“Black Studies vs Fascism: The longue durée”
The current attacks of multicultural education, critical race theory, and on virtually all critical scholars has put many of us in the academy on the defensive. Again. Beyond the U.S., we are witnessing the ongoing imprisonment of intellectuals (Turkey, the Gulf States, India, etc.) and outright “scholasticide” in Palestine. Black Studies is one field of inquiry under attack. While my talk acknowledges the latest wave of attacks, I will argue that Black Studies has a long history of being “under attack” precisely because it emerged as an offensive against fascism. I will look at the radical turn in Black scholarship during the 1930s (a response to fascism in many ways), as an anticolonial Black power and Black feminist assault in the 1950s-70s, against “friendly fascism” of neoliberalism in the 80s - 90s, and the current authoritarian and reactionary turn. I will also argue that this insurgent, anti-fascist tendency in Black Studies must be understood at a global level (from Kingston to Dar es Salaam, London, Cairo, Montreal, and so forth) By recalling its insurgent history we see Black Studies as a transformative force rather than fighting for its mere survival.
Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and Freedom Scholar Award. His books include the award-winning, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies, co-edited with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Kelley is currently completing two books, Making a Killing: Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life and The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century. His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, New Yorker, Village Voice, Dissent, American Quarterly, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor.
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