Our thoughts create our reality. In a world where racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and other forms of oppression maintain a false social hierarchy and unequal distribution of power, the radical imagination is the foundation to re-envisioning the future and building a new, balanced world. Defined as the “ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions, not as they are but as they might otherwise be,” the radical imagination brings “possible futures ‘back’ to work on the present, to inspire action” (1). To fully unpack the radical imagination requires consideration of its etymology. While the word “radical” in today’s day and age often has a negative connotation and is used synonymously with extremism, “radical” is derived from the Latin word, radix, which translates to “root.” Perhaps not coincidentally, ideas that are deemed “radical” are oftentimes grounded in the understanding and/or identification of systemic inequity, oppression, and power imbalance as root causes of societal problems (2). To be radical, in its truest form, is to get to the root of the problem.

The imagination is the generative foundation for all new ideas and involves the social and cultural creation of meaning (3). Early conceptions of the imagination included the belief that imagining was restricted to solely visual mental imagery (4), but it is now known that the imagination encompasses other perceptual modalities [e.g., auditory, tactile, olfaction; motoric (5, 6)] and underlies prosocial behavior [e.g., empathy (7, 8)] at both the individual and collective levels. As will later be discussed, it is the collective imagination – a group process through which knowledge and new ideas are co-produced (9)– that undergirds many social justice movements toward Black collective liberation. The imagination also exists on a temporal plane in that it can be oriented toward past happenings, alternative presents, or possible futures (3). All three aspects of time are inextricably linked and deeply racialized (10, 11). For example, Black Americans are unjustly cut from accessing all elements of time: (1) they are cut from their past and family lineage via the transatlantic slave trade (11); (2) cut from the present via labor inequities that are rooted in capitalism and the historical commodification of the Black body for capital, which impact access to time, rest, and leisure (12–14) and (3) cut from the future via premature deaths and abbreviated lifespans evidenced by health disparities (15–20), mass incarceration (21, 22), and state-sanctioned violence (23, 24). It is through this intentional manipulation and monopolizing of time that the imagination is squelched, and social and systemic inequities persist. Thus, for Black Americans, the collective invocation of the imagination is a longstanding form of resistance and a critical means of making it to the future. In a society where aging is a privilege, the Black imagination is a tool for survival.

“Any serious motion toward freedom must begin in the mind.” (25) The imagination is a mechanism through which we are not only able to envision new, freer worlds, but we can actualize them. To radically reimagine requires more than the deconstruction of problematic policies or dismantling existing power structures (although both are important components of it); it additionally encompasses the process of rebuilding from a space of possibility. The radical imagination extends beyond mere fantasy. It is a central driver of cognition and perception in that society can only create that which its members can imagine (9, 26). When equipped with deep understanding and acknowledgment of the past, the radical imagination can become a portal to a more just, equitable word (27).

In this perspective paper, I argue there are three components of the Black radical imagination which include: (1) imagining alternative Black futures, (2) radical hope, and (3) collective courage. I explore the neuroanatomical underpinnings of these processes and values, and then consider their relationship to brain health. Lastly, I delineate how the Black radical imagination is a necessary conduit to possible futures rooted in health and healing justice for Black Americans. I reflect on what it means to disrupt existing power imbalances and place Black Americans as the central story writers and designers of an equitable future.

People of the African diaspora have long been building new futures to escape trauma and cultivate shared realities. The paradox and illegitimacy of ancient Western criticism was that people from the continent of Africa were considered lacking in imagination and incapable of “true sophistication” required for social evolution, while also, ironically, deemed “too imaginative” in their belief of the supernatural, deities, Dogon myths, and orishas (28). Dating back as far as 500–300 BCE (29), these traditional ideas and belief systems within African societies were the earliest forms of Black imagination and ways of existing that countered the Western gaze.

The term “Black radical imagination,” first appearing in Robin D.G. Kelly’s, Freedom’s Dreams (25), is the process of Black people collectively envisioning a revolutionary and liberated future. Early conjuring of the Black radical imagination is apparent in the kidnapping and forced relocation of ~12.5 million people from the continent of Africa to the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade from 1500 to 1865. This treacherous and inhumane journey overseas required those captured to imagine alternative forms of resistance that ranged from refusing to eat to staged ship revolts. Some even made the difficult decision to jump overboard to cheat the ultimate death: enslavement and control.

