Black History from the Civil Rights Movement to BLM
Constructs like “black-led movements,” the “black freedom movement,” or the “black radical tradition” often strip black life and politics of complexity and, of course, contingency by imagining that our positionality as oppressed people insulates black Americans—like no other human beings, ever—from all proximate cultural, economic, and political influences except for racism and sexism.
The bottom line, though, is that the political gains black Americans have made have always been the product of contingent, utilitarian, cross-racial political coalitions or agreements. This is among the reasons the scope of blacks’ conceptions of both inequality and equality, how blacks conceive the obstacles confronting them, what black Americans perceive to be social justice, along with the terrain on which the fight for a just society can and will be fought, are different depending on when and where you are talking about.