A review by ralowe
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers

2.0

this book made me mostly mad at myself. there's more i could have done to make sure the anti-501(c)(3) critique had been passed on. friends of mine used to screenprint shirts that said "non-profits are the new The Man,"ќ i lost mine. i wore it all the time. the shirt's screenprinted beautifully awkward grammar scored doubletakes off the more conceptually elegant articulation it hit when you get it. never got back my copy of *the revolution will not be funded,* gay shame got jumped by someone in a cowboy hat while trying to pass out our zines on direct action alternatives to corporatized activism outside of creating change when it was in downtown oakland. that's what's so filthy about how "reparations"ќ as a buzzword traffics black political life, it becomes an alibi for the fallacy that profit motive can fuck with social justice. ask any new hire at a food co-op. in some fucked up careerist fart cloud where assata and booker would even sit at the same table. and i know fred moten counsels a sort of deconstructive skepticism of the marxist formulation of the commodity, neither his nor frank wilderson's work are intended as prescriptive; in fact, it's easy to renovate cedric robinson's black radical tradition as contiguous with fund transfer activism. nibbling confit and sipping aperitifs in qatar with the captains of industry about rosa parks murals on county jails. it starts there and then becomes whatever moves will survive an audit, so deep inside the institutions of state legitimacy, trying to speak their legalistic slave-holding language, trying to fit into their photo-op frame, trying to teach cops to be nice as "prison abolition."ќ sure there are some noble endeavours but then you're trying to explain why a new ted talk wine shop co-worker cafe on your block is bad, why trying to buy political influence is bad, why crowdsource popularity darwinism fucks everybody, why trying to help CEO's get woke is kind of how you play yourself. i want to believe in the apparent optimism in the beautiful parts of this book that don't read like a resume at diversity consultant follow-up interview at warcriminal.com. i can't describe how painful it is to see the ideas you hold dear made palatable to an apparently non-black funding stream. antiracist anticapitalism now includes "pay me to make you a better person,"ќ and that's just what's normal now. it's so fucking depressing. and you probably think i'm dramatic.