Fear of Black Consciousness

'There is a movement from a suffering black consciousness to a liberatory Black consciousness in which revelation of the dirty laundry and fraud of white supremacy and black inferiority is a dreaded truth'

We often grapple with the idea of race, but seldom pause to consider how much the construct shapes our core beliefs and ways of being. Lewis Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black Existentialism, has spent decades nurturing intellectual reflection as a vital component of ongoing activism for racial justice around the world.

In this boldly original book, he delves into history, art, politics and popular culture to show how the process of racialization - and its absence - affects not only how individuals and society perceive black people but also how black people perceive themselves.

Fear of Black Consciousness traces the ways in which the lived experience of black people has been rendered invisible in the Western world and the breadth of rich cultural expression that encapsulates the truth nonetheless - from ancient African languages to films such as Get Out and Black Panther.

Grounded in his own experience of moving from his childhood home in Jamaica, to the disorienting racialized landscape of the USA, Gordon offers a stunning philosophical, political and social critique while highlighting the fundamental role of Black people as agents of history and of the social change required to build a humane world of dignity, freedom and respect.