It's refreshing to consider that I may have no more daunting critics worth minding that the coterie at P6. While I have difficulty getting an argument through the repartee there, it is more or less clear that I can express my direction in my head. I think I'll take a moment to summarize what I see to be the core of our differences.
I seem to recall encountering some resistance for my elitism, but I think I have good company in my insistence that there is, and must be a discoverable black ideal towards which African Americans must comport themselves to attain the freedom which is their stated imperative. I argue that within that thing I call the Old School are practical ways and means of maintaining the discipline required of that accomplishment. Furthermore I contend that within the scope of 'black' there are competing and divergent, if not mutually exclusive, trends within African America. The underlying assumption is that a task of black mental liberation and political agitation are fundamental components of this liberation. We have inherited various schools of thought on mental liberation and political agitation, and are engaged in a somewhat wooly corner of debate about which set of ideas is superior in effecting the desired change in blackfolk.
Where I think I depart from the now fracturing mainstream of black political thought is that I don't see that the prospects of this project are attainable at a national scope. Two axioms of that belief are: 1. Black Unity is dead. 2. Don't second-guess blackfolks.
I came to the first conclusion after serving as the National Finance Officer of NSBE. I was elected twice by the national body. It was my job to arrange for the funding of the organization's activities. I came to the rather stunning realization that there would always be fundamental conflicts between blacks along class and educational lines, and that any organization founded to overcome those barriers for the sake of racial unity was doomed to strife and failure. I lived through the strife and it racked my brain for several years. I found theoretical comfort in recognizing the parallels between my struggle and that of Japanese poet & playwrite Yukio Mishima who ultimately committed dramatic suicide in anguish over a lack of national unity of the Japanese people in the post-war era.
I wasn't relieved of this anguish until I read Gwaltney's 'Drylongso' several years later. In that tome I discovered within African America an institutionally unexpressed yet very cogent nationalist self-awareness. I came to the realization that all of the benefits of Black Nationalism could be retained without an actual organization. While I had long abandoned any conciet that as part of the Talented Tenth, I might facilitate leadership in some such organization, this was the final nail in the coffin of my belief in national black leadership.
And so there were but two projects remaining from my perspective in reconciling our generation to the aspirations of our forebears. The first was one of simple socio-economic progress and the other was the steady improvement, conservation and melioration of the best of black culture. For me that meant literature and music. I intended on taking a highbrow route, with flavor. In the grip of this ambition during the early 90s I saw two poles of aspiration in the books of Greg Tate and Stanley Crouch. And driving to work this morning I found that if I ever wrote a book, I would love to be mentioned in their company, specifically 'Flyboy in the Buttermilk' and 'Notes of a Hanging Judge'.
But I digress.
There is no quick and easy way to summarize my growth from that period. But I'll try. I'd say that at the end of the road for a philosopher-king like DuBois there is nothing but that anguish. One simply cannot harness the ambitions and prospects for even a semi-self aware nation in any great scheme. The more you love blackfolks and want only the best for them, the harder it is to face this fact. It was very difficult for me, in my Japanese days in '86 at the end of college. And yet retaining a great love and respect for blackfolks, how could one do nothing? In the end it was only Conservatism that made sense of all of the greatest problems I tried to address. I was pushed towards it in a variety of ways.
If there was only one lesson of Conservatism I would retain, abandoning all other trappings including the Republican Party and the USA itself it would be something like this about Hayek.
Fritz Machlup* (Economics, Princeton)
"One of the most original and most important ideas advanced by Hayek is the role of the 'division of knowledge' in economic society . . [But if] I had to single out the area in which Hayek's contributions were the most fundamental and pathbreaking, I would cast my vote for the theory of capital. As I said before, when I reviewed Hayek's book on The Pure Theory of Capital, it is 'my sincere conviction that this work contains some of the most penetrating thoughts on the subject that have ever been published.' If two achievements may be named, I would add Hayek's contributions to the the theory of economic planning. Most of what has been written on systems analysis, computerized data processing, simulation of market processes, and other techniques of decision-making without the aid of competitive markets, appears shallow and superficial in the light of Hayek's analysis of the 'division of knowledge', its dispersion among masses of people. Information in the minds of millions of people is not available to any central body or any group of decision-makers who have to determine prices, employment, production, and investment but do not have the signals provided by a competitive market mechanism. Most plans for economic reform in the socialist countries seem to be coming closer to the realization that increasing decentralization of decision-making is needed to solve the problems of rational economic planning." (Fritz Machlup, "Hayek's Contribution to Economics", Swedish Journal of Economics, Vol. 76, Dec. 1974.)
It is this overarching understanding expressed in political and sociological terms that guides my understanding of the prospects for African America. And it underscores the axioms I have learned from my own practical experiences.
So what remains is the cultural project, which is ultimately about flavor and ethics. And yet with this fundamental understanding that there is no shepherd or master plan for blackfolks, what do we do with the blackness created in the wake of solving of the Negro Problem? If you can take it as a given that the Black Man was the first truly mentally, politically and economically liberated African American, that the American promise of liberty has finally been realized then you are at square one. Then you can say that Blackness was a success. I think most people do indeed believe that, that when they speak of Malcolm and Martin in heroic terms that they believe them not to be compromised Negroes in any way, that their very success means they achieved what could not have been before. I think their world fame and celebration quite unassailably makes the case. What then is the future purpose of blackness? It is a basic lesson to be replicated to bring all below to the level of the American middle class, or is it a cultural and philosophical thing to be conserved and refined?
