Reflections on the Black Radical Tradition

One of the most important thing the Black Radical Tradition has taught me is the need to record our present in an attempt to preserve our past. Despite all the oppression they faced, African Americans in particular were not just great conveyors of cultural expression but also great documenters. Much of the academic work and critical discourse would not have been possible, or would have been extremely lacking, if black Americans had not been able to preserve their music, drama, fashion, and art. Therefore, the onus is on us to make sure that we record our culture in the present day so that in the years to come, future generations can look back on it and reflect.

Another takeaway I had from the Black Radical Tradition was this sense of diversity in thought amidst a sense of the collective. Although a lot of the thinkers and scholars we studied had very different views about how they thought their people should be treated, two things unified them all – firstly, the colour of their skin, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the common need to rid themselves of colonial oppression of one sort or another. And in this way, despite what may appear as irreconcilable differences in opinion between thinkers, the shared experience of colonial oppression as a result of being black bound them all together.

More than anything else, however, the Black Radical Tradition has taught me the importance of propagating ‘radical’ ideas and views, no matter how impractical they may seem. For example, a common criticism levelled against any progressive movement in Pakistan is that it is not ‘practical’ or ‘realistic’ enough. Martin Luther King’s dream of the provision of civil rights to black Americans did not seem ‘realistic’ or ‘practical’ when he spoke in Washington in 1963 nor did Kimberlé Crenshaw’s wish for examining the intersectionality of black women’s experiences in 1989. However, these are both ideas, among many others, that we have seen become the norm in the world we live in today. As such, it is not productive to shrug away ‘radical’ ideas that don’t seem ‘practical’ or ‘real-world applicable’ because many of the ideas that were propagated as a part of the Black Radical Tradition were not considered realistic either yet we continue to see their results and outcomes even today.

Indiscrete Oppression

All the Women Are White; All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave.

In Ain’t I A Woman, bell hooks writes: “when black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women”. In this way, despite black women having to bear what hooks calls the “dual impact of sexist and racist oppression”, it is rare to hear their voices in either feminist or civil rights discourse.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights activist and legal scholar, coined the term intersectionality to capture black women’s experiences since traditional feminist ideas and anti-racist policies exclude black women as a result of the overlapping discrimination they have to face. She writes: “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”

She further moves on to state that “the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism”, which ties with the concept of ‘multiple jeopardy’. This term, commonly used by black feminist scholars describes how the culmination of the multiple oppressions and barriers individuals face contribute to a far greater overall oppression. Another, albeit a bit reductive, way of putting this would be to say, for example, that the level of oppression an individual has to face as a result of both sex and race discrimination is equal to 10. Most would argue that a black woman would face an oppression equal to 10+10=20. However, according to an intersectional approach that recognizes that oppression is not discrete and that multiple oppressions build on top of each other, a black woman’s oppression would equal 10*10=100.

The need for intersectional politics can also be seen in the justice system of the United States. For example, as Crenshaw highlights, in the DeGraffenreid vs General Motors case, where black women claimed they were discriminated against, the court stated: “(plaintiffs) should not be allowed to combine statutory remedies to create a new ‘super-remedy’… this lawsuit must be examined to see if it states a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a combination of both.” In this way, although the jury recognized that those women might have been victims of race or sex discrimination, it completely invalidated the experiences of black women as being “multiply-burdened”.

Crenshaw states that “the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white women’s and Black men’s experiences” and that “Black women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with those of either of the two groups.” In instances like this, intersectional politics becomes important because it is the only way to capture the multiple, unique oppressions an individual faces, and in a world that is now further oppressing on the basis of sexuality, nationality, religion, and socioeconomic status as well, such a resource becomes absolutely necessary.

Forked Identities

Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, paints a very vivid image of life at the border between the United States and Mexico. It enables the reader to appreciate the strict imposition of a border crossing between the two countries, one that has been marked by conflict and violence, which almost serves as a reminder of the differences between the two states and peoples, as a “place of contradictions”. However, she masterfully reconciles these differences and explains how they form a new identity, or perhaps new identities, how even in this borderland, there is are possibilities for one to express themselves.

