What follows after this brief introduction is an exchange between C. Liegh McInnes and Charles Keil, following up on their original June 1rst call and response.
In an email to your editor, McInnes allowed he didn’t quite know what to make of Keil’s first post with its “XR” ender. I thought it might help if he (and other readers unacquainted with Keil’s trajectory) knew a little more of Keil’s back story so here goes…
I grasp why you’d be put off by CK’s attempt to equate obliviousness to the murder of black people with blankness about the “many species that disappear each day never to be ‘known’ or studied, never to be replaced.” Yet CK’s not a simple PETA type – Species extinctions are linked in his head with human genocidal events. Preventing them has been one of the focuses of his life. Holocaust (German guilt, though he’s of German extraction, not a true, ah, Hun) got under his skin when he was a kid along with early (for his kind!) clarity about white supremacy in America. (He wasn’t blowing smoke about his connection with Malcolm X. And CK got there when Malcolm was still a hard Nationist, before he began rolling with Trots and making himself easier for white leftists to love.) CK’s clarities about genocide (that problem from hell) were amped up by his being in Nigeria, writing an ethnography, “Tiv Song,” just before the starving of the Igbo. He became convinced that when a blasé world watched Biafra fade away, international inaction had lasting consequences. It led to other tribal genocides in Africa…- Charlie has tried to think hard about the need to quash genocides and impulses behind ethnic cleansing. When it comes to the complicated dance between Boasian lucidity about the myth of race AND the need for protective Nationism for black Americans (and Kurds and Kosovars and Rohingya and Uighers and…), doubt you’re really on a different page than Charlie. I should add (at the risk of being accused of special pleading) there weren’t too many white guys in the era of Civil Rights or the Age of Clinton who were trying to imagine what Black Power might look like on the ground in America. (I’ve often nodded to his invocations – in the afterword to “Urban Blues” – of a red, black and GREEN federalism, with Swiss-style cantons meant to encourage precisely the kind of local autonomy you talked up in your letter). That’s why he dug your down home angle on what needs to be done!
Needless to say, CK always knew talking up African-American Zions wasn’t going to be his gig for obvious reasons. If you google around, though, you’ll see he’s become one of our major affirmers of “cultural equity.” He’s written wonderful books on Polka and Balkan Gypsy music, etc. Started a vital program in Buffalo schools that’s meant to get kids dancing daily – went national 25 years ago. I’ll leave it there but, this link to his 1968 Q&A with Studs Terkel about “Urban Blues“ might clarify why I think he’s long been a national resource. It ends, by the way, with a Bobby Bland b-side, “Your Friends,” that’s for the ages.
On to the latest exchange between C. Liegh McInnes and Charles Keil…
Response to Charles Keil’s Response to My “Letter from Mississippi (This Is Integration: George Floyd)”
I read Mr. Keil’s letter, and I just didn’t follow/understand it. After researching Mr. Keil before writing my response to his letter, I know that I am still wet behind the ears and have Similac on my breath compared to the mountain of work that he has done over his eighty years in service to justice and equality of all human beings. So, what I say is not to be disrespectful but an attempt to gain clarity. I understand Mr. Keil’s “need to quash genocides and the impulses behind ethnic cleansing,” as it should be all of our need to do so. Thus, I agree with him on that. I just worry that, often, Black Nationalism, self-determinism, or some plan by people who define themselves as African Americans gets lumped into a “black supremacist” mantra when most Black Nationalist or people who call for black self-determination just want the ability to create institutions that keep their survival from being based on begging someone else to be good to them.
Next, when he states that “Let me add that I am on very solid scientific ground when I state that we humans are all one ‘race’ and one species,” I don’t know any Black Nationalists who deny this point. Moreover, Black Nationalism is not about race superiority but about people who identify as African descendants, understand that they have been historically and systematically damaged (psychologically and physically), and, based on these understandings, have decided to create a plan of action to acknowledge and heal that dual damage while creating institutions in which they are not begging others to save them. Regardless of what science tells us, there is still a large number of people who create and execute plans of oppression against African peoples. As such, African peoples have the right (as humans) to acknowledge and defend themselves against those plans of oppression. Or, to put it another way, just because people may know that it is wrong to steal does not stop some people from stealing. Thus, people who do not steal have a right to protect themselves from theft. Whether or not the vast majority of people who define themselves as white accept the scientific data that all humans are the same race has no bearing on the right and ability of African Americans to protect themselves from racial prejudice and racism.
