The Panthers Can't Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter

Description

In the wake of the mass protests over the police murder of George Floyd, nearly every major consumer brand proclaimed their commitments to antiracism, often with new ad campaigns to match their Tweets. Despite the historic scale of protests and ruling class approval, the most substantive reforms advanced by Black Lives Matter remained out of reach. Still less was achieved around policies that might help the most dispossessed and precarious Americans. Why has anti-racism been such a powerful source of mobilization but such a poor means of building political opposition capable of winning big reforms? Writing against the grain of popular left sentiments, Johnson cautions against the revival of ethnic politics. Instead, he calls for broad-based left politics as the only viable means for ending the twin crises of racial inequality and police violence. Redistribution, public goods, and multi-ethnic working-class solidarity are the only viable response to the horrors of police violence and mass incarceration. It just so happens that fighting the conditions that make crime and violence inevitable is also the means by which we can build a working-class majority and a more equal and peaceful nation.

Cedric Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. His 2017 Catalyst essay, "The Panthers Can't Save Us Now" was awarded the 2018 Daniel Singer Millenium Prize. In 2008, Johnson was named the Jon Garlock Labor Educator of the Year by the Rochester Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He previously served on the representative assembly for UIC United Faculty Local 6456.