"Radical simply means "grasping things at the root.""
About this Quote
“Radical” is one of those words that’s been scrubbed into a vibe: reckless, extreme, unserious. Angela Davis snaps it back to its literal origin, and the move is strategic. “Grasping things at the root” reframes radicalism as method, not mood. It’s an argument about diagnosis: if the problem is structural, the response has to be structural too. Anything less is maintenance dressed up as reform.
Davis’s intent is also reputational judo. In a culture that uses “radical” as a slur to discipline dissent, she turns the accusation into a credential. If you’re being called radical for naming the roots - capitalism, racism, patriarchy, the carceral state - then the label isn’t an insult; it’s evidence you’re looking where power doesn’t want you to look. The subtext is that “moderate” politics often depends on refusing root causes, substituting diversity slogans for redistribution, sensitivity training for abolition, representation for material change.
Context matters: Davis emerged from the crucible of Cold War repression, Black liberation movements, prison activism, and the state’s reflex to criminalize both ideas and bodies. When she defines radicalism this way, she’s defending not just a personal politics but an entire tradition of analysis that links everyday suffering to systems, not individual failure.
The line works because it’s disarmingly simple. It makes the reader reconsider who benefits from calling certain demands “too much,” and it dares you to ask the most inconvenient question in politics: what, exactly, is the root?
Davis’s intent is also reputational judo. In a culture that uses “radical” as a slur to discipline dissent, she turns the accusation into a credential. If you’re being called radical for naming the roots - capitalism, racism, patriarchy, the carceral state - then the label isn’t an insult; it’s evidence you’re looking where power doesn’t want you to look. The subtext is that “moderate” politics often depends on refusing root causes, substituting diversity slogans for redistribution, sensitivity training for abolition, representation for material change.
Context matters: Davis emerged from the crucible of Cold War repression, Black liberation movements, prison activism, and the state’s reflex to criminalize both ideas and bodies. When she defines radicalism this way, she’s defending not just a personal politics but an entire tradition of analysis that links everyday suffering to systems, not individual failure.
The line works because it’s disarmingly simple. It makes the reader reconsider who benefits from calling certain demands “too much,” and it dares you to ask the most inconvenient question in politics: what, exactly, is the root?
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
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