link:https://nonsite.org/
Saw this site mentioned by Halper and Taibbi. Adolph Reed Jr, had something to do with starting it, i think.
Here’s an example of one of the articles:
The Triumph of Black Lives Matter and Neoliberal Redemption
By Cedric Johnson (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Draped in Ghanaian kente cloth, a fabric popularized by Afrocentric nationalists during the late eighties, a dozen or so Congressional Democrats knelt in a moment of silence before unveiling their Justice in Policing legislation. Their actions came exactly two weeks to the date that George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, and after an unprecedented wave of protests that swept all fifty states, over 500 U.S. towns and cities, and scores of demonstrations of solidarity globally. Led by Karen Bass, Congressional Black Caucus chair, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the congress members embraced the language and tone of Black Lives Matter protests, with some lecturing on the “original sin” of slavery, and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn adding that Floyd’s death was “just a continuation” of a long and unbroken history of American racism. Even former presidential hopefuls, senators Kamala Harris and Corey Booker traded in their previous roles as tough-on-crime enforcers and adopted the histrionic rhetoric of popular anti-racism. This was perhaps the perfect valence to mount the center-right Democratic renewal, especially after a botched campaign to impeach Donald Trump, and the social-democratic left challenge of Bernie Sanders’ second bid for the party’s nomination. This moment has been a triumph for Black Lives Matter activists, but once the plumes of tear gas dissipate and compassion fatigue sets in, the real beneficiaries will likely be the neoliberal Democrats and the capitalist blocs they serve. Nearly all of the Democrat leadership who “took a knee” against racist policing, have openly opposed Medicare for All, free higher education, and the expansion of other public goods, but their technical reforms to reduce excessive force incidents and prosecute police for misconduct are the perfect way of displaying commitment to racial justice, while perpetuating the very pro-market logics and class relations that stress policing and mass incarceration were invented to protect.
Adolph Reed, Jr.’s “How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence,” should be read again and often during this moment of resurgent Black Lives Matter sentiment, precisely because he so clearly names the limitations of anti-racism as a way of thinking about the problems of carceral power, and cautions against any left-progressive politics that separates racism from historical processes and political economy. As Reed notes, “antiracism is not a different sort of egalitarian alternative to a class politics but is a class politics itself.” Furthermore, antiracist politics is essentially “the left wing of neoliberalism in that its sole metric of social justice is opposition to disparity in the distribution of goods and bads in the society, an ideal that naturalizes the outcomes of capitalist market forces so long as they are equitable along racial (and other identitarian) lines.” Of course, I can already hear some friends of mine, academic colleagues and activists alike, who will grumble and cry foul, quickly asserting the presence of this or that tendency that embodies the true radical spirit of Black Lives Matter. Others will likely point to the scale of recent protests as evidence of a new moment, a turning point that will yield massive substantive reforms. Like Occupy Wall Street protests before, however, Black Lives Matter is more of a sentiment than a fully formed political force. Let’s not forget that it was born as a hashtag, and while it has provided a powerful banner for longer-standing organizations and legislative campaigns working to reverse the social toll of carceral expansion, the liberal character of the hashtag should be more apparent now than ever….see link
.
