Between Protest and Politics

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the official Black Lives Matter Movement (the Black Lives Matter Global Network) as a point of departure to argue that Black Lives Matter (BLM) in general expands our epistemological framework for thinking about black freedom movements, black freedom dreams, and black freedom strategies. By analyzing the movement’s explicit refusal to be likened to civil rights movement organizations as a concurrent attack against intraracial sexism, heterosexism, and transphobia, the article insists that BLM deprivileges heteronormativity to show that black freedom dreams must include gender and sexual liberation. By considering BLM’s rejection of capitalism as a broader critique of neoliberalism’s forceful role in maintaining black dispossession, the author posits that BLM desires to disrupt the state’s tendency to use the black middle class to enact, enforce, and reinforce an economic order that relies upon race and racism to codify and cement black inequality. Finally, the author posits that the movement’s tactics and goals provide a framework through which to enact short-term change, while pushing to dismantle the larger system of antiblack racism that is refracted through global capitalism.