociology. I offered a broad critique of the IDW over a year ago , trying to pre-emptively assuage the culture war, much of which still holds up. The IDW have gotten worse in some respects, have been critiqued harder, and now is quickly crumbing and becoming obsolscent, giving rise to a new emergent discourse.

There is also the odd (right-wing) person who is fond of metamodernism, but interprets it for their own ends without really understanding it. They support Trump. They like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. They are against immigration for personal (identity) reasons. They have no interest in the thorough critiques of any of these things. They, of course, have also been missing the metamodernisms as I have described in this series, but also in the contemporary sense that comes from Dutch and Nordic versions, because there's nothing in those sources to inspire right-wing ideology. On the contrary, they demand a much closer read of history, theory, and social consciousness.

In general, metamodernism is post-political, beyond the left-right spectrum, and refers to the era we are in (and so does hypermodernity). But along a particular axis of issues, metamodernism as a movement and sociological theory is uniformly aligned with the leftist movement today, as it is expressed throughout this series (vis-a-vis technology, liberation theology, black socialism), and some of my other writings. This doesn't mean conservatives aren't welcome to participate and contribute - they are - but it means zero tolerance for ignorance about what postmodernism actually means, and regressive dogmas about climate change or social justice. In the Dutch and Nordic versions, metamodernism assumes the viability of a socialist steady state, not surprisingly because they are from successful ones, and are relatively successful in such societies. The idea is to provide that to everyone, and it's not a pipedream.

Metamodernism, by all available standards, reflects a progressive culture towards a cosmopolitan post-capitalist demilitarized vision of society that will mitigate climate risk, not an ethnonationalist hyper-capitalist militarist denialist prophecy of social control that will accelerate and exacerbate collapse. The choice is starkly contrasted, and the latter is called hypermodernism, not metamodernism. With this in mind, I see no right-wing person actually theorizing metamodernity, coherently at least, but there is still a need for a course correction in green metamodernism by black metamodernism.

Back in Black Metamodernism

My role here is not to be an expert on black metamodernism per se, but to defer to the real experts in their fields and to help widen the space of the new discourse. Outstanding black scholars are not in short supply, but are still fighting an uphill battle against a white-privileged status-quo. Many are immensely wise, strong willed, and influential, and yet lack the clout they truly deserve. Their critiques have not reached far enough to affect the needed change. And the lack of convergence through metamodernism has not helped either.

Notable black thinkers/ activists/ leaders include Cornel West, Charles W. Mills , Tressie Mcmillan Cottom, Michelle Alexander, Ta-nehisi Coates, Michael Eric Dyson, Benjamin Dixon, Mansa Keita, Bill Fletcher Jr., Wosny Lambre, Briahna Joy Grey, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Kwame Anthony Appiah , Patricia Hill Collins , Kimberlé W. Crenshaw , Angela Y. Davis , Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , and many more . Could this be a cross section of black metamodern thought? Many of them have theorized or criticized postmodernism as well, so it would not be a stretch to entertain metamodernism, especially with these added perspectives (Borgmann, González, black, in addition to Dutch and Nordic strands).

This negligence of black metamodernism is part of the wider pattern of Missing Metamodernism  - even amongst black scholars. They could perhaps be forgiven for not dropping everything and devoting themselves to Dutch or Nordic metamodern developments, but they also have a precedent with 'black metamodernism,' so we hope they will learn and develop it with us and speak up. Take up this meta- mantle and converge with metamodernism more broadly, to develop a new paradigm.

Much of the public discourse is not lacking in racial awareness, evidenced by the following TED talks, but it's a broader question of some (white) people's interests and attention spans. And the mainstream media is still deeply filtered and divisive over race issues. My purpose here is just to share some of what's out there, so that it can't be ignored or missed by those interested in metamodernism. And so it can't be denied by the centrists and right-wingers that want to preserve some mythical abstraction of white Western civilization. The point is that black culture was metamodern before some industrious white people rediscovered metamodernism.

In The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History, David Ikard recounts the story of his son in Grade 4, who was taught that Rosa Parks was frail old black women, diminishing her life-long struggle and the story of social justice behind her. David wanted to confront the teacher, but because of his experience with the "white fragility" of some people, he knew that might be a bad idea. So he instructed his son to learn the true history, which he did, and his son gave a speech debunking the myth. The teacher apologized to student, and subsequently retaught the Rosa Parks lecture. This is why Rosa Parks wrote her autobiography, so she could tell her own story, David said, but it still so easily becomes whitewashed. In 1950s, lynching was normal. MLK's house was bombed twice. Rosa parks was not an 'accidental activist.' These facts are often submerged by a more sanitized narrative.

