African Culture Essay Research Paper When WEB — страница 4

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civilization B. Rehabilitate Black identity C. Redefine the Black perspective by becoming subjects of history rather than objects. However, the issue of achieving “centering” has drawn the most fire, perhaps because implicit in achieving it is the political project of the struggle of a people to control their own destiny, their own definition of themselves, their own cultural way of being, and their own agenda. This is true not only in America but everywhere that people of African origin have tried to “center” themselves in the face of European imperialism and colonialism, the racism in the countries to which they immigrated, and their treatment as a global underclass. I have attempted to address this struggle in my most recent book, Pan Africanism In The African

Diaspora, to suggest that there is both a real and theoretical unity to the existence of African-origin peoples as they struggle for reinterpreting community and destiny in places outside of Africa through politics. (Irele, 98) The potential of Afrocentrism is that it enhances the possibilities of African Americans by their becoming actors in the positive uses of power. In this regard, an historic example is the Million Man March, which took place in October of 1995. While the meaning of the March was analyzed by the press from the perspective of its relationship to the dominant society, far more important was the political project of centering actions that it initiated within the African-American community, using unity to approach an intractable set of problems. The Problematic

of Race and Democracy So let us take Dr. Schlesinger’s problematic seriously in the following question he poses: “What happens when people of different ethnic origins, speaking different languages and professing different religions, settle in the same geographical locality and live under the same sovereignty? Unless a common purpose binds them together, tribal hostilities will drive them apart. Ethnic and racial conflict, it seems evident, will now replace the conflict of ideologies as the explosive issue of our times.” (Schlesinger, 10) Implicit in this question is an answer that we must preserve the old Anglo-conformity doctrine and its notion of racial hierarchy as the definition of an American, and of what constitutes the basis of unity, since there was no serious

ideological conflict to either Capitalism or the European cultural origins of the nation. But there is another vision: a Rainbow Coalition of people from different ethnic and racial groups, including Whites, striving together to create a truly democratic nation without racial subordination. Therefore, I believe that we should adopt a 21st century frame of reference that includes factors that will enhance diversity. In fact, the most powerful idea of the new cultural framework is that a decent respect for the principle of diversity, the integrity of the diverse groups, and the equality among them will provide the basis of a truly democratic society. To the extent that this notion is reflected in law and in social practice among groups and individuals, the basis of a new democracy

will be laid. In order to achieve this new democracy, it will be necessary to remove the impediments that stand in the way, such as racism, sexism, group imperialism, and materialism. This task will require the persistent involvement of those who want true democracy in projects of social change. As former Black Panther Chair Bobby Seale has said, you don’t fight racism with racism, you fight racism with solidarity, the solidarity of diversity, solidarity about the things that will make America a progressive and humane society. And if we take the famous African-American writer Jimmy Baldwin seriously when he said that the White man cannot free himself from racism by himself, then the very salvation of this idea of democracy lies in the hands of those who are the most

dispossessed. Ronald RACIAL DUALISM Race matters: whether we in the United States — and in many other countries as well — wish this to be the case or not. The US: what is it? A nation built on the soil of conquest, battened on the theft of human beings. Yet it is not only this. The US was also created out of the doctrine of natural rights, whose restrictive application was continually eroded by the struggles of the excluded: first the European “others,” and then the other “others” down to our own day. Throughout US history, racial conflicts continually shaped and reshaped the categories into which identities — all identities — were classified. The racial struggles at the heart of US society, the racial projects whose clash and clangor leaps off the pages of