This is a good reminder of how much Black political discourse over the last decade–with its emphasis on “representation” and the fetishization of secondary and tertiary identities–was ultimately vacuous. Far too many people ceased to be concerned with social change or even the acquisition of power, but rather with hyperindividualistic acquisitiveness within the neoliberal order. Black “activists” reveled in fashionable and vociferous (but impotent) rhetoric yet eschewed the lessons of Malcolm X and others that correctly identified our condition as internal colonialism, and also posed solutions to it (territorial sovereignty). Hence, in turning away from the historic traditions of Black radicalism, many instead embraced Western liberal theories–ideas that have proven incapable of even freeing whites from the thrall of capitalism or growing authoritarianism.
We were never going to sing, march, or boycott our way to freedom. We certainly weren’t going to twerk our way to it. Now that all of these illusory paths have exhausted themselves, perhaps we can take the path less traveled.