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tesslaah's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
5.0
There's so much to love about this book. My copy has sentences & paragraphs underlined on almost every page--I'm sure your copy will too. At the most basic level, this book is about Black Liberation. In particular, where the United States fails at this and how we can create a new way to get us to this liberation. On page 194, Taylor says "Perhaps at its most basic level, Black liberation implies a world where Black people can live in peace, without the constant threat of the social, economic, and political woes of a society that places almost no value on the vast majority of Black lives... In that sense, Black liberation is bound up with the project of human liberation and social transformation." Taylor uses endless evidence and explanation that all point to this idea. What is Black liberation? How do we know when we've gotten there? When Black lives matter.
This book is beautifully written, dives deep below surface level, and pushes back against common "post-racial" society tropes all while inspiring the reader to imagine a better world. Taylor makes me believe this better world is possible, but it requires a lot of work.
"Can there be Black liberation in the United States as the country is currently constituted? No." (page 216)
This book is beautifully written, dives deep below surface level, and pushes back against common "post-racial" society tropes all while inspiring the reader to imagine a better world. Taylor makes me believe this better world is possible, but it requires a lot of work.
"Can there be Black liberation in the United States as the country is currently constituted? No." (page 216)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, and Police brutality
sarahjsnider's review against another edition
5.0
This is a good companion piece to Stamped from the Beginning, as it picks up more of the modern-day history of the struggle for liberation. Surprisingly quick to read but still scholarly, it should be an interesting document in the future as well as now.
I also want to address one thing the author mentioned re: African-Americans being excluded from Social Security benefits. Originally, SS excluded agricultural and domestic laborers. So, while it was perhaps not deliberately racist, it was certainly punitive, given the large numbers of African-Americans working in those fields in 1936. More can be found here: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html
I also want to address one thing the author mentioned re: African-Americans being excluded from Social Security benefits. Originally, SS excluded agricultural and domestic laborers. So, while it was perhaps not deliberately racist, it was certainly punitive, given the large numbers of African-Americans working in those fields in 1936. More can be found here: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html
gingerrachelle's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
ursulamonarch's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing, powerful & compelling. I cannot wait to read the author's writing on the current administration.
books_take_me_away's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
morgandhu's review against another edition
5.0
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, African American scholar, socialist and academic - she is an assistant professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University - offers a profoundly incisive and extensively researched study of US politics American racism and Black resistance in recent decades in her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.
Taylor's viewpoint is grounded in both socialist and anti-racist theory - and her analysis looks at both economic and cultural forces. Taylor's focus here is on the era from the civil rights movement to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the similarities and differences between the two movements, and ultimately on "the potential for a much broader anticapitalist movement that looks to transform not only the police but the entire United States." However, she begins her analysis with an examination of America's history as a racist state, from the earliest foundation of a slave-based economy to the exclusion of Black Americans from the benefits of the New Deal. In particular, Taylor points to the effects that the cultural myth of "American exceptionalism" has had, particularly in the Cold War period, in suppressing any consideration of institutional and systemic injustice in American society, and the subsequent evolution of the idea of the "culture of poverty" as the reason for the existence of economic and social inequity in the supposedly freest and most economically mobile country in the world.
Taylor notes the beginnings of a wider understanding of racial inequity as a systemic issue - and one with material as well as cultural elements -during the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, the extension of the welfare state under Johnson, and most significantly, in the multiple Black Liberation movements, and particularly The Black Panthers - that followed in the latter half of the 1960s.
Unfortunately, as Taylor demonstrates, this early materialist critique of the philosophies and methods of institutionalised racism faded in the 1970s as more conservative, 'personal responsibility' narratives take the central place in the debate on both racism and poverty, and the doctrine of 'colourblindness' emerged as a means of appearing non-racist while continuing to engage in administrative and economic practices that were inherently unjust to people of colour.
