sbAyt ni ptH (The instructions of Ptah): Fashioning the future

In ancient kmt (Kemet or Egypt) the nTr (netcher) ptH (Ptah) was shown at a potter’s wheel sculpting rmT (remetch)–humans. Ptah thus becomes symbolic of the process of crafting reality, molding remetch, and thus shaping the future. Absent an additional determinative, ptH also means create. Ptah reflects the cultural values of Kemet in this respect, that humans are the architects of possibility. Like Ptah, we are endowed with the power to create a world that reflects us. I argue that this charge is not a matter of mere preference, but in fact is vital to our very survival as a people.

In my previous post, Fight or Flight?, I discussed the importance of critically assessing the viability of continued struggle in the U.S. I suggested that, drawing from the insights of Martin R. Delany from a century and a half ago, that flight might offer a more viable solution for the malaise of African people. However I suspect that there is a middle ground between the continued oppression, which is a natural consequence of the paucity of African power, and emigration. That middle ground draws most directly from the legacy of Black Nationalism and offers a path that has been articulated by many of our forebearers.

In his famous speech The Ballot or the Bullet, Malcolm X reaffirms his commitment to Black Nationalism. He states that while his religion is Islam, that “my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism.” He goes on to explain what each of these commitments means, stating that in each and every sphere African people must exert direct and deliberate control over the institutions that sustain their lives. Malcolm X’s charge is one that we still struggle to actualize today, but it is imperative if we endeavor to secure ourselves and our future. In this essay I offer a brief sketch of how this idea can gain expression within and outside of the United States.

The viability of Black Nationalism as a practical philosophy focused on achieving African community empowerment must first address the question of geographic distribution and the capacity for the generation of power in each of these respective domains. By this I mean to suggest that our efforts should be focused on building zones of self-determination, or liberated zones, and building an infrastructure whereby these zones can be connected to sustain economic, political, and cultural exchanges. That stated, any program for community empowerment must examine the distribution of African communities within the U.S., expanding more broadly throughout North America and the Caribbean, and from there to the African continent in addition to other outposts of the global African community. The plan discussed herein will be centered from the locus of the African American community simply because that community is the central feature of this particular reflection. Moreover it will center on economics, politics, and culture as forms of power, and as such, bases of struggle requisite in the establishment of liberated zones.

Economics, politics, and culture as terrains of struggle

In the early and mid-20th Century African American economic enclaves were a common feature in many African American urban centers. Harlem in New York, the Black Metropolis in Chicago, Black Wall Street in Tulsa, and others were potent examples of our efforts to create economies that served the interests of the community. W.E.B. Du Bois’s essay entitled “The upbuilding of Black Durham” offers a compelling portrait of Durham, N.C. as a community striving for economic self-determination.

While integration is often faulted as contributing to the demise of these communities, integration occurred parallel to an increased engagement of African Americans in electoral politics. While many viewed the election of many Black candidates to various local, state, and federal offices as a progressive development, this alone was not constitutive of political power. If examined from the standpoint of Malcolm X, electoral politics alone was insufficient to bestow upon African Americans total control of our communities.

This period was also characteristic of a surge of interest in African culture, as well as in the politics of Pan-Africanism. The pioneering role of Maulana Karenga and the Organization Us in popularizing a paradigm of re-Africanization via the theory of Kawaida cannot be understated as it provided a cultural impetus and framework that informed the works of other formations such as the Congress of African People and the Council of Independent Black Institutions, which were instrumental in advancing discourse about the role of culture in Black Nationalist struggle.

While this period, the mid-1960s to the beginning of the 1980s was rich in animating the discourse and activism on these varied fronts, the capacity of the movement for Black Nationalism on the whole experienced a peak and decline within this same period. The federal government’s Counter Intelligence Program is in part to blame for this decline. The ultimate tragedy of this movement’s contraction is that we have been denied the opportunity to view the full potential of these initiatives, which I argue are essential to the conceptualization of a renewed path towards social power.