Then there was a book draft David reviewed for his brilliant white professor "Fred" (not his real name) while he was a graduate student. Fred was writing a history of the civil rights movement, David explains, "specifically about a moment that happened to him in North Carolina when this white man shot this black man in cold blood in a wide-open space and was never convicted." David saw a problem in a particular personal story of how Fred talked with his black maid (which already has racial undertones in itself).

1968, MLK had just been assassinated, Fred is 8 years old, and his maid is crying and he asks why. "It'll be okay" he says… "Didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins?" and 'maybe things will work out.' The maid, despondent as she was, tempered herself and gave little Fred a hug and a cold Pepsi. For Fred, it was proof people could cross racial lines to overcome adversity; that love could conquer all; he did a good thing. David called bullshit. The story wasn't about the maid, it was a selfish story about Fred naively thinking he was helping. The whole episode was clouded by the fact Fred was technically her employer, so she couldn't get mad at him. After being called out, Fred then realized that he misread the moment.

And there is many more TEDx that challenge basic misconceptions and expose systemic racism: Black Self / White World - lessons on internalized racism | Jabari Lyles | TEDxTysonsSalon (2017); White Men: Time to Discover Your Cultural Blind Spots | Michael Welp | TEDxBend (2017); Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis (2016). Not to mention the ample books and documentaries out there.

From the Intellectual White Web to Black Lives Matter

The more you know, the less ignorant you are, but some people can't be bothered. From the current smorgasbord of trashy thought leaders, Jordan Peterson is probably the most obtuse white person one can picture. He is tacitly against identity politics and racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism, while not having a clue how they actually operate in the world and through his own discourse. The Peterson paradox is being able to unironically praise MLK in one sentence and condemn his core values (like democratic socialism ) in another without an inkling of cognitive dissonance.

Imagine being so functionally ignorant of systemic racism that you lecture about how 'white privilege is a marxist lie' at Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC (2018), behind a picture of Abe Lincoln, as if that means something in this context. It is scholarly dereliction to be so ignorant about those concepts, to say the very least. And then to cry crocodile tears when Michael Eric Dyson calls you out as a "mean mad white man." And then for your demagogic bile and self-help slop to fuel the xenophobic incel rage of white nationalist shooters. And then to get even angrier that you have incessant critics, as if don't they have something important to explain to you. And then you give a high school book report of The Communist Manifesto to Zizek. But at least you've made over $1M in the past year and are now doing a business scam thing with Kobe Bryant and George W. Bush , and chumming with far right politicians who want to purge humanities teachers. So much for classical liberalism. Fear not mean white man, have a cold Pepsi, we know you're doing your best, just like "Fred" was with his maid.

At the end of the day black metamodernism is not just about the 'black' modifier; it's not self-interested minorities with narrow identitarian priorities, like their white majority racist counterparts. Many black scholars do not dwell on race, they are well rounded, but rather race is forced upon them because of their skin color and place in society. Some become experts by choice, others by circumstance. The dream is for racial equality and economic solidarity, not black supremacy, but white anxiety keeps murdering this dream, keeping the nightmare (whitemare?) alive and well in America.

"Black Lives Matter" (BLM) is actually a proportional response to the criminalization of drugs, profiling of minorities, and being incarcerated or killed by racist or paranoid cops. Whether the cops are overtly racist or subconsciously is beside the point, because they are still racist in effect and consequence. Opponents of BLM generally miss the point, only seeing a black power grab, but that itself is a racist interpretation based on ignorance, fear, and (social) media distortion and polarization. The reality is, as Brunton described it;

"The Black Lives Matter movement argues that we need to recognize precisely the opposite of what the movement's hashtag declares that is, historically, white patriarchy has failed to treat black lives as though they matter. American liberal democracy has failed to provide the rights and privileges of citizenship to a large portion of the citizenry, and the election of a black president has failed to usher in a post-racial society." - Brunton, Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018)

Like with MLK, this progressive (black) metamodernism includes the racial struggle, but is about the larger quest for socio-economic and even environmental justice. As such, black metamodernism is not reducible to a shallow form of identity politics. To avoid this caricature, the first task is to consolidate the new subfield as metamodern, as could be done for each path in (ie. Borgmann, González, etc…). The second task is to re-integrate back into a broader more inclusive notion of metamodernism to address the meta-crisis of hyper-capitalism. This series tries to advance both tasks in a small way.

