Taylor Keeanga-Yamahtta, Black Lives Matter : le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine
Taylor Keeanga-Yamahtta. — Black Lives Matter : le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine. Marseille, Éditions Agone, 2017, 424 p., bibl., index.
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- 1 Black will be capitalized following The New York Times (...)
1Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book Black Lives Matter: le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine is the French version of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. The author’s timely and insightful analysis of racism in America has been published in 2016 by Haymarket Books and translated into French by Éditions Agone. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton University) has a long-standing expertise on Black1 politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States, and talks about the scholarly reflection on racial politics. By connecting the historical roots of racial oppression in the United States through Jim Crow, the Civil Rights, and the diachronic evolution of social movements, she analyses the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the persistent inequalities that Black Americans face daily.
- 2 See E. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and th (...)
2The main argument is that the “post-racial” rhetoric, epitomized by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, has little adherence to reality. She thus follows an established stream of scholarly literature2 that criticizes the United States’ “colourblind utopia,” as it does not grasp the actual situation in the country, which is still marked by profound inequalities. Central to her stance towards the idea of a “colourblind” society, Taylor introduces a nuanced critical analysis of the Obama presidency and of the limits of Black political representation, showing how, under the first Black President, the neoliberal policies have paradoxically perpetuated racial inequalities.
- 3 See Y. Bonilla & J. Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, (...)
- 4 See E. Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretatio (...)
3Her main focus is police violence and racial profiling, which have been extensively analysed recently.3 The strength of the book lies in the ability to connect these circumstantiated problems with the broader picture, often left behind by a more synchronic representation of race and racism. Black Lives Matter, she argues, has marked the shift from seeing racism as an individual problem to seeing it as the part of a racist system, which comprises, among others, education, healthcare, employment, and housing. In doing so, she follows a long-standing scholarly debate which points to the structural and institutional roots of racial disparity, which refutes attributing racism to individual behaviour or psychological attitudes.4
- 5 See J. Rosa & Y. Bonilla, “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity, (...)
4The most interesting aspect of the book is its diachronic perspective, especially on social movements. Many analyses, in fact, keep a shallow eye on the contemporary struggles for racial justice. For Taylor, on the contrary, Black Lives Matter has to be understood within the history of mobilization of Black Americans in the United States, to address the multifaceted aspects of racism. Interestingly enough, the book has been written before the assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and before some of the most high-profile cases of violence against Black Americans. However, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was already circulating, since the assassination of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Martin’s case catalyzed (social) media attention, together with many other cases of police brutality and of civilian hate crimes. They are at the centre of anthropologists Jonathan Rosa and Yarimar Bonilla’s article “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity, and Unsettling Anthropology,”5 which shows how Trump’s election did not happen in a vacuum. Similarly, Taylor points out how Obama’s presidency, far from being a sign of exceptionalism, has paved the way for a resurgence of race.
5Giving a sense of anti-racism movements before 2020, the book anticipates their development with a sense of impending urgency. Its theoretical framework talks to Critical Race Theory (CRTs), with its emphasis on the importance of mentioning race and to oppose white privilege embedded in the current system. Being born within Critical Legal Studies, CRTs accommodate Taylor’s emphasis on the legislative system, talking to the juridical culture which is prevalent in the United States. And therefore, while the book analyses critically the debate on racism as a systemic rather than individual question, it remains within a racial framework, where a dichotomous Black and white racial view polarizes the media and the political discourse. Race being also a methodological tool, the book’s analysis remains confined within the Euro-American theoretical and methodological framework.
6All in all, Black Lives Matter: le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine is an essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the historical and contemporary realities of the struggles for Black liberation in the United States. Its language and style are accessible but rigorous. Its broad target makes it useful to other scholars, interested in the debates on the origins of racism, but also to students and to a general public interested in the history and development of the Black Lives Matter movement. In conclusion, Taylor’s book offers a powerful and necessary examination of racism in America, providing both a historical account of the Black liberation movements and a hopeful vision for the future. Borrowing from CRTs, in fact, it entails a very clear and vocal call to action, which gives hope for a future of justice and equality in the US.
Notes
1 Black will be capitalized following The New York Times Guidelines, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20believe%20this%20style%20best,in%20a%20memo%20to%20staff> (accessed 21 November 2024). The rationale behind this choice is the acknowledgment of historical patterns of oppression that have afflicted Black people. White, on the other side, will not be capitalized following recent linguistic reflection, which aims to distance itself from the practice of capitalizing it by white suprematists and which thinks of whiteness as not constituting a cultural identity: <https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php> (accessed 21 November 2024).
2 See E. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2014.
3 See Y. Bonilla & J. Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States,” American Ethnologist 42 (1), 2015, pp. 4–17, <https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12112>; R. W. Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007, <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/fulcrum.c534fp64h>; L. Wacquant, “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration,” New Left Review 13, 2002, pp. 41–60.
4 See E. Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 62 (3), 1997, pp. 465–480, <https://doi.org/10.2307/2657316>.
5 See J. Rosa & Y. Bonilla, “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity, and Unsettling Anthropology: Deprovincializing Trump,” American Ethnologist 44 (2), 2017, pp. 201–208, <https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12468>.
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Marta Scaglioni, « Taylor Keeanga-Yamahtta, Black Lives Matter : le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine », Cahiers d’études africaines, 257 | 2025, 320-322.
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Marta Scaglioni, « Taylor Keeanga-Yamahtta, Black Lives Matter : le renouveau de la révolte noire américaine », Cahiers d’études africaines [En ligne], 257 | 2025, mis en ligne le 11 mars 2025, consulté le 16 avril 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/50121 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13h7r
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