Revisiting (and updating) the New African National Strategy

Around the year 2000 Dr. Demetri Marshall, then president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa (PG-RNA), visited Chicago and lectured at the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies. His lecture centered on his New African National Strategy (NANS), which was a platform for achieving independence and sovereignty based on the historic platform of the Republic of New Africa (RNA), which identified five states as the national territory for an independent African American or New African nation. These states are South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The NANS identified three broad types of areas, and attempted to articulate the form that organizing in each of these domains should take. These three areas were 1) rural areas inside of the national territory, 2) urban areas inside of the national territory, and 3) areas outside of the national territory. One key feature of Dr. Marshall’s strategy was the Kush District, an area comprising the western border of Mississippi, consisting of contiguous counties with over 70% African majorities in the population. It was believed that this large area, if made the epicenter of organizing activity, could become an example of the potential of national independence and serve to invigorate the movement towards a plebiscite–a national vote wherein African people in the U.S. would declare their will to remain citizens of the U.S. or to establish a sovereign nation.

Each type of area identified within the NANS offered unique challenges, opportunities, and priorities with regards to organizing, but in each area within the national territory the acquisition of economic, political, and cultural empowerment were primary concerns. I think that this model offers much insight into a potential path towards social power.

Similar to the NANS, I wish to discuss three distinct area types that currently serve as loci of habitation, or arguably communities for African Americans. I argue that the term loci of habitation is more appropriate than communities because a community is a shared space that reflects the political, economic, and ultimately the cultural interest of those who reside therein; whereas a locus of habitation is simply a place where one lives that may or may not reflect one’s interest. The colonized and compromised nature of African communities within the U.S. do not meet an optimal criteria for community. Nonetheless I will use these terms interchangeably. The three loci of habitation that I will discuss are 1) Black majority neighborhoods, 2) Black majority municipalities, and 3) Black majority regions.

Black majority neighborhoods are spaces within existing municipalities that feature a numeric majority African populations. These communities may exist within municipalities or regions wherein Africans are or are not numeric majorities. Black majority municipalities are localities such as cities or towns with African demographic majorities that are located within larger regional areas that may or may not feature corresponding African demographic majorities. Lastly African majority regions are contiguous geographic areas consisting of municipalities, counties, and states wherein Africans comprise a distinct numeric majority.

One might conceive that each level articulated offers expanding levels of possibility with respect to the imperatives of economic, political, and cultural power. To be sure, each level offers increased possibilities of development and integration within larger African networks.

A scaled and integrated approach to economic power

The examples offered earlier of economically prosperous African American communities offers a potent example of the forms of economic development that should be strove for on the level of Black majority neighborhoods. Central to this analysis is the acknowledgement that an economy is a system for the production and distribution of goods and services that are vital the well-being of a community or society. Herein I argue that a core feature of communal life at every phase of analysis is the imperative that communities both produce and consume the basic resources that they require to survive. Using the model offered by the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI), there are six basic levels of institution building. These are shelter, clothing, food production, health care, education, and defense. If one adds logistics such as transportation and communication to this, you have the seven basic levels of economic development requisite to create self-sufficient communities. I argue that these provide a framework for economic development for neighborhoods.

Succinctly stated, shelter consists of the ability to build and maintain housing requisite to meet the needs of the community. Clothing includes the totality of resources that enable communities to provide clothing for its members. This includes the production of fibers, the processing of textiles, the assembly of garments, and the distribution and recycling of these items throughout the community. Food production entails the growth or procurement of food necessary to sustain human life and well-being. This necessarily includes agriculture and food distribution systems. Health care is the institution focused on ensuring the mental and physical well-being of community members. This includes the range of social processes such as medicine production and distribution, delivery of medical care, and the application of health care knowledge in the development and design of institutions that seek to address health ills and promote optimal functioning. Education is the collective of socialization processes focused on ensuring the intergenerational survival and enhancement of African life. Education entails processes that seek to disseminate essential skills and vital knowledge, in addition to preparing members of the community for the various vocations requisite for its survival. Defense entails the capacity to secure African life, institutions, and territory; the ability to resist threats both internal and external to the community. Lastly, logistics entails the ability to move goods, information, and personnel. This capacity is essential to the functioning of any economic system, and is imperative to the horizontal integration of similar systems.

