There remains a persistent widespread attempt to render the movement in Baltimore into something morally digestible for white audiences
That is, to translate it into something that can be articulated in white terms (or else condemn it)
(I'm using "white" here as both as a marker of white supremacy and a placeholder for a putatively "universal" or "neutral" perspective)
This is the case whether the perspective is a liberal one ("we need to invest in communities!") a Marxist one ("the workers have risen!")
Or indeed an anarchist one ("smash the state!") and/ or a post-political one ("a movement without demands!")
The worry is that in these acts of appropriation, the specificity of anti-black oppression and the resistance to that oppression is obscured
I get the desire to do this, in a context where Baltimore is dismissed as "violent" and Gray's death swept aside cos of "criminality"
But let's not forget that these terms - "non-violence" and "innocence" - are set and defined by whiteness
Like what does it mean to publish Freddie Gray's rap sheet? Is it something to disavow? Or does it actually tell us something important?
Specifically what does it tell us about a state that classifies 1/3 of black males inhabitants as "criminal"?
my mates a lecturer at sussex uni, tweeted this
