On Black Organizing

Abstract

Abstract Any account of radical democracy that cannot adequately grapple with the tentacles of capitalist exploitation and racial expropriation in the US is fundamentally flawed. Some religious scholars and theologians are less convinced that BBCO is the right example for radical democracy. The first section of this chapter gets this critique up and running. In the next section, I draw on political and social theorists to argue that capitalism moves by exploitation and expropriation that depends on “hidden abodes” not entirely encompassed within the economy. The third section explores how BBCO organizes against racial capitalism. The final section argues that by centering the political role of sacred value, in this specific case the sacred value of Black life, BBCO can more adequately build relational power that grasps the role of race expropriation and class exploitation in contemporary racial capitalism.