This article is a critical response to a previous article by Victor Ray, Antonia Randolph, Megan Underhill, and David Luke that sought to incorporate lessons from Afro-pessimism for sociological research on race. Specifically, in their article, the authors emphasize conclusions from Afro-pessimism in their assessment of its lessons for theories of racial progress and labor-market research. In reviewing the work of key thinkers in the approach of Afro-pessimism—namely, Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, and Jared Sexton—the author argues that Ray and his fellow authors, in focusing on conclusions about race and politics from Afro-pessimism, overlook key foundational assumptions of Afro-pessimist thought. The author clarifies such assumptions, particularly that blackness exists on an ontological register and that slavery persists as a social phenomenon, to argue that the four authors have essentially understated the implications from an Afro-pessimist approach. The author engages criticisms from Hartman, Wilderson, and P. Khalil Saucier, who argue that empiricist sociological approaches are antithetical to Afro-pessimist analysis. The author extends these criticisms to Ray and his fellow authors’ interventions, arguing that their rejection of racial progress narratives is not necessarily Afro-pessimist and that their prescriptions for labor-market research overlook the implications of slavery as a means to understand the racialization of labor. The author concludes by urging sociologists to earnestly engage with such criticisms and challenges from Afro-pessimism in conducting research on black populations.

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This article contributes to sociological understandings of race and social movements by reassessing the phenomenon of social movement emergence for Black social movements. Broadly, it addresses the possibility of organizational support for Black social movements. More narrowly, it seeks to understand the emergence of Black movements and racial change as outcomes of organizational transformation, specifically using the case of how the mixed-race prison reform organization Action for Police Reform (APR) joined the Black Lives movement. By providing a case of racial transformation and the spanning of tactical boundaries, I present two central arguments. First, it is necessary to look within organizational forms and at organizational dynamics to see how activists modify their organizations to support Black movements. Second, tailored more directly to the case of APR, sustained support for Black movements depends on organizational transformation, such as when activists repurpose an organization’s form and resources to maintain racially delimited tactics.

We are pleased to offer this especially rich and timely issue of the Journal of World-Systems Research. Readers will find not only a special symposium on Race in the Capitalist World-System, compiled by William I. Robinson, but also a special collection of papers on Ireland in the WorldSystem edited by Aidan Beatty, Maurice Coakley, and Sharae Deckard. The juxtaposition of these sections highlight the ways Ireland has served as a "testing ground" for techniques of capitalist exploitation of people and the natural environment, shaping the development of racist ideologies and practices in the world-system. As the media headlines feature daily reports of racial tensions and protests in numerous countries, and as xenophobic, Islamophobic, and racist discourses permeate electoral campaigns in the United States and other core countries, it is critical for us all to reflect on how the organization and operation of the global political economy contributes to these trends. In addition, as political leaders grapple with how to manage the deepening global financial and ecological crises, it is very instructive, as our special issue editors point out, to offer a "radical reappraisal" of Ireland's economic development.Contributors to the symposium and to our special issue on Ireland add a great deal to efforts to better understand the processes that reproduce all forms of racism and other exclusions, and their work points in the direction of much-needed strategies for re-structuring human relations and the world-system more broadly. Moreover, the articles in our special issue on Ireland in the WorldSystem demonstrate how focused attention on a particular world region can illuminate broader