It has been a while since I have focused on anti-racist politics or ethics in particular, but I recently stumbled across a section of my website that was dedicated to repurposing and reviving some of that spirit: The Boohabian Slamdance.
It turned out that I ran out of steam fairly quickly as I started out on those tangents, but I think that the site works fairly well as a resource. I'd like to remind VC readers of it.
The other guy was a Mennonite from the midwest. I almost got him blogging but he decided against it.
I think that the orthodox approach is the way that I'll be dealing with China except that I think I'm going to be a great deal more self-conscious.
The Boohabian Project was indeed logical. Its aim was to enable a praxis rooted in inculcating in people a discipline which undid essentialist thinking. In the beginning, as in the end, I believed that Americans did not want to be racist and were participating in a system of racism which was below their ability to percieve. So I hoped to give people tools to clarify their thinking and improve their vision.
In the end, I found that people's hope was indeed to not be racist, but while they still lacked the ability to enable any praxis that merited political standing, their ignorant hearts were well-intentioned. And yet the political stakes of a strict anti-racism has been hijacked by and large, by those with 'more skin' in the game. Such hucksters have moved the goalposts and claim racism to be ever more subtle and insidious.
Posted by: Cobb at December 21, 2004 10:55 AMWestern theology(substitute "racism") is based on rational thought.
Sorry, but all theology is based on faith.
At some point, you have to accept what is being said because something can't be "proven."
The Boohabian Project was indeed logical. Its aim was to enable a praxis rooted in inculcating in people a discipline which undid essentialist thinking. In the beginning, as in the end, I believed that Americans did not want to be racist and were participating in a system of racism which was below their ability to percieve. So I hoped to give people tools to clarify their thinking and improve their vision.
Even in the aim of undoing racial essentialism, a goal you may be assured I vigorously endorse, the only practical solution is the type of orthodox interpersonal communion you described. In that context, one grows accustomed to the body language, the idiomatic flair, the apparent cultural habits and differences of the other, and that familiarity dispels deeply inculcated racist superstitions. The *spiritual* tools I'm recommending, are tools that enable the individual when so interpersonally exposed, to continue the developmental process on their own, and to become mindful of superstitious recurrence. In the individual, old habits die very, very hard. In the collective, they are even harder to uproot.
In the end, I found that people's hope was indeed to not be racist, but while they still lacked the ability to enable any praxis that merited political standing, their ignorant hearts were well-intentioned. And yet the political stakes of a strict anti-racism has been hijacked by and large, by those with 'more skin' in the game. Such hucksters have moved the goalposts and claim racism to be ever more subtle and insidious.
As a practical matter, in America, I'm disinclined to agree that a majority of whites are well intentioned. One need only look at housing, education, working, socializing, and worshipping demographics to see quite clearly that the traditional collective habits of like seeks like, like makes like - dominate the collective psychic automatism of America hands down. America preaches a tolerant theology, but practices a racist way of life. The only thing that's changed [during our lifetimes] is the institutional codification and enforcement of racist habits. Idiosyncratic racism is still very much in the hearts and minds of Americans. With political and media propagandists vigorously driving American racist habits and superstitions, and the complete lack of orthodox methods for counteracting these hypnotic messages, it seems likely to me that these habits can only be emboldened and become increasingly overt in conjunction with the impending economic downturn.
Posted by: cnulan at December 21, 2004 01:20 PMSorry, but all theology is based on faith. At some point, you have to accept what is being said because something can't be "proven."
Where in scripture is faith defined?
Where you find those familiar definitions, if you look closely, I suspect you'll find that faith is the practice of considering evidence beyond what is provided by the senses. This takes work. The question is not one of accepting anything without proof, (that's the western sickness), rather, the question is one of making sufficient effort to learn to access and consider faculties beyond the senses, reason, and grammatical logic.
It may seem strange at first, but an entire technical language, methodology, and praxis for accessing faculties beyond the senses and reason has always been at your disposal, hidden in plain sight. Proof and understanding comes with the development of these faculties.
You are surrounded more than you know by artifacts of various cultures of *unseen* competency. Sadly, western culture has lost it's own systems of competency and doesn't recognize, value, or transmit such systems any longer.
Posted by: cnulan at December 21, 2004 01:58 PMIn this matter I don't think it's as important that racism is disabled as in understanding the methods by which it can be overcome. In the words of the faithful "Lord, don't take away my stumbling block, but lead me around." From a conservative perspective, I seek to employ the fundamental strengths rallied against more more vicious, state sanctioned racisms of the past to empower, rather than the more soft accomodation and sensitivity training regimes of the present. So in a way, it doesn't matter to me what the intentions of society are. There are ways and means to triumph against sleepwalkers and zombies both, so long as state factories are not generating them for the purposes of your destruction.
