Materialist Philosophical Inquiry and African American Studies

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Notes

1. John H. McClendon, “The Afro-American Philosopher and the Philosophy of the Black Experience: A Bibliographical Essay on a Neglected Topic in Both Philosophy and Black Studies.” Sage Race Relations Abstracts vol. 7, no. 4 (November 1982).

2. For an overview see John H. McClendon III, “The African American Philosopher and Academic Philosophy: On the Problem of Historical Interpretation.” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience (Fall 2004).

3. Some of the African American philosophers' earliest efforts with the philosophy of Black (African American) Studies/AAS include: Berkely Eddins, “Philosophia Perrennis and Black Studies” Southern Journal of Black Studies vol. 9, no. 2 (Summer 1971). Carlton Lee, “Black American Studies.” Negro History Bulletin, vol. 34 (1971). Charles Frye, Toward a Philosophy of Black Studies (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1978).

4. Examples of Afrocentrist idealism in AAS include: Molefi Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1992) and Mambo Ama Mazama, “Afrocentricity and African Spirituality.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 33, no. 2 (Nov. 2002), 218–234. For postmodernist Afro-American idealism see Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982), 15; also the electronic interview of bell hooks with John Perry Barlow, “An Intimate Conversation with Shambhala Sun” (www.shambhalasun.com/hooksbarlow.html), and “bell hooks interviewed by Cornel West” in bell hooks and Cornel West, Breaking Bread (Boston: South End, 1991), 79–82. After reading a considerable amount of bell hooks' corpus it is my view that she is an unabashed idealist. However, T. Dean Sharpley-Whiting holds the opposite view and lists bell hooks as among the “black materialist feminists.” T. Dean Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts & Feminism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 18.

5. For a ground-breaking effort at a materialist approach to AAS see Clarence Munford, Production Relations, Class and Black Liberation: A Marxist Perspective in Afro-American Studies (Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner, 1978). See also John H. McClendon III, “Black and White or Left and Right?: Ideological Critique in African American Studies.” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience (Fall 2002).

6. See Abram Harris, “Economic Foundations of American Race Division.” Social Forces vol. 5, no. 3 (March 1927), 468–478; Oliver C. Cox, “An American Dilemma: A Mystical Approach to the Study of Race Relations.” Journal of Negro Education vol. 14, no. 2 (Spring 1945), 132–148.

7. African American philosopher (and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.) Samuel W. Williams, in a 1954 lecture, presents an explanation of the differences between philosophical and popular notions of materialism. See “Communist Infiltration of Intellectual, Professional and Cultural Groups” (July 27, 1954), in Samuel W. Williams Collection, Box 12, Folder 12, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center Archive/Special Collections. I want to acknowledge and thank the Archivist of the Robert W. Woodruff Library for use of this material.

8. On the role of technology, see Abram Harris, “Economic Evolution: Dialectical and Darwinian” in William Darity, ed., Race, Radicalism, and Reform: Selected Papers, Abram L. Harris (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1989), 363–374.

9. On class struggle and historical materialism, ibid., 374–385. During the late nineteenth century, the preeminent philosophy of history among African American historians was a religious form of idealism, wherein biblical citations and theistic explanations were considered legitimate means for the comprehension of historical developments. See S.P. Fullwider, The Mind and Mood of Black America (Homewood: Dorsey Press, 1969), 7. For a materialist critique of African American dependence on religious forms of idealism, see Eugene Gordon, “Blacks Turn Red” in Nancy Cunard, ed., Negro: An Anthology (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970), 138–143. See also the work of materialist African American philosopher Eugene C. Holmes, “A Philosophical Approach to the Study of Minority Problems” Journal of Negro Education, vol. 38, no. 3 (Summer 1969), 196–203, and John H. McClendon, “Eugene Clay Holmes: A Commentary on a Black Marxist Philosopher” in Leonard Harris, ed., Philosophy Born of Struggle: An Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917 (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1983).