As the political climate in America became increasingly conservative in the years following Nixon - even among Democrats, but alarmingly so among Republicans - the twin narratives of colourblindness and the 'culture of poverty' became fixed as the foundations of public policy. Even among the middle class Blacks who increasingly gained access to positions of political and economic power, these narratives went unchallenged, while social and economic conditions worsened for poor blacks (and other people of colour). By the time that conditions were ripe for the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, as Taylor notes in comparing the situation in 2014 immediately prior to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson to that preceding the emergence if the civil rights movement, "The main difference is that today, when poor or working-class Black people experience hardship, that hardship is likely being overseen by an African American in some position of authority. The development of the Black political establishment has not been a benign process. Many of these officials use their perches to articulate the worst stereotypes of Blacks in order to shift blame away from their own incompetence."
Taylor sees the betrayal of black communities by black politicians and elites as the inevitable outgrowth of a switch from grassroots resistance and critique of the political and economic power structure structures to a strategy based on electoral politics - one which, due to the nature of the political process in America left black politicians financially beholden to corporate money and conservative voting bloc brokers.
After examining political viewpoints surrounding the oppression of Black Americans, Taylor turns to an examination of racism and violence toward Blacks in criminal justice institutions. She opens with a discussion of laws restricting black movement, employment and home rental/ownership after the Civil War, laws whose violation was punished by enforced labour on municipal projects - thus beginning the carceral-based slavery system that has replaced the plantation-based slavery system. Her analysis shows that, despite the end of 'chattel slavery,' the American state continues to find ways of compelling black people to labour, without appropriate remuneration, in the interests, and at the leisure, of white property-owners.
Having set the scene, as it were, by delineating the history of the conditions - institutional racism and its consequences for the average black person, police brutality, the narrative of a 'culture of poverty' and the co-opting of the black elite - which could, given the necessary spark, bring about a new Black liberation movement, Taylor takes a close look at the Obama regime and its influence on perceptions of racism, recalling the initial optimism of blacks and progressive whites at the election of a black man to the office of President.
However, Obama's reticence on racial issues and acceptance of the 'culture of poverty narrative among Blacks led to a sense of disillusionment among those same black and progressive voters. Taylor outlines the processes which helped to build a loose coalition between social justice activists and the economic justice activists of the fledgling Occupy Wall Street movement.
Taylor pinpoints the killing of Trayvon Martin as the turning point that led to the coalescence of the BlackLivesMatter movement. Despite protests, demonstrations and attempts by Black and anti-racist activists to challenge the narrative, Martin was characterised as a dangerous criminal and his killer, George Zimmerman, as a victim: "Out of despair over the verdict, community organizer Alicia Garza posted a simple hashtag on Facebook: “#blacklivesmatter.” It was a powerful rejoinder that spoke directly to the dehumanization and criminalization that made Martin seem suspicious in the first place and allowed the police to make no effort to find out to whom this boy belonged."
While the death of Martin ad the acquittal of his killer marked the beginning of the BlackLivesMatter movement, Taylor identifies the crucial moment when that ignited mass resistance in the killing of Michael Brown:
As she recounts the growing response to the deaths of Brown and other black boys and men at the hands of police across the country, Taylor draws clear distinctions between the positions of the black 'older statesmen' such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who sought to defuse tensions and re-establish the legitimacy of the government in dealing with police violence and racism, and the younger generations of activists who sought immediate and direct action.
Taylor notes other differences between the BLM movement and the more established Black civil rights organisations - the prominence of women and LGBT people, its decentralised structure and use of social media, the flexibility of its tactics, its work in coalition building with labour and other movements, and the development of a "systemic analysis of policing.... that situated policing within a matrix of racism and inequality in the United States and beyond."
In the book's final chapter, Taylor discusses the ways in which radicalisation on political and economic issues - an analysis that links capitalism to the material conditions that Black and other marginalised people are faced - with is a necessary part of the struggle for Black liberation. She reminds us of the socialist perspectives adopted by 60s activists such as the Combahee River Collective and the Black Panthers, and traces the roots of black radicalism in the United States from the early days of the Communist Party in that country. Beginning with the words of Karl Marx on the relation between colonial exploitation, slavery, and capitalism, she outlines a radical understanding of the relation between the capitalist system and the oppression of black people, leading to the conclusion that only a restructuring of society which embraces economic as well as social justice can bring about the goal of black liberation.