What is perhaps more striking about this text is the its unique structure, which can be said to be an accurate reflection of Anzaldúa’s thoughts – unorganized, scattered, and constantly switching between different identities. This can be characterized by her repeatedly switching the language of the book between English and Spanish, which makes the reader (even if they possess command over both languages) uncomfortable. But that is exactly how one feels in the borderland – uncomfortable and uneasy. The constant shifting between these two languages in people’s everyday lives leads to an identity crisis. In this way, the book replicates the discomfort experienced in La Frontera. Instead of treating this discomfort as something negative, the residents of the borderland decided to embrace it. Because they did not identify with the language spoken by the people on either side of the border, Anzaldúa and other border people decided to combine them to form their own “forked tongue, a variation of two languages”. She writes: “…for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?”

This “place of contradictions” also manifests itself at a personal level with Anzaldúa recognizing the importance of restoring harmony between conflicting identities. She writes:

The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures .. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode – nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else.

Black Radical Tradition: Major Takeaways

To place a field of scholarship as broad as the Black Radical Tradition within a certain category of philosophy is, in my opinion, a major simplification. Weve observed how it deeply penetrates, or in some cases forms the very foundation, of not just politics and literature but also black art, music, sports and religion. It shapes perception of the self and the other at a communal level.

One of the main things one can draw from this tradition is the sense of the collective. All of the personalities we discussed appealed to the factor that unified all Africans irrespective of locality, class or age i.e the color of their skin. By doing so there is a sense of uniformity that is created regarding the decolonial experience, arts, expression, perspective and most importantly, the obstacles they face in a white dominated world. The tradition establishes that the grievances of the black community in America, England or any black diaspora is the grievance felt across Africa as a whole and vice versa. Joy is shared and celebrated in a similar manner.

The Black Radical Tradition is a movement for global emancipation. It is grounded upon the ability of “speaking truth to power” by going beyond one’s own national boundaries. In doing so it attempts to undertake the extremely arduous task of naming the oppression. For the tradition, it is not important to be specific to time and place, in fact there is a sense of timelessness throughout, however what’s common is the history of dehumanization and slavery. It forms the basis of the tradition. The tradition stresses upon the institutionalization of racism (which draws from the days of slavery) as having penetrated all spheres of society including sports (e.g: we learned that through Ali, Clive Lloyd). In return the tradition has repeatedly attempted to go beyond the realm of reality and engage in surrealist literature through the likes of Cesaire etc. In doing so the tradition can attach its own meaning to the world it lives in and go beyond what Christina Sharpe calls living “in the no’s”.

There is also constant hearkening back to a glorified past in the tradition. Marcus Garvey went as far as to start a shipping service to Africa, to return back to the original “property of Africans”. African personalities that were part of the Radical Tradition e.g: Nkrumah have constantly referred to a past where communal societies of Africans existed in harmony. It is not surprising that a major chunk of the Black Radical scholarship aligns with Marxist thinking e.g: Fanon.

Lastly, one of the major takeaways would be the unfortunate absence of Black women from this tradition. Bell Hooks talks about how “womanhood” was not seen as an important part of black identity. While the tradition constantly debated over assimilation or segregation, violence or non violence, it neglected sexism and emancipation of women in the process.

In conclusion, while the tradition has been thoroughly romanticized on the surface level and has played a central role in the movement towards an egalitarian society, it is important to think of the Black prophets as sinners, not saints. Only then can one objectively engage with their unmatched contributions to this movement against oppression.

