[A conversation with the historian about the 20th-anniversary of
his seminal book Freedom Dreams, how the meaning of freedom has
changed in the intervening years, the reparations debate, and more.]
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REDEFINING FREEDOM WITH ROBIN KELLEY  
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Robin D. G. Kelley, Omari Weekes
October 24, 2022
The Nation
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_ A conversation with the historian about the 20th-anniversary of his
seminal book Freedom Dreams, how the meaning of freedom has changed in
the intervening years, the reparations debate, and more. _

, UCLA

 

Even when African Americans have been actively denied time and space
to dream, we have imagined other possibilities for the world around
us. Jupiter Hammon
[[link removed]], one of the
first African Americans to publish poetry in the 18th century,
envisaged a future in heaven that would make navigating the atrocities
of being enslaved less absolutely crushing. Some 200 years later, the
legendary poet and intergalactic recording artist Sun Ra
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space is the place for Black people to live and thrive outside of the
strictures of white and Western dominance. All the while, Black
radical movements have manifested visions of the new worlds, the
improved material conditions and healthier social relations that would
emerge if Black people were finally free to determine our own
trajectories.

Robin D.G. Kelley
[[link removed]] has been at the
forefront of chronicling the radical history of Black people. With
wide-ranging work on the Alabama Communist Party, Thelonious Monk
[[link removed]] and modern jazz in the African
diaspora, the Black working class, surrealism, and more, Kelley has
tracked the revolutionary impulses of Black Americans across
centuries, locales, and continents. In _Freedom Dreams: The Black
Radical Tradition_
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Kelley mines the depths of Black political theory and praxis to show
how Black people imagined new visions of what the world could be in
their everyday lives, their activism, and their aesthetic practice. As
the poet Aja Monet [[link removed]] writes in a new forward
for the 20th-anniversary edition of _Freedom Dreams_, “Kelley’s
book offers us our history so we can create with a clearer vision for
our future.” In the following interview, which has been edited for
length and clarity, Kelley reflects on what this book’s reach has
been since its original publication and how, perhaps, the idea of
freedom has mutated under the various American regimes that have come
into power since.

_—Omari Weekes_

OMARI WEEKES: IN THE BOOK’S NEW INTRODUCTION, YOU WRITE THAT IT WAS
“NEVER MEANT TO BE A MANIFESTO OR A ROAD MAP.… INSTEAD, IT HUMBLY
OFFERED A DIFFERENT TAKE ON HISTORIES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS BY CENTERING
THEIR VISION OF THE FUTURE.” WHEN MY STUDENTS READ EXCERPTS
FROM _FREEDOM DREAMS_, THEY TREAT IT MUCH LIKE A MANIFESTO AND AN
INVITATION TO DO RADICAL THINKING AND IMAGINING. I WONDER IF YOU WISH
YOU HAD THOUGHT ABOUT IT MORE IN THOSE TERMS?

ROBIN KELLEY: Not at all. In fact, I’m even more convinced that it
shouldn’t be a manifesto or a road map. The word you used just now,
“invitation,” is perfect. It should be an invitation for us not
just to study our history but also not to be locked in or bound by it
either. And sometimes we’re looking for models when in fact that
gets in the way of the work. The work is a struggle. That’s what
movements do. Social engagement, participation, and struggle create
the grounds for envisioning both the immediate and the future. When
you’re engaged in social movements, you know when it’s time to
throw away your manifesto, to revise it or rethink the way forward..
Because we’ve got to always be in a mode of improvisation, and I
actually think there’s a relationship between improvisation and
fugitivity. Improvisation is the most important tool you have to
navigate both the catastrophe we’re facing and the counter-planning
needed to move beyond that catastrophe.

OW: COULD YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT WHAT KIND OF IMPACT YOU
WANTED THIS BOOK TO HAVE?

