Class in session: 2023

The American framework of capitalism and class-based violence is catapulting the black bourgeois with a string attached. The string is insecurity and the attachment is white supremacy. White supremacy is not a people- it’s a value system. A value system so tethered to capitalism that it does not exist without class identity. And similarly, black values are not a practice in worshipping docile negroes or black people who have found success amidst class-based violence. Black value is not defined by a relationship to whiteness (or any skin color) because everything is the offspring of black. So, black values are the value of self and the value of other.

We value self and we value other. This is why we seem familiar. This is why you think you know us from somewhere. Because when you see us, you see you. Or, a version of you.

Maybe you didn’t recognize that what’s happened to us was an act of violence. And that’s why our simple acts of freedom feel like violence. Exercising our freedom is a revolutionary act.

But, the revolution we are looking for is not designed to elevate a class of people. It’s designed to elevate our humanity so that we no longer identify each other by a class.

All photos courtesy of Hycide- Long live Akintola Hanif