Lecture 16 Black Conciousness, liberation, struggle for HR

Double consciousness

WEB Du Bois, seeing oneself through the eyes of society that denies one full humanity

Black consciousness

Steve Biko, psychological liberation and self-definition as the basis of political struggle

Negritude

Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Leon Damas; affirming black identity and culture against colonial assimilation

Black liberaiton

from civil rights → movement for black lives, a struggle for freedom not only for legal inclusion

Black feminist thought

Sylvie Wynter, June Jordan, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde; race, gender, and class analyzed together, self-determination and love as political practice

Tometi and Lenoir

black lives matter not a civil rights movement (2015)

Beyond reform

the struggle is not a police reform just as the Montgomery boycutt was not merely about a seat

Full rights

civil, social, political, economic and cultural rihts as set out in the UDHR including self-determination

Structural view

police violence as a symptom of structural injustice, jobs schools, health, community, investment

Intersectionality

queer, trans, migrant, disabled, and formerly incarcerated people at the center

MLK jr. LFBJ Provacation

fact-finding, negotiation, self purification, direct action

MLK jr. LFBJ Achiume

the urgent debate, liberal empire; a transnational tradition resulting in success

Phlonise Floyd June 17 2020

addresses the un human rights council during an urgent debate on systemic anti black racism in policing; unprecedented and trigged by a global hegemon, a liberal democratic paragon, explicitly framed around systemic racism in first world state

Achiume 1947

NAACP, drafted by WEB Du Bois, appeals to the world: early NGO request for UN investigation of a member state

Achiume 1951

Civil rights congress, invoked genocide convention and tied US white supremacy to imperalism abroad

Achiume June 2020

600+ rights groups led by ACLU and US HR Network + Africa group at the council, demands a special session and independent inquiry into racist policing in the US; formally requests the Urgent Debate

Achiume Mandate

indepedent comission of inquiry, a high commissioner report

Achiume Target

US named in the operative text, US reference removed; calls on all states

External pressure

diplomats report political and economic threats, including possible aid cuts from the US and some WEOG allies

Liberal diffusion

objection to singing out one country and appeals to a shared global problem stripped the demands of their force

Liberalism as a shield

several western delegations expressed confidence in US rule of law and open public debate, treating them as proof the US could address the problem itself

Empire and race

drawing on Aziz Rana and Makau Mutua; the liberal project is also an imperial one and racial hierarchy can be compatible with liberal order

Implication

advocacy through mechanisms needs the same radical abolitionist and decolonial strategies that drove the 2020 uprisings