Accusations of Genocide

“These theories speak to the long, critical memory of Black Americans who have been taught the racist, anti-Black history of the United States. This memory, the work of which is “the cumulative, collective maintenance of a record that draws into relationship significant instants of time past and the always uprooted homelessness of now” (Baker, 1994, p. 3), serves as centuries of evidence of real, anti-Black conspiracies and grounds Black speculation as to what conspiracies may be maintaining our oppression today. Within Black cultural forms, we are able to find archives of conspiracy theories which served as attempts at subverting white supremacy through anticipation of its atrocities. These forms are core ways of knowing for Black people, offering epistemologies which challenge the persistent structures of systemic racism that shape our realities. In this way, conspiracy theorizing among Black Americans is not simply an exercise in well-founded paranoia, but is often an intellectual and cultural practice that asserts Black agency and demands accountability from those who conspire to oppress.”

Chapter 5 Beyond Blackness: Paranoia, Power, and Creating Knowledge in Oppressive Contexts