What the FUCK is a Black Marxist?
During a conversation about literacy in my Composition I class this past week, my student Abby responded very poignantly to our reflection question for the day: What does literacy mean to you?
She said that literacy was ‘the freedom and privilege to write and create what you want.’
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I have a very strong love for oppressed people, for my people. I want to see them free and I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free.
- Angela Davis, Vibrations for a New People, 1971
I first came across the community of Black Marxists in undergrad. The Democratic Socialists on campus wanted the NAACP to participate in a rally with them and some other activists on campus. They wanted us, a group of Black kids, to wear ski masks and bust down an administrative meeting with the President and demand he speak to us, or we wouldn’t leave. We had stated plainly that a group of Black kids in ski masks raiding a building doesn’t sound good for us but sounded really good for the majority white organization that would be using us as human shields so they can ‘see the Black people first.’ When we suggested calling a meeting beforehand for the public they called us scabs and phonies and decided to ditch the idea altogether. I guess it wasn’t that serious to them.
That experience led me to think - clearly, Black people have experienced this racist bullshit when organizing before? I had started with The Combahee River Collective Statement as a lot of queer Black girls that get into radical thought often do. I then moved on to Angela Davis and finally owned one of her books after someone left it in our English department book closet for grabs. I just recently finished scanning the entirety of that free book: If They Come In the Morning this past year.
I was deep into activist and organizing spaces, which often hosted read ins or book clubs around radical theory and organizing oppressed peoples. I met a wide range of socialists, democratic socialists, Marxists, communists, leftists, and liberals from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities. Read any of the literature by disabled, queer, indigenous, non-Western, and ‘othered’ politicians and activists that my student ID could allow me to get. I took every pamphlet, read every infographic, and asked every question I could think of. Like the Black radical academics that came before us, we all felt the weight and privilege of being able to go to school, think freely, and choose how we want to live our lives. It was important we know our ancestors, their practices, and their work, and we make new work from it. This was the same time I was learning about hoodoo, Sankofa, Santeria, West African Orishas, and reading queer Black people’s works of fiction and fantasy. The world they talked about is a part of my responsibility to build.
Black Marxism was popularized by a Black Trinidadian academic, playwright, novelist, and teacher, C.L.R. James in the 1940s after his move to England up until the 1980s. After denouncing Stalinism Leon Trotsky invited James to his home in Mexico City for more conversation. He started several organizations that were inspired by the Haitian revolution and revolutionaries who worked to free and lessen the obstacles marginalized peoples face in the world and spread the ideas of Marx and free radical thought as far and wide as possible. He wrote many plays, books, articles, and lectures about Black radical thought. When talking about intersectionality and the lens of freedom from Black women, queer, and trans people we have thinks like Angela Davis, Barbra Ransby, Assata Shakur, and Sami Schalk that write works that talk about communism, race, gender, ability, class, and more. This is where I really started enjoying hearing about the joy that Black marxists were finding in organizing for their people.
I want to see my people free.
Sooo, what do Black Marxists believe?
Black Marxists know that race and capitalism are one in the same. Capitalism creates systems that depend on genocide, violence, and exploitation to thrive. Systems like racism. Black Marxists remix the original teachings of Marx since they omit race and specifically Black people as revolutionary potential. Black Marxists reject the myth of a united working class and instead center Black agency and decolonization for its praxis. Overall, understanding how racism directly affects Black people is the key to freeing all oppressed peoples in the world. (I went through a few Substacks for this portion here is one main one.)
Sooo, what do Black Marxists do?
Black Marxists work to deconstruct the colonialized teachings passed down to their people through violence and slavery. They instead teach about African histories, non-colonized languages, food sustainability, racism, and situating Black histories into the heavily erased ones we are barely taught in school. This work is usually done through grassroots efforts, community organizations, schools, churches, and private organizers.
We work to free our people.
For me, that is working with queer and trans BIPOC survivors of sexual violence, Black children and their families, Black educators. How can I make these people’s lives better? Help them find housing? Help them eat? Or just be there for them?
Media (outside of the hyperlinks) that helped me understand Black Marxism:
C.L.R. James: https://youtu.be/qQFi9L-0SNU?si=U74GYm-rF-ztZhLS
Angela Davis: https://youtu.be/cGQCzP-dBvg?si=E7SBNbpSwHftn8p6
AfroMarxist Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AfroMarxist
Audio Companion Piece on my Patreon:
https://patreon.com/taylorwaits?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
