Political blackness and Palestinian solidarity

JVL Introduction

Annie Olaloku-Teriba writes about how for the 1960s movement “blackness was a structural position brought into being by material conditions, rather than any innate quality of particular people. A position created by American society, which then made possible the radical critique of that society.”

But she also tells the story of how the internationalist political solidarity that emerged out of this analysis was displaced, in the States and elsewhere, by a fragmentation into communities of colour, competing with each other for advantage, rather than struggling together.

Material conditions are now very different from those of the 1960s and we can’t simply reappropriate the old. We need to find a new language about how we identify ourselves, and with whom we find common cause to help us build new solidarities needed for the challenges we face.

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This article was originally published by Red Pepper on Tue 22 Sep 2020. Read the original here.