This past Sunday I saw Donja R. Love’s play produced at the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia (SPOILER ALERT: If you do not want to know the plot and the resolution of this theatrical work, please do not continue reading.) This play was worth the wait. Whereas I am ready to call this work a “play” because it is rehearsed, performed, and staged by a cast and crew and its elements, Donja made clear to me that he wants his work to be considered an “offering” rather than a play.
This “offering” should be produced, supported and seen for two main reasons. One, it unites the sacred and the secular of the Black radical tradition and restores the role of the Black church as the vanguard for social change. Two, it demonstrates better than any other play in the twenty first century the value of the masculine-feminine dynamic in overcoming ANY obstacle to pass moral values to the younger generation.
This play is an obvious response to Jasper Wiliams’s troublesome eulogy of Aretha Franklin that pathologized the Black family since the civil rights movement. In this eulogy the moral ills of our LGBTQ or SGL (Same Gender Loving) members were blamed for the downfall of the Black family, instead of the rampant deindustrialization and mass incarceration that came to define the end of the twentieth century. Donja’s offering shows us that the LGBTQ or the SGL members are the vanguard or the future of the Black family.
The play begins and ends with a sermon in a pulpit. It begins with Reverend Bridges asking his congregation where the beauty is, in the midst of our daily difficulties. The play ends with Reverend Bridges’ grandson answering his grandfather’s question and telling his younger congregation thirty years later, that the answer to his grandfather’s question of where to find the beauty in life is, in himself. Despite the social conditions that try to deny Black life beauty, from the AIDS epidemic to deindustrialization, to a church culture that is handicapped by homophobia, Manny at the end of this play shows that in his life is beauty. The first act is set in 1986 Brooklyn, New York and the second act is set in 2016 Jackson, Mississippi.
Donja’s offering does a remarkable job of showing the beauty of Manny’s life, first in the life of his father J.R. who dies by the end of the first act, to the life of his son who demonstrates what it looks like to hold on to beauty.
In the first act, we are introduced to the “beauty” of J.R. Not only is he physically attractive with a powerful machismo performed unforgettably by Jude Tibeau, he also enjoys a healthy sex life.
(a photo of me and Jude Tibeau who performed J.R. & Manny)
J.R. asks his pregnant wife Max if they can have sex, and she politely declines and encourages him to get tested at the doctor’s office. When J.R. gets tested, his Doctor “Steinberg” tells him he has AIDS. Before he leaves the doctor’s office, he is approached by a caring advocate in Abdul who invites him to a group therapy session for HIV positive men.
At this session, we meet an HIV positive corporate scion in Troy, a transwoman named Grace, and a young man “with lesions on his face” named Eric. J.R. is encouraged to tell Max that he is HIV positive. When he tells her, she discloses that since their conception, she got tested and that she and her child is HIV negative. She meets Abdul and, as J.R. told his group, his wife Max and him have “an understanding” about him sleeping with men and women.
This is the part of the play where the audience feels the “beauty” of sexual freedom for J.R. Max notices the nonverbal chemistry between J.R. and Abdul and invites Abdul to spend the night with J.R. while she visits her friend Vernetta, suggesting the whole time her own intimate relationship with Vernetta.
Love’s offering shows us that an AIDS diagnosis does not have to be a death sentence that requires a suppression of one’s sexuality. Max cherishes her husband’s relationship with his lover Abdul. She does not use his disclosure of his status as a ball and chain to police his sexuality or stifle his beauty. In the relationship of Max and J.R., we see unapologetic beauty. We see the beautiful affection between J.R. and Abdul, we J.R. living his full life.
Abdul introduces a camcorder to the group and brings a camcorder to Max. Max encourages J.R. to record a video for their soon-to-be born child. J.R. obliges and sings to the recording device. He sings with a passion and an awareness and reflects the beauty that Max and Abdul have showed him. This beauty is plucked at when the supply of health insurance medications that J.R. is using on Max’s employment is threatened when her co-workers start ostracizing her because of the rumor about J.R. having HIV. When Max chooses to inform J.R.’s parents about their situation, Max and J.R. argue. We as the audience feel the social pressures that J.R. endures for choosing to hold on to the beauty in his life. Abdul passes from AIDS, then J.R. We see the social pressures on Max. She loses her husband, her lover, and her child’s father. In one scene, these pressures trigger an emotional outburst in her. Toni L. Martin’s talent shines in this scene and culminates in her taking out J.R.’s robe and wearing it.
