I am currently a doctoral candidate in my fourth year as a student in the Political Science Department. As a political theorist, I attempt to explore the relationship between power, liberty, and domination. I routinely argue that in order for liberty to be maximally enjoyed, power must be decentralized. I suggest that it is fundamentally the decentralization of power that disrupts the emergence of relationships of dependence, and thus, the possibility of domination. The contemporary political crisis, I suggest, is the rapidly increasing ability of the powerful to effectively suppress the ability of ordinary citizens to engage in self-governance, exercise choice, and co-create the common good. Too often, I think, contemporary political philosophy neglects the role of the centralization of power in the establishment and maintenance of relationships of domination and therefore is unable to produce desirable solutions to the most prescient substantiations of our current crisis. In specific, I like to think about the appropriate arrangement of power to promote liberty in relation to the concerns of the Black Liberation Struggle. Coming into graduate school, I had already developed an affinity for the politics of the Black Power Movement, as I was intrigued and inspired by the unabashed assertion that Black people ought to have the power and authority to govern and structure their own communities without oversight, and often sabotage, from a racist power structure. Fortunately, through my graduate training, I have developed a more robust and substantial understanding of the means by which an environment that systematically disempowers particular citizens is created, sustained, and legitimized. By moving the centralization of power back into the purview of those thinking about racial domination, I think we can uncover, recover, and re-appropriate political prescriptions that are both attainable and desirable.
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