RK: I wanted to create an alternative history of Black movements that
are future-oriented and I chose struggles that may not be identified
as successful and, in fact, reject the notion of success altogether. I
wanted to write a history of movements that are demanding reparations,
that are trying to get out of Dodge and are trying to find an
alternative to the reality we have by leaving, whatever leaving may
mean. I wanted to try to free a new generation of activists from the
bonds of history and to show them that they have the right to make
mistakes. We don’t give ourselves permission to make mistakes.
Funders don’t give us permission to make mistakes. But we don’t
always know; we figure it out together and make mistakes along the
line. Part of my assessment of these movements was to recognize the
mistakes, to recognize the limitations, and in fact, part of the new
introduction and epilogue is also about the recognition of my own
limitations in writing it.

One of the things that I learned over the last 20 years was even how
that conception of what it means to create a transformative politics
around the question of identity and identification was still limited
because we’re only talking about, as Indigenous groups might say,
the human nation. This whole planet and all of life are relations. And
when you start to think that way, then you are way beyond it. We see
in the flowering of movements new visions coming forward for what the
future can look like, what emancipation can look like, what abolition
can actually look like. None of those terms can ever be codified. You
can’t come up with a definition of abolition and then stick with it
for the rest of your life. That’s impossible. But that’s our job
as intellectuals, we’re supposed to define our terms, and I’m
like, Why can’t they be more elastic?

In that vein, I should add: Someone one day should go back and read
all of the introductions and acknowledgements written by white left
cultural studies people from 1990 until about 2000. Or even go beyond
2000 to right now. It’s amazing how even if they don’t name
feminists of color or queer movements, they feel a sense of
displacement, a sense of irrelevance. And that is exactly the problem.
They have defined the center, and if they could just get out of
themselves at the center then they’re going to recognize that their
own subjectivity is part of what they have to grapple with.

OW: I’VE ALWAYS BEEN STRUCK BY THE FIRST CHAPTER OF _FREEDOM
DREAMS_, “‘WHEN HISTORY SLEEPS’: A BEGINNING,” AND THE WAY YOU
USE YOUR CHILDHOOD MEMORIES IN HARLEM AND WASHINGTON HEIGHTS AS A WAY
OF OPENING AN APERTURE TO THIS HISTORY OF THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION.
COULD YOU TALK A BIT ABOUT WHY YOU DECIDED TO BEGIN YOUR HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS HERE WITH THE DEEPLY PERSONAL?

RK: There was no other place to begin. To put it very simply, our
mother was our first revolutionary teacher both in her practice and
pedagogy. The whole framing of the book as a kind of third-eye view
comes directly from her; there’s no other source. Political
imagination requires praxis, the application of theory to, if not
movements, then to everyday life. And my mother was engaged in praxis
with us every single day in terms of what she made us look at, how she
saw things, how she described things. Her spiritual practice was what
drove her. A lot of people would have wanted me to talk about her
growing up in Jamaica and how this shaped her politics. But, actually,
it was strictly her discovery of Paramahansa Yogananda and her reading
of the Bhagavad-Gita and the way in which she wanted to actually model
a spiritual practice that all came from there.

Part of what she was trying to convey to us was a definition of
freedom that does not depend on citizenship or the state to authorize
it. It’s possible to seize freedom, to enjoy it, to create space for
it, without necessarily overthrowing the government. We think of
freedom as this elusive thing, but what she was saying is that there
are ways to achieve it that we need to seize and embrace, even if they
are momentary. And when we do that, it’s not the end of history.
It’s the _beginnings_ in many ways, because it provides that
vision of what’s possible. It’s not the same as hope, but if you
don’t believe that this other world is possible, then there’s no
reason for you to get up in the morning and fight or love or actually
try to see the beauty in the midst of the ghetto.

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OW: I’M REMINDED OF BELL HOOKS
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“THEORY AS A LIBERATORY PRACTICE
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AND HOW CRITICAL THEORY, FOR HER, WAS NOT UNLIKE THE WAY SHE WAS
TALKING WITH HER MOTHER AND THE KINDS OF EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONS THEY
WERE HAVING ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE IN THE WORLD.

RK: That’s the beauty of the deeply radical politics envisioned in
Black feminism. My colleague and friend Elsa Barkley Brown was one of
the first historians to really draw on the lessons of her mother, the
lessons of family, to use stories as a way of getting deep theoretical
interventions in historical practice. She’s just one of many. bell
hooks is also a great example; I mean, she walked the walk.

