How the Black Lives Matter movement redefines 'common good'

*Originally published on April 6, 2021.

Today's Black Lives Matter movement has redefined the idea of the common good, by focusing on those most oppressed in society — which in turn helps create a better society for everyone, according to Deva Woodly.

"In the process of undoing the structural oppressions that make it impossible for Black people, particularly Black poor people, to thrive, we also undo structural impediments to all people who are subject to oppressive social forces," said Woodly, associate professor of politics at The New School for Social Research in New York.

"So in shrinking the carceral population and investing in communities, we not only make communities safer for Black people, we make communities safer, period. In investing in the thriving of members of the Black community, we also learn what it means and accept the costs of investing in the thriving of people full stop."

Liberation in the Black Atlantic world 

These ideas of Black liberation as a common good aren't new; in examining the history of the Black Atlantic — countries in Atlantic Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean that are all linked through the history of the transatlantic slave trade — we see a region that's connected not just geographically, but also through the shared experience of anti-Blackness and state violence.

"All of the struggles of Black peoples around the world are connected by the history of modernity, which is a history of the Black Atlantic and the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism," said Woodly.

The slogan itself rings in most Black movements around the Black Atlantic for centuries. And the idea is, we are human.- Deva Woodly

As a result, nations in the Black Atlantic are also connected by the social movements that sprang up in response to anti-Blackness — from the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, all the way to today's Black Lives Matter movement.

"Think about what it means to be Black in hegemonic white countries, and what it means to see again, year after year, people get executed by police and see absolutely no consequences. And the effort to organize politically in response to this, to me evokes the Haitian Revolution, because I consider it the moment when Blackness became political," said Gregory Pierrot, assistant professor in the Department of English at University of Connecticut, Stamford. 

"I mean, the slogan itself rings in most Black movements around the Black Atlantic for centuries. And the idea is, we are human."

The Haitian Revolution and 'true' freedom

For centuries, Western notions of the common good, and what it meant to be liberated, have taken their definitions from the French and American revolutions.

But according to Pierrot, French and American ideas of who was included in that common good were extremely narrow.

But when the Haitian Revolution began in 1791, it set a new standard for the meaning of freedom that would encompass all members of the state, including the enslaved and the most oppressed.

"[Haitians] were advocating for a very different future and calling out the hypocrisy of Atlantic empires and countries, saying: 'You espouse universalism, you claim to be a republic, you claim to be a democracy, and yet you are willing to exclude us,'" said Julia Gaffield, associate professor of history at Georgia State University.

And while the kind of freedom espoused in France was considered inseparable from the conception of the state itself, revolutionary leaders in Haiti instead saw freedom as something in complete opposition to the state.

"The Haitian state came into existence [and] Haitians declared their independence to preserve their own personal freedom," said Gaffield.

"And so the first leader of independent Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, when he declared independence from France, it was to ensure the legal abolition of slavery."

Haiti's legacy of inclusion and liberation has continued to shape notions of who gets included in the common good. 

Haiti's legacy and Black liberation today 

Today's global Black Lives Matter movement takes the Haitian ethos a step further by placing at the centre of their work those who are most oppressed and most marginalized in society. 

According to Woodly, this ideal comes from the movement's roots in Black feminism, which thinks about justice from the point of view of those who are the most impacted, in pain or oppressed.

"The movement ... says: 'Taking our cue from people's actual lived experiences and particularly the lived experiences of those who are at the intersection of the most structural repression, how do we begin to undo the circumstances and structures that make it impossible for them to thrive and subject them to early death?'" said Woodly.

"And so really thinking through what it means to be safe and what it means to thrive from the point of view of those who have been furthest from thriving for systematic and structural reasons, actually yields goods for everyone."

Dancer, artist and BLM Toronto organizer Ravyn Wngz saw this firsthand at the first local demonstration she actively participated in.

In 2016, protesters held a sleep-in in front of the Toronto Police headquarters demanding answers in the shooting death of Andrew Loku, a 45-year-old Black man who was killed by police.

"It was such a beautiful celebration of life in that space. We had a medic area for people who needed extra care, water, people were delivering and dropping off food, lawyers were dropping off cards. It was just such a beautiful representation of what we could be living like, you know?" sais Wngz.

And according to Woodly, dismantling anti-Blackness is central to the task of achieving larger social justice overall.

"Without racial justice, there is no social justice," she said. "So unless we directly address racism, white supremacy, structural racism and injustice, we can't approach other aspects of social justice like economic justice [and] gender justice. All of these things intersect."

The future of the common good

Today, the work of the Black Lives Matter movement has yielded improvements in carceral trends in the U.S., voting rights, political engagement and the criminal justice system. 

Some of these changes include a slow but steady decline in both state and federal prison populations over the last several years, widespread removals of corrupt and regressive district attorneys, and several policy changes in the direction of defunding police and redirecting those resources into housing and other social services. 

"There have been a lot of good outcomes in terms of changing people's logic about police and prison, which is just good for everybody," said Woodly. "Because even though police disproportionately kill and harass Black and brown people, they kill and harass every kind of person."

Through its methods, the movement for Black lives asks us to consider what kind of world we could create if we were to model our notions of the "common good" not according to Western ideals, but instead, through the framework of ongoing Black liberation struggles.

"Looking to the Haitian state allows us to understand how liberty, equality could be applied in a way that was not implicitly and explicitly limiting. When they say all citizens, they mean all citizens rather than just the white citizens or the Christian citizens," said Gaffield.

According to Wngz, part of the answer to this question of a "limited" common good, lies in how we connect to each other as a society. 

"This is important for us to not only remember, but to centre, to decolonize ourselves, to move out of these carceral punitive punishment-type behaviours, and allowing and giving space for everyone to exist in their fullness so that there aren't all these systems of control, but instead systems of safety, systems of collective, universal understanding of each other," she said. 

"That is the gift of Black liberation."
 

Guests in this episode:

Gregory Pierrot is an assistant professor in the Department of English at University of Connecticut, Stamford.

Deva Woodly is an associate professor of politics at The New School for Social Research.

Julia Gaffield is an associate professor of history at Georgia State University.

Ravyn Wngz is an activist with Black Lives Matter, Toronto.

This episode is part of our series on the idea of the Common Good — the eternal search for humankind: what does it mean to live together in society, and how might we best share the world we live in? Find more Common Good episodes here.

* This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa and Tayo Bero.