All the push back to BLM

ένα αποκλειστικά λευκό σώμα ενόρκων

Their ultimate goal is to create in the present a future that overthrows the logic of neoliberalism

They didn’t want equal opportunity in a burning house; they wanted to build a new house

it never occurred to us to refuse to read a text simply because it validated the racism, sexism, free-market ideology, and bourgeois liberalism against which we railed. Nothing was off limits. On the contrary

Study groups

the formal classroom was never the space for deep critique precisely because it was not a place of love

if we argue that state violence is merely a manifestation of anti-blackness because that is what we see and feel, we are left with no theory of the state and have no way of understanding racialized police violence in places such as Atlanta and Detroit, where most cops are black

how can we embrace our students and acknowledge their pain while remaining wary of a culture that reduces structural oppression to misunderstanding and psychology?

This is also why diversity and cultural-competency training are the most popular strategies for addressing campus racism. As if racism were a manifestation of our “incompetent” handling of “difference.”

It is difficult to see this in a world where words such as trauma, PTSD, micro-aggression, and triggers have virtually replaced oppression, repression, and subjugation

The triumph of liberal multiculturalism also meant a shift from a radical anti-capitalist critique to a politics of recognition. This means, for example, that we now embrace the right of same-sex couples to marry so long as they do not challenge the institution itself

the programmatic adoption of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism vampirized the energy of a radical movement that began by demanding the complete transformation of the social order and the eradication of all forms of racial, gender, sexual, and class hierarchy

Powerful as this might be, the solution to racism still is shifted to the realm of self-help and human resources

Managing trauma does not require dismantling structural racism

Resistance is our heritage. And resistance is our healing

Violence was used not only to break bodies but to discipline people who refused enslavement

But what sustained enslaved African people was a memory of freedom, dreams of seizing it, and conspiracies to enact it—fugitive planning, if you will

the popularity of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me (2015), especially among black college students, rests on his singular emphasis on fear, trauma, and the black body

reading black experience through trauma can easily slip into thinking of ourselves as victims and objects rather than agents

anchors violence in their collective consciousness, produces fear and paranoia—wrapped elegantly in thrill—and shrouds the many ways capitalism, militarism, and racism are killing black and brown people

While every generation of black Americans has experienced unrelenting violence, this is the first one compelled to witness virtually all of it, to endure the snuffing out of black lives in real time, looped over and over again, until the next murder knocks it off the news.

Contrast this with black student protesters who appeal to the university to “repair a broken community,” to make students “feel safe, accepted, supported and like they belong,” and to remedy their sense of alienation through “intense ‘inclusion and belonging’ training for all levels of students, staff, faculty, and administration.”

“It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. In the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can.”

The authors advocate refuge in and sabotage from the undercommons, a subaltern, subversive way of being in but not of the university

Less than two decades later, the United Coalition Against Racism, a student organization at the University of Michigan, established the Ella Baker – Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education (BMC). The center was never conceived as a safe space for students of color but rather as a resource for anti-racist struggles “dedicated to the principle of thinking in order to act.”

A smaller, more radical contingent of protesters is less sanguine about the university’s capacity to change. Rejecting the family metaphor, these students understand that universities are not walled off from the “real world” but instead are corporate entities in their own right. These students are not fighting for a “supportive” educational environment, but a liberated one that not only promotes but also models social and economic justice

while trauma can be an entrance into activism, it is not in itself a destination and may even trick activists into adopting the language of the neoliberal institutions they are at pains to reject

I challenge student activists to not cleave their activism from their intellectual lives or mistakenly believe that because the university does not offer them the education they crave, it is beyond their reach.

But someone who sends pipe bombs to Democrats; plows through a crowd of anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Va.; or shoots up a church in Charleston, S.C., will not face domestic terrorism charges.

homophobic

Heroes of every color and creed who wear the uniform and risk their lives to keep passing down those blessings of liberty, police officers and the protesters in Dallas who all desperately want to keep our children safe.

When you ask why such "bad" cops are  armed and allowed to patrol the streets, one begins to see that lurking beneath this violence is a fiscal menace.