The Dig: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Black Liberation and Socialism

Putting “black faces in high places,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues, has not only failed to benefit the working class and poor black majority — it has actually harmed them by pushing an individualistic, meritocratic narrative that blames poor black people’s condition on their own personal failings. Taylor is a professor of American-American studies at Princeton and the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, from Haymarket Books. She is a regular contributor to Jacobin and contributed a chapter called "What about racism? Don't socialists only care about class?" to The ABCs of Socialism.