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International Conference: “Black Lives Matter: Political and Artistic Mobilization against Systemic Racism in the US and the UK”

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, 15-17 May 2024
Philippine Fauchier et Théo Maligeay

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1The International Conference “Black Lives Matter: Political and Artistic Mobilization against Systemic Racism in the US and the UK” was held from May 15 to May 17, 2024 at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3. This three-day conference blended academic and cultural events to discuss and analyze the recent antiracist mobilizations united under the slogan Black Lives Matter in the US and the UK. It consisted of seven academic workshops, two keynote speeches, a Q&A session and a theater workshop with Patrisse Cullors, artist, activist and co-founder of the BLM movement, as well as two stage readings of works by Black British and American women playwrights. It was also connected to other events such as a photography exhibition, a documentary showing at the Cinéma Utopia and a literary roundtable as part of the Montpellier Comédie du Livre. The conference was organized by a collective of members and associates of the EMMA (Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone) research team: Marc Lenormand, Claudine Raynaud, Lawrence Aje, Claude Chastagner, Anne Crémieux, Marianne Drugeon, Manon Lefebvre, Hervé Mayer, Monica Michlin, Niaz Cary-Pernon and Raphaël Ricaud. It came after a one-day workshop, “Black Lives Matter : formes politiques et artistiques de l’antiracisme aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni”, also held in Montpellier, on February 4, 2022. All academic talks given over the course of the conference have been recorded and are available on Canal U.

2As shown by the interweaving of scientific panels with theater workshops, literary roundtables and movie projections, the conference sought to take advantage of the few years which have now elapsed since the first appearance of the BLM hashtag in 2013 and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, to shed light on the movement’s characteristic positioning at the crossroads of politics and art. Taking their cue from the numerous murals which became viral in the summer of 2020, all speakers explored the different ways in which art and politics function as two sides of the same coin when it comes to resistance against the violence of systemic racism in the US and the UK. A wide range of media and institutions were thus brought under the limelight such as street art, YouTube, folk music, higher education, etc. Furthermore, the conference also provided a time to reflect on the legacy of the movement and its place in the unfolding of current political events. Both keynote-speakers Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton University) and Victor Ray (University of Iowa) as well as Patrisse Cullors addressed the issue in their thought-provoking interventions. Overall, the multi-pronged approach of antiracist mobilization offered a strong case in favor of critical race theory by revealing the deep entrenchment of systemic racism in the political structures and in the cultural fabric of British and American societies.

3In the first paper of the conference, Emma Bell (Université Savoie Mont-Blanc) examined the echo found by the slogan “Defund the Police” in the UK. Far from being a mere importation from the United States, the call has a specific relevance to the British context. This leads to debunking a series of myths. For example, the association of police with crime-fighters, the idea that British police are free from the taint of enforcing a large-scale racist institution such as slavery, or the myth that policing is done with the consent of the population since the founding of the Metropolitan Police by Robert Peel. Current issues with policing in the UK include the “policification of social policies” (Millie 2013), the expansion of private police and the damning results of the 2023 Casey report.

4Elsa Grassy (Université de Strasbourg) on the other hand focused on the work of American musician and writer Jake Blount, especially his May 2020 album Spider Tales, the title of which is a reference to Anansi, the trickster spider of West African myths. Bringing to light a counternarrative to Black folk music whose provocative nature has been lost on some, Grassy argues that Blount curates Black and Indigenous traditional music by correcting and clarifying the historical record surrounding the songs and music he plays. Furthermore, the artist also suggests that Black communities have a head start in facing coming ecological catastrophes. 

