Acknowledging Black agency and action is necessary because human subjectivity is always relational – hope acknowledges the uncertainty of the future but commits itself to action as an ethical imperative to engage with others and the world.

Turning to embodiment means understanding the resistance to world transformation on an affective and embodied level. The world is not easily changed and antiblackness is pervasive. Yet, as we have seen, transformation remains possible. It is precisely this tension and awareness that guides Black humanism in its approach to a possibly differently lived future. Agency is meaningful in triggering change in the racial set-up of society, and action is never inconsequential for neither oneself nor those around because of the relational nature of human subjectivity. In Black humanist thought, hope is both fragile and persistent. Transformation is not only possible, but there is also an ethical mandate to strive for it. This distinguishes hope from optimism and nihilism as frequently encountered in liberal humanism and Afropessimist thought, respectively. Cornel West’s work epitomizes a Black humanist relationship with hope. It is not framed by naïve optimism regarding the future but advocates the necessity for human dedication to struggle. West clearly distinguishes between optimism and hope: Hope has nothing to do with optimism. I am in no way optimistic about America, nor am I optimistic about the plight of the human species on this globe. There is simply not enough evidence that allows me to infer that things are going to get better. […] We can be prisoners of hope even as we call optimism into question. To be part of the democratic tradition is to be a prisoner of hope. And you cannot be a prisoner of hope without engaging in a form of struggle in the present moment that keeps the best of the past alive. (2001b: 12) While West thoroughly rejects the tradition of optimism found in Western humanism that embraces certainty about a better future and human progress, he embraces hope as motivation to act in the present not because it will necessarily pay off but because it is the ethical thing to do: “To engage in that struggle means that one is always willing to acknowledge that there is no triumph around the corner, but that you persist because you believe that it is right and just and moral” (2001b: 12). From this vantage point, change might not take place and it may at times not even be for the better, but it can occur through human commitment in the world. It is worthwhile struggling for simply because it is not impossible to achieve. Lewis Gordon contends similarly that the “point of some actions is not about their success or failure but whether we deem them worth doing” (2017: 298). But is it irrational for that kind of hope to even exist in a world steeped in antiblackness? Embodiment theory teaches us that even as the future is seemingly closed, it is always also open. Gordon asserts that “whatever is done will be that on which the future will depend” (2021: 77). If this appears optimistic, then he immediately tames his tone because he knows about the persistence of injustice. Nonetheless, precisely because the world is of human making, it can also be undone by humans, even though there is no guaranteed process of how to do it. In this context, Gordon helpfully distinguishes between choices and options, where the “former pertains to individuals [and] the latter to the material conditions and social world” (2017: 300). Even if options—determined, for instance, by law—are limited, human choices are not. Embodied habits and values infuence but do not determine choices. Indeed, taking embodiment seriously, makes it impossible to believe in triumphal breakthroughs but holds open the possibility of change, nonetheless. He thus insists on the importance of “commitment to action without guarantees” (Gordon 2021: 77). Emphasizing commitment also means taking even small gestures of resistance and affection seriously; it means knowing that they matter and can have an impact (even if years later only). The effect of individual agentic acts on the world is often minute, but Gordon invites us to think of agency in a longer perspective. Drawing on Evelyn Simien’s Historic Firsts, Gordon notes that there “could be no Barack Obama without such important predecessors [like Shirley Chisholm or Jesse Jackson] affecting the demographics of voter participation. […] Although no exemplar of radicalism, Obama’s ‘success’ emerged from Chisholm and Jackson’s (and many others’) so called ‘failure’” (78–79). Humans are relational beings always in touch with others and the world.