(A photo of me and Toni L. Martin who performed Max)
The first act ends with a visit to Max by J.R.’s father, the Reverend Bridges who is clearly paralyzed by the stigma of AIDS. Max declines his offer but with the social pressures of the care of a newborn, an increasingly comfortable alcoholism, she eventually takes the Reverend up on his offer to allow him and his wife to raise her son.
In the second act we are introduced to a group home for SGL queer youth, led by Reggie. We are fast forwarded thirty years to see J.R.’s son Manny now, thirty years old, in a relationship with Elijah who both live in a dilapidating shack in Jackson, Mississippi, that also is home to Terrell, a “flamboyant teenager” and Eve “a transwoman in her early twenties.”
This act we see the son of J.R. who is Manny hold on to the “beauty” that a repressive society taught him to deny. Manny’s ambition in this act is to get meds for his HIV positive lover Elijah, and he endures several obstacles in the twenty first century to do so. He holds on to the beauty and the audience sees the sacrifices he makes to hold on to it.
Manny does not realize that the nurse that Reggie has hired part-time to take care of Elijah is none other than Max, his biological mother. She surprises Manny when she notices him drink his stash of booze hidden on the front porch, recalling the social pressures she succumbed to decades before.
The sympathy for Manny rises as he talks with his father Reverend Bridges who keeps a veil over Manny’s head about the true identity of his biological mother and father. The fact that Reverend Bridges is completely unable throughout the entire play to tell Manny about his father J.R. and the beauty in his life is a sincere tragedy, and it shows how SERIOUS the stigma of HIV and AIDS was for people of Bridges’s generation.
Part of Manny’s beauty is his patience with Elijah, his belief in modern medicine, and his belief that this medicine will keep Elijah alive and maintain part of his beauty which is affection with Elijah, and his loving relationship with Elijah. We see how Manny will do anything for Elijah. To keep his beauty, Manny sells sex to a wealthy patron in Adam despite the havoc this creates in his relationship with Elijah. The stage directions tells us that the sex Adam pays for from Manny is “quick as can be, but for Adam, it’s everything he needs it to be.”
When he returns to the group house, Eve is the one who tells Manny “I saw you get out that car.” Eve asks Manny to be careful. Elijah interrogates Manny who replies that “I told him I upped my prices. And it worked. Now I got money to go towards all the repairs the house needs and to help pay for Ms. Max.” However Elijah tells Manny that he is giving up on him. Manny is no longer sleeping in their bed: he now sleeps in the attic. Terrell tells Manny that his lover’s mother kicked him out of his house and Terrell asks Manny if his lover can stay in the group home. Manny says “of course.”
Amid the social pressures that Max faces, Manny goes out on the porch for his secret stash of booze, where Max reveals to Manny that she is his biological mother. Manny is furious and orders Max to leave. Before she leaves, she hands Manny a VHS cassette that Manny reluctantly but eventually seeks to watch. When Manny confronts Reverend Bridges about his true maternity and paternity, he offers a hush money check of one thousand dollars to Manny. Manny says to make it twenty five hundred. The Reverend obliges, but only if Manny agrees to become the new Reverend of his church. Reverend Bridges shows himself here as a passive figure. He does not “go forward” to make new disciples as Jesus did. Instead he waits until he is acrimoniously confronted to educate the younger generation about the truth of where they came from.
When Manny returns to the attic, Reggie notices him looking for the VHS tape cassette player and locates it for Manny. Manny watches his father J.R. and evidently musters the strength he needs to tell his congregation how one can in fact live with the God given beauty one is allowed. Manny and Max reconcile.
This offering destroys the myth that the Black family is dead.
This offering destroys the myth of the “no-good” Black man who wants no relationship with his children.
This offering destroys the myth of the Black woman as a hopeless nag.
This offering destroys the myth that Black women hate Bisexual or gay men.
This offering must be seen, produced, reviewed and studied. -RF.
Thank you to Donja R. Love, Theresa Davis, Brandon Nick, Jennifer Fritz, Larry Felzer, and my grandmother Maudlin Young who each made my review possible. -RF.