"Racism in the United States has never been just about abusing Black and Brown people just for the sake of doing so. It has always been a means by which the most powerful white men in the country have justified their rule, made their money, and kept the rest of us at bay. To that end, racism, capitalism, and class rule have always been tangled together in such a way that it is impossible to imagine one without the other. Can there be Black liberation in the United States as the country is currently constituted? No. Capitalism is contingent on the absence of freedom and liberation for Black people and anyone else who does not directly benefit from its economic disorder. That, of course, does not mean there is nothing to do and no struggle worth waging. Building the struggles against racism, police violence, poverty, hunger, and all of the ways in which oppression and exploitation express themselves is critical to people’s basic survival in this society. But it is also within those struggles for the basic rights of existence that people learn how to struggle, how to strategize, and build movements and organizations. It is also how our confidence develops to counter the insistence that this society, as it is currently constructed, is the best that we can hope to achieve. People engaged in struggle learn to fight for more by fighting for and winning something. But the day-to-day struggles in which many people are engaged today must be connected to a much larger vision of what a different world could look like."
Taylor's viewpoint is grounded in both socialist and anti-racist theory - and her analysis looks at both economic and cultural forces. Taylor's focus here is on the era from the civil rights movement to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the similarities and differences between the two movements, and ultimately on "the potential for a much broader anticapitalist movement that looks to transform not only the police but the entire United States." However, she begins her analysis with an examination of America's history as a racist state, from the earliest foundation of a slave-based economy to the exclusion of Black Americans from the benefits of the New Deal. In particular, Taylor points to the effects that the cultural myth of "American exceptionalism" has had, particularly in the Cold War period, in suppressing any consideration of institutional and systemic injustice in American society, and the subsequent evolution of the idea of the "culture of poverty" as the reason for the existence of economic and social inequity in the supposedly freest and most economically mobile country in the world.
Taylor notes the beginnings of a wider understanding of racial inequity as a systemic issue - and one with material as well as cultural elements -during the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, the extension of the welfare state under Johnson, and most significantly, in the multiple Black Liberation movements, and particularly The Black Panthers - that followed in the latter half of the 1960s.
Unfortunately, as Taylor demonstrates, this early materialist critique of the philosophies and methods of institutionalised racism faded in the 1970s as more conservative, 'personal responsibility' narratives take the central place in the debate on both racism and poverty, and the doctrine of 'colourblindness' emerged as a means of appearing non-racist while continuing to engage in administrative and economic practices that were inherently unjust to people of colour.
As the political climate in America became increasingly conservative in the years following Nixon - even among Democrats, but alarmingly so among Republicans - the twin narratives of colourblindness and the 'culture of poverty' became fixed as the foundations of public policy. Even among the middle class Blacks who increasingly gained access to positions of political and economic power, these narratives went unchallenged, while social and economic conditions worsened for poor blacks (and other people of colour). By the time that conditions were ripe for the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, as Taylor notes in comparing the situation in 2014 immediately prior to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson to that preceding the emergence if the civil rights movement, "The main difference is that today, when poor or working-class Black people experience hardship, that hardship is likely being overseen by an African American in some position of authority. The development of the Black political establishment has not been a benign process. Many of these officials use their perches to articulate the worst stereotypes of Blacks in order to shift blame away from their own incompetence."
Taylor sees the betrayal of black communities by black politicians and elites as the inevitable outgrowth of a switch from grassroots resistance and critique of the political and economic power structure structures to a strategy based on electoral politics - one which, due to the nature of the political process in America left black politicians financially beholden to corporate money and conservative voting bloc brokers.
After examining political viewpoints surrounding the oppression of Black Americans, Taylor turns to an examination of racism and violence toward Blacks in criminal justice institutions. She opens with a discussion of laws restricting black movement, employment and home rental/ownership after the Civil War, laws whose violation was punished by enforced labour on municipal projects - thus beginning the carceral-based slavery system that has replaced the plantation-based slavery system. Her analysis shows that, despite the end of 'chattel slavery,' the American state continues to find ways of compelling black people to labour, without appropriate remuneration, in the interests, and at the leisure, of white property-owners.
