hdbk_blackstudies ch 26.pdf

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-se...

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos, embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio content, and downloadable tables and resources. Author: Molefi Kete Asante Pub. Date: 2010 Product: Sage Reference DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Keywords: Afrocentricity, black studies, black nationalism, dislocations, nationalism, African people, consciousness Disciplines: Race & Ethnicity, Race, Ethnicity & Migration, Black Studies, Sociology Access Date: July 8, 2024 Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Online ISBN: 9781412982696 © 2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Social Discourse without Abandoning African Agency: An Eshuean Response to Intellectual Dilem- ma Molefi KeteAsante Afrocentricity as an Africological paradigm creates, inter alia, a critique of i social history in the West (Asante, 1998). Such an action is at once a liberalizing and a liberating event, marking both the expansion of con- sciousness and the freeing of the mind from Eurocentric hegemony. One cannot gain such expansion and freedom without setting off a transformation in the way knowledge is acquired, legitimized, and projected (Mazama, 2001). Even the manner in which the acquisition of knowledge is legitimized and then disseminated will be affected by an agency analysis that strips from oppressors and hegemonists the right to establish norms of human relations. Exploration into the social knowledge necessary to free the minds of the oppressed always involves a critique. Too often, contemporary social scientists, and indeed too many African social sci- entists among them, reframe and reshape the Eurocentric model and project it as universal. I have always believed that Eurocentricity was possible as a normal expression of culture, although it has remained an ab- normal human system because it seeks to impose its cultural particularity as universal while denying and de- grading other cultural, political, or economic views. It is preeminently a system of privilege; African American Studies as a discipline is inherently an instrument of challenge to any type of essentialist privilege. To put it bluntly, the suppressing of anyone's personality, economic or cultural expression, civilization, gender, or religion creates the state of oppression. The operators of such systems or the enforcers of such individual or collective suppression are oppressors. What the oppressed must do to regain a sense of freedom is to throw off the layers of oppression that result from all forms of human degradation (Kebede, 2001). The Afro- centrist sees these forms as class and biological discriminations and oppressions that must be dealt with on a cultural and psychological level, both at the oppressor end and the oppressed end of the spectrum. Indeed, both experience freedom when this is done. This is why I have called for a critique of hegemony and other forms of domination (Asante, 1998). This essay seeks to establish the grounds on which we can build a useful social discourse in Black Studies without abandoning African agency. I shall do this by offering some general statements regarding the Afro- centric idea and then show, through a critique, how a contemporary social scientist uses the particular van- Handbook of Black Studies Page 2 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. tage point of Europe to write Africans out of centrality, even within our own historical context. What I mean by this notion of critique is the observation and commentary on the historiography of social knowledge and on the sociology of history by Afrocentrists committed to the freeing of the minds of the oppressed. All science becomes by virtue of such an agency analysis anti-oppressive and antiracist in its critical nature. Using Maulana Karenga's twin towers of tradition and reason, the Afrocentrist establishes the subject analysis for culture on contemporary racist and sexist interpretations of human phenomena (Karenga, 1993). Thus, the grand sociological narrative, and narratives of other disciplines, imposed by Western scholars to enshrine Europe and European individuals as the norms of human culture, human relations, human interactions, social theory, and social institutions must be called to task for their universalizing actions (Reviere, 2001). In fact, some social scientists are already rewriting the script with a more human and sensitive approach to humanity. I have avoided the term inclusive because I see it as giving the impression that “minorities” (sic) are to be included in Europe, and this is certainly not my intention. In the notion of “inclusive” is the idea that Europe is classified above other cultural spheres not alongside them. My idea is that communication between cultures is a co-cultural affair, not an affair of superior and inferior cultures. What the Afrocentric critique has shown is that one can neither write an authentic sociology of the world nor a genuine history of humanity based simply on the structure of northern European thought. To assume, as the Western academy often does, that history starts with Europe or could be written by assembling only European facts is the grandest arrogance in human scholarship. Inevitably, we are at the contradiction of place when the particular is transformed into the absolute. Nothing could create such a false sense of human purpose and place as the doctrine of racial superiority, which has unfortunately affected everything in the Western acade- my. Such a racist construction of human knowledge often means that to the Eurocentrist a totalizing rhetoric of science is desirable and possible. Because Afrocentricity has demonstrated that openness to human agency is its operative principle, the Afrocentric critique of this position must be particularly severe. There can be no coherent totalizing rhetoric of science based merely on the European example. Yet this position has been pushed incessantly by many Western scholars. To a nauseating degree, it appears that the lessons of pro- gressive sociologists and historians of European origin are ignored by the Eurocentric mainstream. I have rarely