Laying the foundations for a more perfect society is complicated. The utopian ideal, laid out in the book Utopia by Thomas More in the 16th Century, is a fictitious place — one where there are no human vices, no struggles, no ownership.
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, says there’s a balance between utopian and dystopian visions. “Us-topia" requires that we all take a role, that there is collective agency rather than a reliance on some external power:
“How we get our hands dirty in terms of building the kinds of worlds that we want to inhabit — I see [this as] ‘us topia.’ [It’s] a reclamation of our collective power to actually work together to ensure that no one is excluded [and] no one is left behind in terms of creating political, social, [and] economic systems so that we can all thrive.”
Benjamin, author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, argues that we shouldn’t take a back seat to technology and automation; tech can play an important role in representing the public good. Benjamin shares the example of Barcelona’s Decidim app which promotes democratic participation in city governance. He says that those most affected by social harms need to get involved in envisioning and creating solutions:
“Too often, fear and antagonism is engendered in order to get us to support more policing, more military investment, [and] more surveillance when what we really need is greater investment in public goods that would actually enhance our quality of life in the here and now.”
Ruha Benjamin, pictured here, says: “Right now, we have a narrow sliver of humanity that's currently shaping the world that the rest of us have to inhabit. And that starts much earlier than whoever's in industry, whoever's working in these companies. It starts with our K through 12 system in terms of who young people feel empowered and passionate about in these fields.” Photo by Cyndi Shattuck
Book cover “Imagination: A Manifesto.”
So how did Utopianism influence Black thinkers, artists and politicians in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement? Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America, shares the stories of a relatively unknown group of Black leaders and artists. This includes Albert Cleage Jr, a Black nationalist minister from Detroit who advocated for Black-led institutions, and was critical of the advancements and methods of the civil rights movement.
Somewhat radical for his time, Cleage renamed his Church “The Shrine of the Black Madonna.” It became the hub for Black Christian Nationalism, a new political movement promoting “Black self-determination and the creation of Black-led institutions.”
Robertson reflects on the value and importance of historical memory and why these stories are an important chapter in American history:
“I'm interested in the kind of struggles for historical memory that I think are going to really ramp up in the next few years. I have written a lot about Black towns, about these all-Black spaces that traditionally have not gotten a lot of air time in mainstream media or mainstream narratives. Trump's vision of a utopian future is one that rejects the 1619 Project explicitly. [It’s] meant to reframe our understanding of American history. The vision of the future is one that we will have to constantly fight for.”
Aaron Robertson, pictured here, says that “one of the ways that some of the people in Cleage’s church were able to start to imagine a different life for themselves was through this beautiful mural that exists in the shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit. It's a really striking, 18 foot tall, nine foot wide mural of a Black Madonna and child.” Photo by Beowulf Sheehan
“The Black Utopians:Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America.”