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The Black Book: Reflections From The Baltimore Grassroots
Lawrence Grandpre and Dayvon Love
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle 2014
Introduction
Section 1:
- Anti-Blackness as an Independent Political System-16 /(white supremacy)
- Pan Afrikan Nationalism Defined 31 /defined. good.
- The Negro
phobia/Negro
philia Paradox and
Liberal Academic White Supremacy-56 // in the liberal University * in the talk of multiculturalism and against racism, what is implicit
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Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Baltimore 126 // in the liberal non profit *
- Spectacular Blackness 161 // ? int.
Section 2:
- Fighting the Youth Jail 175 // in Md. success? vs jail for youth convicted as adults (rather th in juvenile facilities?)
- Passing Christopher’s Law 193 // success in passing? ~ requires cultural sensitivity training police etc
- Conclusion: On Interracial Coalitions and Next Steps 201
- Key Reflections-214
We offer a perspective that is often shut out by mainstream political discussions and by academia, because it questions the very structures that have become essential building blocks for civil society.
We are making assertions that many people in mainstream political positions refuse to say, since their employment and consequent abilityto move up inthe professional world rests on keeping these truths out of the public domain.
As grassroots activists, we are committed to building authentic community power, without chasing grants or being in good favor with established institutions.
Our stance has made it difficult to sustain the work that we do, but because we hold no allegiances, we are able to say the things that you will read here.
This text is a part of the New Timbuktu Project, a thoroughly independent,
alternative learning community of
activists, citizen scholars, and professional academics that fosters dialogue centered on the heart of the issues that undermine the livelihoods of Black people. To sustain that community, we channel the wisdom of our ancestors and our elders and apply it to contemporary socio-political issues.
Reorienting scholarship from the academy to the lived realities of Black life in America will
produce material benefits for Black people. As activists scholars, we see ourselves as functioning within a lineage of Black intellectuals who realized that the division between the "college bubble" and "the real world" is illusory and counterproductive. Instead, this text pulls from our experience doing activist work in the Baltimore community and our academic experiences in the world of intercollegiate policy debate to bring unique perspectives to both activism and academia
Though we direct our text to people who have already engaged issues of racism and Black liberation, we are looking beyond an academic audience. Lawrence and I are grassroots activists whose background in collegiate policy debate gave us the skills and intellectual rigor to engage high-level academic material. This has been an integral part to the method & strategy in building Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.
.. of the engagement with the intellectual ideas in this book happened in the context of
competitive policy debate, which in turn birthed Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS). LBS was founded in 2010 by former policy debaters who are also alumnae of the Baltimore Urban Debate League. .. New innovations in debate included the use of the scholarly works of Black scholars that were previously not used in debate, the incorporation of poetry/hip hop, and the use of performance in the presentation of debate arguments. These innovations were important
challenges to the overwhelmingly white male-privileged activity that often perpetuated the invisibility of white supremacy that is so commonplace in our society. ..
Lawrence and I are a combination of Pan-Afrikan nationalist and Afro-pessimist.
I [Dayvon Love] am more of a Pan-Afrikan nationalist
Lawrence [Grandpre] is more of a Afro-pessimist
This balance grounds our experience in the
lives & experiences of Black people.
Pan-Afrikan nationalism—support of
global self-determination for
people of African descent.
Afro-Pessimist—inquiry into Black life predicated on the idea
that American civil society is fundamentally organized on the structural
positioning of the slave —contends that civil society is fundamentally structured / on Anti-Blackness /
in opposition to
Blackness and Black people.
We are carving out a political
space where the notion of
Black self-determination is not imbued with
the baggage loaded onto terms like "black power", predicated on the
claim that
//key claim//
the development of independent Black institutions is
essential
for Black liberation.
We can no longer rely on white people's benevolence and goodwill to uplift our people. We must build our own power, so that we can engage in the political arena from a position of strength.
Is our focus on Black self-determination too myopic? ... For instance, according to the mission posted on its official website, the NAACP says that it fights for social justice for all Americans. This is an organization that many people think of as being accountable to Black people, but its mission implies otherwise. This is not to pick on the NAACP, but to demonstrate how Black institutions have an unspoken imperative to speak broadly about issues of justice, instead of specifically about our issues.
We are allies in the struggle for freedom and liberation for other oppressed groups, but we engage this broader struggle against white supremacy and US imperialism from the position of strict advocacy for independent Black institutions. We speak int his text as Black people who have the right and responsibility to represent ourselves and our own interests.
Following the introduction, this text consists of two sections. The first contains the political theories and commentary that guide our work; the second, reflections on the specific work that we have done here in Baltimore, applying some of the ideas in the first section.
Both sections flow from the assumption of
race literacy on the readers'parts.
RACE LITERACY
Ourposi+onisthattheliteracyonissuesof race in America is so lowthat it keeps otherwise smart people fromhavingsubstan+veconversa+ons.
// absence of bigotry is not absence of racism (nor vice versa) //
Forinstance,racism and bigotry are not synonymous. Racism is the combina+on of prejudice and power. Historically, white people's individual bigotry did not create the wretched condi+ons that oppressed Black people; rather, those people established ins+tu+ons that wielded material and existen+al power to opera+onalize white supremacist ideology over the lives of Black people.
racism is not about being mean;
racial jus+ce is not about people being nice to people of other races;
____Liking Black people is not racial jus+ce.
[rather ] racism is about the power that white people have developed through their exploita+on of Black people and other people of color.
[Racial justice] seeks and results in equitable distribu+on of power so that Black people and others are not reliant on the benevolence of white people in order to ensure our own qualityoflife.
