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All the white scholars and writers who have suddenly discovered race, racism, anti-racism, racial capitalism, and white supremacy need to figure out a reparative means of engaging with the Black scholars who have labored long before them.
You can't just claim this language like you've been in the trenches since John Brown. You can't just use this language because its sexy, au courant, whatever. It's the kind of racist opportunism that is really a kind of literary settler neocolonialism.
Part of the obligation here must be for white left journals to do an audit not only of who writes for them and who sits on the editorial boards, but what books have been reviewed. The audit won't look good.
Some may be surprised at the alarming infrequency that Black writers are reviewed, especially those who aren't leveraged by agents and elite academic posts.
Some may be surprised to find that the New York Times is more diverse than, say, The Nation; or that Dissent's editorial hierarchy is whiter than that of the Financial Times.
And if our audit asks about the *geographic* representation of the Black World, of Africa, the Caribbean, etc., we will understand, as many Black leftists have always understood, that left commitment to anti-imperialism can be something of a joke.
