Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want

Ruha Benjamin

Published by Princeton University Press 2022

Viral Justice

How We Grow the World We Want

Ruha Benjamin

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222899

Overview
Contents

About this book

An inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time

“A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.”—Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.

Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities, and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

Author / Editor information

Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code and editor of Captivating Technology, among many other publications. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Root, and The Guardian.

Reviews

“This book is an education. Wide-ranging and provocative, soaring yet grounded, Viral Justice reveals how racism poisons our bodies, communities, and institutions, but the book also chronicles inspired movements seeking repair and justice. The work of a beautiful mind and spirit, it moves fast—mixing memoir with social analysis and community engagement—and left me challenged and hopeful and stirred.”—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“In this riveting and beautifully written book, Ruha Benjamin expertly channels her personal experiences to illuminate how solutions to social and racial injustice can be transformative when they are individualized. To accomplish meaningful, collective change, we should first look within ourselves. Justice can be contagious when it is personal.”—Uché Blackstock, MD, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity

“As Ruha Benjamin narrates her life story, we come to see in detail both how structures—carceral, racial, gender—affect individuals and communities and how, through small acts of justice, we can navigate these structures, prefiguring the world that we want and need.”—Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz

“Ruha Benjamin is among our sharpest, most expansive thinkers on the manifold inequalities of the current order. Viral Justice reckons with the practices that uphold that order and how we might dare to change the world—a book as urgent as the moment that produced it.”—Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Author’s Note Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction. The White House Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Weather Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
2 Hunted Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3 Lies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
4 Grind Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
5 Exposed Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
6 Trust Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
7 La Casa Azul Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365
A NOTE ON THE TYPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	375