About the Book
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.