Published in Feb 2018

Eliminating black poverty through politics

One problem with justice organizations is that if you don't have a serious black politics at the beginning, one that's trained on the elimination of racialized poverty, then it's not going to come later, when you are trying to institutionalize and hustle around and get donors to keep the lights on and the salaries paid.

If you are serious about poor black people, you are going to alienate your upper class men who want to keep the patriarchy, your upper class women who haven't figured out that anti-black politics is a feature, not a bug, of liberal feminism, your environmentalists who'll want to put Michael Vick in jail over dogs, your black middle and aspiring middle class who have gotten there by treating white people just so, your black nationalists and pessimists who have given up on contesting shared governance and pine for a fantasy of a black nation.

In short, if you are going to do justice work, go ahead and put "eliminating black poverty through politics" in the group's constitution, because if it's not there, your group will find a way to fight for everything except that.


By Irami Osei-Frimpong