In The Long Emancipation Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom. Taking examples from across the globe, he argues that wherever Black people have been emancipated from slavery and colonization, a potential freedom has been thwarted. Walcott names this condition the long emancipation—the ongoing interdiction of potential Black freedom and the continuation of the juridical and legislative status of Black nonbeing. Stating that Black people have yet to experience freedom, Walcott shows that being Black in the world is to exist in the time of emancipation in which Black people must constantly fashion alternate conceptions of freedom and reality through expressive culture. Given that Black unfreedom lies at the center of the making of the modern world, the attainment of freedom for Black people, Walcott contends, will transform the human experience worldwide. With The Long Emancipation, Walcott offers a new humanism that begins by acknowledging that present conceptions of what it means to be human do not currently include Black people.

"Engaging with the works of Sylvia Wynter and Frantz Fanon, Walcott issues a call to rethink the post-Enlightenment conception of the human. It is through this reworking that the book elucidates how we might be able to find real freedom. . . . in Black freedom lies the freedom of us all. Perhaps—if we heed Walcott’s call and respond to his challenge to think again and again—then, maybe, freedom is coming, tomorrow." - Public Books

"A must-have of any Black reader’s library. . . . [H]ighly recommended if you are in search of answers on how to explore oppression and articulate the depths of the Black experience." - Amsterdam News

"Rinaldo Walcott’s The Long Emancipation gave me new tools to think with in Black studies." - Bookforum

"Walcott argues that Black people today live in what he calls the "long emancipation," in which, though emancipated from slavery and colonization, they are still not free. . . . Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals."
  - Choice

"This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how race relations still affect much of everyday socio-economic and political life in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world." - E3W Review of Books