Black lives constitute a collective term pointing towards the particular experience of crisis, trauma, violence, and precarity that people on the margins of society bring to bear in their daily life. It calls out the structure of racism, colonialism, and intersecting systems of oppression that animate and undergird certain forms of suffering in the contemporary world. It underscores the irreducible value of every human life, insisting on the legitimate desire for wellbeing, flourishing, and joy – especially for those who have been denied such possibility by a variety of forces, both material and discursive. As such, it is at once an acknowledgement of pain, a declaration of agency, and a testimony to the possibility of a dignified and meaningful life.

See also: black bodies, slave trade, racial justice, police brutality, white ally