Leadership Quote by Angela Davis

Davis is refusing two comforting stories at once: that Black liberation can be neatly contained within a single “movement,” and that class conflict inside Black politics is just an unfortunate byproduct of bad strategy. The first “can’t” pushes against the nonprofit-era habit of treating liberation like a brand with deliverables. “Think narrowly” is a warning about tunnel vision: if you only look for change in the familiar arenas of legislation, representation, or charismatic leadership, you miss the wider architecture of power that keeps reproducing racial hierarchy.

The second “can’t” is sharper. Davis rejects the idea that class division is something movements simply choose, like a messaging misstep. The subtext is structural: capitalism does not merely coexist with racism; it metabolizes it, generating stratification within Black communities and then selling that stratification back as “progress” (more managers, more homeowners, more officials) while leaving the carceral state and low-wage labor regime intact. Her phrasing also anticipates the blame game that often follows movement setbacks: if the coalition frays, pundits reach for interpersonal failure instead of political economy.

Context matters: Davis comes out of a Marxist, feminist, abolitionist tradition that treats “liberation” as inseparable from prisons, policing, labor, housing, and imperial power. She’s speaking against respectability politics and against a politics of uplift that treats a rising Black elite as evidence of collective freedom. The line works because it’s both diagnostic and tactical: it asks organizers to widen the frame, not as an academic exercise, but because narrow frames produce narrow wins - victories that can be celebrated while the underlying machinery keeps running.