The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto

The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, is a nonfiction book published in 2021 by American author and journalist Charles M. Blow. The book argues that for Black people to achieve self-determination in America, they must migrate en masse to the American South, colonize the region, and codify Black power as a regional function of American politics.

This study guide uses the 2021 first edition published by HarperCollins.

Summary

The 2020 police killing of George Floyd set off an international movement of marches and protests. For months, millions of people poured into the streets of nearly every major city in the United States, shouting slogans like “Black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace.” The movement is contemporarily viewed as a cultural touchstone and a racial reckoning for the nation, but its far-reaching effects are currently unclear.

Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist who often discusses race in America, watched the demonstrations in apprehension, anticipating the worst: that the explosion of protests in support of Black lives that burst into the global conversation would just as soon disappear (2-3). His worries were not simply a criticism of the George Floyd protests but of the many others that came before it. Blow believed that protest in general amounted to a public airing of grievances, with little if any substantive changes made to the system.

Increasingly angered at the lack of progress, Blow found kinship in other Black intellectuals and civil rights icons who wondered the same thing: Where do we go from here?

Blow looked to history for answers. What he found was the Great Migration, a period from 1916 to 1970 when 6 million Black people migrated from the South to northern “destination cities,” searching for better opportunities and hoping to escape violent white supremacist terror (14, 23). What those migrants found were the near-same conditions they suffered in the South: disenfranchisement, violent suppression, and a denial of Black wealth and community. In Blow’s opinion, the migrants gambled their livelihoods and sacrificed everything for the glimmer of hope that the North would accept them. They were wrong. Yet when considering the ramifications of the Great Migration, Blow found the very answer he was looking for.

If Black people were to again migrate en masse to a particular state or region, with their combined population defined to that particular area, they would constitute a majority of the electorate and would control local and state power. In real metrics, Blow proposes that the dispersed Black population reverse-migrate back to nine southern states where Black populations already make up a near-majority: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware (44). Effectively creating a Black bloc (201), this region of states would create a haven for Black people by internally disassembling the white supremacist structures within. Further, on a national level, Black people would have the opportunity to elect 18 senators to the Congress and would wield as many as 90 electoral college votes (33).

This is not a fantasy. Forty-four percent of Black people live outside the South, and if only a fraction returned, they would be enough to tip the scales (32). Furthermore, Vermont’s liberalization as a case study supports the idea that voting-with-your-feet possess true potential to drastically change political structures and opinions (38).

Beyond the potential for power, Blow likewise makes a pragmatic argument for moving out of destination cities. First, he dispels the “Great American Mythos” that there is an unequal distribution of prejudice between the North and South (113). Using various statistical studies, Blow shows that anti-Black bias is near equally distributed across nation (47), as are police killings of Black people (75). Historically, with racial covenants, redlining, and gentrification (19-21, 96), northern white supremacy segregated and reduced northern Black population density to pocket neighborhoods and inconsequential communities. Consequentially, Black people in the North do not have the means to politically mobilize and change these institutions, rendering them a token to be competed over at election time.

Next, Blow demonstrates the socioeconomic opportunities and cultural value in migrating south. Considering opportunity costs, Black people possess far more chances at success in the South, where there is both a higher concentration of Black businesses and Black homeownership (123). Increasingly, the power structures in the South are already turning Black, with many major cities hosting Black majorities and Black mayors sympathetic to Black needs (132). Then there are the spiritual aspects of migrating South, the region Blow considers the ancestral home of the African American. Foremost, he asserts that for all the pain and suffering inflicted upon Black people, the South belongs to Black people as much as anyone else (204). By colonizing the South in their image, Black Americans can alter their course in history and finally establish a home where they are wanted and loved (61). In this safe space where Blackness is primary, Black people can also experience the restorative value of living within a Black-majority community (199).

Blow admits that he does not imagine himself a leader; nonetheless, as a writer attuned to documenting the struggle for Black self-determination, he has observed the necessary steps and is ready to advocate a guide forward (39). He argues that Black people must cease waiting and hoping for the system to repair itself and instead seize the moment (154). Not only will this solution serve and protect Black people, but it will likewise go toward repairing the nation as a whole (203).