Upon arrival to the Americas, through collective struggle and solidarity, those who were Black and enslaved identified ways to undermine slavery and actualize their birthright: freedom. Despite attempts to erase the enslaved of their culture and customs, commodify their labor, and indoctrinate them into Western practices, Black people resisted through subtle acts of defiance (e.g., sabotaging crops, damaging equipment, feigning illness) and through clever communication and escape tactics in this foreign land. For example, the different hairstyles Black women wore contained intricate designs like conrows or Bantu knots and were used as maps hidden in plain sight to escape to freedom (30). Women also hid rice and seeds in their hair to grow once they escaped to a free territory. Songs contained embedded messages for those escaping North to freedom via the secret routes of the Underground Railroad. The spiritual, “Wade in the Water,” was sung by enslaved persons to warn those enroute to freedom to avoid trails and use the river to hide their body scent and to evade search dogs (31). Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist and former slave who escaped to freedom, is one of the most widely known conductors of the Underground Railroad. It was her ability to dream of new worlds and incorporate celestial knowledge (using the North Star as a guide) that allowed her to make 13 rescue missions to help others achieve freedom in the North. Although lesser known, Tubman was also a spy in the Union Army and the leader behind the Combahee River raid, freeing 800 enslaved people (32, 33). It was these visions of alternative (free) futures, resourcefulness, and ingenious strategizing that have long carried Black Americans through turbulent times.

The Black radical imagination has been a cornerstone of Black American culture and the social struggle for equity that exists to this day. This collective dreaming of alternative futures is the impetus behind U.S. movements and initiatives for liberation (e.g., Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Riders, March on Washington, Black Lives Matter). Imagining in this context is not a discrete process, but one of co-creation that shapeshifts over time and with the needs of the marginalized community (1). It is shaped by the material and social conditions of society (34). The Black imagination remains a site of resistance to oppression to this day. The process of imagining as a liberation praxis remains integral to the generation of Black possible futures (35).

A vision for the future without belief that the outcome is attainable leaves little worth acting upon. Hope is the process of looking to the future with a desired outcome in mind and maintaining belief that the outcome can be actualized. Radical hope specifically adopts a social justice orientation (90) and is considered radical because the hope is driven by the desire for a future rooted in equity and questions of when equity will be achieved trumps questions of how it will happen. Radical hope is a core tenant of the framework for radical healing for People of Color and Indigenous Individuals (91), and emphasizes Black agency and the design of new futures through a decolonized imagination. Within this framework, radical hope is the fuel that keeps the vision ablaze.

Hope has been instrumental to the livelihood of Black Americans and is described as “a gift from [the] ancestors that fuels [our] will to survive racial trauma.” (92) Radical hope carried those kidnapped from the continent of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to survive the atrocities of the Middle Passage and make it to the Americas. Radical hope is further evidenced in their pursuit of self-taught education and literacy while enslaved, which was key to physical and intellectual emancipation (93, 94) and subverted white domination. The belief that they could achieve freedom in times of precarity and horror exemplifies radical hope. It was the rebuilding of new cultural practices as the old ones were stripped – that is, the development of new traditions, rituals, and narratives that are now cultural staples in present-day Black America – that came from a space of radical hope and possibility (94).

If Black American history has taught us anything, it is that radical hope must not be extinguished or else run the risk of societal stagnation, or even worse, suppression. In author and poet Langston Hughes’ Harlem (A Dream Deferred) (95) published in 1951, he raises the important question:

Without having to reference hope directly, Hughes’ lines of questioning challenges Black Americans to maintain the collective dream to upend the very real, harrowing happenings of that time: Jim Crow racial segregation, voter suppression, and police brutality. He advocates for Black Americans to have resolve–a steadfast hope–especially in times when the desired outcome is delayed or seemingly out of reach.