Having set the scene, as it were, by delineating the history of the conditions - institutional racism and its consequences for the average black person, police brutality, the narrative of a 'culture of poverty' and the co-opting of the black elite - which could, given the necessary spark, bring about a new Black liberation movement, Taylor takes a close look at the Obama regime and its influence on perceptions of racism, recalling the initial optimism of blacks and progressive whites at the election of a black man to the office of President.
However, Obama's reticence on racial issues and acceptance of the 'culture of poverty narrative among Blacks led to a sense of disillusionment among those same black and progressive voters. Taylor outlines the processes which helped to build a loose coalition between social justice activists and the economic justice activists of the fledgling Occupy Wall Street movement.
Taylor pinpoints the killing of Trayvon Martin as the turning point that led to the coalescence of the BlackLivesMatter movement. Despite protests, demonstrations and attempts by Black and anti-racist activists to challenge the narrative, Martin was characterised as a dangerous criminal and his killer, George Zimmerman, as a victim: "Out of despair over the verdict, community organizer Alicia Garza posted a simple hashtag on Facebook: “#blacklivesmatter.” It was a powerful rejoinder that spoke directly to the dehumanization and criminalization that made Martin seem suspicious in the first place and allowed the police to make no effort to find out to whom this boy belonged."
While the death of Martin ad the acquittal of his killer marked the beginning of the BlackLivesMatter movement, Taylor identifies the crucial moment when that ignited mass resistance in the killing of Michael Brown:
As she recounts the growing response to the deaths of Brown and other black boys and men at the hands of police across the country, Taylor draws clear distinctions between the positions of the black 'older statesmen' such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who sought to defuse tensions and re-establish the legitimacy of the government in dealing with police violence and racism, and the younger generations of activists who sought immediate and direct action.
Taylor notes other differences between the BLM movement and the more established Black civil rights organisations - the prominence of women and LGBT people, its decentralised structure and use of social media, the flexibility of its tactics, its work in coalition building with labour and other movements, and the development of a "systemic analysis of policing.... that situated policing within a matrix of racism and inequality in the United States and beyond."
In the book's final chapter, Taylor discusses the ways in which radicalisation on political and economic issues - an analysis that links capitalism to the material conditions that Black and other marginalised people are faced - with is a necessary part of the struggle for Black liberation. She reminds us of the socialist perspectives adopted by 60s activists such as the Combahee River Collective and the Black Panthers, and traces the roots of black radicalism in the United States from the early days of the Communist Party in that country. Beginning with the words of Karl Marx on the relation between colonial exploitation, slavery, and capitalism, she outlines a radical understanding of the relation between the capitalist system and the oppression of black people, leading to the conclusion that only a restructuring of society which embraces economic as well as social justice can bring about the goal of black liberation.
"Racism in the United States has never been just about abusing Black and Brown people just for the sake of doing so. It has always been a means by which the most powerful white men in the country have justified their rule, made their money, and kept the rest of us at bay. To that end, racism, capitalism, and class rule have always been tangled together in such a way that it is impossible to imagine one without the other. Can there be Black liberation in the United States as the country is currently constituted? No. Capitalism is contingent on the absence of freedom and liberation for Black people and anyone else who does not directly benefit from its economic disorder. That, of course, does not mean there is nothing to do and no struggle worth waging. Building the struggles against racism, police violence, poverty, hunger, and all of the ways in which oppression and exploitation express themselves is critical to people’s basic survival in this society. But it is also within those struggles for the basic rights of existence that people learn how to struggle, how to strategize, and build movements and organizations. It is also how our confidence develops to counter the insistence that this society, as it is currently constructed, is the best that we can hope to achieve. People engaged in struggle learn to fight for more by fighting for and winning something. But the day-to-day struggles in which many people are engaged today must be connected to a much larger vision of what a different world could look like."