On Negritude

Negritude provides us with another point of accessing the world, accessing the specific history of pain, of trauma, of longing. As a word, it holds the power to challenge what seeks to drown out black expression. The discourse of the world that dominates our understanding of it is calculated in nature. It also leaves little to no room for the stories and voices of those who have long been excluded from this narrative. In a white man’s world, there is no room for the history of the black man. Through negritude, which Sartre’s calls poetry in essence, a poetic impulse is produced that seeks to expand meaning, and seeks to expand possibilities. It is a different way of analyzing the world. As an expression of a language, it makes room for those who have been cast aside by the world. It creates a space, in the dominant discourses of the world, for the black man to exist in. As who he is, not who he’s been made out to be. The modern conception of our world has reduced it to a quantifiable entity. When you put something that is not an obvious concern, that is not immediately intuitive to us, you find a semblance of similarity with what negritude seeks to teach us. The world is reduced to laws, it is cut in binaries of white and black, it is demystified, and as Weber calls it, it has become disenchanted. A great theft, he calls it, to rid the world of its magic, to make it more comprehensible, understandable, more codified, more simplified. Negritude, as a philosophy, as an ethic, as an ontology of Being a different way in this world seeks to generate a meaning of the world that serves as an alternative to the modern understanding of it. It is a meaning which seeks to create a different form of humanism, one that is applicable to all human kind.

Derived from the French word, negrè, negro, the linguistic baggage that this world carries accumulated over the span of four centuries. It is here that the term blackness came to be understood as an attribute. What Cessaire and Senghor attempt to do, is to change that understanding of blackness, by talking about the black man, and where he comes from, and who he is, and what cultural and intellectual baggage he carries, that comes from his relationship with others like him, with his ancestors, with the past he is no longer a part of. Negritude seeks to retrieve an identity that has been artificially constructed by another. It is homecoming. It is appreciation of where you come from, and ownership of it. It is claiming the world you inhabit with that ownership of your past. It seeks to affirm. It seeks to represent the stories of those who have been silenced by others. It is reinforcement of this idea, and ownership of it: emotion is negro, as reason is hellenic.

This philosophy emphasizes the need to go back to the African past, to explore it, to reexamine it. Because the past still has a lot to teach us, and that is how the past can come to be the present, with the way that we analyze it, and understand it now. Criticized on the restricted nature of this philosophy, which seeks to establish a root to the universal through the particular, there are questions directed at it to explain whose past it seeks to revive. Is it of those who inhabit Africa, is it also of those Africans who constitute the African diaspora? Does this form of humanism seek to include everyone, including the Europeans, including all non-Africans, or does it seek to isolate Africans from the rest? Is this unlimited in its scope of what comes to be understood as African, or is it also limited in its conception of that? Is it possible to make space for yourself in a a world divided across lines of difference, divided on the grounds of color? Negritude is particular, but it is also universal. Because it doesn’t only provide us with the ontology of Being a different way for Africans, but for humans across the world. Though situated in the context of affirming the black identity, it seeks to create an alternative understanding for how human kind is come to be understood and defined. The understanding of man rooted in the mind of the Africa is that which connects him to nature, that which connects him to his God. How do you express this blackness, which has come to be thought of as an attribute, as a characteristic, as a color? You do it through your art. And your music. And your rhythm.

This past is elusive, and it is difficult to recognize. This past has become past. It doesn’t exist for the new African, for the modern black man. But it must be refashioned, and recreated, so it can become home to the formation of African identity, that is derived not from the colonial understanding of it as a subject, but the African conception of it as human. This is not all there is to it, and even the suggestions to reinvent this past have met with criticism. If the African expresses himself through his art, through his music, through his rhythm, is he not still operating within the colonial gaze? Is he not still performing for the white man, to prove to him that he is who he is? But for Senghor, this form of negritude seeks to do much more than that. With the expressions of the African through his art, he establishes a connection between man and nature, between God and nature, and between nature and nature itself. Through the particular, you find a root to the universal.

BRT – The Struggle to Revitalize and Reclaim One’s Importance

If there is one thing Black Radical Tradition has thought me, it is the importance of identity. Through out this course, through every reading and lecture, somehow, for some reason, the word that constantly buzzed my mind was the element of identity, the constant struggle towards achieving it, the non-stop effort to reclaim one’s sense of self. It rather intrigues me to dig into the very importance of race and the subjugation that has existed against ‘the Black’ or ‘the Negro’ since time and, subsequently, struggle to achieve a sense of equality.

