African American Studies

This paper spotlights police complicity with and perpetuation of anti-Black violence, invigorating months of protests and calls for police accountability, police demilitarization, police defunding, and even police abolition. The demands themselves differed in substance; some focused on closing down police departments altogether, while others emphasized the fiscal necessity of redirecting public funding from police to other agencies.1 But the gist of these calls was unanimous: they insist that to transform rather than merely reform the institutions within American society that perpetuate anti-Black racism, police must be decentered as the go-to institution for solving not just problems of crime but social problems more generally.

Black Lives Matter at School succinctly generalizes lessons from successful challenges to institutional racism that have been won through the BLM at School movement that began at one school in 2016 and has since spread to hundreds of schools across the country.

This book exames righteous rage, black joy, as well as grief and fatigue among other emotions, the contributors celebrate the vitality of black life while documenting those who have harmed it.

M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at Black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it terms a "war against Black people," as well as the "shared struggle with all oppressed people." Yet despite the significance of the social, political, and economic goals of M4BL, as well as the innovative organizational leadership strategies it employs, M4BL has so far received little sustained philosophical attention.

Stay Woke directly addresses our political, social, and economic institutions, which are still embedded with racist policies and practices that devalue black lives. provide a basic toolkit that will equip readers to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics. This book offers a clear vision of a racially just society, and shows just how far we still need to go to achieve this reality.