On Black Radical Feminist Pragmatism

Abstract

A “reckoning” is an opportunity to settle a score. It is a moment of collision between what is and what is due. Woodly's excellent book not only espouses the formation and political organization of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) coalition, but it also describes how social movements challenge the status quo and demand transformation in light of systems that work only for the powerful few. This transformation, Woodly shows, is brought about by the grassroots theorizing and political praxis of social movement organizers. Reckoning models the development of these new ideas, demonstrating both their intellectual and practical legacies. In this essay, I consider Woodly's theoretical formulation of the M4BL's philosophy of “radical Black feminist pragmatism” and what I see are (1) its promise for centering the reorienting practices of radical Black feminist politics and (2) the ways “pragmatism” as a frame stands in tension with those radical elements of the movement.