Alicia Garza on Progressives and the Black Community

Socialism in Black America

by Rev. Andrew J. Wilkes

We live in strange times. We have a black president using race-neutral framing for social justice, alongside a Black Lives Matter movement using structural racism framing for participatory democracy. Killer Mike, a Southern rapper best known for his work with the Grammy Award-winning superduo Outkast, has endorsed a sitting U.S. senator and self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders. Some black preachers, apparently, are tripping over themselves to cozy up to Donald Trump or reposition themselves within the arc of Hillary Clinton's historic candidacy. Strange times indeed.

Today, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders launches a tour of historically black colleges and universities (The HBCU Tour) in states where Clinton holds a clear advantage with black voters. He’ll be carrying a message of democratic socialism, one that rarely gets a hearing among any voting bloc.

Given the unique character of our political moment, I would argue that freedom-loving black folks should consider socialism as a viable political strategy for ameliorating the massive human misery in America. The reasons are embedded in our history and situation.

Socialism has deep roots in African American political history. The most famous and revered black person in America--Martin Luther King, Jr.--was a democratic socialist. Many of the most effective organizers and grassroots theorists of that era --folks like Ella Baker and A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin, for instance--held to a political vision of what may be called socialism. I appeal to black history to rebut the often-made claim that socialism has no lineage in communities of color and therefore is either untested or not to be trusted.