The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives

Description

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has gained worldwide visibility as a grassroots social justice movement distinguished by a decentralized, non-hierarchal mode of organization, and in 2020 Black Lives Matter protests across the country shook America's moral conscience to its core. M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at Black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it terms a "war against Black people," as well as the "shared struggle with all oppressed people." Yet despite the significance of the social, political, and economic goals of M4BL, as well as the innovative organizational leadership strategies it employs, M4BL has so far received little sustained philosophical attention. The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives brings philosophical analysis to bear on the aims, strategies, policy positions, and intellectual-historical context of M4BL. Leading scholars tackle such themes as: "Black Lives Matter" as a political speech act, M4BL's conception of the value of Black lives, the gender dynamics of the Movement, the relation of M4BL to other Black liberation movements and transitional justice movements, the Movement's new forms of leadership and organization, and the impact of racism on the normative assessment of the criminal justice system. The volume broaches a wide range of pressing issues in the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender, and the philosophy of punishment. It is vital reading for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences interested in race, inequality, and social justice movements. cover The Movement for Black Lives Copyright Contents Contributors Introduction Part 1 1. What “Black Lives Matter” Should Mean 2. “And He Ate Jim Crow”: Racist Ideology as False Consciousness 3. He Never Mattered: Poor Black Males and the Dark Logic of Intersectional Invisibility Part 2 4. Reconsidering Reparations: The Movement for Black Lives and Self-​Determination 5. The Movement for Black Lives and Transitional Justice Part 3 6. Positive Propaganda and the Pragmatics of Protest 7. Value-​Based Protest Slogans: An Argument for Reorientation 8. The Movement for Black Lives and the Language of Liberation Part 4 9. Can Capital Punishment Survive If Black Lives Matter? 10. Sentencing Leniency for Black Offenders Part 5 11. The Violence of Leadership in Black Lives Matter 12. Speaking for, Speaking with, and Shutting up: Models of Solidarity and the Pragmatics of Truth Telling 13. Sky’s the Limit: A Case Study in Envisioning Real Anti-​Racist Utopias Index