seen the evidence of Andrew Hacker, Joe Feagin, Sidney Willhelm, for example, in the policies of the American government. The reason for the emergence of Stephan Thernstrom, Mary Lefkowitz, Marvin Har- ris, and Diane Ravitch, among others, as leading scholars in the American academy has a lot to do with the lack of sound standards and criteria regarding human ethics. You can still be considered a good historian or a good sociologist and yet be a sexist or racist in traditional terms. Problematizing becomes a science of cov- ering for the worst types of outrages against humanity. There always seems to be a reason advanced for the Handbook of Black Studies Page 3 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. most vile and venal forms of discrimination and racism. Thomas Jefferson's enslavement of Africans is prob- lematized as part of the general attitude of the day, and thus, Jefferson must be understood within the context of his times, according to this doctrine. The Afrocentrist rejects such scurrilous arguments on the grounds that human dignity is itself the most abiding standard by which we should judge our treatment of other humans. The fact that Eurocentrists can make arguments to excuse the racism of White philosophers, politicians, and historians demonstrates the degree to which cultural chauvinism has influenced the historiography. However, no good Afrocentrist can also be a racist or sexist. What is the reason for this difference between the Eurocentric and Afrocentric conceptualizations? The answer lies in the fact that Afrocentricity actually celebrates agency on the part of any individual or groups of individuals who identify as a collective creating history or making human social relations. Furthermore, Afrocentrists are cognizant of the fact that culture and economics are connected in the eradication of oppression. One without the other leads to continuing disen- franchisement of African people in the American society. Positive social relations—by which I mean economic, political, and cultural relations—are predicated on freedom. Without freedom, the African person in America is merely a pawn in the hands of the globalizing ethos of White corporate capital, which ultimately leads, it seems to me, to another form of enslavement and domination. To speak of globalization is to speak of some form of cultural and social equality in which all parties arrive at an agreement for mutual acceptance of in- terchanges and exchanges, not for the domination of one particular cultural style on the rest of the world. A Weberian analysis where class and status are different might yield other responses to globalization, but in the end, whether a person who participates in the Western hegemony is of one class or any other class, one sta- tus group or any other status group, the controlling dynamic seems to be the obliteration of other, particularly competing, views of the world. This is the principal violation of the nature of social relations that must be laid at the feet of the West. It is the reason why freedom rather than the notion of individual liberty has been at the heart of the African quest for dignity. We know as Afrocentrists, long under the influence of Western science, that no universal values and charac- teristics are derived from one cultural group alone but yet applicable to all groups. All human beings create their contributions to the world on the basis of their cultural foundations. They may add to the archive on the basis of class or biology—for example, as a proletarian or a female—but they may contribute simply as a member of a community where people share similar interests in any number of things. I do not want to give the impression that Afrocentrists find nothing useful in the Western construction of ex- treme because that would be taking my argument to the extreme. What most worries me is the continuation of the Western notion that all human history can be placed on a time chart and plotted from ancient Greece forward as the heritage of the world. Granted, it is one of the human heritages, but it is woefully lacking in Handbook of Black Studies Page 4 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. its scope and depth. There is no one giant time chart of the world where belief in this universal chronology would lead to discovery. The way Eurocentrists construct this argument for a Greek-derived hegemony is to argue that there must be a starting point in time for everything, and if it cannot be found in Europe, then it is unknown. If it is unknown—that is, if its origin cannot be determined—then it is of little interest to human civilization. Nevertheless, Afrocentrists have made it quite clear that no one can simply assume a position as arrogant as that, and we now fully understand why we cannot say that Sophocles or Aeschylus discovered drama or Plato discovered political science. We know that because we are unaware of all the possibilities of written documents in Africa, Asia, or South America, we must say we do not know. Discoverers in the Euro- pean construction of reality are always Europeans. This should normally give one pause, but if you assume a European superiority, then an inauthentic and unlikely event becomes normal, expected, and even pre- dictable. Who else could have discovered dynamics or the printing press, paper, medicine, political union, the concept of nation, religion, writing, or architecture? Afrocentricity has reopened methodological categories of Eurocentric scholarship (Keita, 2000). In recent years, we were drawn to the debate over naming when we challenged terms such as minority, disadvantaged, underdeveloped, marginal, the Other, ethnomusicology, mainstream, prelogical, and prehistorical. But it soon became clear that the reactionary rearguard would take the rising chorus of criticism against such terms as an attack on freedom of speech or academic freedom. The right wing would recast the issue as political correct- ness, and the press would take up each case as an example of someone trying to impose a thought police on the free will of the thinker. In a reactionary environment, it becomes easy for reactive forces to undermine the possibilities of human interaction based on equality and