“Whatever We Call Our Politics—Leftist, Feminist, Anti-Racist—Dignity and Survival Are Our Core Concerns”: On the “Core Concerns” of the Black Lives Matter Movement by Dr. Reiland Rabaka Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies; Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies University of Colorado Boulder
After centuries of arduous struggle, the new collective cry of “Black Lives Matter!” has risen from the ashes and anger, the heartache and moral outrage, of the aftermath of the Black Freedom Movement (circa 1945 to 1975), which includes the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Women’s Liberation Movement, and Black Arts Movement (Jeffries, 2018). It is important to emphasize that the Black Lives Matter movement (hereafter abbreviated as BLM) is not about hating white people, but instead about loving Black people and defending them against anti-Black racist assaults (both physical and psychological). In The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, BLM co-founder Alicia Garza (2020) asserts, “For most of us, whatever we call our politics—leftist, feminist, anti-racist—dignity and survival are our core concerns” (p. 9). Many people know about the Black Lives Matter movement. However, few have taken the time to explore its core concerns, and how those core concerns were inherited from previous Black protest movements. Fewer still have examined the ways in which BLM built on the visions and missions of previous Black protest movements to develop an expansive and inclusive movement that has as much concern for the lives and struggles of Black women and Black queer folk as it is about Black men’s distinct lives and struggles. Revolutionary Blackness and Relearning to Love Ourselves (and Others) It is only when continental and diasporan Africans systematically and critically engage in interrogating white supremacist constructions of Blackness that we begin to consciously decolonize and deconstruct these false, anti-Black racist constructions of Blackness and reconstruct a new revolutionary Blackness—that is, a Blackness that transgresses and transcends anti-Black racism and white supremacy and, also, a bold Blackness that promotes 86