Black American hope has often been situated within a religious and/or political context and there are numerous examples in history of the symbiotic relationship between the Black Church and Black political action (96). We experience themes of hope in Martin Luther King, Jr’s infamous “I Have a Dream Speech.” At the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “Use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress, but you keep on dreaming, young America […] Keep hope alive!” (97) Hope is also laced throughout Barack Obama’s presidency and encapsulated by his campaign slogan, “Yes we can.” Radical hope is a throughline of the Black consciousness and imagination that keeps Black Americans afloat in times of precarity.

Most literature approaches the study of hope through a very Western, individualistic lens which emphasizes a bootstrap mentality and belief that the future is shaped exclusively by individual effort and self-determinism. It is important to distinguish this notion from that of radical hope which goes beyond individual desires and actions (98) – radical hope is about committing to a new collective future among a group of people experiencing injustice.

Although new frameworks are emerging that conceptualize hope as a culturally determined value [e.g., see Cherrington’s Afrocentric framework (99) and Mosley and colleagues’ psychology theory of radical hope (98)], most existing research on hope has come from a Western perspective including Herth’s psychological model (100) and Snyder’s Theory of Hope (101, 102). According to Synder, hopefulness is a cognitive process comprising three components: (1) goals thinking - clear conceptualization of a desired future outcome; (2) pathways thinking - the generation of routes and strategies to obtain the outcome; and (3) agency thinking - the perception that one can achieve those goals. This theory lends itself to examining potential neuroanatomical and functional correlates of hope.

The impetus behind any major social justice movement is imagining new ways of being and maintaining hope, but the spark that initiates action and fosters change is courage. Courage is the willingness to act upon imagined possibilities despite fear or possible failure. Asserting one’s presence in the future, in a day and age where Black lives are far too often ended prematurely, is a courageous and necessary act.

A core element of courage within a social justice context is that the motivation to act comes from the needs of the community. Most social justice movements have a figurehead who becomes the “face” of the movement, but the work is maintained and propelled forward via on-the-ground mobilization of the community. Thus, it is the collective action — the cooperative behavior of a group to achieve a common goal – that is the backbone of movements for equity. Existing literature suggests that collective action is driven by identity, perceived unfairness, and perceived efficacy (127). There is also alignment of emotions and values across the group which maintains a level of cohesiveness. Amongst the most critical of these shared values is courage. A society, or subgroup, can develop a collective emotional orientation, like communal courage, based on a shared sense of social identity (128). This develops as a byproduct of having shared cultural experiences, processes of socialization, and even racialization.

While there are many different conceptualizations of courage (129), Williams and colleagues (130) delineate the importance of civil courage – brave behavior that is specific to social change. This is differentiated from other forms of courage in that civil courage includes indignation about injustice (131). It is also distinguished by the fact that there is a major social cost, or even ostracism, at risk but action is taken regardless due to strong moral imperative (132). This form of courage is exemplified by the Little Rock Nine as the Black teenagers integrated the Arkansas high school in 1957 with escort from the National Guard after being harassed by anti-integrationists. Civil courage was also demonstrated by the four North Carolina A&T students who staged the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins and asked to be served food at a “white-only” Woolworth counter. In both circumstances (and many others), the Black American community moved in solidarity in demonstrating their unwavering support in response to these courageous actions. For example, the college students’ refusal to move and be served food in the Black standing area sparked a wave of 300+ students who joined the protest in solidarity and rippled to other regions around the country to initiate a sit-in movement. This courage in the face of injustice despite huge risk, including the risk of death, remains a testament to the Black American spirit.

Collective courage within a modern-day social justice context may be fostered through: (1) overlap in aspects of identity or lived experience or collective memory, (2) agreement and understanding of the root cause of injustice (e.g., racism), (3) identification of shared goals toward a greater purpose or belief, (4) tolerance of uncertainty and/or risk, and (5) belief that a just and equitable society is possible.