dignity. They are emboldened by the political rhetoric to seek isolation, narrowness, and petty clan conservatism. Such attacks on openness are ways to maintain social and economic privilege. But any critique of hegemony will see this grab for anti-African space as part and parcel of the socializing process by which the reactionary elements attempt to define reality for others. Rather than accept the def- initions offered by the subjects themselves, the reactionary forces are fond of maintaining their right to call people by any name and to assign to them any attribute they care to because it is their legitimate right to do so. After all, to say they cannot do so is to prevent them from exercising their freedom of speech. There is no lonely rage in the construction of agency among African people in America; we are profoundly en- gaged in a collective experience for self-determination and self-definition. This is not an anti-White position; it simply ignores the definitions and constructions set up by White (and some Blacks can be White) sociologists and historians. What matters to us is the ability to write our own story and to cooperatively set the terms of our engagement with the larger White and often domination-seeking world. But what is most challenging is the Handbook of Black Studies Page 5 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. fact that hegemonists rarely give in to the human sensibility of mutuality when they think they have the politi- cal and economic power to set the terms of engagement. Might becomes the basis for legitimacy. Inevitably, those who see themselves as oppressed will break free from such one-sided engagement and bring an end to the interaction. Periodic eruptions in the American society that are inaccurately labeled “riots” or “civil unrest” are directly re- lated to this breaking away from engagements that are dehumanizing and suffocating. When the sociologists and other social scientists rush to determine the cause of the latest urban expression of this breaking away, they often ask the wrong questions and seek culprits in the wrong places. All conflagrations are merely symp- tomatic of the search for agency and subject place. One could always ask, “Why are the oppressive forces seeking to hold a lid on the achievements, aspirations, expressions of cultural and economic development of the African people in this place?” Answers to this question will greatly enhance the sharpness of the social analysis in any given urban community from Chicago to Los Angeles to Boston. Western social scientists are ensnared in a conceptual net that allows only a few to escape, and consequently, there is a hardy similarity to their analyses. The overanalyzed discourse on racism becomes in such a context nothing more than an elaboration on race relations and race formation themes; racism itself remains safely ensconced in the brains of the social scientist, away from real detection. Now the real problem for oppressed African people is that many African scholars have succumbed to the same constructions as the White social scientists. They are victims of the hegemonic influences of their teach- ers and are therefore caught in a uniquely stifling bind. Although I am the first to admit that I have some elements in my own thinking that need purging, I believe that there are many African scholars in the United States and the United Kingdom who write as if they are not just conceptually European but also anti-African. Periodically, there appears a book that runs counter to the wisdom of experience in the African American community. Against Race by the sociologist Paul Gilroy (2000) is just such a book. Gilroy (1993), a British scholar, who teaches at Yale University, created a stir with the postmodern work, The Black Atlantic. I see his book, Against Race, as a continuation of that work's attempt to deconstruct the notion of African identity in the United States and elsewhere. It is precisely the kind of sociology that I have been explaining. The funda- mental argument of the book runs squarely against the lived experiences of African Americans. The history of discrimination against us in the West—whether in the United States, the United Kingdom, or other parts of the Western world—is a history of assaulting our dignity because we are Africans or the descendants of Africans. This has little to do with whether or not we are on one side of the ocean or the other. Such false separations, particularly in the context of White racial hierarchy, hegemony, and domination, is nothing more than an acceptance of a White definition of Blackness. I reject such a notion as an attempt to isolate Africans Handbook of Black Studies Page 6 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. in the Americas from Africans on the continent. It is as serious an assault and as misguided a policy as the 1817 Philadelphia conference that argued that the Blacks in the United States were not Africans but “col- ored Americans” and therefore should not be encouraged to go to Africa. To argue as Gilroy (1993) does that Africans in Britain and the United States are part of a “Black Atlantic” is to argue the “colored American” thesis all over again. It took us 150 years to defeat the notion of the “colored American” in the United States, and Afrocentrists will not stand idly by and see such a misguided notion accepted as fact at this late date in our struggle to liberate our minds. We are victimized in the West by systems of thinking, structures of knowledge, and ways of being that take our Africanity as an indication of inferiority. I see this position as questioning the humanity and the dignity of African people. It should be clear that Gilroy's (2000) book, Against Race is not a book against racism, as perhaps it ought to be, but a book against the idea of race as an organizing theme in human relations. It is somewhat like the idea offered a decade or more ago by the conservative critic, Anne Wortham (1981) in her reactionary work, The Other Side of Racism. Like Wortham, Gilroy (2000) argues that the African American spends too much time on collective events that constitute “race” consciousness and therefore participates in “militaristic” marches typified by the