5The discussion continued with a Q&A with Patrisse Cullors, who describes herself as an artist, abolitionist, and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, while a silent film that she directed and in which she appeared was shown. The film depicting four Orisha gods was developed over two years for an exhibition in Mexico. Cullors was trained as a public speaker and an internationalist from a young age. She cited Angela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler as influences, acknowledging their impact on her identity as a young Black queer teenager. She pursued social justice programs, leading campaigns against transit racism and later police practices in Los Angeles. She then deplored the public's views on law enforcement and on Black and Brown youth revealing deep-seated racism and an openness to the “unchilding of children.” Cullors reflected on a Black generation growing up under systemic violence, chaos and poverty, describing BLM as a love letter to Black people and part of a historical continuum of struggle for freedom. Before Black Lives Matter, she added, the American Black left was marginalized. Many grassroots organizations developed independently from each other and paved the way to BLM. She also addressed the challenges of BLM as a decentralized movement that avoids traditional leadership but risks infiltration and lack of control, raising safety concerns. She noted that BLM truly but became global after Michael Brown’s killing, with the first BLM protests in the UK. Fostering international discussion, the movement grew further in Canada and Switzerland where the countries had to learn from past mistakes and adapt. Another unexpected moment for BLM was the COVID-19 lockdown and George Floyd’s death. She acknowledged the role of social media in the creation of BLM but now expressed mixed feelings due to rampant misogynoir and online abuse. She was grateful for Angela Davis’s support advising resilience against attacks. She appreciated Ava DuVernay’s impactful filmmaking and talked about their pivoting back to the indie market after the entertainment industry’s backlash to BLM. She was initially hesitant to write her memoir When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018) but was encouraged by asha bandele. She shared anecdotes from her life, such as her first arrest while in middle school, to challenge her label as a terrorist and found the process cathartic. She intended it to be deeply personal and deeply political. Inspired by her Harvard Law Review article on abolition, she wrote An Abolitionist's Handbook (2021) advocating systemic change from an economy of violence to one of care, through practical abolitionist principles.

6The first day of the conference ended with a visit of the exhibition of engaged photography by students from Studio M displayed outside the university. Their work related to the topic of the conference spanned from experimentation with the medium, metaphors of inclusion/exclusion and fieldwork.

7On the second day of the conference, workshop number 2 speakers all came back to the topic of antiracist mobilization. First, Natalia Botonaki (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) confronted different philosophical arguments about the political value and function of anger. Building on Amia Srinivasan’s criterion of “aptness,” she cast significant doubt on the description of anger as a counter-productive, self-defeating force. Although there are pessimistic voices that deny this, Botonaki along with other writers like bell hooks described anger as a constructive drive and proposed the idea that anger could be healing for the community. The talk also fundamentally rejected result-based assessments of political anger, and argued that the discussion should focus on the harm that anger responds to.

8Lynn Weiss’s (College of William & Mary) paper on the other hand was based on a case-study of guerrilla monumentality in Richmond, Virginia. It showed how BLM protesters in 2020 spontaneously and collectively wrote a new chapter in the protests against Confederate monuments by covering said monuments in layers of intersecting and colorful graffiti and prompting community-driven festivities around them. The talk not only bore witness to the vibrancy of street art and the diverse messages that it can carry, but it also led to an interesting discussion about the concept of countermonumentality which, for some, removes too much agency from the artists and strays too far from the vernacular.

9Finally, Audrey Célestine (New York University) and Nicolas Martin-Breteau (Université de Lille) presented the conclusions of a field study they had conducted during the Faith Ringgold’s retrospective held in Paris’ Musée Picasso in 2023. Expanding on the fact that museum employees noted an increase in attendance, their questionnaires gave significant insights into the different responses of museum visitors to racial issues. For example, they were able to provide empirical evidence showing that Black visitors tend to mobilize their personal experience to condemn racism whereas white visitors rely statistically more on their value system. Furthermore, they also identified a specific discourse about race in the Black, female under-25 demographic. Célestine and Martin-Breteau ended their paper on the provocative question of whether BLM has given birth to a transnational public space, which they are going to pursue in subsequent investigations. 

10Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s (Princeton University) keynote speech “Understanding the Backlash to BLM” put forward a bold, sweeping statement on the future of social and racial movements in the US. Starting from the repression of student protests in the spring of 2024, Taylor remarked that the 2020 call to “Defund the police” has not come to fruition. Although she clearly identified the considerable antagonism which BLM has had to face since 2013, compounded by President Obama’s unwillingness to leverage his political clout in favor of ordinary African-Americans, and the Trump administration’s forsaking of the norm of governing for all, the originality of Taylor’s argument came from her willingness to look at the inner structural weaknesses of the movement to make sense of this eventual fizzle. For example, she brought to light for example the way in which the massive influx of donations has put the non-profit milieu of anti-racism under strain since 2013. In a similar vein, she also argued that far more problematic than the alleged misuse of said funds is the opacity of political decision-making, notably the endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. Going further in her analysis of the difficulties of staying connected with grassroots groups and ideals, Taylor mentioned the difficulty of sticking with the ambitious program announced in Visions for Black Lives. She argued that even if the CEO of BlackRock himself declared that he was “appalled” by the murder of George Floyd, the forces of capitalism were never truly committed to ending racism. What they wanted was peace on the home front. Furthermore, the movement for Black Lives has also exposed class divisions within Black communities. For example, Black politicians had to act against anti-racist protests in 2020. On the other hand, in the aftermath of the Great Resignation caused by the Covid pandemic we can see that a wider disaffection with the dominant economic system was not expressed in BLM. This led Taylor to contend that Black people alone do not have the capacity to sustain a movement that can push for the wide range of social transformations needed to improve the conditions of Black people. In conclusion, there is an added urgency to examine new coalitions. 

