The Making of Black Lives Matter by Christopher Lebron
Started in the wake of George Zimmerman's 2013 acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has become a powerful and incendiary campaign demanding redress for the brutal and unjustified treatment of black bodies by law enforcement in the United States. The movement is only a few years old, but as Christopher J. Lebron argues in this book, the sentiment behind it is not; the plea and demand that "Black Lives Matter" comes out of a much older and richer tradition arguing for the equal dignity--and not just equal rights--of black people. The Making of Black Lives Matter presents a condensed and accessible intellectual history that traces the genesis of the ideas that have built into the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Drawing on the work of revolutionary black public intellectuals, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Anna Julia Cooper, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King Jr., Lebron clarifies what it means to assert that "Black Lives Matter" when faced with contemporary instances of anti-black law enforcement. He also illuminates the crucial difference between the problem signaled by the social media hashtag and how we think that we ought to address the problem. As Lebron states, police body cameras, or even the exhortation for civil rights mean nothing in the absence of equality and dignity. To upset dominant practices of abuse, oppression and disregard, we must reach instead for radical sensibility. Radical sensibility requires that we become cognizant of the history of black thought and activism in order to make sense of the emotions, demands, and argument of present-day activists and public thinkers. Only in this way can we truly embrace and pursue the idea of racial progress in America.
To paraphrase Lebron, some progressive people struggle to construct a different kind of space, where blacks might stand as human beings demanding the recognition they deserve, where dignity is holy and autonomy inviolableThe Black Lives Matter movement represents that kind of space and possibility... Recommended. * W. Glasker (The State University of New Jersey, Camden), Choice Reviews Vol 55. *
Christopher Lebron's short, incisive book examines the racialised violence that defines US history: from the overt violence of slavery to the racial segregation of Jim Crow legislation, from white supremecist lynchings to the covert white privilege of society today. * Martin Myers, Times Higher Education *
Christopher Lebron's short, incisive book examines the racialised violence that defines US history: from the overt violence of slavery to the racial segregation of Jim Crow legislation, from white supremecist lynchings to the covert white privilege of society today. * Martin Myers, Times Higher Education *
Christopher J. Lebron is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time, which won the APSA Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Award.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780190601348 |
| ISBN 10 | 0190601345 |
| Title | The Making of Black Lives Matter |
| Author | Christopher Lebron |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2017-06-15 |
| Number of pages | 216 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |