We have seen this before: the wanton killing of Black people by police. The historical record is replete over four centuries and well into the early 21st century. Black lives do not matter in the
United States of America because they do not. They have never mattered. The current economic obsolescence of Black people has been in the making over the last 40 years with the dislocation and shifts in the industrial base of the U.S. economy. The Information and Technological Age, while benefiting from the creativity of Black talent, has foreclosed against all but marginal Black participation.
While we live in a post-enslavement culture and de jure racial segregation is passé, it is all too clear that racial domination and class exploitation structure …show more content…
We must interpret the killing of Black people as a historical matter. If not, then we will obscure the essence of the daily inhumanity visited upon Black people and fail to grasp the reasons why Black people’s resistance to this inhumanity is fraught by the seemingly inability to negate White dominance and see their humanity for themselves as free, whole, and transformative. Despite the fact that a “Black Lives Matter” movement (of sorts) has emerged from the reaction and fallout of the killings and judicial failures, resistance has been constrained by an inversion (intended, deliberate, or not) of Whiteness. The resistance has been reactionary rather that proactive, episodic rather than protracted, and momentary rather than sustaining. Despite the documented history of the glory and tragedy of Black liberation struggles inside the United States, weariness has been most characteristic of Black resistance against the centuries’ long dehumanization of the Black body and being.
Therefore, we attempt to turn to history to argue that the current killing of Black males by police results from the historical racial domination of Black people by the American
United States of America because they do not. They have never mattered. The current economic obsolescence of Black people has been in the making over the last 40 years with the dislocation and shifts in the industrial base of the U.S. economy. The Information and Technological Age, while benefiting from the creativity of Black talent, has foreclosed against all but marginal Black participation.
While we live in a post-enslavement culture and de jure racial segregation is passé, it is all too clear that racial domination and class exploitation structure …show more content…
We must interpret the killing of Black people as a historical matter. If not, then we will obscure the essence of the daily inhumanity visited upon Black people and fail to grasp the reasons why Black people’s resistance to this inhumanity is fraught by the seemingly inability to negate White dominance and see their humanity for themselves as free, whole, and transformative. Despite the fact that a “Black Lives Matter” movement (of sorts) has emerged from the reaction and fallout of the killings and judicial failures, resistance has been constrained by an inversion (intended, deliberate, or not) of Whiteness. The resistance has been reactionary rather that proactive, episodic rather than protracted, and momentary rather than sustaining. Despite the documented history of the glory and tragedy of Black liberation struggles inside the United States, weariness has been most characteristic of Black resistance against the centuries’ long dehumanization of the Black body and being.
Therefore, we attempt to turn to history to argue that the current killing of Black males by police results from the historical racial domination of Black people by the American