The Intellectual Roots of Contemporary Black Thought

Nascent Political Philosophies

Kersuze Simeon-Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367473013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000191646
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education
• Index: History

The Intellectual Roots of Contemporary Black Thought examines the ways in which the intellectual production of notable historical figures of Africa Diasporan Thought has shaped, and continues to shape, social and political discourses in relation to peoples of African descent.

With an internationalist approach, this volume places the philosophies of intellectuals and activists from different regions in cross-generational dialogues. The work studies seminal publications from the 1700s to the late 1800s, including monographs, manifestos, speeches, and letters, analyzing the subsequent influence of such publications on the works of later thinkers and scholars of the 1900s. Hinged in qualitative and critical analysis, it investigates the extent to which the intellectual works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have influenced education and institutions over time, scrutinizing the multifaceted contemporary outcomes of historical practices through the theories of historical knowledge. The excerpts and translations in the text engage readers in informed and meaningful interactions, with the philosophies of liberation, reparation, and rehabilitation.

This book contributes to the fields of intellectual historiography, human rights, political philosophy, social thought, and critical race theory and will be of interest to students and scholars of history, politics, and philosophy.

1
Philosophies of Freedom, Existence, and Humanity

In his essay titled “Man Know Thyself,” expounded in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Garvey advances for “knowledge of self,” for the consequential awakening in confidence, character, purpose, and deeds, on the part of African descendants.¹ It is those components in conjunction with systemic political reforms, substantive economic readjustments, and social restructuring that will (in unison) rehabilitate contemporary Africans and their descendants from their perennial historical circumstances. Confidence and knowledge of self are vital conditionings that must be developed as constitutive elements of the general human formation; such characteristics must be further deepened with a comprehensive education in one’s particular collective history (histories). Knowledge of self and confidence relate reciprocally; thus, each component continually reinforces the other and synchronically build the individual’s character, in a progressive process. Significantly, the development of confidence in self and confidence in one’s community cultivates the necessary level of courage and integrity vital to further seeking comprehensive and profound knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, not only helps to continually elevate one’s confidence, thus bolstering one’s determination to achieve beyond misconceptions and stereotypical expectations, it also serves as the impetus that encourages and leads the individual to contribute to the rehabilitation of the community. In his essay “Man Know Thyself,” Garvey conveyed what he understood as one of the primary truths of humanity; that is, “[f]or man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master.”² Written between 1920 and 1925, Garvey’s message not only honed into the indispensable substantive politico-economic restructuring, for the purpose of economic opportunities, self-sufficiency, and freedom, it concurrently advocated the process of unfettering the psychology and spirit of African descendants. That message awakened African descendants to the fact that after physical liberation great work remained to be accomplished in order to reach psychological liberation. The awakening to the impacts of mental slavery was Garvey’s foremost caution to the Africans and their descendants; later, Bob Marley would reiterate the same message of mental freedom and fortitude in his “Redemption Song.”³ In Garvey’s era of the early twentieth century to Marley’s era of the late twentieth century, as it remains true in the twenty-first century thus far, the descendants of Africa have had to face two fundamental impeding factors, one circularly affecting the other; they are economic and psychological: economic to psychological ↔ psychological to economic.

It is evident that the dis-alienation or de-marginalization of Africans and their descendants around the globe can only be meaningful when the economic labyrinth—an ultimate cul-de-sac for the majority—with its resultant psychological, educational, and intellectual impacts, is addressed and redressed. One of the rudimentary factors perpetuating the adverse psychological effects and the material destitution of the majority of African descendants is centuries of the inadequate, inappropriate, and misleading education of the world community in their regard. With global miseducation, that is the distortion of historical truths, came centuries of normalized social denigration and socioeconomic disenfranchisement. Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 publication, The Mis-Education of the Negro, unveiled more thoroughly than previously accomplished the factual miseducation of the world. Though the text is titled The Mis-Education of the Negro, its historical and analytical contents proved beyond any doubt (if there were any) the global miseducation system. Employing the United States of America as the region of focus, Woodson laid bare the sources of the world’s unresolved psychological chaos as well as its mass economic imbalance and sociopolitical conflicts. In his pivotal examinations, Woodson argued that the education system not only cruelly failed Blacks but also did “not hit the mark” for Whites and others. However, while the education system did “not hit the mark” intellectually/academically and morally/ethically for Whites and others, it has not affected their economic and sociopolitical standing within the material world. In consequential contrast, the miseducation of the African descendant was and remains a mode of manacles, impeding access to basic human survival and well-being as well as obstructing access to economic, political, and social opportunities. To levels that are irreparable, the general miseducation of the world, along with the resultant ill-will toward Africans and their descendants, indeed effectuated centuries of disparaging perceptions of and pernicious interactions with African descendants throughout the globe. Thus, the falsifications and misrepresentations embedded in the education systems in Europe and the Americas have exerted dreadful impacts on the fundamental existence of Blacks not only materially but psychologically. Woodson explained:

[The] so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed. Negroes daily educated in the tenets of such a religion of the strong have accepted the status of the weak as divinely ordained … their pouting and resolutions indulged in by a few of the race have been of little avail.⁴