Furthermore, it's all about climate change now, the anthropocene, and (quite certain) global existential risks that humanity are creating. There is this overriding sentiment that if 'we're all going to die' then might as well do the right thing now. And as you can see (below), black metamodernists are already ahead of this curve, which is why we should already be united under one paradigmatic umbrella.

The Black Socialists of America were on the podcast New Models - Episode 12: BLACK SOCIALISTS (Z, Busta, Keller, @LILINTERNET ). They describe how they founded it response to how Cornel West was attacked by "black liberals" for critiquing Ta-nehisi Coates, and realized there wasn't a real platform for Black American socialists, anti-capitalists, leftists, etc. At 7:30, they start to get into it;"I don't want to slam postmodernism too hard here but…" Needless to say, they are beyond postmodernism, and have a thoughtful critique that could be described as metamodern.

The Michael Brooks Show (TMBS) invokes black sociology often (consider the work of the Association of Black Sociologists on twitter too), especially with the frequent guest Bill Fletcher Jr . Brooks is so committed his twitter bio says "Member of the Yacubian Left," a nod to the theory that an ancient 'black scientist' created white people through eugenics. On TMBS 91 " Wonkery Won't Save Us & Green Imperialism ," Brandon Sutton (The Discourse podcast) was recently on to brilliantly break down systemic racism and the neoliberal agenda (May 21, 2019). Sutton is also cautious about cancel culture and performative wokeness that run the risk of undermining their goals. TMBS has been critical of Kanye's politics and black activism (vis-a-vis Trump), from black perspectives. Briahna Joy Gray (former Intercept editor and now Bernie's press secretary) is a regular guest too.

Michael Brooks and guests have been the most incisive critics of the IDW, because they already have this implicit metamodern awareness, as noted in Gonzálezean metamodernism. To be sure, black metamodernists would go after the mostly white Intellectual Dark Web, not join it like Candace Owens, Coleman Hughes, or Thomas Sowell to be instruments for a racist status-quo. See ' Coleman Hughes is bad for the discourse ', and this vid , and James B. Stewart, Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture (2006). Hughes and Sowell, despite whatever intellectual merits, are truly not grounded in racial reality, and are certainly not metamodernists, but reactionary modernists.

Last Light on Black

There is still so much more to explore in this potential subfield than I have not covered here. I have just scratched the surface of black metamodernism, as with the other articles in Missing Metamodernism. Afrofuturism seems pretty metamodern. The movie Black Panther was a critical and commercial success; perhaps a black metamodern film in a metamodern franchise. A black writer named Germane Marvel has authored a couple Medium posts on metamodernism which seem to offer fresh philosophical musings about it; Meta Something? , followed by Meta Nothing? Research in Black Feminist Science explores how "the intellectual endeavors of marginalized black women have historically represented radical challenges to structures of knowledge and systems of oppression."

Some more artefacts of black metamodernism to consider include Get Out , The Legacy of Black Reconstruction, by Robert Greene II , Bernie's Plan for Racial Justice, by Meagan Day , The Boondocks (TV series) , and Into the Spiderverse . And through the internet over the past couple years I have connected with a few black people in Africa and elsewhere interested in metamodernism, but without having a proper African version of it. I think now it is safe to say there is one, and it can be developed more.

Conclusion

I hope I have established a solid precedent for what I suggest by a broad 'black metamodernism'; a shrewd awakening and reality check for what Charles W. Mills calls 'white ignorance,' among many other things, that metamodernism has not hitherto immunized against. Social justice still demands resolution, despite what the (pseudo-)intellectual posturing against it would tell you. The ample literature on structural racism may seem to shout through the matrix of postmodernism, incomprehensible to the new center, but we are listening. In a time when racial tensions are still high and systemic racism persists around the world, particularly against people of color in the United States, not to mention the scourge of white nationalism and dastardly race/IQ pseudoscience, we cannot make excuses for the absence or negation of a black metamodernism that was always present.

Furthermore, postmodernism and social justice are under constant attack for the wrong reasons, while questionable postmodern (gibberish) scholarship is still being produced, normatively for the right reasons, but at the limits of critique. For many of us in the culture war, this is the whole point of a metamodern intervention; to cut through the bullshit and end the culture war itself (along with actual war), while also reforming the research and education paradigm towards these ends. Who but (black) metamodernists could most aptly advocate for this?

→ Read Part 1: Missing Metamodernism
→ Read Part 2: Borgmannian Metamodernism
→ Read Part 3: Gonzálezean Metamodernism

Brent Cooper is founder and Executive Director at The Abs-Tract Organization , a Canadian think tank.