"I had formed a black movement, so I would speak for the Trotskyist movement and then walk about a hundred yards to where the black movement was speaking"
About this Quote
James is describing the politics of proximity: how ideology travels, where it gets stuck, and who gets to translate it. The deadpan logistics of “a hundred yards” does the real work here. He’s not romanticizing coalition; he’s measuring the distance between two movements that, on paper, should have been natural allies but in practice operated in different dialects of urgency.
The intent is tactical and a little mischievous. James casts himself as a kind of political switchboard operator, moving between the Trotskyist left and a Black movement he helped organize, carrying arguments across a gap that wasn’t just physical. Trotskyism offered a universal theory of class struggle; Black organizing demanded attention to racial domination as lived reality, not as a footnote to an eventual revolution. By staging his body as the connector, James highlights both the possibility and the burden of mediation: if the bridge is one person wide, the alliance is fragile.
Subtext: he’s quietly indicting the white left’s tendency to treat Black liberation as an “after” problem, while also resisting the idea that Black politics must be sealed off from global revolutionary currents. The line suggests he refused the available choices - either become the Black spokesperson inside a mostly white Marxist milieu or abandon Marxism for a narrower nationalism. He did both, walking back and forth, insisting the movements confront each other’s blind spots.
Context matters. James lived in the churn of mid-century anti-colonial struggle and diasporic organizing, when Marxist parties often prized doctrinal purity while Black movements were forced into improvisation. “A hundred yards” is his understated map of the left’s internal borderlands - and a reminder that solidarity is often a commute.
The intent is tactical and a little mischievous. James casts himself as a kind of political switchboard operator, moving between the Trotskyist left and a Black movement he helped organize, carrying arguments across a gap that wasn’t just physical. Trotskyism offered a universal theory of class struggle; Black organizing demanded attention to racial domination as lived reality, not as a footnote to an eventual revolution. By staging his body as the connector, James highlights both the possibility and the burden of mediation: if the bridge is one person wide, the alliance is fragile.
Subtext: he’s quietly indicting the white left’s tendency to treat Black liberation as an “after” problem, while also resisting the idea that Black politics must be sealed off from global revolutionary currents. The line suggests he refused the available choices - either become the Black spokesperson inside a mostly white Marxist milieu or abandon Marxism for a narrower nationalism. He did both, walking back and forth, insisting the movements confront each other’s blind spots.
Context matters. James lived in the churn of mid-century anti-colonial struggle and diasporic organizing, when Marxist parties often prized doctrinal purity while Black movements were forced into improvisation. “A hundred yards” is his understated map of the left’s internal borderlands - and a reminder that solidarity is often a commute.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by L. R. James
Add to List