On Economics: The Social Complex of Inferiority and the Illusion of Superiority

There is sufficient scholarship on the intents and outcomes of the slave trade, whereby the constructed socioeconomic hierarchies and the sociopsychological race relations have over time morphed into structural and normalized racism. In fact, in numerous countries of the Americas the practices of racism are so inherently ingrained in the educational, social, political, and economic fabric—as a normalized way of life—that the term was not used or acknowledged as part of respective national realities until the late twentieth century. To frame the significant effects of epistemic formation, within the context of history and historical trajectories as well as the lasting acceptance of historical distortions, it is crucial to examine from the outset two elemental concepts at the base of historical and social deformation: the complex of inferiority and the complex of superiority. We are examining these concepts within the framework of groups rather than individuals. Both concepts and subsequent praxes are manifested in the slave trade, the slavery system, and the long-standing structural impoverishment of African descendants. Primarily, it is vital to recollect two foundational facts from the established scholarship on the study of the slave trade and slavery. One, the objective of the slave trade was economic, with the purpose of unending accumulation of profit. Thus, the slave trade was the appropriation of human flesh through fiendish means, for forced human labor, for free human labor. Second, as part of the politics of economy, emergent racist discourses were concocted as pseudo-justifications for an iniquitous act—the slave trade and slavery. To levels that are preponderantly conscious, but at time simultaneously subconscious and unconscious, racist ideologies, discourses, and practices reciprocally reinforced and normalized what was and what is inherently unjustifiable and indefensible—that is, the centuries of physical and psychological terror employed as relentless efforts to dehumanize and disenfranchise Africans and their descendants. The perennial discursive strategies—with tactical phenomenological deformation—would continue to justify or simply ignore the lasting distressing economic and psychological impacts on African descendants, for centuries thereafter. The relentless and terrorizing actions of the enslavers, upheld with the combination of conscious as well as subconscious and unconscious discriminatory ideologies, have culminated into the current psycho-social chaos and neuroses to which Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, respectively, refer in Discours sur le Colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism) and Peau Noire Masques Blancs (Black Skin White Masks). Essentially, the social complex of superiority and the social complex of inferiority were born out of and sustained by two realities: one, the wicked reality of the new world’s chattel slavery system, with its physical violence for extortionate profit; two, the mechanisms of psychological terror that were exerted on the Africans through various forms of tortures and torments. The tangible situation of armed European enslavers tyrannizing the chained and displaced Africans, the unmitigated physical and psychological horrors, the inhumane lasting extortions that left the enslaved Africans and their descendants economically destitute, all made possible the creation of entrenched systems of oppression. Consequently, all set the stage for the socially established complex of superiority and the imposed complex of inferiority. Within contemporary contexts, the ensuing complex of superiority that elevates some and the complex of inferiority that cripples others can only be addressed at the source: the mind. It is, undoubtedly, from the scrutiny of the roots of imposed and implanted complexes, through the study and the unveiling of historical trajectories, can the aftereffects be grasped and remedied. It is significant to recall that the term complex in psychology underlines the psychological exercise of conceiving reality based on self-conscious emotions and feelings, bolstered by social conditioning and expectations. Such emotions and conditioning lead to pathological behaviors, particularly when fundamental facts are purposefully hidden, and truths are manipulated.

Equally important to our discussion is an overall consideration of Alfred Adler’s work on the human mind, human nature, and the impact or influence of society on human development. In Understanding Human Nature, published in 1927, Alfred Adler psychoanalyzed the connection between the complex of inferiority and the complex of superiority within the context of the individual—from childhood to adulthood—and in relation to his or her sociality.⁵ Adler maintained that every child is born with a certain level of inferiority complex (or a subconscious sense of insufficiency) in the midst of a world established by adults. Within this generalization, those who were born with a greater inclination to or, based on their environment, have developed excessive feeling of inferiority, insecurity, and insufficiency are more likely—from childhood to adulthood—to aim for power over others, to assert himself or herself aggressively, and to rule over others. In other words, deep-seated complex of inferiority and insufficiency generates an aggressive complex of superiority. Adler’s research on the individual provides a framework that is consistent with the psychoanalysis of groups of individuals, particularly groups of individuals within a system that is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Intellectual Production and the Condition, Elevation, and Destiny of African Descendants of the World
• 1 Philosophies of Freedom, Existence, and Humanity
• 2 The Colonial System Unveiled: From Baron De Vastey to Aimé Césaire
• 3 The Words of J.J. Dessalines and H. Christophe: An Appeal to the Nations and Citizens of the World
• 4 Africa’s Legacy of Ingenuity and Beauty in the Writings of Martin Delany, Anténor Firmin, and Cheikh Anta Diop
• 5 The Philosophies of Psychological and Structural Liberation: From M.M. Garvey and C.G. Woodson to M.L. King
• 6 The Existential Rerouting: The Intellectual Formation of the Youth
• Epilogue in Lieu of Conclusion: Toward the Twenty-First-Century Renaissance of the Black World
• Bibliography
• Index