Horizontal integration refers a process of combining comparable economic systems within a cooperative, and thus mutually beneficial network. While each of the above forms of institutions are necessary on any communal level, they most clearly demarcate the thrust of economic development within any neighborhood. As multiple neighborhoods engage in processes of horizontal integration, these communal clusters are able to establish interdependent economies with implications for scales of production, markets of consumption, and levels of autonomy. Thus even on the first level, consisting of African majority neighborhoods, a modicum of self-sufficiency is possible that is only augmented as multiple communities coalesce. Thus the secondary level is essentially the replication of this level of development across neighborhoods within a municipality.

This principle of horizontal integration applies to the third level—African majority regions—as municipalities and communities across a broad geographic area seek to combine their economic structures. This principle of regional integration can operate on the scale of local regions, as in a collection of contiguous areas, or more dispersed regions which are non-contiguous but where integration becomes a feasible and beneficial endeavor.

In short, economic development is, just as it has always been, absolutely vital to our survival as a people. Our failure to move forthrightly to build and horizontally integrate our economic systems imperils our collective capacity, and with it, our ability to bring a desired future into being.

Governance and the restoration of communal authority

One of the failings of the last several decades has been the over-emphasis of electoral politics. While effecting our will through the political apparatus is necessary and beneficial, this period has also been characterized by an alarming degree of social disorganization in African communities. By social disorganization I am referring to the loss of collective capacity in the community via the erosion of social structures which serve to transmit and reinforce social norms. Traditional structures such as the extended family, African American education personnel, the clergy, and a broad array of community members were empowered to act collectively as stewards of the community via the assent of the community. This mechanism of internal regulation has largely eroded as African American family units have become less stable, as the African American teaching force declines and are replaced by outsiders, as Black religious institutions have turned from issues of social justice to material aggrandizement, and as concerned community members have secluded themselves behind closed doors having been driven away out of fears for their safety.

The point here is that political power is essentially the ability of a community to exert its will over the processes of governance that shape society. With respect to communities, political power occurs on multiple levels, in forms which are both vertical and horizontal.

Vertical forms of political power are best reflected in hierarchical institutional contexts where there is a governing body and a mass that is essentially governed. Vertical forms are the normal forms of political relations within the U.S., and the forms that naturally occur within a representative political system. While these systems are touted for their supposed efficiency (i.e., the ability for the interests of hundreds or thousands to be represented by a single individual) these systems are prone to corruption. Horizontal forms of political power relate to the processes of governance wherein the subjects of governance are simultaneously the source of governance, that is, these are collective systems that require the active engagement of every member to participate in determining the will of the collective, and then to carryout and enforce that will in social intercourse.

Key to the viability of horizontal systems of governance is scale. With respect to the three area types discussed in this work, the first level, neighborhoods, provide an ideal context for the implementation and practice of this form of governance. On the scale of level two, municipalities, horizontal governance becomes increasingly difficult across very large populations. This is a point where vertical forms of governance become a matter of practicality, particularly if sufficient safeguards are established to ensure alignment between the actions of political representatives and their communities. It should be noted that the role of community members acting in a representative capacity diverges markedly from them viewing themselves as political leaders, which suggests a hierarchy of power which is antithetical to the liberatory paradigm of governance described herein. Finally, on the level of regions, the third level, representative forms of governance are a necessity, particularly across far-flung regional contexts. However, regional governing bodies should utilize collective forms of decision making as a way of ensuring fairness.

Such a paradigm of governance as discussed here is inextricably linked to the development of a comprehensive economic system, as the work of managing the economy will in part fall under the purview of the institution of governance. Additionally, the conceptualization and implementation of such a form of governance will absolutely necessitate a cultural system which enshrines the requisite unity, cooperation, and trust that will sustain such an endeavor.

Re-Africanization, culture, and engine of liberatory of struggle

Culture is always linked to social power, as culture provides the ideational frameworks wherein power is acknowledged as a vital necessity for life. All economic activity is in fact cultural activity, as culture entails the totality of material and non-material objects that exist within any society, this includes the goods, information, or skills that become vital in any economic system. Similarly, political activity is also fundamentally cultural, as culture determines forms of governance, levels of participation, and articulates the ends of such endeavors. Thus governance by Africans in the interest of Africans, or as Dr. Anderson Thompson says of the African Principle, governance that seeks to establish “the greatest good for the greatest number” is a function of culture. Thus, with respect to both the conceptualization and actualization of a bases for African liberation we are dealing with culture and its role in shaping our notions of reality.

