Thinking about Du Bois and Ambedkar

One day, when the current writing projects are completed, I plan to devote some time to writing about B.R. Ambedkar and W.E.B. Du Bois. One area where I appreciate Ambedkar, was in his critique of Marxism vis-a-vis his interpretation of Buddhism. Du Bois’s relationship to Marxism was complex, reflecting the contradictions of the White left, as well as the limitations of Marx’s theory to addressing the malaise of African Americans. Moreover, Du Bois was influenced by Black nationalism and Pan-African nationalism in various ways, hence tempering his relationship to Marxist theory in some respects.

I compare this to Ambedkar’s discussion of Buddhist philosophy in relation to social inequality. This is from his essay Buddha or Karl Marx.
“A part of the misery and unhappiness in the world was according to the Buddha the result of man’s inequity towards man. How was this inequity to be removed ? For the removal of man’s inequity towards man the Buddha prescribed the Noble Eight-Fold Path.
The elements of the Noble Fight-Fold Path are:
(1) Right views i.e. freedom from superstition:
(2) Right aims, high and worthy of the intelligent and earnest men;
(3) Right speech i.e. kindly, open, truthful;
(4) Right Conduct i.e. peaceful, honest and pure;
(5) Right livelihood i.e. causing hurt or injury to no living being;
(6) Right perseverance in all the other seven;
(7) Right mindfulness i.e. with a watchful and active mind; and
(8) Right contemplation i.e. earnest thought on the deep mysteries of life.
The aim of the Noble Eight-Fold Path is to establish on earth the kingdom”

While Amedkar drew upon Indian philosophy to critique or de-center Marx, Du Bois did not draw upon African philosophy for similar ends. Later generations of Black scholars however would. It would be remiss of me to suggest that Du Bois’s influence would not impact their works even indirectly, as we has, after all, a pioneer of African-centered thought.

Impermanence

This world presents to us an illusion of permanence. Such is also evident in various discourses, often fundamentalist, which ascribe (or express a desire for) a quality of unchanging within our terrestrial reality. I think that such notions are also buoyed by the sometimes painful dislocations of a phenomenal world that constantly reminds us (despite our resistance) of the incessant nature of change, as well as the insubstantial nature of all things, or what is sometimes called sunyatta in Buddhist philosophy.

I do not believe that denial of change’s constancy is an idle matter. I think that it has profound consequences, both personally and collectively.

Three paths, one destination

To my thinking there are three paths to the African warrior tradition. The first path is characterized by both the practice of the African combat arts, as well as the internalization of the highest ethics and discipline of the culture. Herein, one is not simply employing technical principles, but also seeks to reflect African cultural ideals in various ways.

The second path is where one incorporates select principles and techniques of the African combat arts into whatever warrior discipline one practices. This may entail using one or more kicks from Capoeira, or several blocks from 52 Blocks. Here one also draws on the philosophical principles of these arts and of African culture more generally.

The third path consists of the incorporation of the philosophy of the African warrior tradition into one’s practice of non-African martial arts. For years when I did Kung Fu, before I started learning Capoeira, various African proverbs informed my thinking about what it meant to be a martial artist. Whether it was the Odu which states, “It is at home that the war is lost before even reaching the battlefield” or another that states “The constant soldier is never unready, even once”, these statements greatly informed my thinking about these arts and the type of consciousness that must accompany their practice. They gave me a way of conceiving what warriorhood meant in the African milieu and how such principles are vital to the present context.

Hence, even absent the African fighting arts, the African warrior tradition remains a vital area of personal and community development that ultimately should inform our work.

Those seeking further insight into the aforementioned topic should consider the following texts:

Carruthers, Jacob H. 1985. The Irritated Genie: An Essay on the Haitian Revolution. Chicago: The Kemetic Institute.

Desch-Obi, T. J. 2008. Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Green, Thomas A. 2003. “Freeing the Afrikan Mind: The Role of Martial Arts in Contemporary African American Cultural Nationalism.” In Martial Arts in the Modern World: Transition, Change and Adaptation, edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, 229-248. New York: Praeger.

Green, Thomas A. 2003. “Surviving the Middle Passage: Traditional African Martial Arts in the Americas.” In Martial Arts in the Modern World: Transition, Change and Adaptation, edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, 129-148. New York: Praeger.

Green, Thomas A. 2004. “African Roots in the Martial Arts: An Interview with Kilindi Iyi.”  In Yo: Journal of Alternative Perspectives (Nov 2004).

