A sweeping history of transformative, radical, and abolitionist
movements in the United States that places the struggle for racial
justice at the center of universal liberation.
In Where Do We Go
From Here? (1967), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described racism
as "a philosophy based on a contempt for life," a
totalizing social theory that could only be confronted with an
equally massive response, by "restructuring the whole of
American society." A Wider Type of Freedom provides a
survey of the truly transformative visions of racial justice in the
United States, an often-hidden history that has produced conceptions
of freedom and interdependence never envisioned in the nation's
dominant political framework.
A Wider Type of
Freedom brings together stories of the social movements,
intellectuals, artists, and cultural formations that have centered
racial justice and the abolition of white supremacy as the foundation
for a universal liberation. Daniel Martinez HoSang taps into moments
across time and place to reveal the longstanding drive toward a
vision of universal emancipation. From the nineteenth century's
abolition democracy and the struggle to end forced sterilizations, to
the twentieth century's domestic worker organizing campaigns, to the
twenty-first century's environmental justice movement, he reveals a
bold, shared desire to realize the antithesis of "a philosophy
based on a contempt for life," as articulated by Martin Luther
King Jr. Rather than seeking "equal rights" within failed
systems, these efforts generated new visions that embraced human
difference, vulnerability, and interdependence as core productive
facets of our collective experience.