Black Radical Tradition teaches the importance of struggle and the eventual revival it brings about. The mere fact that after more than a decade of struggle against the corruptive oppression of the advantaged white supremacist, the empowerment, the fearlessness and the approach to revitalize the self-worth the historically disenfranchised ‘Negro’ can attain through gaining an independent nation (Haiti). That activists such as CLR James can convince a people to let go of senseless violence and seek change through a constructive social innovation.

That the continued reiteration of the importance of ones identity and the push towards struggling to find one’s identity can indeed sculpt a renewed sense of self. That individuals such as Toni Morrison can motivate a people to avoid the denunciation of their white oppressor and map out a renewed and empowered sense of identity from within.

BRT offers me a belief that to gain equality and to gauge societal importance for a hegemonized race can be achieved through relentless struggle without violence. The mere fact that Martin Luther King Jr. evolved a sense of collectivization through construction and struggle rather than destruction. That to make a mark, a renewed approach to gain freedom and equality was the way to gain recognition.

Black resistance movement has taught me that through out the journey of black liberation, from suffering from abolition to gaining civil rights, from the responsive ‘Black Power’ to creating the non-violent recognition of ‘Black Lives Matter’; the struggle of any movement should not be to gauge hatred and abhorrence, but to promote the humanity within the black community and attain the level of dignity the white supremacist never could.

That the Black movement in general was the epitome of reclamation of identity from the corruptive elements of slavery, capitalism and white imperialism with the progressive maintenance of tradition, beliefs and values to bring about an exemplary form of activism that has brought a community to the forefront today.

It has made me realize that there is no mile stone, no stringent idea or manifestation of thought that couldn’t be overcome under a systematic movement and struggle to revitalize and reclaim one’s importance.

Anzaldua’s Borderlands

Anzaldua’s Borderland is the unfortunate story of a people that lost their heritage, their importance and most importantly, their identity in the midst of the imposition of cultural supremancy and the constant struggle of an oppressed people to ‘fit in’ to the society.

Her book, a combination of sentimental poetry and description, is not merely the quest of a people, but more importantly, it is an anecdote of the life of a Chicana woman who was in a constant quest to find herself. Anzaldua, through her writing, questions the various normative constructs that are imposed on a society – the constant struggle an individual, more specifically, a woman feels as an ‘inbetweener.’ Anzaldua pens her thoughts to question the various indemnities and the binary division of ways to exist in a society.

What I find rather compelling in Anzaldua’s description of her societal surroundings is her boldness and fearlessness while questioning aspects such as the normative presence of femininity, homosexuality, religion and culture. Anzaldua’s life is the visual representation of an anti-thesis to the constructs that have so carelessly been imposed on post-colonial societies. The unfortunate fact that the white patriarchal supremacy took away the historical ‘way of being’ of her oppressed society. This can be highlighted by the variety of languages spoken by the Chicano men and women in the quest to search for their self-assumed identity. Through her text, she attempts to declassify this diminished sense of identity that has been corrupted in the quest to find its reality. She attempts to empower her people by arguing that being Latino or Mexican is not a state of mind or of citizenship, but that being Mexican is a state of soul, a way of being that lies in one’s internal self.

To sum up her assertion, Anzaldua brings about the concept of ‘la Mestiza’, a superior identity that is the catalyst to the ultimate revolution that will bring back the lost consciousness of her people. La Mestiza in literal terms is a woman of mixed Spanish and Indian descent, however, in Anzaldua’s eyes, she is a much more intricate and complex figure. By bringing about this form of identity, she counters the existence of the Mestiza as a conflicted being. She asserts that the Mestiza is not an inferior or conflicted identity, she isn’t a ‘half and half’, neither through gender, through her language, through her culture, but rather, she is a being in herself, a new form of identity, an evolved ‘combination of all.’ Through her creation of the Mestiza, Anzaldua breaks down the duality in terms of the subject and the object that keeps one prisoned in the quest to find oneself.

Anzaldua’s book provoked me to question my identity as a Pakistani. The mere fact that we live our lives in ignorance of who we truly are, what our reality is. To be fair, we have, in all honesty, lost our identity in the various phases that signify the development of our past. Sure, as an average Pakistani, I am an Urdu-speaking boy who finds pride in speaking English and complying with the various ways of a foreign sense of identity – fighting and trying to liberate myself of the stereotypical localized normative values that might, in all honesty, be a representation of my historical origins.

