Howard and the Negro

One ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro…

Those immortal words of W.E.B. Dubois, uttered more than 100 years ago, still resonate within the veiled hearts and minds of the African American community today. As we, in this space, continuously seek to carve our niche in this placed called the United States, we still refuse to ‘bleach our Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism.’ However, Howard University offers a unique view.

According to Cedric Robinson, and other scholars such as Michael Gomez, the mid-19th century saw the rise of at least two alternative political cultures among Blacks.

The first, maroonage, which advocated communitarian, inventive and democratic ideals emerged among the class of Africans who experienced very harshly the “brutal regime of slavery and peonage.”

This culture existed in en masse among the African-American community. The second, and better publicized and understood, was the “assimiliationist black political culture that appropriated the values and objectives of the dominant American creed.”

This emerged from bourgeois Africans who were closer in physical and social proximity to mainstream America. These two cultures contributed to class conflicts within the African community in America. However, this is a classism that is predicated on whiteness as a marker for not only success, but for comfort and security, remnants of white supremacy and racism.

This classism plays out everyday on the campus of Howard University. In order to understand this however, one must understand the history of Howard itself.
Formed by an act of Congress, which we celebrate today, Howard University is the only black university that was formed not as a land-grant university, but as a federally chartered, private, non-profit educational institution (see Howard University Endowment Act).

Therefore, it is easy to see which one of these different political cultures Howard University was built to serve. It then becomes clear, why and how Howard University seeks to encase its students in a bubble from the masses of Africans in America who differ in terms of their ideals as outlined by Robinson.

The analysis of Kwame Ture in his autobiography, “Ready for Revolution,” was indeed insightful.

In the chapter titled, “Howard University: Every Black Thing and Its Opposite,” Ture explains Howard University almost 100 years after its charter, as a place whose most egregious image in the African community was an elitist enclave, a ‘bougie’ school where fraternities and sororities, partying, shade consciousness, conspicuous consumption, status anxiety and class and color snobbery dominated a student body content for the most part with merely “getting over” academically.

He also describes the administration of the University as “a reflection of the massive contradictions underlying the relationship between Africans in America and whites in America.”

While we can acknowledge the presence of these ideals today in 2009 (especially in administration), thankfully this was not then or now the entire story.

Undeniably among this class structure, there exists maroons many of whom come from the first political culture but find themselves engulfed into the assimilationist model.

Many students at Howard have bourgeois mindsets, but would never be considered elite in any circle of the power structure. Yet those who came from a cultural foundation of maroonage found themselves forming groups like the Non-Violent Action Group (NAG) that advocated for African-American humanity as the administration cringed.

These were the faculty who challenged normative theory and engendered real consciousness in its students who would later challenge the power structure of the global empire in many ways.

Howard, although it never intended to be, became the meeting place for revolutionary thought among the masses of African people, who brought what they learned to the masses from Nigeria to Leflore County, Miss.

The legacy of these maroons is one of being ostracized, under-funded, vilified, fired and even cast into insane asylums. Although, today we act as if we are following the legacy of Sterling Brown, Rayford Logan or even Patricia Roberts.

The legacy of Howard University is the same legacy that existed at its founding, one that falls in line with what Howard scholar E. Franklin Frazier explained in his classic, “Black Bourgeoisie.”

If one understands this history then it is easy to see why Howard University cannot have a Go-Go on campus without a hitch, when other HBCU’s such as North Carolina A&T State University seem to do so regularly.

One can easily see with historical consciousness, why Pan-Africanism is scary for the “powers that be” and is not “needed.” One can understand when viewing things clearly, why one of the largest profiteers of the Prison Industrial Complex can feed us everyday.

The political culture dictates that this University has this relationship with the masses of Africans and with the power structure of the U.S. global empire. The understanding of contradictions is essential. As we deal with neo-liberalism increasing this understanding becomes even more critical, as Junebug Jabbo Jones loved to say:

“Effen yo’ doan unnerstan’ the principle of eternal contradiction, yo’ sho ain’t gonna unnerstan’ diddly about Howard University. Nor about black life in these United States neither.”

Kwame Speaks: The Politics of Race Betrayal

Recently, we have seen inevitable attempts by Black bourgeoisie politicians, from Africa to Howard University’s campus in DC to exchange the interest of their cultural and political base for the interests of power. Unsurprising to many, the long history of cultural gerrymandering by political puppets of African descent continues to rear its ugly head. The ruling class continues to demonstrate its proficiency at cajoling the masses into believing that a leader whose racial and even cultural heritage is theirs must mean that their interests align. The Black-face Roman governors should have taught us this lesson.

Let us take the case of Guinea-Bissau. Unbeknownst to many students, who rarely dabble into world affairs even as it affects their kin, the president of Guinea-Bissau Joao Bernado Vieira was recently assassinated by his country’s own military. This killing came in retaliation to the killing of the nation’s chief of staff, Batista Tagme Na Wa. We will attempt to take the analysis further than the Western press, who has its own agenda. According to many news outlets, these killings are a result of long standing ethnic strife in the region. However, when we discuss Africa and its relationship with the rest of the world in such a context, we must do so through a lens of its political economy. The principal (official) export of Guinea-Bissau is cashew nuts, followed by fish and seafood. This is very different from other African nations such as the Congo and Azania (South Africa), who have immense amounts of wealth such as diamonds and gold. However, as many of know, there are two economies in the world. Guinea-Bissau is heavily involved in the underground (or not) cocaine trade, serving as intermediary between Latin America and Europe. It sits in a strategic location for global imperialism and its ‘second’ economy. What it lacks in the ‘official’ economy it makes up for in the black (white) market. Of course none of this ‘trickles down’ to the masses.

This is related to the recent assassinations in that they were no doubt the result of economic issues in the nation. African politicians often serve as conduits for imperialism’s expansion, and in this case President Vieira and Chief of Staff Tagme Na Wa were pawns in a much larger imperialist game. The people of Guinea-Bissau continue to suffer as a result of these games, and have the unwelcome distinction as one of the world’s poorest nations, while Portugal, its neo-colonial master, ranks in the top 40 economies of the world. One of their main exports is fine linen, by the way. Ironically, as expected the first nation-state to respond to the assassinations was Portugal, no doubt to ensure that its interests are taken care of.

A more familiar instance of race betrayal is the Obama administration’s recent refusal to attend the World Conference Against Racism. This conference, by no means designed to end racism, is a continuation of the conference held in 2001 in Durban where the United States walked out due to its love affair with Israel, whose Zionist policies were branded racist. It is also a continuation of the Bush-Clinton policies toward Israel. Any nation who has ‘overcome race, and is now post-racial’ should be willing and ready to attend a global discussion on racism and its pernicious effects. However, this ambivalent feeling is the type of change we are forced to believe in. Although, Obama does not come from the genealogy of slavery, he effectively utilized racial tensions and attitudes that developed as a result of the enslavement process as a springboard to the Presidency. 96% of the descendants of Africans who were enslaved in the United States voted for President Obama. Normally, the favor would be returned, however the discussion of reparations for slavery scheduled to take place at the conference was too much for the administration to stomach. We have to be critical of decisions like this as a collective.

Maybe politics is not the answer to our problems. As Baba Jacob Carruthers has taught in his Intellectual Warfare, even the etymology of the world politics has to do with the interests of the few, and that we should as ‘political scientists’ learn our ways of governance. However, as we are engulfed by this political system, we must empower our Black-face politicians to follow the model of iconic figures like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. As John Hope Franklin asserts, “one hopes they (Black politicians) will not lose focus on the problems black people face, for if they do, they will have gained the prize, but will have lost their souls.”