Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall
Yannick Giovanni Marshall is a scholar, writer, and speaker specializing in anti-colonial Black thought, anti-patriotism, and dissent.
featured course
Now in print:
“Elegy for JAY-Z” — Lead Feature, Current Affairs (July/August 2025)
A 6,000-word essay on Black capitalism, hip hop and the “conscious,” slum radicalism, the pitfalls of Black excellence, and how revolt gets contained.
Currently in subscriber circulation. Public release to follow.
why i left the “united states”
I left the “United States” not for another job, but in protest — against the suppression of Black Studies, oppositional thought and the complicity of U.S. institutions in the crackdown on dissent.
This site is how the work continues — through talks, courses, and collaborations rooted in that departure.
My forthcoming book, The End of Supplication, takes aim at the figure of the kneeling protestor and the transformation of Black resistance into a performance of colonial submission. It is about the marronage and traditions of Black disinterest in paltry colonist offerings of hope, change, reform, redress and gradual progress.
As part of my political exit from the U.S. academy, I’ve continued to write, teach, and present internationally — including a lead feature in Current Affairs (July/August 2025).
Recent public talks
- Aarhus University (Aarhus) – December 2025,
- Institute for Cultural Inquiry, 2025–2026 Lecture Series (Berlin) – December 2025
- Queen’s University, Studies in National and International Development(Kingston) – November 2025
- University of Toronto (Toronto) – November 2025
- Wilfrid Laurier University, Lamine Diallo EDI Lecture Series (Waterloo) – October 2025
- Off University (Berlin) – September 2025
The End of Supplication
Bloomsbury Academic, 2025
In this urgent and unflinching work, Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall contends that Black freedom struggles are not civil rights appeals but anti-colonial movements. The End of Supplication exposes how the figure of the “supplicant negro” was invented to disarm Black resistance — and how destroying that figure is necessary for real insurgent struggle to begin.
This book challenges liberal portrayals of Blackness, arguing instead for a break from narratives that domesticate Black insurgency into calls for recognition. It is both a searing indictment of colonial modernity and a bold call to reject containment in all its forms.
Selected Essays
Published in Al Jazeera English and beyond, these essays interrogate anti-Blackness, colonialism, and the criminalization of dissent.
“The Day Millennials’ Hip Hop went to the Klan’s Ball”
🔗 Read on Al Jazeera
“Black freedom has never been on the ballot”
🔗 Read on Al Jazeera
“After their ‘Racial Reckoning’: The Black Anti-colonial Rising”
🔗 Read on Al Jazeera
Yannick Giovanni Marshall 