DR JOHN HENRIK CLARKE

Dr John Henrik Clarke exposed a central contradiction in Black life that we ignore at our peril: the fantasy that the very system built on our stolen labour, blood and bones will somehow rise to save us. Clarke reminds us that centuries of unpaid Black toil financed a global economic order, capitalism, that was never designed for our liberation. To believe that the oppressor will voluntarily dismantle or reform the machinery that enriches them is not simply naïve; it is an act of intellectual and political surrender.

From the Middle Passage to chattel slavery, from sharecropping to mass incarceration, from colonial extraction to ICE deportations, Black labour has been the seed capital of an empire created to exploit, not uplift. Capitalism, colonialism and racial hierarchy were engineered on the backs of our ancestors. Expecting restoration or justice from the architecture of our oppression is to misunderstand its purpose fundamentally.

For today’s liberation movements, this means rejecting the crumbs of appeasement, rejecting the myth that an oppressive system can ever be an ally, and embracing uncompromising self-determination. If we enter the system only to “be included,” we risk becoming complicit in our own containment. If we demand a mere share in the structure, we legitimise the structure itself. If we look to our oppressors for reform, we invite further domination.

Clarke calls us to reorient our struggle: build our own institutions, shape our own economies, and liberate our minds from the illusion that freedom can be gifted to us by those who profit from our subjugation. Liberation is never handed down; it is won through collective action and organising!