Fear of Black Consciousness

by Lewis R. Gordon

Overview

Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopher.

Fear of Black Consciousness is an original and a bold intervention in the cultural and political conversation about systemic racism. Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and antiblackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized blackness, the problems racialization produces, and the many creative responses from black and nonblack communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom.

As he skillfully navigates the difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of white narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates. He illuminates the different forms of invisibility that define black life, and he exposes the bad faith at the heart of many discussions about race and racism, not only in North America but also across the globe, including in countries where discussants regard themselves as “colorblind.” Gordon reveals that these lies about race and its supposed irrelevance confer upon many white people an inherited sense of being extraordinary. More than being privileged or entitled, they act with a license to do as they please. But for many if not most blacks, living an ordinary life in a white-dominated society is an extraordinary achievement.

Informed by Gordon’s upbringing in Jamaica and the Bronx, and taking as touchstones the pandemic and the uprisings against police violence, Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking book that positions Black consciousness as a political commitment and creative practice, richly layered through art, love, and revolutionary action. It is sure to provoke, challenge, and inspire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250862914
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,076,604
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lewis R. Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician. He is the head of the philosophy department at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He has received accolades for his numerous influential books and articles, many of which have been reprinted and translated around the world. These include Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization and Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age. He is the honorary president of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and a former president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, for which he now serves as the chairperson of awards and global collaborations.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

Introduction: Struggling to Breathe 9

Part I Bound

1 Feared 25

2 Blackened 39

3 Erased; or, "I Don't See Race" 55

Part II Race-Making and Racism

4 Race-Making 73

5 Racism Intersected 87

6 Privilege, Luxury, License 103

7 Trans But Not Transcended 115

Part III Political Realities

8 Five Kinds of Invisibility 129

9 Black Consciousness is Political 147

10 Black Consciousness in Wakanda 162

Part IV Even When Black and Blue

11 Blue 195

12 Valued 219

Notes 231

Acknowledgments 257

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

Lewis Gordon’s expansive philosophical engagement with the current moment—its histories and globalities, its politics and protests, its visual and sonic cultures—reminds us that the ultimate aim of Black freedom quests is, indeed, universal liberation.”
—Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz

“Reading Fear of Black Consciousness had me nodding so often and so vigorously, I got a mild case of whiplash. With surgical precision, laser-sharp wit, and the eye of an artist, Lewis R. Gordon doesn’t just dissect race, racism, and racial thinking; he also offers a clarion call to embrace Black consciousness, to take political responsibility for decolonizing and transforming the world as it is.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

“Lewis R. Gordon is a thinker whose reflections on race have produced singular illuminations on our times. In Fear of Black Consciousness, he refines our conceptual understanding of how race consciousness is made and lived, and shows how reflection and survival are intertwined for all those who suffer from antiblack racism. Drawing on the history of philosophy and on a wide range of colonial histories, African popular culture, aboriginal histories, contemporary films, and stories, he shows the critical powers of creativity in dismantling racism and the making of a world where breath and love and existence become possible.”
—Judith Butler, author of The Force of Nonviolence

“This striking text offers the first systematic examination that I’ve seen of the epistemic dimensions of the universal illness that encompasses neoconservatism and neoliberalism. We learn the differences between a first-level, naive black consciousness and a revised and refined ‘Black consciousness,’ which critically reflects on this world and is capable of radically transforming it. You will want this book among your primary intellectual road supplies for the future.”
—Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English Emerita at Vanderbilt University

"In Fear of Black Consciousness, we are invited to think through the deep racial contours of philosophical thought and notice how black ways of being animate new modes of living together. As atrocity, injury, white supremacy, and racial violence loom, Gordon holds steady a Fanonian outlook, theorizing black consciousness as the realization of possibility—that is, a sustained political commitment that recalculates the stakes of freedom."
—Katherine McKittrick, author of Demonic Grounds and Dear Science

"Fear of Black Consciousness deserves to be carefully studied . . . deeply engaging and captivating . . . [Lewis Gordon] is an ally of the revolutionary struggle for human freedom."
—Joel Wendland-Liu, People's World

From the Publisher

★ 11/08/2021

Philosopher Gordon (Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism) draws in this probing and accessible study a distinction between the kind of “racialized black consciousness” shaped by white supremacy and a “liberatory Black consciousness” that refuses “to apologize for Black lives having value.” Interweaving autobiographical details about his childhood in Jamaica and the Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s with historical sketches of Black liberation movements and incisive discussions of the links between neoliberalism, racism, and the coronavirus pandemic, Gordon argues that the U.S. and other societies “devoted to blocking black people’s access to citizenship” are “fundamentally antipolitical and antidemocratic,” and argues that the fight against racism is “ultimately a fight for democracy.” He delves into the history of racialized thought in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and the U.S., and shows how anti-Black views get perpetuated even within the Black community, where “the opportunities available to lighter-skinned blacks are greater than those for darker-skinned blacks.” The contrast between his lack of racial awareness as a child in Jamaica, where the leading public figures were all Black, and his Bronx elementary school, where he learned the meaning of the n-word, is enlightening, as is his discussion of Black Panther, which analyzes how the film “distinguishes legitimate force from violence” and “rais the question of what Africa could offer the world if it were seen with open eyes.” The result is an essential, up-to-the-minute reckoning with racism. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2021

Head of the philosophy department at the University of Connecticut-Storrs and a leading scholar of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, Gordon tracks the historical development of racialized Blackness and its consequences for both Black and non-Black communities. In particular, he addresses the bad faith evident in many conversations about race and racism, challenging claims of "color blindness" and calling out white self-congratulation. Informed not just by Gordon's philosophical acumen but by his upbringing in Jamaica and the Bronx and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

Library Journal

2021-11-13
An Afro-Jewish philosopher looks at Black consciousness and the struggle against pervasive White supremacist social structures.

“Racism is the institutional production of nonhuman status to groups of human beings,” writes Gordon, head of the philosophy department at the University of Connecticut, “with the consequence of a ‘race’ or set of ‘races’ being treated as inferior or superior to others.” Certainly, that is manifest in most working definitions of White supremacy, although, as he adds, these days most adherents of that doctrine prefer somewhat blander terms such as alt-rightor white nationalism. Furthermore, argues the author, that racism exists on the left as well as the right. He suggests that small-b black consciousness accommodates this system, whereas what is needed is “to become actional, to fight against oppression”—i.e., to take up the cause of a capital-B Black consciousness that repudiates all ideas of White supremacy and Black inferiority. Gordon stretches a bit, though in the end convincingly, to incorporate the film Black Pantherinto this evolution. The author sometimes paints with too wide a brush, as when he asserts that “whites want everything,” a charge that would certainly risk alienating well-meaning allies. Nonetheless, the author has a keen understanding of the supremacist playbook, which draws on a range of old-school and neofascist sources to arrive at the maxim that the only way to make oneself superior is to make another inferior. Here, Gordon broadens the discussion to include intersectionality and the “understanding that race is connected to a multitude of other ways of living in the Euromodern world, including class, gender, indigeneity, and sexuality,” with new discriminations at each juncture. Racism is not supremacism as such, he holds, but both can be defeated with the new Black consciousness that both of them fear.

A provocative addition to the literature of race, racism, and resistance.

Kirkus Reviews