Radical philosophy: An introduction

Abstract

Popular discourse about race in America is increasingly fraught. The #BlackLivesMatter movement and its offshoots are driven by rage at the seemingly endless announcement of the death of African Americans at the hands of policemen. And yet there is, as Salahmisah Tillet pointed out in a recent piece on the #SayHerName campaign, also a rage within this movement – a rage that black women feel at the tendency among black men to imagine violent acts of racism as ‘partrilineal’, even though no fewer than six black women died in or as a result of police custody in the first 8 months of 2015. How can activists address both of these patterns of injustice without compromising the central message of each cause? How, in other words, can radical activists appreciate the insights of intersectionality while maintaining the urgency of specific calls for change? [...]