Dunstan: Black thinkers have contested the principles of democracy in ways that are central to the experience of these democracies

In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó regarding her new monograph Race, Rights and Reform, Sarah Dunstan maps the landscape of Black activist thought across the French Empire and the United States from World War One to the Cold War; shows how gender operated in tandem with the dynamics of race and class; underlines how the end of empire connected rights to national belonging; and reflects on how positionality continues to define the canon in ways that need to be critically examined.