Karenga, Maulana. 1999. Odu Ifa: The Ethical Teachings. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press.

Maasi, Shaha Mfundishi. 2008. Essential Warrior: Living Beyond Doubt and Fear. Baltimore, MD: MD&H Publications, LLC.

Maasi, Shaha Mfundishi, and Nganga Tolo-Naa. “The Liberation of Consciousness Through African-Descended Martial Culture in the Americas: The Truth About Kupigana-Ngumi.” accessed December 10, 2015. http://www.kupiganangumi.com/kupiganangumi/History.html.

Powe, Edward L. 2011. Black Martial Arts VIII: The ABC & “Bay-ah-Bah” of Capoeira de Angola. Madison, WI: Dan Aiki Publications.

Price, Richard. 1996. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Information and wisdom

This society’s emphasis on information places value on the ephemeral, as information constantly changes. This is why there is a new study every other week debunking some previous study that debunked everything that you thought you knew.

Our ancestors, on the other hand, emphasized wisdom and its cultivation. For them also, information changed, but wisdom was an anchor from which these changes could be discerned and evaluated. Long held traditions were resistant to change, not only because of cultural inertia, but also because people had the wisdom to understand the utility, the practicality of their traditions. In this way, wisdom sought to nullify the nihilism of a potentially presentistic and information-obsessed culture.

The hamster’s wheel

Dr. Greg Carr reminds us that the pursuit for “citizenship rights” is an endeavor that binds our efforts and the scope of our aspirations within the structure and logics of the settler colony called the United States of America.
 
The pursuit for the rights of citizenship are merely re-christened for each generation as the quest for integration, reform, inclusion, or representation. In each case, such pursuit directs time and energy that could be directed towards our liberation towards futile endeavors.
 
No evidence to date–despite all of our exhaustive efforts, powerful orations, erudite petitions, or moral appeals suggest that African people will be given a “seat at the table” of the descendants conquers and enslavers or their beneficiaries. Nor should we want it.

Reflecting on Dr. Carr’s lecture at CCICS on 01-31-2020

Dr. Greg Carr’s lecture at the Carruthers Center was excellent. He raised a number of relevant points for thinking Africans who are determined to be free and not those looking to sneak back onto the planation.

He reminds us of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s unwillingness to allow the work of reconstructing African history to be controlled by Whites through the instrument of finance. Fortunately for us, Woodson realized that too many Negroes forget their integrity when the gaudy baubles of white legitimization are waived before them.

We learned that although academically trained, Woodson would not be held down or held back by academic institutions–whether they were under the control of Whites or nominally controlled by (Eurocentric) Africans. Dr. Carr suggests that Woodson’s best works may have never come to fruition if he were forced to labor under the aegis of an academy whose myopia is only exceeded by its hubris and opportunism.

We also learned that Woodson’s method consisted of grassroots fundraising, as well as soliciting for resources from the masses of African people. Dr. Woodson, unlike many Black scholars who merely write about Black people, was one who wrote and learned from the masses of Black people.

Woodson sought to give African people a mirror, Dr. Carr would say, so that we could see ourselves and know at last who we are, and empowered by this knowledge could move into the future capable of deeds far beyond the narrow prescriptions of enemies.

Again, it was a dynamic lecture attended by many notable scholars, theologians, activist, educators, students, and so on. Asante sana to Dr. Conrad Worrill, the Black United Fund of Illinois, and the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies of NEIU for bringing us all together. Axé.

Moving forward

The notion of progress is often dependent on an imagined movement from a supposedly lethargic and backwards past towards some signifier of forward direction. However, “forward” is not neutral, but is heavily dependent on power, that is the meaning of this idea is often dictated by those with the institutional capacity to define “progress” and to make their definition the definitive conception of it. Thus this definition does not merely reside in minds, but is bound up in policies, and institutional structures. Consequently, many of us, due to the political and economic dimensions of knowledge, embrace conceptions of progress that are inescapably Eurocentric.

Opposing elements

Opposition is inevitable in an oppressive society. The conditions of alienation necessitates it. Those focused on maintaining hegemony recognize its inescapability and direct the creation of oppositional elements that fall under the control of the political and economic elite. The existence of a controlled opposition enables an outlet for the disaffected, while also limiting the disruption that this poses for the broader system. A controlled opposition, even when decried by some sectors of the dominant political-economic system, will be buttressed and legitimized by others. This particular drama is necessary in order for it to maintain its nominal appearance of being radical.

