Neither Ground on Which to Stand, nor Self to Defend: The Structural Denial (and Radical Histories) of Black Self-Defense

Abstract

This article examines self-defense as an inherently spatial phenomenon that evidences an assumed right to the individual self and the creation and occupation of space. I argue that self-defense and its claims to space are conceptually and historically denied to Black diasporic populations, as gratuitous violence and the assumption of Black aspatiality void Black claims to self and space. I draw on U.S. laws and legal decisions from the antebellum era through the present to show how anti-Blackness has manifested itself in the legal realm through repeated legal denials of Black self-defense. I argue that at the core of this prohibition of Black self-defense is a societal need to preserve gratuitous violence and aspatiality as tenets of modern humanity. I further argue that, despite this long-standing prohibition, organized Black self-defense has remained important to Black social and political movements throughout the history of the United States. Examining Black movements from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I show how different movements have used self-defense to realize larger goals and establish and protect spaces in which Black life is fostered.