Politics & Power Quote by Anthony Braxton

Braxton isn’t offering a neat definition of racism so much as poking at the politics of definition itself. Calling it a “nationalist gambit” is the tell: he frames the idea that “only European Americans can be racists” as a strategic move, not a moral revelation. A gambit is something you play in order to gain position. In that single word, Braxton implies both sympathy for the historical logic behind the claim (racism as institutional power) and suspicion of what the claim conveniently forecloses (hard conversations about prejudice, hierarchy, and exclusion inside Black communities, or among any marginalized group).

The generational note matters. Braxton came of age alongside Black Arts and Black Power currents that fused cultural pride with political theory. For many in that era, defining racism as something whites “do” to Blacks wasn’t only descriptive; it was protective, a way to refuse false equivalences that dilute white supremacy into a generic “everyone’s biased” shrug. Braxton’s “interesting” lands with musicianly understatement: he’s not denouncing the gambit, he’s observing its effects, like a composer noting how a motif changes the whole piece.

Subtextually, he’s also rehearsing a Braxtonian theme: systems versus individuals. His work often resists fixed categories and insists on complexity. Here, he’s questioning a rhetorical shortcut that can become doctrinal - useful in struggle, limiting in analysis. The line is less about absolving anyone than about warning how identity politics can harden into rulebooks that stop describing reality and start managing it.