Black Scare / Red Scare

“Burden-Stelly offers an insightful case study that is historically specific to the reality of racism in capitalist America. In turn, she engages her impressive knowledge concerning the nuances between Black radical actors and their organizations. This book will establish Burden-Stelly as a top theorist in the area of Black radical anticapitalist scholarship. In a real sense, she has broken new ground in ways that bring together aspects of Black experience that rarely get combined.” * Journal of African American Studies *“In the searing pages of Black Scare / Red Scare, Burden-Stelly … unravels the sinister threads of racist oppression, capitalist exploitation, and political repression that have been woven into the fabric of U.S. history… . This carefully scaffolded study unveils the insidious dynamics of the “Black Scare / Red Scare” phenomenon, revealing how anti-communist ideologies served as governance technologies to discipline Black radicals. The book is meticulously structured and rich in historical detail. It demonstrates how U.S. capitalist racism, rooted in the historical structures of enslavement and settler-colonialism, evolved and adapted with the rise of industrialized conditions, resulting in the perpetuation of racialized exploitation. Ultimately, this work significantly contributes to scholarship and theory, challenging prevailing narratives and prompting a deeper understanding of the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of systemic racism.” * Choice *“… A charged and challenging investigation of racism, anticommunism, and capitalist exploitation.” * H-Socialisms *“Demonstrating Burden-Stelly’s exhaustive knowledge of secondary literature and skillful employment of theoretical frameworks, Black Scare / Red Scare is a work of serious scholarship. Although the intersection of the Black Freedom Struggle with American anticommunism has received prior attention … Burden-Stelly offers a compelling and fresh approach to the material that significantly broadens the geographic and temporal scope. While her exploration of theoretical concepts is insightful and convincing, it is in her application of those theories to distinct historical episodes—legal proceedings involving Garvey, Herndon, and W.E.B. Du Bois; government documents such as the Lusk Committee’s findings and the Palmer Report; J. Edgar Hoover’s thoughts on Radical Blackness; and the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations—that the work truly sings.” * Journal of African American History *“This text is an important contribution to the history of racial capitalism and an insightful analysis of the perpetuity of anticommunist politics and its continued grip on US politics.” * American Historical Review *“Burden-Stelly is not content with simply contributing to existing scholarship. She shakes things up. And Black Scare / Red Scare hits with volcanic force, sweeping away the prevailing tendency to underestimate the Black Marxist threat to racial capitalism and the embedded anti-Blackness driving state repression. Burden-Stelly details precisely how the ‘political economy of capitalist racism’ played a decisive role in the super-exploitation and subjugation of the Black working class, resulting in a protracted war on Black radical movements. A powerful, pathbreaking work that not only reorients the long history of anticommunism on Black liberation but moves the theory of racial capitalism to an entirely new level.”   – Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination“Burden-Stelly is one of our most brilliant radical thinkers and scholars. In Black Scare / Red Scare she recounts, reassesses, and reframes the historical relationship between white supremacy and anti-communism. In light of growing racist authoritarian movements today, the book could not be more timely. Powerful and powerfully relevant.”  – Barbara Ransby, historian, activist, and author of the award-winning Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement“Engaging various disciplines including Black studies and political theory, Black Scare / Red Scare is a highly sophisticated and timely book. Beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution and ending with contemporary federal campaigns aimed at surveilling and quelling radical Black thought and activism, Burden-Stelly’s deeply researched study presents the long history of two overlapping panics: the Black Scare and Red Scare. A major contribution to the field of African American history, Burden-Stelly brilliantly illuminates how anti-Black and anticommunist sentiments unfolded as the United States pursued capitalist and global dominance. Black Scare / Red Scare is certain to transform our understanding of the origins of anti-Black radicalism and histories of Black activists’ collective fight for liberation and struggle against ‘US Capitalist Racist Society.’” – LaShawn D. Harris, Michigan State University“This book is truly one of a kind. The subject matter is timely, and its analysis could not be more original. Black Scare / Red Scare will spark widespread debate and continue to be read for many years to come.” – Jonathan Fenderson, Washington University in St. Louis“Black Scare / Red Scare is a historical and theoretical tour de force. Burden-Stelly explains how the development of anti-Communism and the suppression of Black radicalism became intertwined central governing priorities that bolstered US capitalism from the First World War to the Cold War and beyond. The eventual construction by government officials of what Burden-Stelly calls ‘True Americanism’ legitimized business interests’ racialized profiteering by condemning its critics as radical alien outsiders. These trends reshaped all branches and levels of government. No previous book has analyzed the dizzying array of committees and organizations whose purpose was to quash democratic opponents to US capitalism: the FBI and its Dies Committee, paid informants and infiltrators, and the courts all dedicated untold resources to smashing threats to US racial hierarchy and the economic inequality it fostered. Black Scare / Red Scare ultimately reveals a countersubversive political tradition, developed over the past century, that connects to current attacks on ‘Black Identity Extremism’ and ‘wokeism’ as distractions from actual fascist developments in American society. All scholars and activists interested in antiracism and democracy in America need to engage with this pathbreaking book.” – Erik Gellman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“With Black Scare / Red Scare, Burden-Stelly enters the pantheon of Black radical thinkers, past and present. Analyzing phenomena ranging from the structural location of Blackness to the resurgence of fascism, Black Scare / Red Scare demystifies the processes that subjugate Black lives and sustain economic domination. Do not miss this meticulous and uncompromising study.”  – Vaughn Rasberry, Stanford University

Charisse Burden-Stelly is associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University. She is the coauthor of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History and the coeditor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing and Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State, a collection of essays by Percy C. Hintzen.