In this bold and provocative book, Damani J. Partridge examines the possibilities and limits of a universalized Black politics. Young people in Germany of Turkish, Arab, and African descent use claims of Blackness to hold states and other institutions accountable for their everyday struggle. Partridge tracks how these youth invoke the expressions of Black Power, acting out the medal-podium salute from the 1968 Olympics, proclaiming "I am Malcolm X," expressing mutual struggle with Muhammad Ali and Spike Lee, and standing with raised and clenched fists next to Angela Davis. Partridge also documents the demands by public-school teachers, federal-program leaders, and politicians that young immigrants account for the global persistence of anti-Semitism as part of the German state's commitment to antigenocidal education. He uses these stories to interrogate the relationships among European Enlightenment, Holocaust memory, and Black futures, showing how noncitizens work to reshape their everyday lives. In doing so, he demonstrates how the concept of Blackness energizes, inspires, and makes possible participation beyond national belonging for immigrants, refugees, Black people, and other People of Color.
Damani J. Partridge is Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.
"This book is a captivating display of kaleidoscopic transformations of Blackness in Germany and beyond from the end of World War II to today. Through decades of committed research into the lives of noncitizens in Germany, Damani Partridge shows us how seemingly diverse phenomena such as Holocaust memory, the refugee crisis, the Black Lives Matter movement, and international solidarity with Palestinians are intricately connected in the way racialized people make demands for justice."—Esra Özyürek, author of Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe
238 pp.6 x 9Illus: 6 b/w illustrations
9780520382213$34.95|£30.00Paper
Dec 2022