OW: TO MOVE A LITTLE BIT WITHIN THIS, I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT THE
STYLE OF THE TEXT. THE BOOK, WHICH IS DEFINITELY NOT COLLOQUIAL, HAS
THE RIGOR AND WARMTH OF A DISCUSSION AMONG COLLEAGUES, PEERS, AND
FRIENDS. WHEN YOU WERE WRITING, HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON THIS INTIMATE
STYLE AND THIS APPROACH TO TELL THESE STORIES ABOUT FREEDOM DREAMING?

RK: Every single one of those chapters were talks that were not meant
to be published. And I think that’s important. The framing of the
whole book began with a talk that I gave at Dartmouth. It was for a
Dr. MLK celebration, and my daughter came with me. This would have
been about 2000, so she would have been about 10 years old. I give
this talk, and Elleza has this assignment to write something about Dr.
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at school, and we come back and
she’s like, “I don’t really want to do this.” So, I say,
“I’ll tell you what: Don’t turn in your assignment. But I’m
going to interview you right now, and I want you to say to your
teacher why you won’t do the assignment.” And I turn on the tape
recorder (cassette!) and she said, “It’s not relevant to my
generation.” And I’m like, That’s a damn good answer! I give the
cassette to her teacher, and as a result of that, her teacher brought
me into the class. We did this exercise where we got all the kids to
talk about what is actually relevant to their generation. And the top
issue turned out to be gun violence.

OW: TEN-YEAR-OLDS SAYING THAT!

RK: Yeah, fourth grade. It was gun violence, number one. The kids
ended up writing a beautiful letter, collectively written, to
then-President Bill Clinton basically saying, “Do something about
gun violence.” So, we took what was essentially this moment of
“I’m bored. This is terrible. I don’t like Dr. King” to “OK,
well what’s your dream?” That exercise was in the back of my head
as I began thinking about _Freedom Dreams_.

All of these things were coming to a head: the killing of Amadou
Diallo
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the protests around that, the fact that once again we’re out here
dealing with state violence again and again and again and again and it
doesn’t seem like things are changing. And when something changes,
there are more Black people killed. The combination of all this,
stylistically, compelled me to write a book that didn’t have
footnotes, that didn’t have academic authorizations but simply was
an alternative history for all of us to think about as I’m having
this chat with you. I’m happy with how it came out stylistically. It
wasn’t conscious, but it really was shaped by those forces and
shaped so much by my daughter. I can’t even tell you how important
it was just to have her as an interlocutor. Because everything I wrote
I was writing for her.

OW: THERE’S THIS AMAZING CHAPTER IN THE BOOK ABOUT REPARATIONS, AND
MY QUESTION IS, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON CONTEMPORARY REPARATIONS
DISCOURSE BOTH HAPPENING BY THEORISTS AND ACTIVISTS ON THE GROUND AND
THAT WHICH VERY SHORTLY MADE ITS WAY INTO THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL
DISCOURSE?

RK: The current discourse on reparations is really disturbing for me.
So much of the emphasis is on paying a debt monetarily. I can give you
three problems. One: The idea that African descendants of slavery
should be the ones to receive reparations as if somehow the crime of
human kidnapping and enforced labor can be bound up in the
nation-state and that only the people who have enough money to pay for
a subscription to ancestry.com are the ones who can apply. This is a
triumph of neoliberal thinking. Two: The focus on monetary settlement
is a way to turn what could potentially be a radical movement into a
movement for property. In Evanston, Illinois, the people who got
cheated by the real estate industry and finance capital are going to
get money to buy a house, and the value of the house is not going to
change because they’re still Black. So, even if you believe in
property, the fact that we’re not even addressing the question of
structural racism is a concern. Three: We cannot separate the question
of reparations from decolonization. What good is a transfer of stolen
land from settlers to victims of kidnapping? We have to return to a
transformative vision that sees reparations discourse as
diagnostic—that is, a way of understanding our history, how wealth
is created, accumulated, and concentrated, and the consequences of
dispossession. Reparations can never be an end-all. The dismantling of
racial capitalism for good is the goal. We have to struggle to end all
forms of oppression if we’re going to create the freedom dreams that
we not only deserve, but those the planet needs if we’re going to
survive.