11A Theatre of the Oppressed workshop—elaborated by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal—was held with Patrisse Cullors at Studio La Vignette, Paul-Valéry Campus. She described it as a core part of her art practice and political practice. Participants introduced themselves, reflected on everyday actions, acted out emotions and created tableaux focusing on grief and joy. In a circle, protagonists shared conflict stories, with others reenacting them with different attitudes.

12Sandrine Sorlin’s (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, EMMA) paper investigated the pragma-linguistic shifts between the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and All Lives Matter (ALM) slogans. She demonstrated how BLM asserts the existence and value of Black lives, while ALM is an abstract decontextualization of this claim, creating an appearance of neutrality that undermines BLM's specific focus. ALM's rhetoric encapsulates the colorblindness ideology as a reductive metonymy that obscures racial issues and is at odds with the pragmatic function of BLM. ALM is therefore semantically inclusive but pragmatically exclusive. Promoted by some Republican officials, ALM diminishes BLM's impact by framing it within a misleadingly universal and agentless discourse, perpetuating an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ and social alexithymia.

13Then, Cécile Coquet-Mokoko (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin) discussed the appropriation of #BlackLivesMatter in France, highlighting how concepts of whiteness and racialization are translated into French history and society. Central to the discussion was the need to address historical subjugation, such as Ibram X. Kendi’s "stigma of slavery," comparable systems of oppression and control faced by the descendants of enslaved and colonized people, and their struggle for recognition and justice. Her paper delved into the complexities of racial dynamics in France and colonial Algeria, comparing France's "colorblind" approach to race to American racial frameworks and calling for a nuanced understanding of race and ethnicity—possibly conducive to restorative justice once acknowledged.

14The second day ended with a roundtable including presentations from five members of the Lancaster Black History Group, set in Lancaster, United Kingdom. Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University) investigated the Black Lives Matter rally and protest in Lancaster following George Floyd’s death in May 2020, emphasizing its historical and anticolonial significance. It was the largest anti-racism gathering in the United Kingdom. Primarily young people breached COVID-19 restrictions and concentrated on sites linked to the city's slavery history. It paralleled scenes like the toppling of statues and street renaming to confront contemporary and historical racism. As Black British History emerged in response to 1970s racist politics, her paper argued that the ongoing struggle against racial violence is not an attack on History but is History itself. She stressed the importance of community-driven antiracist education, such as the Lancaster History Group, as foundational to transforming the future. Then, Alan Rice (University of Central Lancashire) focused on efforts to confront Lancaster's slave trade history, recognizing the significant erasure of Black history in the city. He pointed at a graffiti, which tagged “slave traders” on a family memorial, as "guerrilla memorialization" aimed to challenge complacency and ensure the past isn't forgotten. Now involving 45 of the 60 local schools, the Lancaster Black History Group expanded their educational trail about Lancaster slave trade, abolition and fair trade to include more Black agency and a longer timeline. New additions to the trail include memorials made by schoolchildren, graves and stories of Black individuals, abolitionists, runaway slaves, and artifacts such as the “vomiting toff” china. Geraldine Onek presented her personal experience as a Black Lancastrian, community activist, and primary school teacher. She emphasized the need for a movement, not just a moment, in teaching Black British history, which she found lacking in the curriculum. The Lancaster Group initiated educational workshops in historically significant locations to connect secondary teachers and historians with students, and to bring academic knowledge about Lancaster’s slave history to the community. By giving them names, they aimed to give identity back to those viewed as possessions and to deepen students' understanding of their local history. They have developed a downloadable educational pack focused on Lancaster’s local history to provide teachers with background knowledge, stories of individuals, and adapted vocabulary. Kirsty Roberts focused on revealing the overlooked legacies of Black entertainers in Morecambe, a predominantly white town in Lancashire. As a curator, Roberts emulated other approaches to uncover the performance in Lancaster of Black figures such as Adelaide Hall and less-famous James Cooney. Roberts emphasized that while curators shouldn't act as activists, they must address historical silences in deciding what to include or exclude in exhibitions. She highlighted the missed opportunities to not mention the names of Layton & Johnstone for instance in acknowledging Morecambe’s Black entertainment history. Finally, Lela Harris, an artist known for her innovative techniques and focus on portraiture, presented her work on bringing Black Lancastrian history to life. Her project at Lancaster's Judge Lodgings Museum addressed representation by celebrating the lives of Black individuals historically overlooked and displaying their portraits next to transatlantic slave trade artifacts and traditional paintings of White wealthy elite. Harris used newspaper archives, conjecture, and connections to create emotional and psychological portraits of the Black individuals she wanted to represent. Harris and Onek also organized workshops to teach students how to explore history creatively. Harris's work has increased the museum’s diversity and engagement, short-listing the museum for an award. Her portrayed figures have been reproduced and adopted by Lancastrians as part of their city’s history.