Then, of course, Mr. Keil double downs with “I argued that it was nonsense and counter productive to talk about racial equality, racial justice, race relations, race riots, etc. etc. etc. when ‘gene-pools’ don’t relate or riot, . . and when we are all one intermarrying ‘race’/species and have been for tens of thousands of years . . . , and when we could be talking about freedom, justice, equality for ALL like it says in the Declaration & Constitution.” Again, there are a couple of problems with his logic. One, the Declaration and Constitution were written by people who consider themselves white for the benefit of people who consider themselves white. Furthermore, that’s the same problem with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. They are all documents in which people who identify as white are defining freedom and citizenship for African peoples. In contrast, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act are the first time in American history when African Americans were able to contribute to defining their citizenship and freedom. So, the whole notion about humans being “all one intermarrying ‘race’/species and have been for tens of thousands of years” is true, but it does not void the fact that oppression based on race still exists and that those who are oppressed because of their race have the right, again, to create a plan of action that directly addresses their plight. Therefore, Mr. Keil’s notion of “talking about freedom, justice, equality for ALL” is fantasy at best and nonsensical at worst when there has been no proof that the vast majority of people who identify as white are capable of seeing African peoples as anything other than subhuman. Is Mr. Keil suggesting that African peoples ignore data and real-life experiences and trust that one day the vast majority of people who identify as white will be convinced by the scientific data that we are all the same? Further, how long does Mr. Keil suggest that African peoples, specifically people who identify as African American, wait for those whites to change their behavior? If they haven’t learned by now, when will they learn? And, again, how long must African Americans suffer waiting on people who define themselves as white to be educated by science?
Unless he is being sarcastic, Mr. Keil is more optimistic than I am that “we are leaving capitalism/imperialism/racism and the climactic irrational deathtrips called ‘fascism’ behind, once AND FOR ALL,” as I see no such evidence of that at all. What I see in Brexit, the election of Trump, and the rise in government-sanctioned attacks and murders of African Americans is a clear example that the vast majority of people who identify as white are concerned that their numbers are shrinking and that they are willing to do anything to save/salvage what’s left of their power over the world. When American white female voters vote against their own interests to preserve white supremacy, I’m not sure that I can understand Mr. Keil’s optimism. (I suggest reading Silvina Ocampo’s very metaphoric yet still timely “The Inextinguishable Race” for a brilliant artistic expression of this fear and desperation.)
Additionally , I don’t know if I’m misreading Mr. Keil or if Mr. Keil is misreading what transpired during and after George Floyd’s murder, but I couldn’t make sense his statement: “And I thought to myself, the murder of one person with three other cops and many witnesses looking on for 7 minutes is a lot like millions of us understanding that many species disappear each day never to be ‘known’ or studied, never to be replaced, and yet we are not shouting and protesting each and every day, not civilly disobeying in 100s of different ways.” The civilians, the non-law enforcement, who were real-time eyewitnesses to Mr. Floyd’s murder were not mindlessly watching a program from Animal Planet but were held to inaction from fear of living in a military state. I don’t deny that humans should be more knowledgeable and concerned about other species. But we should not confuse the inaction of fear with the inaction of apathy. And, the explosion of emotion after the fact is what happens when millions of people remember or simply experience Fannie Lou Hamer’s sentiment of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yet, just because humans don’t care enough about other species does not mean that they should be numb or apathetic to the demise of its own. Frankly, the hypocrisy of an organization, such as PETA, annoys me, until I remind myself that even these human beings who care more about other species than they do about humans have a place and a role to play. I just want them to play their role way over there away from me.
When Mr. Keil ends with “What I don’t understand is why we don’t want to slow up & think deeply about the day to day joys of Live and Let Live!,” I don’t know if he’s being disingenuous or sarcastic, but it seems that this is a question that should be directly asked of white readers because African Americans do not have a history of oppressing Americans who identify as white. Of course, the problem with my misunderstanding Mr. Keil is that we are doing what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls playing different language-games as he is having more of a global discourse when I was having more of a national discourse.
