We’ll put Cedric Robinson (born 1940, Oakland, California, U.S. – died 2016, Santa Barbara?, California, U.S.) in conversation with Du Bois. Please start by reading the reflection on Robinson written by Robin Kelley.

BLACK RADICALISM

Robinson. 1983. Black Marxism. (pp. xxxv, 1-5, 9-28, 41-3, 60-8, 71-82, 97-100, 121-2, 167-71, 228-40, 307-18)

Robinson demystifies the origins, features, and trajectories of a Black radical tradition. This tradition offers a critique of Western civilization as well as a critique of Western radicalism (e.g., Marxism). Robinson may not fully dismiss historical materialism, but he argues that its typical articulations fail to recognize the true significance of racialism, nationalism, culture, and more. He begins to fill the gap by reconstructing the history of a Western racial order. Robinson shows how racialism not only predated but also set the possibilities for modern capitalism. He accounts for a racial ordering internal to feudal Europe as well the demonization of Islam during the Dark Ages before detailing the emergence of a world system defined by the colonization of extra-European spaces, the transatlantic slave trade, and the myth of white solidarity. All of this set the conditions for a Black radical tradition to emerge. The growth of this tradition was made difficult, but not impossible, by the European creation of the “Negro,” a marginally human category without a history. Still, across the African diaspora, a culture and consciousness of Black resistance thrived and provided the foundation for Black radicalism as both a negation of Western civilization and a departure from the Marxist critiques of that civilization. Robinson closes by emphasizing the merits and durability of this tradition under contemporary racial capitalism and neocolonialism.