15On the last day, workshop 5 began with Eglantine Zatout’s (Université Jean-Moulin-Lyon 3) account of major transformations in Family Equality, an American non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of equality for LGBTQ+ families. Drawing from her experience working there in 2018, Zatout was able to show three areas where significant change had occurred because of BLM. First, changes were made in the staff and the way members’ struggles were made visible; secondly, the rhetoric on adoption has evolved; and finally there is more collaboration with other non-profits. The new, more outspoken stance on race is a radical departure from the past: Family Equality used to be isolated because they did not take a stance on anything.

16In the second paper, Grégory Benedetti (Université Grenoble-Alpes) discussed both the outdoors industry’s responsibility in the construction of stereotypes excluding African-Americans from outdoor leisure spaces and its recent efforts at transforming itself and the American racialized landscape. Benedetti’s paper not only retraced the social construction of outdoor space as white, it also recounted the fumbling response of major brands to the 2020 BLM mobilization. Evidence of encouraging change since then can be seen in Outside magazine’s emphasis on racial diversity in the outdoors space, and in the appearance of African American business leaders.

17Third, in accordance with a growing body of literature on anti-Black technological racism, Avriel Epps and Zana Bucinca’s (Harvard University) paper addressed the question of whether YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is biased regarding #BLM content. The first part of the paper was dedicated to the elaboration of the database, which saw unsuccessful attempts at using topic modeling approaches and Large Language Models, before the use of Amazon crowdsourcing services yielded satisfactory results. The second part of the paper tested two contradictory assumptions, either that algorithms encourage viewers to consume extreme content because it increases engagement or that algorithms support existing power structures. Epps and Bucinca’s data offered some confirmation of the second: the platform tends to favor moderate anti-racist content rather than radical calls to defund the police.

18Finally, in his paper, Talal Hochard (Université de Lorraine) argued that the recent poll showing that a majority of Democrats stand in solidarity with Palestinians is a consequence of the BLM movements. Indeed, as shown by Palestinian advice on makeshift gas masks during the Ferguson riots, and the creation of George Floyd murals in 2020, there is a strong feeling of mutual solidarity between the two communities. At the root of this solidarity is the identification of a common enemy, whose existence seems corroborated by the participation of Israeli forces in police training sessions held in Minneapolis in 2012. 

19Victor Ray (University of Iowa), who recently published On Critical Race Theory (Ray, 2023), followed with the keynote address “Critical Race Theory and the Interest Divergence Dilemma.” His keynote explored Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework rooted in personal experiences of racial injustice. The theory emphasizes the role of storytelling in bridging empathy and understanding, alongside rigorous research on how race and racism shape lives. CRT—as well as Ray’s book—was presented as a response to attempts to erase racial progress, highlighting its core ideas of race as a social construct and the pervasiveness of structural racism. Ray demonstrated how CRT’s critique of racial progress fragility and its role in exposing systemic racism are countered by politically motivated claims that it further divides the country. He also examined the weaponization of CRT in political discourse following high-profile incidents like George Floyd’s murder, and the ensuing bans and censorship in educational institutions, reminiscent of McCarthyism. Ray used Derrick Bell’s concept of interest divergence to explain current efforts to discredit CRT. According to Bell, the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a monumental victory for Black protests, was achieved because white powerholders’ interests were under pressure for greater inclusion in a context of Cold War politics. Ray argued that repressive conservatism has turned inward: the backlash against CRT could be explained by the absence of such outside pressure and the divergence of interests between white decision-makers and Black activists. He advocated for the need to fight against the attacks on Black thought and recognized BLM as a crucial Civil Rights movement, noting past victories did not always improve Black lives, citing school segregation.

