Essays on Social Issues & How They Impact African Americans and Other People of Color: Law, Literature, and Social Work

Copyright © 2010 by Antonette Jefferson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 07/27/2015

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Table of Contents

Diasporic Issues

The Rhetoric Of Revolution The Black Consciousness Movement And The Dalit Panther Movement

Bengali Women And The Politics Of Color

Social Issues And The Impact On African Americans

Domestic Violence Among Law Enforcement Officers

Female Offending: Risk And Protective Factors

Mental Health Issues Confronting The African American Community

Prison Privatization, Criminal Justice, And Hip Hop

Capitalism And Its Implications For African Americans

The Black Perspective And Afrocentric Theory

African American Agitation For Change In Social Policy

The Arts (Literature)

The Spoken-Word Movement?!

Dimensions Of Consciousness In The Souls Of Black Folk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to those who were instrumental in my formal and Afrikan education: Hampton University, Howard University, Trinity University, The George Washington University Law School, Ankobea, The Cultural Resource Center, Flint Hill, Keene Elementary, Bertie Backus Middle School, Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, and Integrity Church International.

INTRODUCTION

Essays on Social Issues spans the gamut of social and political issues in law, literature and social work. It provides a diverse perspective on the practical implications of social policy, marginalization, and the arts as it relates to people of color. Not only does this research consider traditional and conservative perspectives, but it also embraces radical and progressive paradigms.

Research conducted by and for the African American community, as well as the plethora of perspectives that abound in communities of color necessitate a work that espouses these beliefs and allows readers to investigate a multifaceted understanding of these issues. The Dalit, Bengali and South African contexts are discussed in terms of social movements, revolution, and the politics of color. These issues necessarily deal with social movement theory, the rhetoric of revolution, and empowerment.

Du Bois’s levels of consciousness are highlighted in an analysis of Du Bois as person and Du Bois as author in his work The Souls of Black Folk. This allows for a comprehensive understanding of Du Bois as a Pan-Africanist and American, as well as an exploration of his literary contribution to the pervasiveness of the idea of Double-Consciousness. The relevance of this work becomes quite apparent in the Obama context of the twenty-first century.

Furthermore, literature and the arts beckon the question of social movement theory as the Black Arts Movement, Harlem Renaissance and current Spoken Word Movement have had and continue to have dramatic impacts on today’s society. The commoditization of the Spoken Word Movement can be seen on television, heard on radio, and experienced at any local café. For these reasons, it is important to fill the gap in literature on the social and political phenomenon known as the Spoken Word Movement. This research fills that gap.

In addition to the Diasporic issues and work relevant to the arts, Essays on Social Issues addresses a number of social issues that impact society overall and the specific effects of these overarching social issues on people of color. Prison Privatization, the Criminal Justice System, and Hip Hop takes a in-depth look at the intersection between these three enterprises and determines the implications of this complex relationship. Highlighting risk and protective factors for female offending, domestic violence among law enforcement, social policy, mental health, globalization, the Black family, capitalism, the Black Perspective and Afrocentric Theory allows for a holistic analysis of historical and contemporary issues that continue to shape majority and minority opinions about people of color and their contributions to society.

DIASPORIC ISSUES

THE RHETORIC OF REVOLUTION

The Black Consciousness Movement and the Dalit Panther Movement

Introduction

The liberation of oppressed people expresses itself in the global context as liberation movements echo one another in proclaiming inalienable rights inherent to all human beings, which are indeed deserved, but are not always realized by the marginalized. Such marginalization leads constituents to respond to oppression by donning the armor of struggle to challenge oppression.

The Black Consciousness Movement, headed by Steven Biko, and the Dalit Panther Movement modeled after the Black Panther Party, and influenced by the philosophies of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, create a need for pause as the worldwide implications and potentials of collective liberation are analyzed and realized for the empowerment of people of color across the globe. This realization is captured in the response of the oppressed to the oppressor, where the rhetoric of revolution (in a broad sense) spans from consciousness-raising to violent action, and where such rhetoric has been utilized as a strategy for liberation.