OW: HOW HAS THE MEANING OF FREEDOM CHANGED FOR YOU SINCE THIS BOOK
CAME OUT?

RK: Freedom is still deeply spiritual; it is bodily; it is rooted not
just in love but pleasure, which is not always the same thing. I think
it’s worth remembering that the collective and the individual are
not foes. In fact, if done right, they are two sides of the same
experience and process. Practicing freedom in Detroit, for example,
means taking the power grid into the collective’s hands. It means
ending the presence of police by creating new forms of social safety.
It means creating forums for people to talk, work, and learn together,
but also grow things. It means reimagining and reshaping the urban
landscape. Those engaged in the struggle are practicing freedom
everywhere, and so to me, I can sit back and just watch freedom unfold
right before our eyes.

OW: IMPLICIT IN YOUR DEFINITION OF FREEDOM IS A CRITIQUE OF
LIBERALISM, NO?

RK: Yes! The redefinition of freedom is one that is against
liberalism. The liberal framework has been a disaster because
liberalism is that which was used against radical abolitionist
movements to get them to shut up and get Biden and Harris elected.
Liberalism is used as a framing of history—that is, the idea that
history is continual progress. The idea that there is a “real
America” and these other dark moments are an aberration is based on
a liberal conception that progress is inevitable if you wait. Part of
what I’m hoping that this 20th-anniversary edition can do is remind
us that fascism has always been a threat, but this country is built on
fascism. Fascism is the use of the state to force people into
subjugation and to extract wealth for a class. And if fascism is based
on nationalism, and especially a racialized nationalism, then America
is fascist. But liberalism underwrites it.

And I hope the book will remind us that at no point in our history has
a liberal regime actually improved conditions for Black people.
Liberalism gives us carceral feminism
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Liberalism gives us a war on poverty that’s about policing Black
people. Liberalism gives us civil rights legislation that is designed
to deliver votes to Democrats but not to achieve anything like
freedom. We cannot be bought or convinced or tricked into thinking
that liberalism equals freedom because that is the lie that we have
been told since the days of John Locke.

OW: ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THE BOOK DOES SO WELL IS THINK ABOUT HOW
THE PROBLEM OF LIBERALISM GETS DEPLOYED AGAINST BLACK PEOPLE TO NEGATE
WHAT BLACK FREEDOM COULD POSSIBLY BE. BUT ALSO YOU TALK ABOUT THE
HISTORY OF SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM AND HOW, AS POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
AND SYSTEMS, THEY DON’T AUTOMATICALLY BRING RACE TO THE FOREFRONT.
THEY DON’T AUTOMATICALLY COME WITH EVERYTHING THAT BLACK PEOPLE NEED
IN ORDER TO HAVE FREEDOM OR ANYTHING LIKE IT COME TO FRUITION.

RK: And that has been the lie that some elements on the
Marxist-Leninist left have tried to impose. Just shut up, because once
socialism comes, all this other stuff will be resolved. This is where
we get these tricky problems where, on the one hand, the Cuban
Revolution is a great achievement, but don’t talk about the
inability of the Cuban Revolution to resolve the issue of racism and
racial inequality. Because if you do, then, you’re going to
undermine the Cuban Revolution. Or the flip side is that people then
use what you say to say, “See? Socialism will never work!” And we
can do better.

I’m really inspired by what I’ve seen over the last 20 years. Life
might have gotten worse but movements and the visions of movements
have not. The deeper the misery, the sharper the catastrophe, the more
visionary the movements. And they’re the ones that end up being the
casualties of the state, because the state and those in power cannot
tolerate them. They can only tolerate liberal multiculturalism. They
can make everyone in the State Department queer and a person of color
and it’s the same policies. When you start thinking about freedom in
the way that this new generation is thinking about it, it’s
dangerous.

_OMARI WEEKES is an assistant professor of English and American Ethnic
Studies at Willamette University. _

_Copyright c 2022 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
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* Black History
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* radical thought
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* Struggle
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* Social Movements
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* freedom struggle
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* state violence
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* reparations
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