Building A Pro-Black World

The Liberatory World We Want to Create: Loving Accountability and the Limitations of Cancel Culture

Aja Couchois Duncan and Kad Smith

There is no end to this love

It has formed your bodies

Feeds your bright spirits

And no matter what happens in these times of breaking—

No matter dictators, the heartless, and liars

No matter—you are born of those

Who kept ceremonial embers burning in their hands

All through the miles of relentless exile

Those who sang the path through massacre

All the way to sunrise

You will make it through—

—Joy Harjo, from “For Earth's Grandsons,” An American Sunrise (NPQ magazine Spring 2022)

Love, a Forgotten Tongue

In Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice, Shiree Teng and Sammy Nuñez “call upon love as an antidote to injustice.”¹ But too often in our equity‐based systems‐change work, love is a forgotten tongue. Even in contexts where Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are leading organizations, networks, and change efforts, our engagement can be marked by competition, judgment, adversarialism, and distrust.

Coming, as we are, from centuries of land theft, enslavement, genocide, and systemic inequities that threaten our daily ability to survive, let alone thrive, it is understandable that we are angry—righteously so. And yet, the world we are seeking to create together requires that we move beyond anger to harness the transformative power of love.

In Ojibwe, one word for love is zhawenim: to show loving kindness. It is a transitive animate ...