On June 24th this year I had the honor of presenting the paper “Green Lumumba: Identity and Nationalism in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Aimé Cesairé’s A Season in the Congo. I was invited by the Toni Morrison Society to present at the Toni Morrison Symposium this year in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It was a surreal experience.
(Photo credit: Kris Yohe)
In this paper I discussed the theme of betrayal in both Morrison’s fourth novel Tar Baby and in Césaire’s stage play A Season in the Congo. Specifically, I discussed how Morrison’s character Jadine Childs in her romantic experience with Son Green, betrayed Son Green in her relationship by her inability to respect Son Green’s U.S. Southern culture (WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILER ALERTS IN THIS POST). I discussed in this paper the factors that attracted Son to Jadine, but also, how the novel chronicles his moral responsibility to stop pursuing Jadine once he was advised by Thérèse to do so because Jadine “has forgotten her ancient properties.” I find this such a common dilemma among many Americans: loving the sexual attraction but being misled by the individual’s modern soul-killing values.
(Cover illustration by Thomas Blackshear)
I chose to compare this betrayal to the betrayal by Césaire’s Mokutu character of Césaire’s Patrice Lumumba in his play A Season in the Congo. I based my read of this play from my attending the 2013 performance of this play stage managed by Lazette McCants and directed by Rico Speight. While in Martinique I met the niece of Aimé Césaire, Murielle, who granted Rico permission to produce the play in 2013. In the play, Mokutu pledges allegiance to Lumumba to work towards “dipenda” or an independent Congo.
However behind the scenes Mokutu is plotting with the banking class, the U.N. Ambassador and with Belgians to overthrow Patrice Lumumba. This is based on what actually happened in 1961. The dramatic irony of Césaire’s play is that everyone in the play knows this impending betrayal including Patrice’s wife Pauline, except Patrice. It is clear that Césaire intends for Lumumba’s ignorance of Mokutu’s plans to overthrow him to be highly dramatized on the verge of delirium. Both Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba are lured by the promise of a lasting relationship. However both are deceived by individuals who betray because of their being socialized to desire safety in a Western world. Jadine betrays Son heads for the material safety of her modeling career (the narrator of the novel tells us she was promised thousands in Europe). And Mokutu who betrays Lumumba in the material safety of his role as a neocolonial puppet for Belgian and American banking interests. To this day the coltan in our smartphones comes from the pillage that Césaire wrote about. He intends his audience to see Lumumba’s death as a sincere tragedy. Conversely, in Morrison’s novel, Son has an opportunity to escape the claws of Western colonization. When instructed by Thérèse to follow the horsemen on the rural side of Isle-des-Chevaliers, the novel ends with him taking her advice.
We visited a monument whose origin story had an uncanny connection with the myth Morrison creates of “the horsemen” in her fictional Isle-des-Chevaliers (island of horsemen) in Tar Baby. This monument is called in French Memorial de L’Anse Caffard and on our trip to this memorial we met the sculptor Laurent Valere who told me personally that the Martinican poet Edouard Glissant was instrumental in its creation. This is a monument to the enslaved who lost their lives drowning on a wayward slave ship in 1830. In Morrison’s story, “the horsemen” are descendants of enslaved Africans who were on their way to “Isle des Chevaliers” who were struck blind upon seeing the island. These are “the horsemen” who live like maroons on her island. Thérèse tells Son to join the horsemen at the end of the novel, instead of pursuing Jadine. The horsemen live in the woods and not according to the Western plantation model that Morrison’s Valerian Street lives by. I appreciate the connection that our symposium keynote speaker, Edwidge Danticat (pictured below with myself), made between Morrison’s “horsemen” and the spirits of those who L’Anse Caffard is dedicated to.
The lesson from the novel, the play and the experience in Martinique for me was to NOT forget your ancient properties. This includes not being used as a tool for Western interests. Morrison writes Tar Baby in a way where the reader is supposed to celebrate the psychological freedom of Son because he is not pursuing an individualistic lifestyle like Jadine; Césaire writes A Season in the Congo in a way where the audience member is warned not to be like Mokutu. The audience member is warned not to be the proverbial wood used against other wood in the annihilation of the forest.