As it relates to Africa and his connecting ethnic cleansing with Black Nationalism, of course, tribalism is, needless to say, an interesting thing. I’ve often wondered how much of the trouble is based in the Napoléon Complex, how much of the trouble is caused by tampering by outside (white and Asian) forces, and how much is based in the notion of ethnic superiority. When I evoke the Napoléon Complex, I mean the inability of regimes to make the successful/constructive transformation from revolutionaries to competent administrators as most simply continue the cycle of moving from revolutionaries to dictators. And, to be clear, I don’t claim to have the answer of how to stop revolutionaries from becoming dictators. History has shown us that most generals don’t make good presidents, which is why Homer is correct that Achilles (the warrior) must retire/die so that Odysseus (the thinking man) can take the people to the next level of socio-political evolution. (I like to think of myself as an amalgamation of Achilles and Odysseus though I’m sure that, depending on whom you ask, I’d be identified as both at various points of my life. However, I am equally as sure that I can be just as strong and as bullheaded as Achebe’s Okonkwo.) Yet, we all have the drive to “get even” or get revenge, and I don’t think that drive is based on believing that others are inferior to oneself. I think that drive is based on innate insecurity, rational and irrational anger, and the inability to forgive. Thus, what continues to happen in Africa seems to be as much about overcoming basic human flaws of insecurity and anger and the manner in which outside forces exploit and/or enflame those issues as it is about ethnic superiority. But, of course, on this topic, I’m always willing to be enlightened as this point also seems germane to rebuilding unity among fragmented groups of African Americans who are divided along class and cultural lines and seem unable to find enough common ground to protect themselves from white supremacy while also engaging our own internal issues/flaws. (I have been as criticized by black folks for asserting that poor parenting—people having babies that they don’t want and cannot afford—is being equal to the problem of white supremacy as I have been criticized by white folks for my attacks on white supremacy and call for black self-determinism. Yet, I find the white folks who attack me because of my position on white supremacy to be hypocritical since I don’t want anything from white people other than to be left alone. This affirms for me that white people who are infected with white supremacy understand that separation is the worst thing that can happen for them because their entire way of life—psychological and physical—is based on having people of color, specifically African people, as their permanent free or cheap labor base. I love and respect Jackie Robinson, as I was a third generation baseball player, but his breaking the MLB color line did more to help white folks profit from black labor than it did to help black folks to become self-determining beings. The Negro League had its problems and was not completely black owned, but it was a level of black ownership that does not exist today. And, that fact cannot be refuted.) So, African Americans must be concerned with tribalism in Africa because we suffer from tribalism in America, which is exploited and enflamed by white supremacists. Moreover, there is a connection between the fate of African Americans and the fate of Africans on the Continent that must be realized if both groups want to achieve their full human potential. (Clearly, Pan-Africanism always becomes a part of this discussion.) So, I understand and respect why Mr. Keil has issues with Black Nationalism, even moreso after reading First of the Month editor Benj DeMott’s discussion of Mr. Keil, but I am just not willing to wait until enough white people can be convinced by science that we are all the same. Until enough white folks learn this lesson, my goal is to do all that I can to ensure that people who define themselves as African and African American can separate themselves from the people who harm them based on race and the people who harm them for any other reason. When I quoted Matthew 18:15 – 18, I mean for it to be clear that no one is obligated to engage others who mistreat or dominate them to their injury.
Finally, reading DeMott on Mr. Keil reminded me of Stephen J. Gould’s “The Evolution of Life on Earth,” which I teach in my literature of science class. Gould is especially disgusted with how scientists have, in his mind, perverted the term, “evolution,” by placing the human species at the top of the evolutionary ladder when all the evidence supports that humans are not the best species at evolving. Moreover, he disparages scientists by asserting that they have become just as myopic and lead by emotions as theologians because they have embraced a narrative of humans ascending to the top of the evolutionary ladder; yet, without the evidence to support proclaiming humans the top evolutionary species, that proclamation only serves to make humans more vulnerable to their demise because their arrogance of seeing themselves as the top species keeps them from doing the real work of developing themselves into a species that is more effective/efficient at evolving. I’m not sure if Gould’s essay actually relates to what we have been discussing, but it certainly connects and makes clear for me the work that humans must do to become a species that is more in harmony with itself, with nature, and with other species.
xxx
C. Leigh’s Points Well-Made…
Especially the one about passivity of ALL people in response to daily extinctions of species.
I was writing to you and trying to score points for Extinction Rebellion values vs. humanisses.
Fear of police state is real. When I came back from a 6 week teaching visit in South Africa shortly before Nelson Mandela was elected it hit me like a ton of bricks that I saw more police in cars between JFK and LaGuardia than I saw during all of my stay in Durban!
peace and ecoequillibrio,
charlie