The Movement for Black Lives Philosophical Perspectives

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has gained worldwide visibility as a grassroots social justice movement distinguished by a decentralized, non-hierarchal mode of organization, and in 2020 Black Lives Matter protests across the country shook America's moral conscience to its core. M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at Black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it terms a "war against Black people," as well as the "shared struggle with all oppressed people." Yet despite the significance of the social, political, and economic goals of M4BL, as well as the innovative organizational leadership strategies it employs, M4BL has so far received little sustained philosophical attention.

The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives brings philosophical analysis to bear on the aims, strategies, policy positions, and intellectual-historical context of M4BL. Leading scholars tackle such themes as: "Black Lives Matter" as a political speech act, M4BL's conception of the value of Black lives, the gender dynamics of the Movement, the relation of M4BL to other Black liberation movements and transitional justice movements, the Movement's new forms of leadership and organization, and the impact of racism on the normative assessment of the criminal justice system.

The volume broaches a wide range of pressing issues in the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender, and the philosophy of punishment. It is vital reading for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences interested in race, inequality, and social justice movements.

Michael Cholbi is Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in ethical theory, practical ethics, and the philosophy of death and dying. His books include Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions (Broadview, 2011), Understanding Kant's Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Grief: A Philosophical Guide (Princeton University Press, expected 2021). He is the editor of several scholarly collections, including Immortality and the Philosophy of Death (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015); Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights (Routledge, 2017); and The Future of Work, Technology, and Basic Income (Routledge, 2019). He is the the co-editor of the textbook Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, forthcoming 2020). His work has also appeared in a number of scholarly journals. In recent years, he has been an academic visitor at Australian National University, the University of Turku (Finland), and the Hastings Center. He is the founder of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, Ergo, and the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

Brandon Hogan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Howard University. His work has appeared in Contemporary Pragmatism, The Journal of Pan African Studies, and the Berkeley Journal of African American Law and Policy. He earned a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh under the supervision of Robert Brandom and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Alex Madva is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the California Center for Ethics and Policy at Cal Poly Pomona. He co-edited An Introduction to Implicit Bias: Knowledge, Justice, and the Social Mind (Routledge 2020), and his work has appeared in journals including No?s, Ethics, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Ergo, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs): Cognitive Science, and the International Journal of STEM Education. He has run numerous workshops and training sessions on bias, stereotype threat, and impostor syndrome for schools, courts, and wider audiences.

Benjamin S. Yost is Professor of Philosophy, Adjunct at Cornell University. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Providence College. His book, Against Capital Punishment, was published with Oxford University Press in 2019. Other published work appears in journals such as Utilitas, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Kantian Review, and Continental Philosophy Review.

Introduction

Part I - The Value of Black Lives
1. What "Black Lives Matter" Should Mean, Brandon Hogan
2. "And He Ate Jim Crow": Racist Ideology as False Consciousness, Vanessa Wills
3. He Never Mattered: Poor Black Males and the Dark Logic of Intersectional Invisibility, Tommy J. Curry

Part II - Theorizing Racial Justice
4. Reconsidering Reparations: The Movement for Black Lives and Self-Determination, Ol?femi O. T??w?
5. The Movement for Black Lives and Transitional Justice, Colleen Murphy

Part III - The Language of M4BL
6. Positive Propaganda and the Pragmatics of Protest, Michael Randall Barnes
7. Value-Based Protest Slogans: An Argument for Reorientation, Myisha Cherry
8. The Movement for Black Lives and the Language of Liberation, Ian Olasov

Part IV -M4BL, Anti-Black Racism, and Punishment
9. Can Capital Punishment Survive if Black Lives Matter?, Michael Cholbi and Alex Madva
10. Sentencing Leniency for Black Offenders, Benjamin S. Yost

Part V - Strategy and Solidarity
11. The Violence of Leadership in Black Lives Matter, Dana Francisco Miranda
12. Speaking For, Speaking With, and Shutting Up: Models of Solidarity and the Pragmatics of Truth Telling, Mark Norris Lance
13. Sky's the Limit: A Case-Study in Envisioning Real Anti-Racist Utopias, Keyvan Shafiei