Exposing the laundering of Black rage, ft. Rasul A. Mowatt & Too Black (P1)
How do we stay cautious of co-optation?
Dear green dreamer,
Sometimes, I feel transformed immediately after hosting a podcast interview. This is one of those such potent conversations. It feels deeply pertinent to these challenging times — as we rethink power, systems, and theories of change. I strongly recommend setting aside dedicated time to sink into this hard-hitting, 2-part dialogue. Enjoy, and gratitudes for all you do ~
with warmth, kamea
“We were trying to understand how that rage at a Black man’s neck getting stepped on is somehow converted to things that seem to have nothing to do with resolving that actual issue…
How do you go from a Black man’s neck being crushed to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) money? How do you go from a Black man’s neck being crushed to a grant?” – Too Black
What does it mean to understand laundering in regards to how Black rage often gets converted to fit the interests of capital — against the very people experiencing that anger as a response to state violence? How do we remain cautious of different forms of co-optation, including through the arts, that end up distancing people from the material conditions that originally sparked the rage?
In this part one of our two-part conversation (Green Dreamer #431), we are honored to welcome the co-authors of Laundering Black Rage, Rasul A. Mowatt and Too Black — who guide us to critically reflect on key happenings in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, and more recently, of Sonya Massey.
Join us in this vital and sobering dialogue as we discuss how activism for social causes is often subverted, redirected, and laundered into forms deemed palatable by the state — only to be fed back into reinforcing the system itself. We also explore how cities, to be distinguished from “society”, are set up inherently as sites of extraction — enforcing complicity by design.
How do we confront our entanglement in such processes of laundering — while staying focused on the types of efforts that can more directly address the root causes of harm?
View the episode transcript and references here, and dive into the extended version of this conversation via our Patreon here.
“If we need to have a night of poetry to remember our pain and our loss, that's fine. But if we're trying to place that night the in context of it being an act of ‘resistance’, as if that's going to make the state fear us and that this issue won't continue…, then what's happened is that we're framing our level of activity to be something that it is not.
Laundering also takes place when issues are flattened or reduced. So when we think of the terms ‘resistance’, ‘revolt’, ‘protest’, or ‘decolonization’, they no longer have the meanings they once had. They’ve become a lot more comfortable… That's what we're pushing back on in many different ways.” – Rasul A. Mowatt
Rasul A. Mowatt and Too Back are co-authors of Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (use the code “LBR25” for 25% off the publisher’s website). Learn more here.
What inspirations or curiosities are still lingering with you from this episode?
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