Methodology

Generic rhetorical criticism is utilized to investigate the rhetoric of the Black Consciousness Movement and the Dalit Panther Movement. Rather than considering one specific speech or eulogy, the research investigates revolution as a meta-text. The specific words and actions of revolutionaries in the Dalit Panther Movement and Black Consciousness Movement, as well as the idea of revolution, serve as an intertwined helix of text and meta-text. Here leaders can study movements to understand and agitate for future revolutions to impact change; and the observable, explicable and predictable rhetorical commonalities of revolution thus serve as a genre by which leaders describe and devise methods to continue the struggle for equality and change (Kuypers, 2005, p. 85).

The methodology considers similarities in the approach of revolutionary leaders, as well as the common collective heritage of the Dalits, South Africans, and others of the African Diaspora. According to Rajshekar (1987), the Dalits are the descendents of the Africans who founded the Indus Valley Civilization and who were enslaved by fair skinned Aryans from the North. He goes on to state that the separation of the struggle of African Americans in the United States from other people of African descent in the Diaspora is deleterious to the collective uplift of a people. Rajshekar (1987) speaks of the similarities between Dalits and African Americans (and by extension, other people of African descent):

While feeling free to pronounce on human rights issues in relation to other countries, both India and the U.S. strongly reject any outside interference (criticism) of their own minority relations. Both multi-ethnic states promote the ideal of nonviolence among their oppressed minorities while not hesitating to resort to violence either in relations with other states, or in repression of minority demands. And lastly and most perniciously, both seek to imply that the oppressed minority’s current plight is due in some way to its own misdeeds… (p. 5)

While Rajshekar speaks of African Americans and the Dalits, Black South Africans are also considered in this research; and in fact, the research has implications for people of the African Diaspora although it is more narrowly focused on the movements of the Dalits and South Africans.

Existing Literature

There is a plethora of research on revolution, including that which investigates how oppressed persons of African descent have conceptualized and begun to address the issues of racism/white supremacy. Kwame Ture and C.V. Hamilton’s Black Power (1992), Amos Wilson’s Blueprint for Black Power (1998), Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism (2000), and Kwame Agyei and Akua Nson Akoto’s The Sankofa Movement (1999) have addressed revolution among people of African descent. These texts have provided a critique of American society, recommendations for black empowerment, and steps for psychological and physical revolution. The colonization of African people throughout the globe, including the United States (as explored by Kwame Ture) has set the tone for this literature to become manifest. It is through the deconstruction and reconstruction of revolutionary rhetoric that leaders can begin to highlight the challenges in bringing about change in the interest of the black collective.

There has also been research conducted to investigate the similar plights of people of African descent throughout the Diaspora, specifically in India. The Black Panther Party Legacy & Alumni, African American Policy Forum, work done by Vijay Prashad and Runoko Rashidi, has begun to reveal the common plight of the Dalits, African Americans and other peoples of the African Diaspora. In his ‘Global African Presence History Notes, Runoko Rashidi begins to unravel the complex history of the Dalits and to highlight the consubstantiality of the Dalits and other persons of African descent.

Socio-Political Environment

Understanding the socio-political environment in which the liberation movements of people of African descent occurred is central to grasping the subtle nuances of liberation movements. As the Black Power Movement received international attention during the mid to late twentieth century, the movement set the stage for concomitant and subsequent anti-systemic movements. Accordingly, this happened because movements do not exist in a vacuum, and because oppression has common features; this is reason why each of the liberation movements occurred essentially simultaneously (Wallerstein, 1999). Thus, the movements of people and intellectual capital through the spread of education, international and transnational trade, and media have been instrumental in creating a connected society whereby peoples can be and are influenced by tangential, adjacent and direct causal relationships with other peoples around the world (Friedman, 2005). Therefore, it is no coincidence that the global milieu set the stage for concurrent action by people of African descent. Furthermore, the success and/or perceived success of these movements propelled each group to continued action. In this context, Wallerstein (1999) offers that movements occur because of the past success of other movements, and states:

No, it is not oppression that mobilizes masses, but hope and certainty—the belief that the end of oppression is near, that a better world is truly possible. And nothing reinforces such hope and certainty more than success. The long march of the antisystemic movements has been like a rolling stone. It gathered momentum over time. And the biggest argument that any given movement could use in order to mobilize support was the success of other movements that seemed comparable and reasonably close in geography and culture. (p. 3)

Therefore it can be said that these revolutionary movements were linked in the tapestry of global liberation movements. They also dovetailed with earlier movements of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, Dr. Ambedkar’s movement in India, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The momentum of hope incited the people to action, emboldening them to fight for equality and liberation.

