Black Radicalism and the Politics of Consumption

• In Event: Black Political Thought (I)

Abstract

This paper argues that neglected texts from the black radical tradition can enable political theorists to reassess their conventional ideas about consumption. Over the past four decades, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have demonstrated the broad political uses and meanings of the terms ‘consumer’ and ‘consumption;’ yet nearly all work by political scientists and political theorists on these themes reinforces a limited image of consumption as an apolitical, self-interested activity. In contrast, I show how Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here accentuated the political role of black consumers. Using textual evidence, I then make the novel claim that King’s account was a re-writing of W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1940 book Dusk of Dawn. Du Bois developed what I call a “consumer republican” ideology, premised on mobilizing black citizens to build and participate in separatist consumer cooperatives. King rejected Du Bois’s separatism but adopted the republican view that democratic action and institution-building could be oriented around consumer interests and identities; this was evident in King’s advocacy of boycotts, universal basic income, and Operation Breadbasket. The economic justice platform of Black Lives Matter, I conclude, continues this legacy of developing a capacious political picture of consumers and consumption.

Author

• Jon Masin-Peters, Johns Hopkins University