I could not help but notice how Western media continues to attempt to promote colonial values in Africa, specifically NBC’s use of a Black reporter to goad African Stream into admitting that African Stream “targets Black audience with misinformation” as African Stream’s July 1st IG post reveals.
Screenshot
African Stream has been first and foremost in reporting news from an anti-Western and African perspective. They continually report on the efforts of the people on the ground to resist Western imperialism and MUST NOT be considered as targeting Black audience with misinformation. As that July 1st post later reveals in promoting the policies of the Biden administration, specifically in goading Kenyan President Ruto to accept the repressive policies of the International Monetary Fund, NBC News is the true culprit in promoting misinformation. I wrote about the difference between industry journalism and advocacy journalism in my first book in 2019 and African Stream is clearly on the side of advocacy journalism.
It is our duty not to be used to decimate the forest of indigenous people. Like Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba, our spirit guides are waiting for us to make the right decision of moving away from Western colonization and to pursue truth. Special thanks to Dr. Carolyn Denard and the Toni Morrison Society for inviting me to Martinique. -RF.
My third book To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin will be released Monday, February 19th, 2024 at Penn State University in University Park, PA. I will be interviewed by Penn State University Department of African American Studies Professor Michael West about my book. You can register to attend this book talk via Zoom here.
A Review of The Case For Cancel Culture by Ernest Owens
I read this entire book looking for a single cogent argument for cancel culture but I could not find one. I think the truest statement Owens makes in this book is that
He writes that “discussing cancel culture without the additional lens of power becomes futile.” The problem of this book is that Owens does not interrogate what “the additional lens of power” actually is. He does not probe enough the power dynamics between the employer and the employed, between labor and capital. He does not provide a deeper context as to who gets cancelled and who doesn’t. His analysis is missing the power dynamic. His whole book assumes U.S. liberal power is good power, and trustworthy power.
Most of the arguments in this book are muddled in corporate liberal talking points that get in the way of a clear description of cancel culture. I find most of his arguments corporate, disingenuous, and inauthentic. He says that “right wing cancel culture is obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” however I’ve found that left wing cancel culture is “more obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” especially when you consider the ways that so called Left groups like Facebook cooperated with local police and federal agencies to murder Baltimore resident Korryn Gaines, persecuted Palestinian journalists for defending their homeland, and for carrying out James Comey’s attacks on so-called “Black identity extremists.”
In his Introduction, he mentions how the concept of cancelling came from the “Love and Hip Hop” Reality TV show which he says he likes to watch, but he does not probe how the storylines its actors play out follow the dictates of its producer Mona Scott-Young, nor how she follows the dictates of her superior Brad Abramson who expects some amount of “drama” to draw Nielsen ratings. Owens’s analysis is shallow and ignores the ways that white ownership of television and internet media make money by continuing to parade and incentivize the dysfunctional behavior of Black people. From the Introduction it goes downhill.
He claims in the next section that “in the hands of conservatives,” cancel culture has “reinforced entrenched power structures.” I couldn’t help but think of Russiagate, and how every Left media outlet, from MSNBC to DemocracyNow.org cancelled so many people in the Left if you did not agree that Russia stole the 2016 presidential election, instead of Hillary’s poor choice not to campaign in several swing states including Michigan. That was the Left reinforcing power structures, not the “conservatives.”
Owens’s discussion of Jesse Williams celebrates his nicely worded 2016 speech at the BET Awards that cancelled the reply by Justin Timberlake. However, I was expecting so much more of Owens’ analysis, like how Wililams’s entire 2016 speech celebrating Black identity was completely negated by his choice to leave his then wife, Aryn Drake-Lee to date Jessica Alba.
Owens claims “the election of Trump emboldened a culture of toxic hostility toward minorities.” Nothing has been more toxic to the culture of Black people than Democratic presidential administrations. During Obama’s eight years, the public sector shrank more than during any other president, and Joseph Biden locked up more Black and brown people with his 1994 crime bill than any Republican president since the 70s.
Owens writes: “Cancel culture is what has given me, a Black Queer millennial the freedom that so many others take for granted.”
