“A Place Where Freedom Means Something”: James Baldwin's Global Maroon Geographies

Racial capitalism has been an active terrain of political economy debate since the 1970s, but the last 5 years have seen a wider diffusion of the concept. We identify one modern component of racial capitalism that has seldom been discussed in extant work: the role of conservative economics at legitimating racial capitalist processes. To this end, we raise the following question: What does a narrative of support for racial capitalism look like in contemporary political economies, where racism denial is pervasive in political discourse, and trust in authorities are at an all-time low? We submit that narratives legitimating contemporary racial capitalism exist, but they are more subtle, indirect, and more plausibly deniable than the narratives that supported chattel slavery and the 100 years of Jim Crow that followed. The Civil Rights Era provided a legal basis for anti-discrimination efforts previously diluted by American jurisprudence and law. In this essay, we engage in a broader conversation about the intersections between discourse and structure before explicating exactly how conservative economics supports and reinforces racial capitalism. Explicating the components of this architecture is crucial to illustrating the value of racial capitalist approaches within the political economy canon.

Anna Julia Cooper lived a remarkable life. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper was twenty-six at the time the 1885 Berlin Conference ‘formalized’ the colonization of Africa, participated in the first Pan-African Conference in London fifteen years after that, received her doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1925 (at the age of sixty-six) and lived to see the formal ‘decolonisation’ of most of Africa; dying a few months before the United States’ Civil Rights Act was passed. While Cooper is rightly celebrated as a Black feminist icon, an educator, a literary theorist, and a pioneer of Africana philosophy, less attention has been paid to her influence on (Black) Internationalism and, by extension, her (still) pioneering critiques of international law. This short essay will focus primary on two aspects of Cooper’s intellectual ouvre as they relate to international law, namely: ‘intersectionality’ and ‘racial capitalism’.

This essay focuses on the life and writing of African American novelist, playwright, and activist Julian Mayfield, whose under-studied work and extraordinary life tell a story about race and civil rights in literature that challenges familiar accounts. By analyzing Mayfield’s published novels, The Hit (1957), The Long Night (1958), and The Grand Parade (1961), as well as some of his essays, plays, and other unpublished work written in the 1960s and 1970s after his move from Harlem to Ghana, I describe an “alternative civil rights literature” not set in the South or primarily concerned with documenting segregation, but focused instead on racial capitalism, black history, internationalism, and on the ways “race” had meaning in postwar United States. Although he has remained largely absent from black literary histories, Mayfield was a prolific figure connected to numerous moments of civil rights reform, and his writing is a model for thinking about other texts that engage questions of race and rights in ways markedly distinct from the dominant narrative of the Civil Rights Movement as such, and have not been recognized as “civil rights literatures” at all.

It is necessary to draw from and push forward the Black radical tradition to realize a world free from racial capitalism. Drawing on the work of Keri Day, I argue that the Azusa Street Revival represents a stream of the Black radical tradition. Further, I contend that the civil rights movement associated with Martin Luther King Jr. represented a continuation of this stream. Specifically, I argue that the Azusa Street Revival and the Beloved Community as envisioned and built by King formed what I call anti-political communities. I refer to these communities as anti-political because they reject the politics of racial capitalism and begin the work of building outside its domain via the Black radical tradition. These anti-political communities tore down racial capitalism through the new kind of community they built, and they have lessons for how we can do so in the present.

This chapter offers insight on how existing paradigms within Black Studies, specifically the ideas of racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition, can advance sociological scholarship toward greater understanding of the macro-level factors that shape Black mobilizations. In this chapter, I assess mainstream sociological research on the Civil Rights Movement and theoretical paradigms that emerged from its study, using racial capitalism as a lens to explain dynamics such as the political process of movement emergence, state-sponsored repression, and demobilization. The chapter then focuses on the reparatory justice movement as an example of how racial capitalism perpetuates wide disparities between Black and white people historically and contemporarily, and how reparations activists actively deploy the idea of racial capitalism to address inequities and transform society.

The emergence of the civil rights policy regime during the 1960s in the U.S. formalized the transition from the pre–civil rights era to the civil rights era. As we see in this paper, the subsequent post–civil rights era has been shaped by increasing challenges against principles of civil rights law, chiefly by political conservatives. Indeed, opponents have had significant success in undermining key parts of the civil rights policy regime. Conservatives and others have sought to usher in an era of “color-blind” policy. Basic civil and political rights were thought by most to be questions of “settled law” in the aftermath of the relatively successful civil rights movement. However, “color blind” political opposition has challenged this assumption. Ironically, this means that there is a yet unsuccessful battle to cement foundational civil and political rights in the United States. Following Marshall, this further deters the development of more egalitarian social rights.

Blue Notes 2.0: The Diachronic Resonance of Langston Hughes During the George Floyd Protests: A Foreword

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has a rich history of Civil Rights struggles and its people continue to resist racial oppression in systems of housing, labor, education, policing, transportation, and others. Dating to 1892, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), a historically Black college/university (HBCU), has attracted students who have become organizers and activists in the fight for social justice in the local community. These include Theodosia Simpson, a leader of the radical Black women-led tobacco workers union; Carl Matthews, who started the first victorious lunch counter sit-in in North Carolina; and Dr. Larry Little, who co-founded the first official Black Panther Party chapter in the South. In that tradition, I have developed a “People’s History Tour of Winston-Salem” that takes current WSSU students outside the classroom to learn about the Civil Rights struggle at a variety of important sites. This critical pedagogy has students apply key sociological concepts that bolster their understanding of racial stratification and efforts to eradicate it. The goals of this assignment are for students to explore classroom curriculum about White supremacy, racial capitalism, and social movements at relevant historical and contemporary sites in Winston-Salem. By doing so, I aim for students to have transformative experiences that tie their readings and classroom discussions to the community spaces where that material comes alive.

Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

HOW THE SUPREME COURT DISTORTED TEXT, IGNORED HISTORY, AND GASLIGHTED THE BOLD PROMISE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 A <i>Comcast</i> Case Study

Book Review| July 01 2017 Civil Rights and Beyond, and Further Beyond Brian Behnken, ed. Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-Century United States. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016. Karma R. Chávez Karma R. Chávez University of Texas, Austin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Civil and Human Rights (2017) 3 (1): 119–124. https://doi.org/10.5406/jcivihumarigh.3.1.0119 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Karma R. Chávez; Civil Rights and Beyond, and Further Beyond. Journal of Civil and Human Rights 1 January 2017; 3 (1): 119–124. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jcivihumarigh.3.1.0119 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Civil and Human Rights Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: BOOK FORUM You do not currently have access to this content.

Although there have been significant civil rights gains made in recent decades, the United States is now experiencing a resurgence of many of the societal ills that have plagued the country for decades. From an insurrection that was seemingly inspired by white supremacist ideology to ongoing examples of police brutality against Black people, anti-Asian violence, anti-LGBTQ violence, and recurring islamophobia, the country sits at an apparent crossroads. There is an urgent need to advance a civil rights agenda that addresses the impact of these societal ills on the affected communities. At the same time, however, we are confronting these ills during a point in history that urges us to think both within and beyond our national borders and boundaries. For many citizens across the globe, similar societal ills exist and are coupled with the challenges presented by our warming planet. Moreover, since the spring of 2020, these dilemmas have been embedded within the throes of an ostensibly unending global pandemic. Indeed, the COVID-19 virus has, in many ways, exacerbated our societal ills and amplified existing inequalities. For instance, more privileged global populations have priority access to lifesaving vaccines. Meanwhile, the risks presented by climate disruption are also unevenly distributed, with such risks being mitigated more by economic comfort than by geography or preparedness. As if these challenges were not enough, online disinformation is a growing concern in this era of COVID-19 and climate disruption. The spread of misleading or patently false information about both the pandemic and global warming poses significant threats to alleviating the harms of each. By creating collective uncertainty about the pandemic, climate change, and a host of other societal issues, disinformation undermines public trust in governmental institutions and, in many cases, adversely affects the already frayed relationship these institutions have with vulnerable populations. Moreover, in a world where communication increasingly happens online, digital disinformation challenges the meaning of truth and breathes life into the extremist ideas that often proliferate on social media. Yet attempting to curb the harms of online disinformation implicates concerns over free speech and free association in cyberspace, which in turn implicates broader concerns over digital rights. Along with climate change, both of these emergent themes—COVID-19 and online disinformation—represent the uncertainty of our changing times and, because they often disproportionately or adversely impact vulnerable populations, pose new challenges for civil rights and democracy. Each of these themes also links two different but interconnected affairs: one that focuses on the civil rights issues of our local and national communities, and the other that focuses on the related wellness of our global neighbors and larger concerns over planetary life. Connecting local civil rights–based issues to similar global matters is of increasing importance because it coincides with the emergence of the Anthropocene: the “catch-all description of the overwhelming impact of human activity on the planet.” While often viewed through the lens of climate change, the Anthropocene is also a theoretical tool for contesting the deep-rooted political and socioeconomic inequalities of the present. Social scientists have employed this theory to examine such socioeconomic and governmental issues arising from systematic inequalities and injustices on a global scale. This Foreword therefore highlights how recent transnational debates regarding issues presented by COVID-19 and online disinformation implicate broader civil and human rights concerns. It argues that being mindful of these pervasive issues—which affect the local, the global, and the planetary—is paramount to the ethos of civil rights and democracy in the uncertain times of the Anthropocene. As the Articles in this Colloquium reveal, promoting civil rights at home is an ongoing, multi-dimensional project. This Foreword advocates a broader view of that project as encompassing the range of issues that define our current struggle with planetary and global justice.

Silencing Dissent: How Biased Civil Rights Policies Stifle Dialogue on Israel

Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals

This essay traces how a range of black cultural producers in the post–civil rights era represent and contest the transhistorical phenomenon I term imperative time, the dominant construction of time within racial capitalism as a demand or pressure exerted on black life. More specifically, I examine how imperative time constrains black mobility and comportment. I study Misha Green’s television series Lovecraft Country (2020) and James Alan McPherson’s essay “The Express” (2003) for their restagings of how Jim Crow imperatives continue to govern black movement beyond the time and terrain of segregation. I then analyze how McPherson’s short story “A Solo Song: For Doc” (1968) and Rankine’s prose poem Citizen (2014) and video-essay “Situation 5” (ca. 2011) figure black countermoves challenging the post–civil rights imperative to embody black progress. Through somatic acts of idleness, motive energy, and pointlessness, these cultural representations buck the demands of imperative temporalities. Studying how black movement sets the clock and calendar otherwise, this essay offers ways to rethink black chronology—not as accretive sequences but as oscillating, irresolute transits of time.