Harlon L. Dalton BLACK PEOPLE SHOULD be honest about the fact that we are not all in the same boat when it comes to dealing with racial abuse. Some of us are shielded from it most of the time; others face it on a daily basis. Most of us live somewhere between those extremes. Even […]

Beginning with Harlon Dalton, the authors in Part II explore the an­tiracist construction of Black racial victimhood. Dalton suggests that the Black community’s prioritization of race over gender or sexual identity is disturbing because it asks individuals to forsake important parts of their identity and suffer injustices in silence in order to re­main authentically Black. […]

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “EVERY DAY, IN every way, we are getting meta and meta," the philosopher John Wisdom used to say, venturing a cultural counter­part to Emile Coue’s famous mantra of self-improvement. So it makes sense that, in the aftermath of the Simpson trial, the focus of attention has been swiftly displaced from the […]

Although the March evidenced mass black political mobilization and signaled a degree of black political independence, its political project was never clearly articulated. The exact purpose of the March re­mains an enigma. Although atonement ultimately became the stated purpose of the March, when Minister Farrakhan first announced his plans, atonement for sin was not the […]

If the March evidenced the inherent limits of modern-day marching and the rhetoric of pessimism, it also signaled a significant shift in African American political culture. The significance of the shift is this: at least hundreds of thousands of black Americans determined that condi­tions in this country were sufficiently disturbing that they were motivated to […]

Over the past decade, Minister Farrakhan has slowly moved the Na­tion of Islam from its separatist position toward mainstream political activity. His dramatic entry into the 1984 presidential campaign inau­gurated this shift. During the election, Minister Farrakhan registered to vote for the first time and urged his members to do so as well. After his […]

Marching has played an important role in the African American tradi­tion of dissent. One of the first acts of the emancipated slave was to walk. Caught up in the emotion that was their new-found freedom, some slaves walked to find lost siblings.6 Others moved about aim­lessly, enjoying the freedom of movement and self-possession. But the […]

Toward a Politics for the Twenty-First Century Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Secret griefs are even more cruel than public miseries. —Voltaire1 We have come to the end of a language and are now about the busi­ness of forging a new one. For we have survived, children, the very last white […]

Today every one of us knows that criminality is not the consequence of the hereditary character of the Algerian, nor of the organization of his nervous system. The Algerian war, like all wars of national liber­ation, brings to the fore the true protagonists. In the colonial context, as we have already pointed out, the natives […]

Reflections on the Million Man March Anthony Paul Farley The world of the spectacle has reached its apogee. New forms of resistance are beginning to break out everywhere. These are any­thing but well known since the whole point of spectacle is to por­tray universal and hypnotic submission. But resistance exists and is spreading. —Anonymous1 ADDICTION […]