Don’t Give in Chicanita

Something I particularly loved was Anzaldua’s poem that so vehemently makes the reader gauge the sentiment of the Chicano movement. The poem tends to put the reader in the shoes of a Mexican woman who is reminded of her origin, her glorious past and the sacrifice of her ancestors. It gives her hope that the sacrifices of the Chicanos hasn’t stopped, that there will be a day when they will rejuvenate their sense of being and their identity will be restored and “like old skin will fall the slave ways of obedience, acceptance and silence.”

“We do not live single-issue lives” – Intersectionality

While researching on Intersectionality, I came across a quote from Audre Lorde’s address “Learning from the 60s” where she vehemently suggested that “there is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” This quote, I believe, is the living representation of what Kimberlé Crenshaw tries to highlight in light of the inconsistency of feminism to represent the hegemonized black woman. In retrospect, if there is one structural error that can be defined as the epitome of inconsistency in liberation movements such as feminism, it is the mere fact that they attain a rather polarized or blind-sided view of discrimination – disregarding the interconnectedness of all its various forms.

The forms of discrimination that have existed thus far have stemmed from an apparent dominant power structure: the ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.’ (Hooks) Hence, it is important to understand that the existing dynamics of structural power cannot be rectified by treating each form of discrimination rather independently. In other words, selectivism or treating one form of oppression as bigger than the other only suffices the misfortunes of some and exponentiates the ignorance of others – those who fall under multiple marginalized categories.

Intersectionality penetrates the layers of discrimination that combine to form a ‘matrix of domination’ by the privileged identities. This can be best explained under the ambit of intersectional feminist theory as explained by Hooks. She reiterates on the fact that sharing a single umbrella identity of being a ‘woman’ is a rather broad form of generalization. Hence, it isn’t sufficient enough to explain the multitudes of realities a woman has to experience – which is determined by the co-existing identities she attains as the multiple ‘layers’ that will continue to define the form of discrimination she will face as a part of her existence.

In other words, the living example of a sector intersectional politics provides representation to is ‘the black womanhood’. It highlights the bitter fact that social inequality and the redistribution of structural power exists even within the liberation movements – where there are a dominant few and the subjugated others. It attempts to rectify the error that tends to propagate the rejection of a binary presence of a woman: that an individual can be a woman and a person of colour. That the ultimate form of liberation should not be a utopian idea but a foreseeable reality for the black woman where she liberates herself from the chains of both her sex and her colour. Intersectionality highlights her misery in the sense that, if otherwise, she remains uncategorised – the worst form of identification that comes about as a result of the combination of subjugation towards her multiple existing identities.

Hence, intersectional politics, in all means, is productive. It is productive because it creates the basic understanding of how dominant categorizations such as class or race, independently or in combination, interact with gender to promote a strain of marginalization that, at the very least, requires recognition and subsequent rectification.

To love and to resist

The Black Radical Tradition has made me more human. In other words, it has taught me that there is no singular way to be human, and that any hierarchy between humans is dehumanizing; not only towards those that are pitted at the bottom of the hierarchy but also those that inhabit the highest level. In order for dehumanization to end, the Black Radical Tradition offers loving acceptance- of difference and plurality. However, it should not be mistaken that it does not turn to the oppressor to end the oppression. Instead, it turns to the oppressed. Here then, the Black Radical Tradition offers resistance. Together, resistance against oppression, and acceptance of humans as humans; not as blacks, as women, or as homosexuals; becomes life-affirming.