Million Man March and the Million Woman March, both of which were useless. The only person who could make such a statement had to be one who did not attend. Unable to see the redemptive power of the collective construction of umoja within the context of a degenerate racist society, Gilroy prefers to stand on the sidelines and cast stones at the authentic players in the arena. This is a reactionary posture. So Against Race cannot be called an antiracism book although it is antirace, especially against the idea of Black cultural identity whether constructed as race or as a collective national identity. Let us be clear here, Against Race is not a book against all collective identities. There is no assault on Jewish identity, as a religious or cultural identity, nor is there an attack on French identity or Chinese identity as col- lective historical realities. There is no assault on the historically constructed identity of the Hindu Indian or on the White British. Nor should there be any such assault. But Gilroy, like others of this school, sees the princi- pal culprits as African Americans who retain a complex love of African culture. In Gilroy's construction or lack of construction, there must be something wrong with African Americans because Africa remains in their minds as a place, a continent, a symbol, a reality of origin, and source of the first step across the ocean when they should have long since been “Whitewashed.” But Gilroy does not know what he is talking about here. This leads him to the wrong conclusions about the African American community. The relationship Africans in the Americas have with Africa is not of some mythical or a mystical place, but rather, it is seen in the long tradition of resistance to oppression. Africa becomes in some senses the most genuine of symbols to the oppressed. Handbook of Black Studies Page 7 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Analytic Afrocentricity and Theory I accept the view that Afrocentricity is characterized by its commitment to a political program in conformity with the idea that theory is not disconnected from practice. I do not know how it is possible for someone to theorize Afrocentrically and not be against racial hegemony. Theory is the guiding blueprint for proper prac- tice. According to Karenga (1978), “without theory, there is no revolution, only thoughtless action, false hopes and tragic failures” (p. 1). Furthermore, Karenga is certain that “even though theory alone does not insure automatic success there can surely be no success without it and history has ample proof of this” (p. 1). How- ever, theory without a basis in human practice is without historical substance. I do not take Afrocentricity to be for or against any particular program or any singular action, but rather, based on historical substance and practice, it seeks to identify with all efforts to reassert the centrality of African agency in human phenom- ena. We cannot appreciate this necessity without some clear understanding of the immense nature of our dislocation, disorientation, and posttraumatic stress as a result of more than 350 years of enslavement and segregation. No people have lived under such constant terror for so long a time without relief as have the Africans in the Americas and Caribbean. This has produced numerous psychological, social, cultural, and political dislocations, including the idea that we are not oppressed, the paramount example of the disloca- tion discovered by Afrocentric analysis. Thus, by linking the affirmation of African centrality in our own story to practice, we underscore the determination that a progressive revolution in thought and action can occur only through centered-ness. This means that our knowledge of the determined future is not some mystical, spooky illusion, but a scientific analysis based on what happens when people arrive at the consciousness of their own agency. What we do is then predictable. Afrocentricity works because it is able not only to interpret the technological, economic, and structural developments in society but also to provide an explanation for the orientations, stresses, choices, and religious locations of the African people. Of course this is risky business because predictions can only be as good as our full understanding of the past, our anticipation of the future infrastructure confronting the African world, and our appreciation of our present condition. That is why I have been quite impressed by those scholars who have begun to expose the possibilities of quantitative research in establishing infrastructural issues. We need to know what is in order to know what ought to be. You do not know these things by speculation or by dreams; you have to do the work to determine the facts. Scholarship is not a matter of introspection alone; it is always a matter of dialogue and conversation with other scholars. We must interrogate each other as well as listen to our inner voices. An example of how analytic Afrocentricity leads to factual determinations regarding African resistance to Handbook of Black Studies Page 8 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. White hegemony is Dunham's (2001) study of the nature of Black nationalism. For Dunham, Black nationalism could be shown to have little to do with White people and more to do with African people loving themselves. The more centered the person, the more nationalistic. This seems to be a perfectly reasonable interpreta- tion to me. But Dunham does not make the mistake of claiming that all Black people are centered in their consciousness, nor that Black nationalism is necessarily Afrocentricity. This is good, because the two are separate. One is a political ideology, and the other a theoretical practice. Of course, the most effective Black nationalist is Afrocentric in practice. Acting Together in Society To act together in society depends on certain common values toward humanity. We understand the causes of societal instability when it comes to interaction in a multiracial informational society. I think that we have to interrogate more of the classical African civilizations to discover new ways forward in the intellectual arena because the paradigm of White privilege cannot hold any