10. For materialist treatments of African American culture see Eugene C. Holmes, “The New Negro in Recent American Literature” in Henry Hart, ed., American Writers' Congress (New York: International Publishers, 1935) and W.A. Hunton, “Negro History, Old Style” (review of Benjamin Brawley's Negro Builders and Heroes). Journal of Negro Education, vol. 7, no. 1. (January 1938), 72–75. On idealism see Vernon J. Dixon, “African-Oriented and Euro-American Oriented World Views.” Review of Black Political Economy, vol. 77, no. 2 (Winter 1977); Jesse McDade, “Toward An Ontology of Negritude.” Philosophical Forum vol. 7, no. 1 (Fall 1977).

11. John H. McClendon III, “From Cultural Nationalism to Cultural Criticism: Philosophical Idealism, Paradigmatic Illusions and the Politics of Identity” in Carol Boyce Davies, ed., Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003).

12. On the significance of research for Black Studies, see Charles H. Wesley, “The Need for Research in the Development of Black Studies Programs.” Journal of Negro Education, vol. 39, no. 3 (Summer 1970), 262–273. On the relationship to the Black community and social activism see Harold Cruse, "Black Studies: Interpretation, Methodology, and the Relationship to Social Movement." Afro-American Studies, vol. 2 (1971) and Ewart Guinier, “Black Studies: Training for Leadership.” Freedomways vol. 15 no. 3 (1975), 196–205. For an introductory outline of the “Definition, Scope, Purpose and Objectives” of AAS, see Talmadge Anderson, Introduction to African-American Studies (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunter, 1993), 4–10.

13. Attempts to classify the diversity in AAS include: James B. Stewart, Alternative Models of Black Studies UMOJA 5 (1981), 17–39; Carlos A. Brossard, “Classifying Black Studies” Journal of Negro Education vol. 53, no. 3. (1984), 278–295; Abdul Alkalimat, ed., Paradigms in Black Studies (Chicago: Twenty-First Century Books, 1990); Carol Boyce Davies, “Introduction: Decolonizing the Academy/Advancing the Process” in idem., Decolonizing the Academy.

14. One of the earliest efforts at curriculum development in AAS is Sidney Walton, The Black Curriculum: Developing a Program in Afro-American Studies (East Palo Alto: Black Liberation Publishers, 1969). See also Beverly Gordon, “Curriculum Policy and African American Cultural Knowledge: Challenges and Possibilities for the Year 2000 and Beyond.” Educational Policy vol. 2, no. 2, (1997), 227–242. On pedagogy see Robert E. Harris, Teaching Afro-American History (Washington DC: American Historical Association, 1985), and Helen A. Neville and Sundiata K. Cha-Jua, “Kufundisha: Toward a Pedagogy for Black Studies.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 28, no. 4. (March, 1998), 447–470.

15. For an examination of the racist argument about lack of soul, see Edward J. Blum, “The Soul of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Philosophia Africana vol. 7, no. 2 (March 2004), 10.

16. Most Afrocentric thinkers view African philosophy as a form of idealism founded on spirituality. See Mazama, “Afrocentricity and African Spirituality” (note 4). The accent on culture as a common frame of analysis can be found among such diverse thinkers as Cornel West, Maulana Karenga and Molefi Asante: West, Prophesy Deliverance, 51; Maulana Karenga, Kawaida Theory: An Introductory Outline (Inglewood: Kawaida Publications, 1980), 17; Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, 171. For a useful explanation of why cultural determinism fails as an approach to the political/economic realities of African Americans, see William Darity Jr., “Intergroup Disparity: Why Culture Is Irrelevant.” Review of Black Political Economy vol. 29, no. 4 (Spring 2002), 77–90.

17. Ama Mazama, “The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and Definitions.” Journal of Black Studies vol. 31, no. 4 (March 2001), 399.

18. Dona Richards, “The Implications of African American Spirituality” in Molefi Asante and Karimu Welch Asante, African Culture: The Rhythms of Unity (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 210. Mazama does agree with Ani that Africans are essentially spiritual people. See Mazama, “Afrocentricity and African Spirituality” (note 16).

19. Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Thought and Behavior (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1994), 30.

20. For a view of Plato as an idealist/spiritualist see Gerald J. Wanjohi, “St. Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy of Education.” Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy vol. 2, no. 2 (1988), 89–90.

21. Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 40–46.

22. Ibid., 5.

23. Ani, Yurugu, 29.

24. Lansana Keita, ‘Review’ Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy vol. 2, no. 1 (1988), 78. Kwasi Wiredu, “Our Problem of Knowledge: Brief Reflections on Knowledge and Development in Africa” in Ivan Karp and D.A. Masolo, eds., African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 182–184.

25. John H. McClendon III. “The Afrocentric Project: The Quest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity.” Explorations in Ethnic Studies (Special Issue Ethnicity: Global Perspectives) vol. 18, no. 1, (January 1995).

26. Emmanuel Eze, On Reason: Rationality in the World of Cultural Conflict and Racism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 112.

27. Messay Kebede, “Negritude and Bergsonism.” Journal of African Philosophy (Issue 3, 2003).

28. Ani, Yurugu, 1–29.

29. Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1989), 2.

30. Tunde Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998).

31. John H. McClendon III, C.L.R. James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005), 13–16. Richard Wright, Black Power (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954).

32. For a similar viewpoint to Asante and Ani's on cosmology as a form of creation myth in Africa, see Chukwunyere Kamalu, Foundations of African Thought (London: Karnak House, 1990), 6–7. For a defense of Afrocentric thought as myth see Ani, Yurugu, 62–63. For the argument that myth is the basis for Western philosophy see Drew Hyland, The Origins of Philosophy: From Myth to Meaning (New York: Capricorn Books, 1973).

33. On syncopation see John H. McClendon III, “Jazz, African American Nationality, and the Myth of the Nation-State.” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 18, no. 2 (July/December 2004), 24; on cosmology, George Gamow, “Modern Cosmology” in John Leslie, ed., Modern Cosmology and Philosophy (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998), 57–69.

34. Asante, Afrocentricity, 2. For a critique of Asante's Afrocentricity as a distinctive form of idealism rooted in religious mythology, see James Palermo, “Reading Asante's Myth of Afrocentricity: An Ideological Critique” (www.edu/PES/97_pre/palerno.html) and Kathy Hytten “Afrocentricity, Politics and the Problem of Identity” (www.ed.uiuc.edu/PES/97_pre/hyten.html).

35. K. Anthony Appiah, “Race, Pluralism, and Afrocentricity.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring 1998), 116–118; “Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism.” Sapina Journal (January–June l993) vol. 5, no. 3 (also in Times Literary Supplement, February 12, 1993); “Is the ‘Post’ in ‘Postcolonial’ the ‘Post’ in ‘Postmodern?’” Critical Inquiry, 17 (Winter 1991), 336–357. For an analysis of Appiah as postmodernist see Louise Muller, “A Thematic Comparison between Four African Scholars: Idowu, Mbiti, p'Bitek and Appiah.” Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy vol. XVIII, no. 1–2 (2004), 109–124.

36. Although his own Afrocentric position colors his interpretation, James B. Stewart attempts to address the conceptual differences ancillary with various models of African American Studies in Flight: In Search of a Vision (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004); see esp. pp. 312–318 of his essay “African American Studies: Past, Present and Future.” See also Abdul Alkalimat and Associates, “Toward a Paradigm of Unity” in Alkalimat, Paradigms in Black Studies, esp pp. 42–43.

37. Molefi Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 7. For a critique of this form of Afrocentric philosophy of history, see Perry A. Hall, “Paradigms in Black Studies” in Delores P. Aldridge and Carlene Young, eds., Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2000), 30–31. For another Afrocentric view of history in relation to AAS, see Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies (Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press, 1993). An early examination of the Afrocentric approach to history is “An Afro-Centric Perspective on the Afro-American Past” in Okon Uya, African History: Some Problems in Methodology and Perspectives (Ithaca: Africana Studies and Research Center; Monograph no. 2 [1974]). For a different treatment of African American history, outside the Afrocentric frame but also grounded in AAS, see Robert L. Harris, Jr. “Coming of Age: The Transformation of Afro-American Historiography.” Journal of Negro History, vol. 67, no. 2. (Summer 1982), 107–121.

38. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1991), 206; Molefi Asante, “Location Theory and African Aesthetics” in Karimu Welsh-Asante, ed., The African Aesthetics (Westport: Praeger, 1994), 53–62.

39. This commonality of Islam is not to imply that Islam is monolithic in Africa. See Jonathan Reynolds, “Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 3. (2001), 601–618. For a comparative study of African American and African theology see Josiah U. Young, Black and African Theologies (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986).

40. John H. McClendon III, “Act your Age and Not Your Color: Blackness as Material Conditions, Presumptive Context and Social Category” George Yancy, ed., White on White, Black on Black (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); “On the Nature of Whiteness and the Ontology of Race: Toward a Dialectical Materialist Analysis” in George Yancy, ed., What White Looks Like: African American Philosophers On the Whiteness Question (New York: Routledge, 2004).

41. George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X (New York: Merit Publishers, 1967), 64–65. While Malcolm suggests that his experiences in Saudi Arabia influenced the transformation he had from mutual exclusion and blanket condemnation of whites, Horne suggests perhaps Malcolm's experiences in Ghana and Shirley Graham Du Bois's input were more decisive. Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 187–188.

42. Dr. Gamal Gorkeh Nkrumah is founder and director of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Cultural Centre in Cairo, Egypt (www.panafricanperspective.com/panafricanculcentre/cultural.html).

43.  Asante, Afrocentricity, 2.

44. Nkrumah, Consciencism, 70. For the alternative view that Nkrumah was Afrocentric even in the sense of Afrocentricity that I have developed here, see Zizwe Poe, “The Construction of an Africalogical Method to Examine Nkrumahism's Contribution to Pan-African Agency.” Journal of Black Studies, vol 31, no. 6. (July 2001), 729–745, and Cedric X. Clark, “Some Implications of Nkrumah's Consciencism for Alternative Coordinates in Non-European Causality” in Lewis M. King, Vernon J. Dixon and Wade W. Nobles, eds., African Philosophy: Assumptions & Paradigms for Research on Black Persons (Los Angeles: Fanon Center Publication, 1976).

45. Ani, Yurugu, 3–5.

46. Molefi Asante, Malcolm X as Cultural Hero & Other Afrocentric Essays (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1993) pp. 37–42, 106; Mazama, “The Afrocentric Paradigm” (note 17).

47. Appiah also offers a challenge to Ani's reduction of philosophy to myth (see the previous footnote 14), K. Anthony Appiah, “African-American Philosophy?” in John P. Pittman, ed., African-American Perspectives and Philosophical Traditions (New York: Routledge, 1997), 25–30.

48. Paulin Hountondji, “Occidentalism, Elitism: Answer to Two Critiques.” Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy vol. 3, no. 2 (December 1989), 7. See also Christian Neugebauer, “Ethnophilosophy in the Philosophical Discourse in Africa: The Critical Note.” Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy vol. 4, no. 1 (June 1990).

49. Adolph Reed, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130.

50. Robert Young, “The Linguistic Turn, Materialism and Race: Toward an ‘Aesthetics of Crisis.’” Alethia vol. 2, no. 1, 8.

51. Young, “The Linguistic Turn” (note 50); McClendon, “On the Nature of Whiteness” (note 40); Cox, “An American Dilemma” (note 6); Harris, “Economic Foundations of American Race Division” (note 6).

52. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 5.

54. Kwasi Wiredu, "Morality and Religion and Akan Thought" in Norm R. Allen, African-American Humanism: An Anthology (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991), 210–211.

55. Ibid., 219–220.

53. Asante, Afrocentricity, 79–80.

56. See Henry Olela, From Ancient Africa to Ancient Greece: An Introduction to the History of Philosophy (Atlanta: Select Publishing Co., 1979); George G.M. James, Stolen Legacy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954).