“I can’t tell you what freedom is ’cause I’ve never seen it”: Addressing the Omission of Liberation Narratives in Sociology

Abstract While liberation, or the process of freeing marginalized individuals and groups from societal oppression and domination, is referenced across many sub-disciplines of sociology, it surprisingly remains under-conceptualized in sociological literature. To address this omission, the present study responds to the following query: how, if at all, do Black individuals conceive of a Black liberated future? I draw on data from 65 in-depth interviews with Black Millennials during Black Lives Matter to capture their imaginings of a Black liberated future. Findings reveal that participants construct four types of liberation narratives when detailing their perceptions of Black freedom: 1) Liberation via Reformation, 2) Liberation via Reconstruction, 3) Liberation via Afrocentrism, and 4) Liberation as Inconceivable. I ultimately argue that liberation narratives function as resistant knowledge projects and, as such, are significant socio-political artifacts and resources for future generations of change agents, community organizers, and social movements actors. Altogether, this study demonstrates how rectifying the omission of liberation narratives magnifies our sociological knowledge about marginalized groups and deepens our analytic capacity to make sense of their ontological approaches toward politics of liberation and imaginings of their collective futures.