Black Studies Manifestos: Higher Education, Supersessionism, and the Perfection of Slavery

Black studies manifestos contain strategies for pedagogical insurgency adequate to the contemporary moment, where the perfection of slavery coincides with the perfection of the university. On the one hand, the right-wing frames higher education as a form of mind-control; on the other, left-wing professors bemoan the ineffectiveness of education all together. The gap between represents a crisis of faith, not only in higher education but also in the aborted project of racial democracy. Instead of shoring up the language of the humanities, the university, and the nation, I reconfigure the rise of fascism, anti-DEI measures, and artificial intelligence through the logic of supersessionism, where the problem of secularizing knowledge and immanentizing God will always require a movement from slavery to segregation to neo-segregation, or “white-over-black.” I close with a call to pedagogical power that transforms educators and students into militant accomplices through opening meaningful occasions for risk and rebellion.