sanguine_otter's review against another edition
4.0
My desire to read this grew out of a disconcerting feeling that I didn’t truly know what was going on. For a man of color I was, and remain, albeit a little less after reading this book, woefully unaware of the conditions that gave rise to the systematic disenfranchisement of Black people and minorities. You see, I knew we had been disenfranchised. I understood that to be the truth; I just didn’t know how it came about, and I, therefore, was inclined to ignore, willfully at times, the current state of Black folk in this country. This book, however, doesn’t allow for ignorance.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor skillfully unveils the different ways in which surreptitious forces coalesced to give rise to the unfathomable rates of unemployment, incarceration, poverty, and police brutality that we observe in Black communities. The statistics and anecdotes are mind-boggling. One can only be amazed how, a nation that touts the lofty ideals of “Equality” & “Justice” can simultaneously be the breeding ground for a vehemently executed, and fervently implemented marginalizing agenda. In Taylor’s analysis, no stone is left unturned as every culprit that was/is complicit, from Nixon to Obama to Raegan to Black elites, is brought to stand trial. Though succinct (only 200 or so pages), Taylor is able to impart an incredibly/breathtakingly comprehensive analysis that barely leaves room for any error.
I could cite and quote this book until pigs fly or Black people get their due, but I won’t. I will leave you with just one thing. ¾ of the way through the book, the term “state violence” is introduced, first brought to life by Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the #BLM movement. As Garza states in an excerpt used by Taylor, the conduct of the government IS state-sanctioned violence; its ability to cause suffering, death, and, even worse, stand idly by as these are happening to its citizens — done with absolute impunity — is a crime of the highest order. As Taylor states:
“The focus on “state violence” strategically pivots away from a conventional analysis that would reduce racism to the intentions and actions of the individuals involved. The declaration of “state violence” legitimizes the corollary demand for state action”. It’s not merely that a random police officer killed a Black man; it’s not merely that a municipality sources 81% of its police officer’s salaries by heavily targeting black communities; it’s not merely that a significant portion of the working-class lives in abject poverty. It’s that all of these are connected; all of these issues, and more, are overseen and implicitly condoned by a government that is complicit in our suffering.
I lied, I want to leave you with one more thing, something you probably already know but maybe not something you’ve come to terms with. Personally, I didn’t resign myself to it until I read this book.
America has failed its people.
If you already knew this, well — I apologize for my tardiness.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor skillfully unveils the different ways in which surreptitious forces coalesced to give rise to the unfathomable rates of unemployment, incarceration, poverty, and police brutality that we observe in Black communities. The statistics and anecdotes are mind-boggling. One can only be amazed how, a nation that touts the lofty ideals of “Equality” & “Justice” can simultaneously be the breeding ground for a vehemently executed, and fervently implemented marginalizing agenda. In Taylor’s analysis, no stone is left unturned as every culprit that was/is complicit, from Nixon to Obama to Raegan to Black elites, is brought to stand trial. Though succinct (only 200 or so pages), Taylor is able to impart an incredibly/breathtakingly comprehensive analysis that barely leaves room for any error.
I could cite and quote this book until pigs fly or Black people get their due, but I won’t. I will leave you with just one thing. ¾ of the way through the book, the term “state violence” is introduced, first brought to life by Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the #BLM movement. As Garza states in an excerpt used by Taylor, the conduct of the government IS state-sanctioned violence; its ability to cause suffering, death, and, even worse, stand idly by as these are happening to its citizens — done with absolute impunity — is a crime of the highest order. As Taylor states:
“The focus on “state violence” strategically pivots away from a conventional analysis that would reduce racism to the intentions and actions of the individuals involved. The declaration of “state violence” legitimizes the corollary demand for state action”. It’s not merely that a random police officer killed a Black man; it’s not merely that a municipality sources 81% of its police officer’s salaries by heavily targeting black communities; it’s not merely that a significant portion of the working-class lives in abject poverty. It’s that all of these are connected; all of these issues, and more, are overseen and implicitly condoned by a government that is complicit in our suffering.
I lied, I want to leave you with one more thing, something you probably already know but maybe not something you’ve come to terms with. Personally, I didn’t resign myself to it until I read this book.
America has failed its people.
If you already knew this, well — I apologize for my tardiness.