The Black radical imagination is a conduit to possible futures rooted in health and healing justice for Black Americans. Both health and healing are liberatory for communities experiencing systemic oppression, which has been described as “society selectively concentrating trauma” (148). For those who are subjects of oppression, this trauma becomes embodied [i.e., integrated at the biological level (149)] and there is a wealth of evidence demonstrating its negative effects on Black bodies (16, 17, 20, 150) and minds (151–156). For example, the detrimental impact of oppression is evidenced in the links between systemic racism and Black women’s higher allostatic load (157) and advanced cellular and biological aging (158, 159). In fact, the weathering hypothesis (i.e., the postulation that Black women’s chronic exposure to stress to accelerates aging and results in health decline) was developed to characterize these environment-biological interactions specific to the intersectional oppression Black women experience (158, 160).

Both chronic stress and trauma contribute to changes at the neuroanatomical and cognitive levels (161–163). However, the neurological and neuropsychological impact of an American history fraught with racism is just now being more deeply explored. Racial discrimination, a direct form of race-based traumatic stress, is associated with lower total brain volume (164), lower fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum, cingulum, and superior longitudinal fasciculus (165), and heightened activation in brain regions associated with threat vigilance (middle occipital cortex) and threat response (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) (166). There is also evidence that experiences of discrimination are associated with higher levels of spontaneous activity in the amygdala and stronger functional connectivity between amygdala with other neural regions (167) and future work is needed to determine whether this translates to an increase in physiological arousal and/or vigilance. These findings highlight how interpersonal encounters of race and identity-based mistreatment get “under the skin” to influence brain biology.

There is emerging evidence of the links between racism and ADRD among Black Americans (53, 70, 168). Cognitive aging is strongly impacted by the social environment and may be accelerated among Black American by exposures to structural racism across the life course. For instance, laws, public policies, and societal beliefs, shaped by structural racism, differentially allocate health-promoting resources and disadvantage racially and ethnically minoritized populations (169). Manifestations of structural racism can be observed in laws and practices impacting differences in educational quality (170), racial residential segregation (15), access to green space (171), political disempowerment/voter suppression (172), policing (152, 173), and mass incarceration (21, 22), all of which are associated with health inequity (174, 175) and may confer ADRD risk among Black Americans.

Collectively, these findings are confirmation of what Black people have long known – the body keeps the score. The Black body also tells its history. Trauma is transmitted across bodies and over time, and there is evidence that trauma manifests intergenerationally (176). As such, Black healing and health, down to changes initiated at the cellular level, are inextricably linked to Black liberation. Black healing is a liberatory praxis and can be achieved through the radical imagination.

Thus, part of the radical imagination encompasses Black people designing and discovering new ways of being in relation to one’s body to facilitate health and healing. This discovery must also center the experiences and desires of young Black girls (177) as well as elders -- those who exist at the margins of society and are overlooked in the process of knowledge production. Importantly, the onus should not be placed on Black people to “fix” a societal problem that was not designed by them; however, Black people deserve to and can live well despite existing injustices. Re-imaging collective wellness is one way of doing so.

The Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective (178), a grassroots collective of southern healers and health practitioners who address trauma through models of collective wellness, is an excellent example of the radical imagination and healing in practice. Cara Page, one of the founding members of the collective introduced the framework of healing justice (179) – which “identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.” Healing justice addresses significant gaps in Western medicine through its application of indigenous and ancestral knowledge systems and focus on holistic (mind, body, social, spirit) wellness. Healing within community for Black Americans may look like participation healing circles (180, 181), storytelling or oral tradition practices (182, 183), or engaging in rituals or ceremonies (184), which are culturally-affirming, strengths-based, and empirically supported approaches.

Little academic literature focuses specifically on healing justice as a framework, except for one systematic review (185), likely because “alternative” forms of healing are often overlooked due to epistemic exclusion (186, 187)--a general devaluating and delegitimizing of work that does not fit within Western ways of knowing or healing. However, a great deal of care has been given to healing justice in organizing and social justice spaces.

Extending the Black radical imagination to address issues of cognitive health disparities and the impact of systemic oppression on brain health is critical for Black aging futures and healing justice. Consider: What would it mean for Black Americans to have the space and time to dream of a better future and truly believe the desired outcome is possible? What would it look like for those outcomes to be actualized in this lifetime? What would Black healing look like at the deep cellular level, and what implications would it have for future incidence of ADRD and other physical and mental health conditions? It is through the radical imagination that we create new realities where all have an equal chance of making it to the future.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.