As a Black Queer Generation X-er, I’ve seen “cancel culture” do nothing but create online mobs and monsters to ultimately destroy an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves. It destroys an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves because its in the hands of those who use their capital, liberal or conservative, to push their corporate agenda. Cancel culture is nothing but detrimental. As Kenny Babyface Edmonds told Jason Lee this month, “cancel culture destroys artists.”
Both liberal and conservative media used their capital to cancel Jeffrey Epstein, but to this day they have protected most of Epstein’s clients. In most cases, when corporations cancel someone they are “saving their face” or “covering their ass” to keep advertiser revenue. They are not upholding some noble cause as Owens argues. It is not a form of democratic expression, but a tool to punish someone and put up a facade to support whatever cause they want to claim.
Owens’s analysis is most shallow in his section called “Cancel Culture Been Here,” where he writes that “MLK cancelled racial segregation in America.” As the liberal Pew Research Center showed, since the 1970s the racial wealth gap has widened in America, and cancel culture could only play a constructive role in that widening because it celebrates only token progress.
Malcolm X made clear in his 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech the difference between a Black revolution and a Negro revolution. A Negro revolution is not a real revolution and is composed of only token progress. Owens’s whole book celebrates token success of Black people and not actual success. Its clear that Cancel Culture promotes tokens.
He claims that the “March 4 Our Lives” event after the shooting at the Marjorie Stoneman High School “cancelled gun culture,” but delivering speeches did not cancel the lobbying power of the National Rifle Administration. They’re now stronger than they were before that march. Owens distinguishes Black Lives Matter from Antifa, and again fails to discuss the corporate controls over BLM by the Open Society Foundation. I found his defenses laughable. He defends Disney by saying they provide disclaimers that their films promote one culture over the other.
What is more fascinating to me is how Disney’s conglomerate with the Lifetime network has raked millions creating what Ishmael Reed has called a “Black Boogeyman” industry by creating monsters in Kevin Hunter in the documentary about Wendy Williams, and by creating a monster in Lifetime’s documentary about R. Kelly. Owens mentions the latter film and the “disgraced” Dr. Bill Cosby as proof that cancel culture works, however this way of looking at cancel culture completely eliminates any discussion of how consent figures into the behavior of those who accused R. Kelly and Dr. Cosby.
Those who ask about whether consent figures into these accusations are instantly accused of victimizing the victimizers and are immediately censored. This is why cancel culture is destructive.
Later, Owens writes very wisely that if you make a mistake you should be offered grace, however “we’re selective about who gets grace.” This is why cancel culture is detrimental and should not be celebrated. Owens mentions Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson being “cancelled” by the U.S. government for criticizing Jim Crow, but he misses the class dynamic and how discriminating racially maintained a certain profit motive for the elite.
His mention of Anita Hill avoided how she was wrongly coached by a California judge Susan Hoerchner who, as Charles Ogletree writes in his book “All Deliberate Speed,” told Anita Hill she was harassed by Clarence Thomas. Ogletree wrote her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This told me, the reader of Ogletree’s book, that I should not have believed Hill’s claims. Nobody should have to tell you when you’re harassed. Anyone who did not experience your harassment, nor witness to your harassment, should not be writing your public testimony about it. But Hill seized her chance to try to use the media in a salacious disingenous attempt to cancel Clarence Thomas. Owens claims that Anita Hill was ignored but Catherine Blasey Ford was listened to. The claims of both women were dismissed. Its clear that Anita Hill was in fact listened to more than Blasey Ford. Professor Anita Hill listened to the wrong advice in their attempt to tank the nomination of Clarence Thomas who Joseph Biden as Senator voted for. Sexual harassment allegations are good for bored senate judiciary committee members, TV ratings, news headlines, but not for logical arguments about judicial qualifications. Owens fumbles Anita Hill.
Owens claims that since cancel culture, “we understand harassment and assault so much better.” This is not true. We understand how those with the capital and the ownership and exaggerate harassment and assault, and create monsters out of thin air. People argue that because so many women “came out” claiming they were assaulted by Dr. Cosby, then that means Dr. Cosby must be guilty. We also have many accusers including Janice Dickerson recanting their testimony and admitting that they were paid to make accusations. So we do not understand harassment and assault so much better.
We understand that anyone could be paid to claim assault and harassment, and get away with it.