20The afternoon began with two stage readings performed by actors Lorry Hardel and Olivia Mabounga. First was an extract of Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is, in which two sisters go through the horrific narrative of how their mother was assaulted and set on fire by their father while they were infants. The second text was an extract from Selina Thompson’s salt. which narrates her travel from the UK to West Africa onboard a merchant ship. In this episode, the exhausted autobiographical character retraces the global chain of command that informs her situation: the crew, the captain, the unions, the colonialist states, etc. Alongside the litany, the ritual is composed of seven blocks of salt which the character on stage breaks with a sledgehammer, something which was aptly replaced in this adaptation by a musical metal contraption capable of producing loud and disturbing noises. Both texts were read in French with the original text appearing on a screen. The translations were the results of a long-term translation project by students and professors of Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3. 

21In the next panel, Indiana Lods (Université de Bourgogne) focused on three works of fiction: An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017) by Rivers Solomon, Friday Black (2018) by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Riot Baby (2020) by Tochi Onyebuchi. She explored how literary fiction employs science-fiction tropes to address issues of race, class, gender, and systemic discrimination that resonate with the Black experience in the US—highlighting themes of vigilante violence, societal alienation, and the fallacy of postraciality following Obama's election. Her paper examined futuristic settings that reflect past and present oppressions, structural and plot entrapments through repetition, and the struggle to break free from these cycles. According to her, literature does not envision a different future but seeks to express and assess anger, encouraging the reader’s agency to draw solutions, emphasizing community and kinship.

22Yohann Lucas (Université de Rouen) then shifted the audience's attention to The Matter of Black Lives anthology published by The New Yorker in 2021, which may have capitalized on new commercial opportunities following George Floyd’s death and the surge in demand for material on race. Despite the anthology’s size and its title, it includes relatively few direct mentions of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, Lucas argued that the anthology brought to it the cultural capital of the New Yorker and tried to decenter the perspective—featuring essays from the 1950s to the 2020s, it emphasized the longstanding nature of the movement. It portrays BLM as a cohesive, intrinsic, and non-monolithic movement that has spread globally. As the movement is led by three women, Lucas notes that the anthologists ensured a higher representation of women contributors—a rarity in African American anthologies—despite most of its essays being written by men.

23The last panel of the conference offered an introspective look into antiracist pledges and practices in higher education in the wake of the BLM movement. Niaz Pernon’s (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) scope was systemic, deconstructing the response of the Russell Group universities during the summer of 2020 across an array of social media and digital communication channels. The paper showed the sometimes-stark contrast between the reactions emanating from lower levels of the institutional pyramid, and the headquarters’ message of choice. This method allowed for a critical understanding of the assumptions, interests and strategies at the heart of the group’s participation in the BLM movement. Overall, the group has put out a message that favored a continuation of the gradual, reformist approach that had already existed before the summer of 2020.

24With her insider account of anti-racist staff training programs at Warwick University, Lydia Plath (University of Warwick) offered a complementary approach focusing in-depth on one specific institution. To address racial inequalities which mostly manifest themselves in the “awarding gap”, Warwick has implemented a staff development program called Tackling Racial Inequalities at Warwick. Since 2020, participation has grown threefold with 150 people participating during the 2022-2023 academic year. The curriculum is made of two core modules and four optional modules which focus overall on facilitating self-reflection. Staff feedback, although overwhelmingly positive, has indeed also generally been that the modules were “eye-opening and uncomfortable”. Noting some limitations of the impact on the academic metrics that were initially targeted, Plath nevertheless reported that the struggle itself has proven to be liberatory. 

25The day ended with the screening at Cinéma Utopia of the film Claude McKay, de Harlem à Marseille, directed by Matthieu Verdeil (2021).

26The three-day conference offered a diversity of approaches from research theory, field work and the speakers’ personal experiences and practical actions in education and community organizing—spanning over both the United States and the United Kingdom. It fulfilled its aim of understanding, discussing solutions and raising more questions about the BLM movement and political and artistic mobilizations against systemic racism. The papers broadened the scope of the conference, initially focused on two countries, discussing BLM’s impact on other minority groups and non-anglophone countries with two presentations focused on France. A rich intercultural exchange followed about pedagogy, racism, and international collaboration for intellectual resistance.

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Philippine Fauchier et Théo Maligeay, « International Conference: “Black Lives Matter: Political and Artistic Mobilization against Systemic Racism in the US and the UK” »Transatlantica [En ligne], 2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 16 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/26508 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15i22

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Philippine Fauchier

Université Montpellier Paul-Valéry (EMMA)

Théo Maligeay

Université Montpellier Paul-Valéry (EMMA)

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