For a world divided in two by a veil, and people faced with duality and internal bifurcation, the Black Radical Tradition offered reconstruction. It attempted to create a better world, and better people; on the basis of acceptance, love, and recognition. Love that transcended the color of the skin, or the genital organs of a body. Love that strived for a world of multiplicities. Love that whole-heartedly accepted difference. Love that was not discriminatory, and made space for everyone. Love that disenabled theft; of knowledge, time, self, and future; occur. Then, practicing love meant healing scars, repairing ruptures, and opening possibilities. It meant for all people to be in tune with their time, and to not be out of joint, and in the waiting room of history. It meant for all people to be able to see themselves without a second gaze. It meant for all people to be able to see and fulfil dreams. It meant accepting humans as they were, and on their own terms. Being human was enough a reason to not oppress, negate, and reduce, and to not feel oppressed, negated, and reduced. To be human was to be levelly human, and no other way.

Then, if the due love and recognition was not given, it was to be fought for. The Black Radical Tradition offered resistance. For Nyrere, resistance that didn’t let go off African histories. For Hartman, resistance that defended the dead. For Patrice Lumumba, resistance that bore witness, even in death. For Fanon, resistance that violently cleansed out fear and shame. For Cesaire, resistance that named the oppression. For Gilroy, resistance that redeemed through music. For Malcolm X, resistance that was fearless, frank, plain and unintimidated. For Senghor, resistance that made space for the marginalized through Negritude. For MacKinnon, resistance that uprooted relations of view-fullness and view-lessness. For Morrison, resistance that read and wrote history to be a healing power. For Butler, resistance that refused to accept status quo as a norm. For Anzaldua, resistance that unapologetically demanded to be heard on one’s own terms. For Audrey Lorde, resistance that broke silence. Then, to resist meant to no longer be treated as objects or victims. It meant to not wait or ask for justice but to demand it urgently. It meant to remain strong, to never give up, and to not stop trying. Whatever its size and form, to resist meant to cause misfires and movement.

Therefore, the Black Radical Tradition offered me a feeling of responsibility; to love and to resist, because the two go hand in hand in a uniquely beautiful manner.

Intersectionality, a Necessity

Judith Butler suggests that in order to make a revolution happen, it is important to have a common, shared cause. This cause, according to Butler should not emerge out of lived experiences—because they are different for everyone—but out of shared humanity. While this idea is significant because it creates a new notion of unity which is based on natural similarity of being human as opposed to being defined in contrast to an other, it can be argued that mobilizing such a movement may not be that practical. The following analysis argues that as opposed to Butler’s approach, there is a need for intersectionality as established by Kimberle Crenshaw and Bell Hooks.

Crenshaw came up with the notion of intersectionality after observing the way black women are oppressed by both white and black men as well as white women. They are not only otherized on the basis of their race but also on the basis of their gender. For this reason, neither black men include them in their struggle for civil rights nor do white women include them in their feminist movements. Intersectionality is thus supposed to be an inclusive notion where all marginalized groups can unite.

Bell Hooks, in Ain’t I a Woman, also reflects on the need for a similar idea. She illustrates how black men and white woman—both marginalized groups—also oppress black women. She further elaborates on why this happens. Black men use black women as punching bags in order to take out their frustrations and insecurities. This behavior is enabled by patriarchal structures. White women, too, otherize black women simply because they consider them inferior, uncouth, and sexually deviant. These racial prejudices prevent them from incorporating black women into the feminist movement. Despite the movement’s claim of being inclusive, black women are continuously silenced or misrepresented.

White feminism has not been inclusive for black women, not only because of racial prejudices but also due to the differences in their issues. Since race determined socio-economic status, white women are more privileged than their counterparts. Their issues are concerning pay gaps, voting rights, and government representation. Black women, who are suffering to be treated as human beings have different priorities at the time Hooks is writing. These different needs cannot be met under a singular banner of feminism.

As a result, intersectionality becomes important. It recognizes that not all people are same. Just as their values differ, their priorities differ too. And more importantly, the oppression they suffer from may also differ. Acknowledgment of different kinds of oppression means a realization of the fact that different structures can be oppressive in different ways. Hooks also elaborates on how real freedom can only result from the destruction of structures like racism, sexism, and capitalism. Understanding that all such systems are oppressive paves the way for unity. Intersectionality enables this unity while also understanding that differences exist. This understanding is necessary for inclusion and also for the sake of tackling oppression on all fronts.