As Owens writes in his last section, “imperfect people are determining imperfect scales of value.” I could not agree more. Those people made imperfect by their capital are sharpening their axes for their next victim that they believe their corporate agenda needs to cancel. In the last section of this book, Owens writes that “cancel culture has always been about power.” However Owens’s analyses needed to interrogate that power further.
Before reading this book, I despised cancel culture and after reading this book, I am more convinced that it should be ignored at all costs.
While I was not able to relate to the incomplete context provided by Ernest Owens book, I was able to completely, experientially, and theoretically relate to the complete context provided by Sam P.K. Collins in his book Babylon Be Still: How a Journalist-Educator Adopted an African-Centered Worldview.
This is a book that describes how Collins came to be an African centered journalist. At the time I am reading this book, I am infinitely more clear about my theoretical interests and my theoretical grounding which is, like Collins, thoroughly Pan-African. I highly recommend this book for those seeking context, identity and theoretical grounding outside of the conventional two-party Western political paradigm. The paradigm in this book is African centered, clearly grounded in the knowledge of Marcus Garvey, who is the subject of my forthcoming edited collection.
It consists of six parts, and each part has at least two chapters. The first part titled “Laying It Out, Plain and Simple” describes Collins’s beginnings as a journalist and his theoretical grounding as a Pan-African. Collins said “the universe blessed me with a circle of new people who shared my perspective and passion for institution building” (31). This is what makes the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Panther Party so interesting to me because those who founded had this “passion for institution building.”
Collins also describes the function of white supremacy when he writes that “the system of white supremacy was designed to siphon African greatness for the benefit of the white elite” (33).
The second section called “Navigating the Academic Waters” discussed the progressive disillusionment with the NETROOTS conference which was a gathering of progressive activists started by Howard Dean. The third section called “Young Lion Awakens” includes articles from Collins’s independent media outlet AllEyesOnDC.com discusses Collins’s growth as a Rastafarian: “the further I drifted away from Christianity, the more aspects of the somewhat similar Rastafari livity resonated with me, especially as I carried along on my journey to a higher African consciousness” (62). In Collins’s article called “I’m Tired of Protesting,” Collins writes about the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” Sandra Bland, and Ethiopians in DC, “unbeknownst to many, Ethiopians and African Americans share a history of rebellion against imperialistic European forces” (79).
His 2016 article called “It’s Not Over: Practicing Kwanzaa in the New Year includes a powerful manifesto: “nothing else can extinguish the economic power of violent police forces and genocidal figureheads better than a mass consolidation of Black finances” (100).
This is the opposite argument of Jared Ball’s book The Myth of Black Buying Power. Like Collins and unlike Ball, I’ve never believed this buying power is a myth. With crypto currency, it becomes more elusive and more potentially influential. I appreciate at the end of this section how Collins sees his work as a journalist and writer, in being able to shape the minds of his readers: “I’m planting seeds of revolution in their mind” (108). He continues: “viewers should have some media literacy and understand how and why their news sources present certain news and viewpoints” (108). This was an article about Kwanzaa and the new year and he said we should “become a more conscious people, breaking out of our mental slavery, one chain at a time” (109). This was a reference to Marcus Garvey’s 1927 speech warning his audience about the danger of “mental slavery” since the abolition of chattel slavery in the U.S. Civil War. This “mental slavery” is carried out by the mainstream media.
His fourth section called “The Politics of Nation Building” Collins describes his growth during the Obama administration: “during the age of Obama, I’ve taken a Black Nationalist political consciousness” (121). Of Obama’s policy, Collins writes that “after cutting Pell Grant funds often used for matriculation to historically Black colleges and universities, Obama chastised school administrators for mismanagement of funds and low graduation rates” (129). This is why Collins says that he will no longer vote Democrat.
Like Collins, I’ve abandoned the Democratic Party, especially after studying the tremendous impact that third parties have had on this country, from the Liberty Party in the nineteenth century to the Black Panther Party in the twentieth century. Collins defines his departure towards Black Nationalism when he writes: “Its a fear of mine that we’ll accept piecemeal change and not truly grasp the opportunity to write and create sustainable institutions that work in the interest of Black people” (141). He has an awesome article in this section called “Black liberals, their use of ‘Hotep,’ and ‘Ankh-Right’ and a Denial of a Nation Building’s Merits” where he writes that “it is my hope the Black liberals get to embrace their African heritage” (165). This is exactly what I thought while reading books by authors like Owens who just sound like they’re repeating Westernized corporate talking points that dismiss the importance of Pan African heritage.
