From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1972-Present) is a scholar, author, and activist whose work focuses on Black politics, radical social movements, and racial inequality. She received her BA in African American Studies from Northeastern Illinois University, and her MA and PhD in the same discipline from Northwestern University. She has been a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, and she currently teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University.

Taylor’s emphasis on the racialized political economy of the United States and its impact on Black poor and working-class communities is an outgrowth of her earlier academic work in the interdisciplinary field of African American Studies. Her 2013 doctoral thesis is titled “Race for Profit: The Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1970's.” Much of her doctoral research contributed to the argument she articulates in From #BLM to Black Liberation (2016). In Chapter 2, she discusses how the turn to colorblind politics “helped to shroud not only racism but also its companion: the economic crisis of the 1970s” (53). She also discusses Nixon’s 1971 statement on housing and goes on to note how the debates over the Fair Housing Act of 1968 involved real estate brokers continuing to oppose fair housing into the 1970s (64).