Radical theologies

I was thinking about Iran’s rhetorical and military response to the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The Iranian political leadership and civilians called for vengeance. This is quite a contrast to the penchant of American Negroes to forgive, almost reflexively, those who do ill to us.

I have wondered about the conceptual underpinnings of these differences. Many say that Christianity is at fault here. That Black people have been sedated by a very powerful opiate–a religion that compels fixation on the hereafter rather than the present world. Often we know better than this, that is that African Americans’ relationship with Christianity has been more complex than this, but nonetheless, such rhetoric persists–especially in the context of asymmetrical and racialized violence in America.

Then I was in a bookstore tonight and saw a book titled, “Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans” by Gayraud S. Wilmore. I glanced over it, didn’t buy it, but it stimulated a necessary reevaluation of some of these premises.

I recalled Nat Turner and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who though Christian, were advocates of armed insurrection or armed self-defense. Turner, for his part, reportedly said that his rebellion began with a sign for God. Bishop McNeal Turner famously declared that “God is a Negro”. He would go on to argue in favor of armed self-defense. He stated: “We have had it in our mind to say this for over seven years, but on account of our Episcopal status we hesitated to express ourselves thus, fearing it would meet the disapproval of the House of Bishops. But their approval or disapproval has done nothing to stop the fiendish murderers who stalk abroad and are exterminating my race, so we have now said it, and hereafter we shall speak it, preach it, tell it, and write it. Again we say, Get guns, negroes! get guns, and may God give you good aim when you shoot.” Turner’s instruction is a historical echo of the 20th Century group, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, whose commitment to armed self-defense, reminds us that Christianity has also been an idiom of armed struggle or armed self-defense.

At a certain level I think that this suggests that African people have been sufficiently ingenious so as marshal a range of conceptual vehicles as mediums of radical thought. Hence we find that the idiom of revolutionary or insurrectionary struggle has variously been that of “New World” African spiritualities (as in the case of Haiti), Christianity (as in the case of Nat Turner), Islam (as in the case of Malcolm X), to say nothing of non-religious voices. The imperative for resistance has, at times, been of greater import than the medium of its articulation, which has variously become malleable in the hands and minds of those who see its utility for radical ends.

A folly of amusements: A short reflection on the politics of anti-African rhetoric

If things African are deemed worthy of contempt and ridicule, where does such a political orientation point those ill-equipped to see through such a campaign? That is, if our culture is an object for amusement, then whose do we regard with seriousness, as being worthy of respect?

Recall that African culture and people have been objects of derision since the inception of enslavement. This campaign was not without purpose. The savage exploitation that our ancestors were subjected to was seen as being fit only for non-human things. Thus, our ancestors were depicted as inhuman and were politically constructed as instruments of capital, as chattel.

In a context where some of us have identified our history and culture as sources of renewal and transformation, it is not surprising that such efforts have also been under consistent assault as characterized by coups, assassinations, and on-going anti-African propaganda. Thus, despite the triviality ascribed to African expressions agency in the impoverished discourses of social media, these actions have been regarded as anything but inconsequential in the broader sphere.

Dr. Anderson Thompson referred to “funny wars”, wars where Africans become proxies of European interests. Some of us have failed to learn the lessons of history and it shows. Today the assault on Africa has been “democratized” as the denizens of social media happily play their part. Dr. Carter G. Woodson noted this sad pattern in his day when he wrote, “The very service which this racial toady renders hardens him to the extent that he loses his soul. He becomes equal to any task the oppressor may impose upon him and at the same time he becomes artful enough to press his case convincingly before the thoughtless multitude. What is right is sacrificed because everything that is right is not expedient; and what is expedient soon becomes unnecessary.”Dr. Thompson reminds us that our actions should be focused on a “grand vision of the future”. In this formulation we can ill afford to be short-term in our planning or superficial in our thinking. Sadly, the impoverished discourse of our day predisposes many of us to just this.

I’ll close with Dr. Marimba Ani’s wisdom. She writes, “Sankofa is the healing ritual which transforms the disharmony, fragmentation, dishonesty, discontinuity, disconnectedness, and chaos of the Maafa, into harmony, wholeness, truth, continuity, connectedness, and order of Maat.” She reminds us that Sankɔfa is a means for us to restore ourselves. Moreover, it is a paradigm that animates our resistance. When we truly understand the power of our culture, we will know that it is not an object of amusement, but a matter of our very survival as a people.