Not only did these earlier movements impact the Dalit Panther and Black Consciousness Movements, but communism also impacted these movements (Franklin, 1994). And despite the nominal defeat of communism following the Cold War, Marxist philosophies would come to inform the movements of people of African descent and the Dalits in India. Essentially the sole nemesis of capitalism and arguably the basis of an entire World War, the ideals of an egalitarian society would serve as a powerful force motivating the conscious efforts of the oppressed to transform society. Thus, communism as a philosophy and movement, along with the rhetoric arising from the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Ambedkar’s movement, and the ANC, became defining features of the philosophies of the later thought of the Dalit Panther Movement and the Black Consciousness Movement (Biko, 2004; Franklin, 1994; MacDonald, 2006). As people of color continue to recognize that the hegemonic construct of white supremacy and/or racism is truly global and connected, their collective economic and political power can begin to unravel the physical and psychological chains and system impacting people of color.

White Supremacy and Oppression

The construct of white supremacy that oppresses people of African descent and people of color can be seen in a myriad of areas. I will argue that white supremacy dictates standards of beauty, assumes writing by Europeans as the highest indication of culture (to the dismissal of African oral and written traditions), and uses its religion to foster slave-based/unequal relations where the European proclaims divine rights to civilize sullen and childish peoples (Kipling, 1899). Furthermore, what African Americans refer to as Wyllie Lynch Syndrome, what South Africans knew as apartheid and separate development, what the Dalits acknowledge as casteism, and what the entire global community of colored people understand as a strategy of divide and conquer has taken varying forms to accomplish the same end—continued subjugation of people of African descent for the continued exercise of white supremacy and/or racism.

This white supremacy operates in a dialectical relationship to the collective consciousness and actions of people of African descent. That is, white supremacy exercises domination; Black Power responds. A synthesis of this dialogue is illustrated in specific black/white relations—antagonism, conciliation, forgiveness, etc. It is not necessarily true that white supremacy predated Black Power in a global sense. Rather, Black Power exists as a reincarnated manifestation of an omniscient African reality. As Toni Morrison asserts, white supremacy is playing in the dark, against an African essence (Morrison, 1992). Therefore, white supremacy is not the originator, nor is it more powerful than Black Power. The exercise of white power has experienced a monopoly in the world system relative to a much longer history of world civilizations. As such, understanding the rhetoric of revolution is central to understanding how this dialectical relationship of current domination/subjugation ensues.

Such subjugation of people of color by white supremacists can be seen in the process of separate development. Michael MacDonald (2006) asserts that separate development sought to confine Africans in ‘their’ tribal cultures (p. 15). These tribal communities were to be transformed into separate nations through institutionalizing tribes as political units and fragmenting the unity of the oppressed that was immanent in the shared experiences of apartheid (p. 15). Thus, Africans were to be sectioned off into groups, created as essentially independent nations, whose sovereign actions would work to negate any collective power and mobilization that might result from a unified Africa. Similarly, African Americans are still navigating subjugation in the areas of the politics of color, the right strategy for liberation, and various other ideological challenges. The Varna, or caste system of India, stemming from the Vedas and inevitably influenced by the Aryans, although disintegrating, still bears the vestiges of discrimination and division.

While India’s fading caste system is wrought with intraracial divisions, the oppression of Dalits is part of the struggle of diasporic peoples of African descent. Paswan and Jaideva (2002) highlight the fact that Dalits are barred from access to resources that would allow them to enhance their position in the social, economic and political strata of Indian life. In speaking of Dalits, they state, The people who almost die in building the terrestrial heaven are denied access to it and we [are] condemned to live in these nether worlds forever, suffering silently and yet serving sincerely (p. 19).

The institutionalization of white supremacy and/or racism/intraracism ensures that it thrives and perpetuates itself to maintain the status quo.