____ Relinquishing resources to Black organiza+ons to empower the community is racial jus+ce.
It does not matter if white people hate Black people if we have the ins+tu+ons to protect ourselves from assaults on our humanity and can maintain our own quality of life.
// effects-based definition > inten+on-based defini+on of racism //
Racism is also commonly understood as describing a person's inten+ons. [versus effects of ~ power structures. policies.] We are taught to see racismas character flawthat is only corrected when people stop intentionally being mean and stop hating Black people. This notion oversimplifies racism as centered around bias and bigotry and takes the conversa+on away from understanding power, the prac+cal effects of a given set of policies or behaviors.
For instance, if Iwere to say that the financial industry is racist, you might ask me to prove that there is a collec+ve inten+on to harm Black people by the financial industry. //right.//
Such a challenge cannot be met. Instead, Iwould focus on the racial effects that certain policies have.
A 2008 study done by the NAACP showsthat Blackpeopleweremorelikelytoget subprime loans than their white counterparts. This places a financial burden on Black people that has the effect of giving white people greater access to wealth. Houses are a huge source of wealth genera+on and having less access to home ownership puts us at a severe disadvantage in the marketplace. While Icould not point to an individual or group of people who overtly intended to being racist, the financial industry itself has racialized effects that dispropor+onately hurt Black people.
The inten+on-based defini+on of racismwould exclude the important conversa+on about Black people having more barriers to wealth development than our white counterparts.
Therefore, only an effects-based defini+on gives us the lens through which we can comprehensively analyze [the]
visible inequali+es so that we can develop concrete effec+ve solu+ons.
meaning of 'RACE'
Having defined racism [ = the power that white people have developed through their exploita+on of Black people and other people of color. ] we now look at the contexts in which people invoke "race" where other terms are more accurate.
Race is often used interchangeably with ethnicity, na+onality and culture,when each term is dis+nct fromtheothers.
//ok good. clarify race vs ethnicity. // ....ok race marked by physical espclly skin color. ethnicity shared hist & geogr. //
For our purposes,
race refers to a marker of iden+ty that is based on skin color and other physical characteris+cs
na+onality = a marker of iden+ty shared by people with the same legal rela+onship to an established state /good,/
ethnicity = a people group with a shared history and geography;
and culture = the totality of thought and prac+ces that cons+tutes a lens through which a people group interprets and navigates the world.
All four concepts are related but have different meanings and histories.
Because race as constructed in America was used by European colonizers to categorize other racial groups as inferior, thereby jus+fying those groups' oppression,
the no+on of "not seeing race"isanobleidea.
Buttheidea that one should not see culture isdifferent. Would we ask Chinese people to giveup their language, cuisine and their customs so that we can all be the same? I don't think so.
People have a right to their own cultural tradi+ons, and the celebra+on of one's own culture does not denigrate anyone else.
You can be proud of your culture without putting down someone else's.
This is why it is important to be precise about the terms we use when we are discussing issues of race. Imprecisely using aforemen+oned terms produces misunderstandings that undermine the development of race literacy. /yes./
B e l o w a r e a f e w g e n e r a l c o n c e p t s t h a t wi l l b e r e c u r r i n g t h e m e s throughout the book.
African/Black - There is an ongoing conversa+on about how people of African descent in America should iden+fy ourselves. Certain scholars & ideological posi+ons place a great deal of importance on whether we call ourselves "Africans" or "Black."
Those who insist on using "African" often do so to emphasize the importance of our African heritage as the star+ng point and framework for interpre+ng our existence in America.
Cri+cs of that viewpoint say that it roman+cizes African culture and obscures the culture we have produced here inthe US.
Those who insist calling ourselves "Black" do so to stress that the Middle Passage stripped us of our African culture and resulted inthe crea+on of a different culture.
Inthis text, we will use bothtermsinterchangeably.
Wewillarguethat Black people in the US should relate to ancient Africa the same way that Europeans relate to ancient Greece. //good. very good. // We have a dis+nct culture here as Black people, but we are a part of the larger African diaspora that shares a historical legacy.
African-Centered - Denotes a broad field of scholarship that emphasizes the intellectual & cultural resources found in the study of ancient African civiliza+ons. This is a paradigm thatis not often represented in mainstream academic conversa+ons, but is a core component of our intellectual framework for this book. / see above re New Timbuktu: To sustain that community, we channel the wisdom of our ancestors and our elders and apply it to contemporary socio-political issues. /
Black Na+onalism/Pan-African Na+onalism - Used interchangeably to refer to the idea that Black people should control the economic, poli+cal, and social ins+tu+ons in our communi+es. //okay. I am ignorant here, might hv tht meant idea of building a (separate) Black state ~ I guess the sense is of that, not a state, but institutions that are separate, own?
Anti-Blackness - Describes the politcal system which has been produced *via* the global tendency to associate Blackness with nega+ve characteris+cs, and specifically within the American outlook on Blackness as a "zero-point" of slavery and nega+vity. We pull from the work of Frank Wilderson, who argues that, since the Arab slave trade during the 11th century, a global system has emerged to define Black/African people as subhuman, con+nuing through today to produce racial dispari+es unique to the Black community. /yes.
Racism/White Supremacy - Extends beyond known hate groups l i k e t h e Ku Kl u x Kl a n
to encompass the social political economic domina+on of people of color by white people.
This text will substan+ate the claimt hat we live in a society founded on white supremacy, closely related to 'an+-blackness', which some scholars prefer [as a term ] over 'white supremacy' because it more precisely describes the nature of white supremacy. We draw from scholars like Neely Fuller Jr. and Dr. Francis Cress Welsing in using 'white supremacy', which already assumes the anti-blackness as the inherent logic of white supremacy.
