1st Edition
Laundering Black Rage The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits
Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits is a spatial and historical critique of the capitalist State that examines how Black Rage—conceived as a constructive and logical response to the conquest of resources, land, and human beings racialized as Black—is cleaned for the unyielding means of White capital. Interlacing political theory with international histories of Black rebellion, it presents a thoughtful challenge to the counterinsurgent tactics of the State that consistently convert Black Rage into a commodity to be bought, sold, and repressed. Laundering Black Rage investigates how the Rage directed at the police murder of George Floyd could be marshalled to funnel the Black Lives Matter movement into corporate advertising and questionable leadership, while increasing the police budgets inside the laundry cities of capital - largely with our consent.
Essayist/Performer Too Black and Geographer Rasul A. Mowatt assert Black Rage as a threat to the flow of capital and the established order of things, which must therefore be managed by the process of laundering.
Intertwining stories of Black resistance throughout the African diaspora, State building under capitalism, cities as sites of laundering, and the world making of empire, Laundering Black Rage also lays the groundwork for upending the laundering process through an anti-colonial struggle of reverse-laundering conquest. Relevant to studies of race and culture, history, politics, and the built environment, this pathbreaking work is essential reading for scholars and organizers enraged at capitalism and White supremacy laundering their work for nefarious means.
1. Laundering Black Rage. 2. From Rage to Commodity: The Phases of Laundering. 3. City on a Hill: Sites of Laundering & Sites of Consent. 4. Raging the Front, Fronts for Recapture. 5. Recapturing the Home Front. 6. Laundering a Massacre: From Black Wall Street to Black Capitalism. 7. Laundering of White Violence: The Dylann Roof Road Trip. 8. Conclusion.
Biography
Too Black is a low-wage worker, poet, organizer, and filmmaker. As a poet, Too Black has headlined the historic Nuyorican Poets Café, Princeton University, and Johannesburg Theater in South Africa. His words have appeared in publications such as Black Agenda Report, Left Voice, Indianapolis Recorder, and Hood Communist. He is also the co-director of the award-winning documentary The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.
Rasul A. Mowatt is a son of Chicago and a subject of empire, while dwelling within notions of statelessness, settler colonial mentality, and anti-capitalism. Rasul also functions in the State as a Department Head in the College of Natural Resources, as an Interim Department Head in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, and as an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. He is the author of the book The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence: The City and State Between Us.
"Deep in the heart of US civilization are pieces of leather and iron, the instruments of enslavement and brutality, the memory of rebellions and the dreams of emancipations. Those instruments produced Black Rage, an angry reaction to an angry system, but a Black Rage that is capable of widening itself and building a new civilization. This book dances between the reality of Black Rage and its capacity to produce a world of love."—Vijay Prashad, Director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
"Wide ranging, thorough, and unflinching analysis of Black politics in the 21st century US—a must read for activists, scholars, and anyone who knows that Black politics matters."—Olúfẹìmi O. Táíwò, author of Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)
"The subjugation and cooptation of Black people's rage are inevitable under the regime of racial capitalism. Laundering Black Rage is a must read for revolutionary analysis."—Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report