One of the key challenges of Africans who have sought to throw off the fetters of the Maafa–the interrelated processes of slavery, colonialism, and their legacies—has been the difficulty of concretizing an African worldview and seamlessly transmitting and sustaining this worldview for subsequent generations. The difficulty of this process derives essentially from the inability of African people to effectively control the socialization process of African people, which in this case requires the capacity to neutralize alien cultural influences. This inability is merely a reflection of the captive state of African communities in the west, most notably our weak economic and political structures. Thus any liberatory effort that does not conceive of culture’s centrality as an impetus of revolutionary transformation is insufficient. Therefore I maintain that culture, as a terrain of struggle, is characterized by a process of re-Africanization, wherein African people engage in a deliberate process of creating a culture that justifies and sustains revolutionary struggle, as well as offering, as Dr. Anderson Thompson states, “a grand vision for the future”.

On the level of neighborhoods, this culture work is absolutely vital to inculcating the value systems needed to effect other transformations in the domain of economics and politics. This work, by necessity, gives rise to the communal structures that makes work in these other domains possible. It also provides a medium of healing, transforming the lingering manifestations of isft, chaos and disorder, through the restoration of mAat, a transcendent and just social order.

On the municipal level this culture work takes on possibilities that are particularly compelling, as local institutions can then be aligned to these paradigms. Whether we are referring to systems of governance, public health, education, or environmental stewardship, African cultures offer rich and varied models that can appreciably enhance human life. Moreover the increased resource capacity present on a municipal level can both aid and augment the efforts of those in communities directed towards re-Africanization.

On the regional level, emancipatory culture work has the potential to catalyze greater changes, both with respect to the scale of resources, but also in terms of shared cultural knowledge. The regional level offers the greatest potential for building and sustaining systems whose alignment with the loftiest ideas and values of African culture offers a range of dynamic possibilities in terms of media production and dissemination, energy production, resource management, logistics, and defense.

A pause, not a conclusion

Each of these three levels expresses the bounds of possibility. From the communal to the regional scales there is an increased capacity that argues quite vociferously for the potentiality inherent in the regional scale. Moreover, the prospect of inter-regional networks has the capacity to include African majority regions within the U.S., the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and Africa in coherent economic, political, and cultural networks. This greatly augmented capacity lays the basis for social power on a scale far greater than that presently exercised by these entities in a non-integrated fashion. Thus here I am advocating not simply for the primary three levels: neighborhood/communal, municipal, and regional; but also inter-regional, which is ultimately continental, hemispheric, and global.

If we remind ourselves, that we are engaged in a struggle for survival, and we are collectively engaged in attempting to ensure victory in that struggle, then we must assiduously search for ways to effect that end. This essay has been a contribution to that endeavor. Herein I have attempted to briefly sketch how this process can play out within the geographic confines of the United States while drawing on the insight of my Black Nationalist forebears. This is not an attempt to negate either the viability of exit (i.e. emigration and repatriation) or territorial sovereignty as envisioned by the RNA, but rather to offer a framework that occupies a more liminal space, one that both leads to territorial sovereignty and possibly creates systems which aids the efforts of African American repatriates, as well as African states and societies on the continent and in the diaspora. Ultimately this document is submitted not merely for reflection, but to inform intelligent action towards the achievement of two vital ends: the reclamation of African culture and the restoration of African sovereignty in the world.

Anx wAs snb (Ankh Was Seneb) – Life Power Health

One thought on “sbAyt ni ptH (The instructions of Ptah): Fashioning the future”

  1. pure and simple. well-stated. a straight forward analysis/assessment of what needs to be done and what can be done without the ego-induced noise and confusion inherent in argument for the sake of argument without a nationbuilding progress. kudos for this clean, clear insight. this thought is worthy of the Ancestors and those yet to return. Abibifahodie.

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