Black folks living under slavery and colonialism and in its aftermath have always imagined that freedom and liberation were possible. Here the distinction between freedom and liberation is that of individual freedom versus collective access to our full humanity. The former can be gained and felt on various levels, but the latter is an ongoing process. We can gain or hold various freedoms—for example, the freedom to vote, the freedom to marry, the freedom to choose abortion. But liberation is a collective effort in which, even after freedoms are won, continual regeneration and transformation are necessary. Liberation must entail resistance to the dominant oppressive systems that permeate our societies (e.g., capitalism, patriarchy, and anti-Black racism).

Thus there is constant tension, constant struggle. There are always forces, sometimes even within a social justice movement, that fight to kill the imagination of those actively engaged in the struggle (and for that matter to limit all thinking about radical possibilities). But oppressed people have always imagined that freedom is possible, and their imagination will not be vanquished. The Black radical tradition requires an ongoing and persistent cultivation of the Black radical imagination. It is within the spaces of imagination, the dream spaces, that liberatory practices are born and grow, leading to the space to act and to transform.

— Unapologetic by Charlene A. Carruthers (Page 25)