Black Lives Matter and the spatial imaginaries of urban political resistance

Abstract

Scholars have often characterized the city as the epicenter of social inequality. The city has largely been argued to be the product of capitalistic endeavors resulting in deep pockets of conflicting class interests and racial tensions. However, any attempt to understand the city as a function of a broader urban process must consider the ways in which class and racial struggles constitutively restructure power dynamics that are lived out among people and places. In this article, I briefly engage Black Loves Matter (BLM) and their policy efforts to think about the ways in which Black people create imaginaries about their own urban futures.