Black anarchism
Black anarchism is a term applied to a group of people of African descent who identify with the principles of anarchism. These people include, but are not limited to, Ashanti Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Greg Jackson, and Martin Sostre. Critics of the term suggest that it broadly eclipses important political differences between these multi-varied thinkers and incorrectly presents them as having a shared theory or movement. Black anarchism has had a major influence on the anarchist movement, black anarchists have a 100-year history in black-led anti-fascist and anti-racist history.[1]
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Regardless, the individuals to whom the label has been applied all oppose the existence of the state, the subjugation and domination of Black people and other ethnic groups and favor a non-hierarchical organization of society. In general, these individuals argue for class struggle while stressing the importance of ending racial and national oppression, opposing capitalism, patriarchy, the state, and white supremacy.
Worldview
Black anarchists generally rejected narrow or explicit forms of anarchism that ignore issues of race and national oppression. Pedro Ribeiro defines it as a deformed "white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism that cannot relate to the people" and that refuses to talk or deal with issues of race by saying "No, don't talk about racism unless it is in that very abstract sense of we-are-all-equal-let's-sing-kumbayas-and-pretend-the-color-of-our-skin-does-not-matter anti-racism."[2]
Ashanti Alston, who has explicitly used the term Black anarchism, also argued that "Black culture has always been oppositional and is all about finding ways to creatively resist oppression here, in the most racist country in the world [the United States]. So, when I speak of a Black anarchism, it is not so tied to the color of my skin but who I am as a person, as someone who can resist, who can see differently when I am stuck, and thus live differently."[3] As an anarchist, Alston added that he viewed Black nationalism as progressive yet also as deeply limited, stating that:
"Panther anarchism is ready, willing and able to challenge old nationalist and revolutionary notions that have been accepted as 'common-sense.' It also challenges the bullshit in our lives and in the so-called movement that holds us back from building a genuine movement based on the enjoyment of life, diversity, practical self-determination and multi-faceted resistance to the Babylonian Pigocracy. This Pigocracy is in our 'heads,' our relationships as well as in the institutions that have a vested interest in our eternal domination."[4]
Contemporary
Most recently, activists and scholars have emphasized the importance of Black anarchism in the formation of histories surrounding the Black Liberation Army, Black Panther Party and other modes of the Black radical tradition beginning with slave rebellions in the European colonies of the late 18th century to the present day. In As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions of Liberation, activists William C. Anderson, Mariame Kaba and Zoé Samudzi, describe the necessity of Black anarchism in current political struggles, arguing that:
"Black Americans are residents of a settler colony, not truly citizens of the United States. Despite a constitution laden with European Enlightenment values and a document of independence declaring certain inalienable rights, Black existence was legally that of private property until postbellum emancipation. The Black American condition today is an evolved condition directly connected to this history of slavery, and that will continue to be the case as long as the United States remains as an ongoing settler project. Nothing short of a complete dismantling of the American state as it presently exists can or will disrupt this."[5]
See also
Notes
- Gershon, Livia (5 September 2020). "The Real Story of Black Anarchists". JSTOR.
- Ribeiro, Pedro (2016). "Senzala or Quilombo: Reflections on APOC and the Fate of Black Anarchism". Black Anarchism: A Reader. Black Rose Anarchist Federation. OCLC 1079407169.
- Alston, Ashanti (October 24, 2003). "Black Anarchism". Anarchist Panther. Archived from the original on March 13, 2008..
- @narchist Panther Zine. October 1999. 1 (1).
- Samudzi, Zoé; Anderson, William C.; Kaba, Mariame (June 5, 2018). As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation. Chico, California: AK Press. ISBN 9781849353168.
Further reading
- Anderson, William C. (2021). The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition. AK Press. ISBN 1849354359.
- Beswick, Spencer (2022). "From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)". Anarchist Studies. 30 (2): 31–54. doi:10.3898/AS.30.2.02. ISSN 0967-3393.
- Bey, Marquis (2020). Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism. AK Press. ISBN 184935376X.
- Emswiler, Aems DiNunzio (2020). "Conditions of possibility": towards an archival praxis informed by Black feminist anarchism and a critical trans politics (Thesis). University of Texas at Austin. doi:10.26153/tsw/14268.
- Harrell, Willie J. Jr. (2012). ""I am an Anarchist": The Social Anarchism of Lucy E. Parsons". Journal of International Women's Studies. 13 (1): 1–18. ISSN 1539-8706. OCLC 8093224507. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
- Heynen, Nik; Rhodes, Jason (2015). "Organizing for Survival: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Anarchism through the Life of Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin". ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 11 (3): 393–412. ISSN 1492-9732.
- Holcomb, Gary Edward (2007). Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance. University Press of Florida. doi:10.5744/florida/9780813030494.001.0001. ISBN 9780813030494.
- Insansa, Lisa (25 October 2022). "To be ungovernable: on the history and power of Black anarchism". gal-dem. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
- Kom'boa Ervin, Lorenzo (2021) [1988]. Anarchism and the Black Revolution. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-4575-8.
- Lovitt, Sean (2020). Mimeo Insurrection: The Sixties Underground Press and the Long, Hot Summers of Riots (Thesis). University of Delaware.
- McGowan-Arnold, Luke (2021). Towards A Black Anarchist Political Tradition: U.S. Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition (Thesis). Haverford College.
- Ramnath, Maia (2018). "Non-Western Anarchisms and Postcolonialism". In Adams, Matthew S.; Levy, Carl (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 677–695. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75620-2_38. ISBN 978-3319756196. S2CID 150357033.
- Tenorio, Sam C. (2021). "Assata's escape as disincarceral practice". Cultural Dynamics. 33 (1–2): 1–17. doi:10.1177/0921374020935137. ISSN 0921-3740.
- Tenorio, Sam C. (2022). "White Carceral Geographies". South Atlantic Quarterly. 121 (3): 515–539. doi:10.1215/00382876-9825962. ISSN 0038-2876.
- Williams, Dana M. (October 2015). "Black Panther Radical Factionalization and the Development of Black Anarchism". Journal of Black Studies. 46 (7): 678–703. doi:10.1177/0021934715593053. ISSN 0021-9347. JSTOR 24572914.
External links
- "Black Anarchism" by Chuck Morse includes transcript of a talk by Ashanti Alston.
- "Anarchist Panther".
- "Black Anarchism. A Reader".
- "Black Anarchism – Has Its Time Come?".
- "Senzala or Quilombo: Reflections on APOC and the fate of Black Anarchism"
- "Kuwasi Balagoon"
- "Anarchy and Chaos in Black Communities" by Robert A. Wicks at LewRockwell.com ("pro-market" anarchism).