Afropessimism is all the rage among millennial Black academics and activists-most notably among Black feminist critical race theorists, who themselves are now the prime targets of the MAGA crowd. Black intellectuals haven't enjoyed this much pop currency among the right wing since Black Power took over buildings to demand Black studies in state universities and the Ivies 50 years ago.
Wilderson's Afropessimism appeals powerfully to critical-race-and-gender-theory millennials because it provides both an ingenious analytical framework for Black oppression and a novel, weaponized language for blasting away at the silencing of Black suffering, Black trauma, Black despair, and Black depression by the junior partners in academia and progressive contemporary multi-identity coalitions.
Wilderson devoted several pages of his first memoir, Incognegro, to recounting the betrayal of Black feminist academics by white feminist academics at his college in San Jose once they'd achieved administrative power. There are according to one prominent Black woman race theorist, Asian women in academia who now describe themselves as Afropessimists.
According to a couple of Black critical race feminist profs we know, there are undergrad students who haven't actually read Wilderson but have nonetheless adopted AP as their rallying cry after coming home from Black Lives Matter protests despairing that nothing they do "Is going to stop these cops from killing us." For some, this despair leads to their own feelings of "Fuck solidarity" and a petulant, pissed-off urge to withdraw from interaction with white people-especially the staunchest of former allies-while they sort themselves out. AP is not a political directive toward anything-other than Blackfolk not getting fooled again by the promises of solidarity from junior partners whose reality-construct is as dependent on the reproduction of Black suffering-upon not being the nigger-as the titular Humans.
source: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/afropessimism-wilderson-critical-race/
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