Aktion	Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Frist	Vorbestellungen
Vorbestellen	Zweigstelle: 19., Billrothstr. 32	Standorte: FS.E GS.BOR John / Startseite	Status: Verfügbar	Frist:	Vorbestellungen: 0

Why did a movement as powerful as the one inspired by the murder of George Floyd fall short of securing its most militant demands? After Black Lives Matter argues that the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injustice that underpins the crisis of policing: socioeconomic inequality. (Verlagstext)

 

In "After Black Lives Matter," Cedric Johnson offers a powerful Marxist critique of contemporary anti-racist politics in the United States. He argues that the dominant framework of Black Lives Matter reduces deeply rooted systemic and economic problems to purely racial ones. Johnson asserts that modern identity politics has been captured by liberal elites and corporations to promote superficial diversity rather than structural change. By focusing heavily on police bias and cultural representation, this mainstream approach largely ignores the devastating impact of global capitalism on working-class communities. Johnson demonstrates that police violence and mass incarceration are not just products of prejudice, but essential tools used by the state to manage historic deindustrialization and widespread poverty. Consequently, he criticizes the "Black elite" for using racial solidarity to advance their own political and professional interests while failing to improve the material conditions of poor Black Americans. True liberation, according to Johnson, cannot be achieved through corporate diversity initiatives or the mere diversification of the ruling class. Instead, he calls for a shift away from divisive identity frameworks and toward a broad, multi-ethnic working-class alliance. Ultimately, the book insists that ending policing crises and racial inequality requires a radical, socialist overhaul of the American political economy.

 

"A compelling argument for reinstating a meaningful anticapitalist analysis and politics into the fight to end police violence and the harms of the criminal justice system in the United States. Readers will undoubtedly come away with new perspectives that deepen their understanding of the successes and limitations of Black Lives Matter and its political vision."

--Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City

 

"A virtuoso performance! Weighing the successes and limitations of Black Lives Matter, Johnson concludes that identity-based mobilization--confusing what people look like with what they need--cannot substitute for majoritarian political coalition-building."

--Barbara J. Fields, Columbia University

 

Inhalt:

Introduction: the frayed Thin Blue Line -- Policing capitalist society -- Making consumers and criminals : the postwar urban transformation and the origins of policing as we know it -- The roots of Black Lives Matter : racial liberalism and the problem of surplus population -- The world of Freddie Gray : dispossession, rebellion and containment in revanchist Baltimore -- Whose streets? Building the just city in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago and beyond -- The labor of occupation -- Conclusion : Abolish the conditions.