X-Sender: wah at mail-wa.acpub.duke.edu Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 19:02:09 -0500 To: dhenwood at panix.com From: wahneema lubiano <wah at acpub.duke.edu>
Some of what I see happening is not new: in the polemics about race, racism, Malcolm X, black nationalism, left sectarianism with regard to race or racism, people posting construct race, black people generally, and black nationalism as ideas and realities that are basically one thing that is perceivable from basically one position (that of the person doing the posting however that person imagines him/herself).
Just one example here to illustrate what I mean: black nationalism has been described here as a fairly homogenous whole that is largely separatist, conservative or reactionary, or progressive (either already so or on the road to being so), liberatory (either already so or on the road to being so). It is exemplified by the NOI, or exemplified by various other organizations in opposition to the NOI, etc. The accuracy of these descriptions is then maintained by the person posting via looking at one or a fairly small number of organizations and figures albeit often in considerable depth. And then people respond with or against in varying tones.
We aren't shooting at each other here, so it seems to me that we can afford to work through the heat rather than closing down the discussions because people are angry or hurt or irritated by the tone and/or substances of polemical exchanges.
There are spots of interesting possibilities in such polemics and much useful information is exchanged. I have a great deal of patience with even the "ugliest" (by most standards of rhetorical civility) because I think what comes out of the exchanges is more finally productive even if it is hard to hear. Sure, there are ways that I would prefer that people argue and make their cases; on the other hand, I think that it's worth reading through these things because even the things that I find objectionable and objectionably stated I can read without wanting to shut up the writer. This is not an absolute position --I am willing to do what I describe on this list because I think there is considerable common cause here. The drawback is, of course, that we all spend some amount of time separating what each of us considers the wheat from the chaff.
Because I am shy on email--I find it almost agonizingly difficult to shed my self-consciousness about what little I know in order to speak-- I am very slow to mix it up especially when it comes to talking about race. I know how strongly people react. I do much better in person and in other kinds of writing. But I would like to contribute.
I want first to admit that alluding to social groups (by definition understood to be a product of naming or constructing) like "black" or "white" people is already to be on tricky ground, but so what? We work constantly by referring to broad collectivities as a short hand to being able to say something that speaks to large issues even as we can point to the limitations of such references.
Black nationalism might best be understood as a broad rubric that names a range of ideas, emotions, strategies, analyses, desires, and political positions-- just as "progressivism" or "leftism" or "conservatism" do. Some aspects of black nationalism have been and are conservative (politicallly and economically), heterosexist, sexist, progressive, left, etc., as are some positions/articulations that circulate within left and progressive statements, organizations, individuals who name their politics thusly, and discourses.
One the most useful ways to talk about black nationalism might be to consider not only the positions that are articulated from self-identified black nationalists or black nationalist organizations, but what constitutes the range of other topics, political positions, cultural expressions, and concepts being circulated in the same moment that some black nationalist articulation is circulated. It might also be useful to consider black nationalism as a kind of commonsense (with all of the messiness of any kind of common- sense) among black people who understand themselves and their forebearers to have been the objects of both broadly social and state-sponsored and/or state-aided white supremacy since African captives were brought here. But their historical sense isn't all that marks out their commonsense understandings of their place in the U.S.
In other words, black nationalism is a way to refer to black people's specific relationship to the complexities of Americanness as it took shape over time in "national" terms. If we consider the "making" of the U.S. as a "nationalist" project over a few centuries, then black nationalism in its most general sense describes the complexities of black peoples relation to that project.
This understanding of black nationalism moves us away from only considering it as a black separatist project embodied in a particular figure and/or organization. Thinking about it in this more general way doesn't preclude taking up some manifestation of black nationalism that is more reified: eg. the NOI.
What I'm trying to describe is the difference between taking black nationalism as it is pronounced and understood in its most public and visible sites--prominent leaders and organizations--and considering black nationalism as it is widely diffused in other less directly articulated arenas. Again, just one example to illustrate: African-American Studies programs in the U.S. academy differ widely in terms of their public descriptions of themselves, their rationales, their core curriculum, and their positions vis-a-vis their respective universities, the academy generally, the larger social formation, and larger political engagements. Some of those programs describe themselves in terms recognizable to some degree or other as explicitly black nationalist but even then one would need to understand what moment of black nationalism energizes their description. On the other hand, if black nationalism, as I and others have suggested, is not simply reified as explicitly separatist, but instead is directed at speaking for the specifics of black existence here in the U.S.--specifics which are very complicated indeed--then African-American Studies is, to some degree, a black nationalist project in more commonsensical terms.
And to end on one particular thread: the discussion of Malcolm X has actually covered a lot of terrain including the limitations of discussing him as an exemplar of a more reified black nationalism and as a more general figure whose movement in history allows us to recognize many of the complexities of race in the U.S. Early Malcom X and the NOI suggest black awareness, expressed as explicit black nationalism, as an endpoint while the later Malcolm X represents black awareness as a starting point.
I do, however, think that some shystering has gone on over whether people attending to his earlier history have given his later history the regard they carefully accord to other complicated figures.
Wahneema
****************************************************************** Wahneema Lubiano Duke University, Program in Literature PHONE: (919) 681-2843 FAX: (919) 684-3598 [Note new e-mail address: wah at acpub.duke.edu]