I believe very strongly that it is the latter. Moreover I believe that blackfolks, well-established in the middle class of America face additional challenges not long considered in prior generations as they rise in society. I would argue that ethicists like Ellis Cose and Stephen L. Carter offer us well grounded organic lessons from black life that will serve that fraction of African America that continues upward mobility. And I believe that these are shared lessons for all emergent Americans, black or otherwise, who look to the future in hopes of improving their lot. It is a singular set of middle-class oriented values for which there is no concept of 'selling out'. Furthermore I assert that particular errors of black liberation movements must be corrected and a fresh look at Black be made because those movements interjected a reason to question American success which has degenerated into excuses for not trying and rejecting too much.
It is entirely possible, although I think not self-evident that the evolution of black families into 'old money' positions of power and influence will be no different in any way from that of any other emergent American minority. But I doubt it. I believe that the influence of black culture on the nation is to strong and that certain values and the very bearing of successful African Americans and their families is as indelible as that of the WASP. I would suggest very strongly that a cursory overview of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature or Stephen Barbosa's African American Book of Values is an excellent starting point to recognize. I say that with my own particular interest in literature, but I would say there are equally if not greater profundities to be found in the African American influence on Christian liturgy, music and evangelism. In short, we cannot be faded.
However one cannot trumpet the enormity of such positive contributions by thoughtful and strong blackfolks to this society and world without also facing the depravity of the ingorant and weak among us. What indeed does Colin Powell share with John Allen Muhammad? Clearly the way Colin Powell paved for his son Michael is superior to the way Muhammad led his charge, the young Lee Malvo. One to head the FCC, the other to cold-blooded murder. Can we wall John Allen Muhammad a Black Man the same way we call Colin Powell a Black Man? But even in lesser degrees of difference African Americans run the risk of re-inscribing racial essentialism by assuming brotherhood where none truly exists. If we were to assign 'black' no more meaning than race, the very same racial evaluation slave traders assessed 20 generations ago then we'd be insane. Furthermore we would be false to the intellectual work inherent in liberation struggle. We would deny the very basis upon which we judge Martin and Malcolm to be great, their transformative leadership that made recognize we were more than part of the Negro Problem.
And so ultimately we must reconcile what Black has been looking back with what it needs to be looking forward. My lessons tell me that since there will be no racial unity, and that there will be liberty that we ought to assert as our birthright in this era, that we are free all of us African Americans to make of it what we will. We cannot be second-guessed. We have no national leadership because we require none beyond what any other free people require. We assert the establishment of our human rights. We are not and will never again be slaves. We assert the establishment of our civil rights. We are not and will never again be second-class citizens. We now must assert the establishment of our social power, we will embody and enrich the power of America itself. That is to say, if we agree that Black moves forward from here.
But this is decidedly not the agenda for those African Americans who struggle with the daily business of living. Before them and all of us lies a simple question. Are they to take blackness in a different direction? I say no, and that they have no right to. For if we are to celebrate that which has and yet may further enrich the nation, then our prospects for blackness must be uplifting. That is a daunting responsibility. I reject the idea that 'it is what it is'. It's about Black Lions writing history.
I believe my critics at P6 find that the elitism of a cultural nationalism that is not about establishing a broader middle class standard of living for the masses of blackfolks in The Struggle objectionable. I also believe that they would question the evidence of freedom I assume at square one of the completion of the Civil Rights Movement. And so by that I interpret they argue that no future Black project should move ahead of the African American masses. That the very purpose of black consciousness is indeed arrested at that level of development and needn't go upscale or be informed by greater powers and capacities.
It seems to me that if there is to be any cohesion in an cultural appreciation of Black, then it must retain the essential quality of an elite, but that is very different from saying that other African Americans must be led. Indeed I am saying that the entire project is voluntary and as such various groups will interpret the legacies of blackness in different ways, none of which is absolutely required. Again, in an era of social power for middle class blackfolks, blackness needn't be emphasized at all. The Black Church needn't be mentioned. Everybody could just assimilate from ground zero with no black cultural priorities. But so long as people will desire to claim black cultural priorities, in other words so long as people want to represent some black cultural nationalism, then the essential class conflict is inevitable, and perhaps irreconcilable. It will always be Oprah vs Ice Cube. Cosby vs ghetto blackfolks. Who owns black?
I believe that if black Progressives and Lefties have their way, then Black will remain a sort of socialist project - that no Cosby gets to be Black until all of his baggy pants rivals get their living wage jobs and there is no inherent black underclass complaint in America. I have sympathy for this vision. If Black doesn't go upscale, I think it's self-evident that African Americans who are upscale will need it less than their struggling brothers. But I think that a class-stagnant blackness is very little more than the Negro caste of old, and the attraction of themes of blackness remains irresistable to my generation. So I want Black to go in my direction, and by the same token that a powerless Negro Church was excoriated 50 years ago by college educated black Progressives, a backsliding fraction of African America deserves flack on top of ordinary middle class browbeating. "Holding up their end of the bargain", as Cosby put it, is a requirement of the blackness of social power.
It is not fair to expect all African Americans to represent black social power. Not everyone desires to or is capable of conducting themselves in an uppity manner. But in today's America not everyone needs to hold up this mantle of black cultural nationalism. It's OK not to be Sidney Poitier. Ultimately the question remains. Who owns black, and politically what is the import of owning it? Will it be a relatively small and relatively powerful black elite of the sort who would be doing things like raising 34 million dollars to conserve the King Papers? Or will it be the black masses still struggling to make ends meet in an America looking past them towards gays and Latinos? Either group of African Americans will struggle with the term as it applies to them, how America interprets blackness and the very necessity of it.
Recent Comments