As for faith, I cannot see how any program will survive long without it. Faith is trust. Faith is hope. It is the willingness to persist despite evidence to the contrary. I believe that progress against the unknown is impossible without it. Ofcourse faith and hope are often misplaced, but that doesn't invalidate the concepts. Too many things are unprovable.
Posted by: Cobb at December 21, 2004 02:11 PMI seek to employ the fundamental strengths rallied against more more vicious, state sanctioned racisms of the past to empower, rather than the more soft accomodation and sensitivity training regimes of the present. So in a way, it doesn't matter to me what the intentions of society are. There are ways and means to triumph against sleepwalkers and zombies both, so long as state factories are not generating them for the purposes of your destruction.
Here we agree completely in principle. Now begins the task of reconstituting the *configuration* which conduced to those fundamental strengths. The corporate state IS doing everything in its power to intensify sleep. In and of itself, that is an unsettling societal phenomenon. Those at the helm of that apparatus have not made their ultimate intentions plainly evident, (or have they?)
That the administration and its corporate talking heads freely employ racist automatisms as a political expedient is deeply troubling.
As for faith, no one should ever believe anything he cannot verify for himself. Everyone should redouble his committment to enlarging his powers of verification. (:
Faith can not be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING ARE QUITE DIFFERENT. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it.
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself;
There exist enquiring minds which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him.
Without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.
The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body and our feelings are so constituted that they don’t care about anything so long as they are happy. They live for the moment and their memory is short. The mind alone lives for tomorrow. Each has its own merits. The merit of the mind is that it looks ahead. But it is only the other two that can "do."
RELIGION IS DOING; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. Whether he likes it or not he shows his attitude towards religion by his actions and he can show his attitude only by his actions. Therefore if his actions are opposed to those which are demanded by a given religion he cannot assert that he belongs to that religion.
Which brings us full circle around to the $64 Thousand challenge. What precisely can we stipulate methodologically as a modern/postmodern black praxis suitable for the task of reconstituting the fundamental strengths of our no longer cohesive communities?
Posted by: cnulan at December 21, 2004 03:43 PMThe moment we stopped being Negro and became black, we inherited the mantle of being an international creature - a whole man in the context of the whole of humanity. And so every reduction to the ghetto context is a missed opportunity and an affront to what has already been accomplished.
So when you speak of what this administration or its 'corporate talking heads' are all about, you circumscribe black action into reaction.
It seems to me that African Americans are perfectly capable, if not necessarily motivated or willing, to assume the shape of America's destiny. It's simply a case of being modern. As I like to say, even the poorest black man is a man and he fits perfectly into the contours of the driver's seat of every Mercedes Benz. The question is whether or not we are writing ourselves into the script of America's future or rehashing old failures.
I don't believe that America is going to remain for long in a position to make mathandscience count for the ordinary man. We will not resist global forces. There will be nothing special about the American standard of living. New cities are not being built here. Our infrastructure will age like Europe's. So if our power of changing lies in our bodies and feelings, where is the happy place for those who would live with fidelity to black culture?
This is, I think, part and parcel of the Old School's task, which is to find that safe and happy place, that well wrapped universe. I think of 'The Bottom' from Sula and multimillionaire Morgan Freeman settling down in Mississippi, and the book 'Pushed Back to Strength'. I think of the piney woods and Harpo's Juke Joint. I don't know why I do - none of that is my family...
Posted by: Cobb at December 22, 2004 12:54 AM
Since western culture, politics, and ethics fearfully ignores the non-obvious aspects of human being, almost acting as if they don't exist, it is understandable that boohab ran aground before completing his exegesis of the problem. Boohab tracked popular culture but ignored the spiritual dimensions of the issue.
What I mean by *spiritual* is really nothing other than the non-obvious aspects of individual and collective human being. In the interest of simplicity, these non-obvious aspects could be constrained to *feeling* and *doing* - just to get past the analytical limit of race *thinking*.
Boohab ran out of steam on racist thinking exactly where western theology runs out of steam on God. Western theology(substitute "racism") is based on rational thought. Western theology acknowledges God at the outset and endeavours to justify His existence by logical arguments and rational categories after that. (which about perfectly sums up racism)
In the Orthodox Church, faith (substitute human being) is God revealing Himself to man. We accept faith by hearing it not so that we can understand it rationally, but so that we can cleanse our hearts, attain to faith by *theoria* and experience the Revelation of God.
As Cobb, you journalize experiences in a far more Orthodox manner, e.g., you had a joint about talking with a Syrian and memory fails me on the other cat's nationality. That piece was the Orthodox realnezz trying to come through. More of that, and less of the endless cycle of thinking about thinking, and the problem could be solved. As you know, that takes psychological fortitude and a willingness to adopt novel approaches.
Posted by: cnulan at December 21, 2004 10:40 AM