Theme music for this post
Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jul 09, 2023 10:20 amIs that because violence and criminality are an intrinsic part of the nature of black people, or does the reason for it have something to do with the position in society black people find themselves occupying, or is there some other reason? I'm not suggesting any of those is the most likely, I have no idea, but the reason is important when it comes having the appropriate attitude towards the problem.
Most people are aware that slavery had always been a part of African culture. In fact, though this has little relevance to the situation in America, the former English colonies, and Europe today, slavery is still rampant in the African and North African world. Amiri Baraka (Leroy Jones) wrote that in contradistinction to the condition of slavery for an African slave in Africa, to have been a slave in any of the European colonies, and in Colonial America, was distinctly different. One would have been totally ripped out of all social context. One would have lost one's own language. One would be completely separated from everything that made one what one was: culture, ancestry, links to the land, one's mythology, religion, spirituality.
In brief this means to have been ripped totally out of one context that one controlled and dominated and determined, and to have been *forced into servitude on the plantations of the White man's will*. A slave culture then is one that, by definition, has had all that we understand of *agency* taken from it. One's destiny is supplanted by the destiny of those one serves. And in the case of tribal Africans from West Africa -- uncivilized, primitive and *barbaric* in the old sociological sense of the word -- to be enslaved in Colonial and post-Colonial America meant to become subject to an extremely different will and destiny, and one defined by Europeans and their culture.
There is something else that must be considered when the the freeing of the slaves occurred: it was not earned (if I can use this word) by having rebelled and fought for freedom and independence, it was granted -- and again by the White man's will and decision. So even in *freedom* the African-American did not really have
agency. It could be said that the freedom granted was an extension or a modification of the former condition of slavery. But it was not determined by the will of African-Americans themselves and this is a very important aspect if one desires to understand American history and the *problem* of race and culture in the United States (not to speak of other countries).
If you read Black writers you quickly realize that a large part of what concerns them -- here I mean after the War Between the States -- are core questions of identity, agency and destiny.
Consider the Bob Marley lyric (Buffalo Soldier):
If you know your history
Then you would know where you coming from
Then you wouldn't have to ask me
Who the heck do I think I am
I'm just a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival
Fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier
Win the war for America
To have been granted freedom, but to realize with increasing awareness, awareness that formerly was not possible because of the condition of oppression (to have no history, to have had one's history wiped away), that you have lost your own identity, agency and destiny, can be nothing else than a pretty troubling realization. Black rebellion, Black opposition, must be understood as a type of refusal to participate in a destiny and indeed a historical trajectory that is fundamentally not one's own. In fact what happened is that White America said to freed African Americans "You've now been granted freedom, now become just like White people".
The entire concept of *integration* is, if you can see why I say this, an extension of the former condition. But consider this poignant fact: perhaps they would not have wanted to 'integrate' in the sense of assuming a destiny that was not determined by their own will. Who would? And again if you read Black writers you find that the offer to *integrate* is received with a certain resentment and contempt.
The question of Black identity, Black power, Black independence, and Black resistance to everything that could be included under the phrase *White man's will* obviously, and perhaps even necessarily, is brought into relief. Consider Malcolm X's association with Elijah Mohammed and the Nation of Islam Movement. The idea, the
motivation, was to create a genuine Black identity and a redefined Black destiny. You can see that a religious modality -- the entire structure of religion based on an awareness that
one is a stranger in a strange (and hostile) land and the desire and need to create one's own genuine destiny -- became necessary.
Again, if you read Black writers you will see that they begin to realize, with increasing clarity, the degree to which they are
not part of the White man's will -- that is, the will that built civilization in the New World (an extension of Europe and European destiny). This is not to say that some do not achieve, let's say, a thorough identification with European traditions and destiny. (There are hundreds of examples but Thomas Sowell is a good one to reference). But when you examine America today at a sociological level you will I think find that the core problem is that of *identification*.
As an aside, but not an irrelevant one, it is through the lens I have provided that one can gain insight into the recent actions of the BLM Movement, in association with various activist groups, that have torn down statues to the nation's founders, to core cultural figures, religious figures, who are deeply associated with American identity (in the sense of the White man's will and
his sense of
his power and destiny). It is I think pretty obvious that the focus of this social rage is against "a structure of identity and valuation that is not our own".
So as it happens -- indeed
as it is happening -- America's *identity* is being fought over. As the demographics shift away from white dominance, another structure of identity must necessarily replace the old one. It should be obvious that in this struggle of power and definition that *tools* are needed. And as all here are aware it is Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory that has -- rather suddenly -- begun to dominate social analysis.
You will find that the so-called Far Right (the Tucker Carlson faction let's say) attempts to refute the CRT argument through blunting or discrediting its primary tool: race consciousness. Formerly, to be *American* was to have resolved to surrender former identity and to take on a new American identity.
My suggestion is that the more clearly that one sees the cultural and social struggles in America by grasping the history through honest and genuine analysis, the more insight one will have into the transmutations that are occurring.
