ABSTRACT Black people's expression of anger, love, and joy has long been caricatured, criticized, devalued, surveilled, and policed by dominant groups. Yet, Black people have found ways to emotionally process, respond to, and resist this harm and violence. In this review article, we explore how Black people, both individually and collectively, use (or don't use) anger, love, and joy as practices of resistance against white racial domination. We situate our work within broader conversations on Black epistemology and emphasize the need to theorize Black emotions within Black movements and everyday acts of resistance. We conclude by considering how conceptualizing love, anger, and joy from a theoretical perspective can inform academic research with Black communities.
Simpson et al. (2025) studied this question.