ABSTRACT
Building on the critical questions raised in the chapter on Afropessimism, this chapter delves more deeply into questions raised by the idea of “blackness.” On one hand, there is the historical racialization of certain peoples under the category of blacks and the lived-reality of their experience. On the other, there is the organization of norms in which blackness functions as an antipode. This is a form of ontologizing that leads to theodicean practices in which justice is achieved through eliminating blackness and, by extension, black people. The implications of this for any group of people under the weight of secularized theodicean practices renders antitheodicy as a crucial element of liberation. The path to this conclusion is taken through an outline of race, racialization, the idea of problematic people, and critical or potentiated double consciousness.