longer. Already, we are seeing that on an international level, African intellectuals have been called together by the African Union to begin a dialogue on ways to interface for the development of the continent and the African Diaspora. This is a useful beginning that should include all serious Black Studies scholars. Those of us who are interested in the agency question because it involves the self-generation of ideas, concepts, movements, and all human actions can find useful and concrete data in these new international avenues. Finally, all discourse must include the key notion of location, the idea that we must always be about the busi- ness of establishing human balance and order in the midst of all chaos and instituting a moral or ethical di- mension to human interaction. This is not a secret or metaphysical quest; this is the concrete reality of every- day existence. How Africologists confront this in their research projects is at the core of what must be done to sustain the discipline. What many recent converts to grand theories have sought are ways to look at a con- cept, spiral it up to another level of abstractions, sometimes so they cannot even understand it themselves, dress it in some metaphysical or epistemological vocabulary, and announce that they have arrived at a new interpretation. We have often lost them to their own “spiritual” quests disconnected from the concrete eco- nomic and social issues confronting the African world. This cannot be the end of Black Studies. Fortunately, people are concerned about real theories, not metaphysical ones. Few people care about the compatibility or incompatibility of systems of numerology, biological determinism, or theories that have no practical grounding. Handbook of Black Studies Page 9 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. It is here that we can make a difference as scientists who are able to advance knowledge without appeals to mysticism. What I am interested in is establishing forms of resistance to domination in the concrete sense and ways to analyze the effectiveness of these forms of resistance. Some of us must not avoid confrontation with the ever-present cultural, political, social, and economic vise of White racial domination in the international and national lives of Africans. We must also confront it in the academy; however, this cannot be done without some fundamental changes to our own consciousness. I personally discover in my search, an Afrocentric path, a way of determining a response to White racial domination found in Black Studies, without becoming a footnote to Plato or Hegel. This is on the way forward with our research agenda. A phalanx of scholars must rise up as beacons to the world, announcing that they will advance a science, an art—a family of knowledge bearers who will interrogate all narrow, biased, and racist models of information and then project a new open- ing to knowledge on the basis of a Maatic resurgence. We shall ultimately be saved as a discipline of thought by this new consciousness that will open doors to our rich and multidimensional experiences as Winston Van Horne (1997) has said, transnation-ally and transgenerationally. African people have met Europe in many spheres and over the past 500 years have experienced an inordi- nate amount of the most aggressive human greed and brutality. Europe cannot teach us society, democracy, law, ethics, human relations, or values; its history has been the antithesis of those ideas. But in the end, we cannot teach ourselves if we seek to model Africana Studies after the worst examples of Western social sci- ences. Ours must be a revolutionary approach to knowledge, bringing light to ethical and moral questions with regard to human interaction and demonstrating that knowledge can be used to elevate and free humanity. Initially, I said that Afrocentricity was a critique of social history. Now I want to add to that in my conclusion to say that our perspectivist, agential, and locational analyses give us a method for examining economic and infrastructural realities as well. When you apply perspective, agency, and location to the economic and infra- structural sectors, you will discover that Afrocentricity is a critique of all attempts on the part of Europeans to overreach their particular reality for some idea of universalism or to establish their own privilege. In the end, we are saved by our own grace and the name of the savior is written in our own intellectual works for the discipline. Handbook of Black Studies Page 10 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. References Asante, M. K. (1998). The Afrocentric idea. Philadelphia: Temple University. Dunham, A. F. (2001). It more'n a notion: A quantitative study of Black nationalism. Unpublished doctoral dis- sertation, Temple University, Philadelphia. Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press. Gilroy, P. (2000). Against race: Imagining political culture beyond the color line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press. Karenga, M. (1978). Essays on struggle: Position and analysis. San Diego, CA: Kawaida. Karenga, M. (1993). Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press. Kebede, M.The rehabilitation of violence and the violence of rehabilitation: Fanon and Colonialism. Journal of Black Studies31(5) (2001). 539–562. Keita, M. (2000). Race and the writing of history. New York: Oxford University Press. Mazama, A.The Afrocentric paradigm: Contours and definitions. Journal of Black Studies31(4) (2001). 387–405. Reviere, R.Toward an Afrocentric research methodology. Journal of Black Studies31(4) (2001). 709–728. Van Horne, W. A. (Ed.). (1997). Global convulsions: Race, ethnicity, and nationalism at the end of the twenti- eth century. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wortham, A. (1981). The other side of racism: A philosophical study of Black race consciousness. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Afrocentricity black studies black nationalism Handbook of Black Studies Page 11 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. dislocations nationalism African people consciousness https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Handbook of Black Studies Page 12 of 12