Robinson traces Black radical thought to a shared African epistemology.

Evidence

When I finally got around to opening the book, I realized why it was so big. Black Marxism is far more ambitious than its modest title implies, for what Cedric Robinson has written extends well beyond the history of the Black Left or Black radical movements. Combining political theory, history, philosophy, cultural analysis, and biography, among other things, Robinson literally rewrites the history of the rise of the West from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century, tracing the roots of Black radical thought to a shared epistemology among diverse African people and providing a withering critique of Western Marxism and its inability to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism and the civilization in which it was born or mass movements outside Europe. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 15

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foreword identifies the book’s central thesis: Black radicalism rooted in shared African epistemology, not Western Marx.
• XREF: connects to: Negritude poets posited a shared essence uniting all Black people — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 945