Violence, Racism and Dubois: the Relevance of Africana Studies

a short post I wrote for Binghamton University's ASO newsletter:

We live in an age of resurgent and wounded white supremacy. As a scholar of Africana Studies and History, I understand Donald Trump and his followers not as the aberration from the supposedly civil political norms of a previous age, but as the return to a mode of political discourse all too familiar in United States history, what the great scholar of Africana, Dr. W.E.B. Dubois called in his magnum opus Black Reconstruction, “the wages of whiteness.”

            We live in age where forms of toxic masculinity, alienation and white racism can combine to fuel destructive form of mass violence. I understand the ever increasing incidence of mass shootings not as the aberration from a previous age of peace, harmony and security, but as the result of our continued use of a mode of violent political action globally, and the inability to ‘wall off’ violence out there (Iraq, Afghanistan), from violence within US borders. 

            We live in an age where a resurgent xenophobic nationalism promises to deal with the ongoing economic catastrophes wrought by the 2008 financial crisis, by building a wall and keeping out Muslims, Mexicans and non-white people in general.   I understand this anti-immigrant sentiment not as the decline from a golden age of tolerance, but as the return to a time-honed mode of racist populism in our collective political discourse. While fascism and racism are common responses to economic anxiety, they only perpetuate the problem of violence, and eat deeply into the spiritual resolve of people who foolishly adopt them.

            In 1915, the great scholar W.E.B. Dubois published a prescient and prophetic piece in The Atlanticcalled “The African Roots of War.” In it, he located the roots of the destruction of Europe in World War One in the violence and genocide of European imperialism in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. Dubois’s central contention, still relevant today, is that “We, then, who want peace, must remove the real causes of war.” Those causes, which Dubois identified as racism, greed, and despotic unjust rule, are still with us today; in fact they define our present global condition as clearly as they did in Dubois’s time.

            Under these conditions, scholars and students of the Africana experience have an opportunity to speak and raise up the truths of Dubois, as well as many others—from ancestor Winnie Mandela to the martyr Marielle Franco—to a new generation. Their writings and their lives are a powerful legacy bequeathed to us, and we speak and analyze and do the work of Africana studies as witnesses to and heirs of their vision. It is up to us, to use these tools to trenchantly analyze and critique the racism, xenophobia, misogyny, violence and general callousness of the powerful we see around us. The problems we face as a society, whether here on Binghamton’s campus, nationally or globally are not insurmountable. But their solutions require courage, careful analysis and a steely, clear-eyed determination about the kind of future we can sustainably build together. In that perpetual quest, Africana studies has much to offer to knowledge-seekers and builders of all kinds.

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The Meaning of White Nationalism as a Reaction Against Economic Marginalization

Remember, If there is one thing worse than national division post-Trump, it is a false national unity imposed by the dominant. America is....a complex political space. It is at once an independent democratic republic and a white settler colony, both a slaveocracy...and the land of the free. It is land that was stolen/taken from one group, and made into the manifest destiny of another group. White America is that sector of the electorate identifying as white and with the historical experience of 'whiteness'. This historical experience is its common currency, not genes or phenotype or even skin color. It is the historical experience of believing oneself immune from the humbling imposed by history, of being uniquely chosen by God, of being the 'best'. Of believing itself deserving of owning land and people. Of itself as refined, civilized, cultured, etc. White Americans are not the first group to believe this about themselves. But they (we, I am a part) define this attitude in America today. At its worst this attitude is the ultimate form of Satanic pride and hubris. Though White America is not a monolith, for good or for evil, it does have a history regularly marked by violent exclusion and fear of the non-white other. It is that history which must be confronted today more urgently than ever before. In spite of what Lincoln said and Obama recently quoted, don't underestimate the worse angels of America's nature. The worst elements have historically dominated American history. Brief interims of hope don't change that. As the dominant demographic of the American electorate, white America still has the overwhelming power to determine cultural norms and political futures. As we saw in this recent election, this power is especially dangerous right now, because we are living in a time where that once overwhelming dominance has decreased, at the same time that a unified front to defeat climate change is more necessary than ever, and the challenges of living in a global world are ratcheting up in intensity. There is nothing like the anger of a group who honestly believes its hard earned gains are being threatened and eroded by other races, religions and demographic groups. There is an old saying (often attributed to Malcolm X), "when white America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia". The meaning of the statement is that when economic and social indicators get worse for whites, they will get catastrophically worse for blacks. But today white America has a cold, and believes it is pneumonia. We are now living through a period where the one time privilege of being white is being gradually eroded. The brutal reality is that the global economy will sacrifice any and all but the super rich as its victims. White nationalism taps into those grievances, offering whiteness (a form of cultural nationalism) as the answer. The work of internal community anti-racism/dismantling white supremacy is a form of spiritual work our community must undertake, and it is key to addressing the appeal of white nationalism and white supremacy. It is a form of acknowledging and confronting, but not validating white supremacist perspectives both overt and covert that exist around us. These perspectives (a form of false consciousness) are found among family members, coworkers, and church members. The goal is to help to cultivate patience, fortitude, forbearance, and compassion among our fellow whites who believe they have pneumonia when its only a cold. Many of them are very fragile when it comes to these issues and that fragility has to be respected, but not validated. They and we as a community have to learn how to live as non-supremacists in our everyday interactions and viewpoints.

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Conservatism, Conservatives and White Supremacy

Although I don't really consider myself a conservative, I have a few thoughts on modern conservatism. Conservatives basically believe in the unchanging preservation of legacies, moral, cultural and spiritual, from the ancient past. They look to these legacies as sources of guidance, and believe they are better guides to what is right and true than contemporary moral attitudes and ideas. Studying the Ancient Egyptians, I am deeply sympathetic to conservatism as a necessary corollary of cultural and religious preservation. When you've created a just society that has stood the test of time, there is something therein worth preserving. This is one reason why the Ancient Egyptians were so conservative. This is also why I respect those who choose to live according to conservative religious traditions, be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Conservatism free from attachment to state power or ethnic exclusivity is a powerful vehicle for preserving valuable moral dispositions. But modern conservatism doesn't deserve the name. It is mostly, if not solely, a form of ethnic nationalism based on the supremacy of European white Christian identity. It is not based on the preservation of old virtues, but on the spreading of new diseases of the heart, based on the lust for power. Perhaps there are a few strands of modern American conservatism that meaningfully connect to the universalist spiritual traditions and disciplines of medieval Christianity, but these are largely secondary to the preservation of group power of Euro-Americans in the space of a settler state. In its nationalist garb, this conservatism is basically the national and cultural expression of white supremacy. When a white nationalist like Jared Taylor talks about preserving white culture, he is articulating a conservative white nationalist critique of American liberalism. Listening to Taylor makes me think about how the founders of this American settler republic would react to the contemporary social scene. Arguably they would be more sympathetic to Jared Taylor than to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Which makes me think that Dr. King didn't represent an "American" tradition, nor a conservative one. Rather his work was an attempt to decolonize that American tradition, a herculean effort to reshape America into a more inclusive space. Whatever battered remnants of political virtue we cling to today are legacies of his and other's sacrifice, not the unchanging and hallowed traditions of this nation's checkered history. #BlackHistoryMonth #MartinLutherKing #Conservatism

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