His part five is called “Instilling Knowledge of Self in African Youth (2016 to 2019)” and resembles my experience teaching in a public charter school. Collins writes about resisting the identity of being a colonial educator when he writes:
“I wouldn’t make that total plunge [away from being a conventional, traditional educator to pursuing writing full time] until my termination from Paul Public Charter International High School on May 24, 2018. That event culminated a turbulent year during which I faced forces, in students and adult colleagues alike, that disregarded consistency, discipline, accountability, collaboration, honesty, and knowledge of self. Up until my last day, I espoused those principles, as taught to me by my family and in the readings of Marcus Garvey and others. Earlier in the school year, I applied for, and accepted, the opportunity to explain to a group of white educators in Pittsburgh the need for an African centered education for African youth.”
I appreciated Collins’s candor and his relating his own growth as a Pan-Africanist to trying to be a mentally stable public school educator. In his article “Leading the Charge: Equipping Our Black Youth with Knowledge of Self,” he describes the personalities that our youth are encouraged to adopt: “a false Black identity currently parroted in popular culture is rooted in criminality, sexual promiscuity, dysfunction, lack of industry, perpetual victimhood, economic immobility and a persistent source of otherness” (221). These are stereotypes promoted in the so called reality TV that’s only a reality for the producers promoting Black dysfunction.
I especially Collins’s literary analysis of Alice Walker’s 1973 short story “Everyday Use” which centers on a conflict between two sisters over a quilt: one college educated sister who wants to put the quilt in a museum and the other sister who didn’t go to college who wants her child to use the quilt to sleep with. Collins compared the personality types in that story to today’s personality types: “the young [college educated] African woman reintroduced as Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo…does not exemplify how the newly Africanized must treat well meaning family members struggling to reconcile their kin’s evolution in Afrikan consciousness” (227).
Collins insists that Wangero, known to the family as Dee, “squanders an opportunity to include her family in her Africanization” (231). Also, her sister Maggie who did not earn a college degree “ends up on top.” Collins concludes about Dee that her desire for the family quilt in the story was perhaps more about “a need to monopolize access to her lineage” (237). Collins compares Walker’s Dee to “a cohort of contemporary Afrikan-centered social media pundits and figures who abhor serious scholarship and lack nuance in their assessment of complicated Afrikan freedom fighters.” Collins writes that “they embrace their ancestry not out of respect, but out of a desire to appear the purest among the collective” (239-40).
I couldn’t help but remember Stephanie Mills telling Vlad TV that Black journalists like Gayle King should not be exploiting Black artists like R. Kelly and how it behooves Black journalists in their coverage not to promote racist stereotypes and try to appear “the purest among the collective,” but to genuinely respect their ancestry through their coverage.
In his sixth section titled “The Covid-19 Files,” Collins has three very important articles. In his first article in this section titled “An Open Letter to My Fellow Pan-African Nationalists,” he writes that “throughout the 20th century, too many organizations fell to the wayside because the surveillance state manipulated internal squabbles” (241).
Like Collins, I am excited about being able to apply the principles taught by those conscious who came before us in order to avoid being manipulated.
Collins himself in this article writes that: “I doubled down on my commitment to rectify schisms within myself and my African family” (245). Collins describes a criteria that eliminates those forces which are using their token position to advance white supremacy: “the quintessential Pan African revolution will revolve, and only revolve, around those devoid of ego who’ve expressed a commitment to their healing and that of their family and community” (247). That includes de-programming from the colonial order and deconnecting from those subconscious thoughts that keep us tied to the colonial order.
Collins provides more details at the end of this article when he writes that “we must strive to raise above our differences and commit to direct action that produces more results of merit for several generations to come” (257). His last article in this section titled “The Creator: A Conduit Between Africans and the Ancestors specifies” the direct action he mentioned: “by mentioning the Most High through prayer and a pious lifestyle, the Africans of yesteryear kept their environments clean and gained internal foresight and knowledge needed to imagine and create—their heaven on Earth, before and during European colonization and terror” (275).
His last article argues “the masses we want to cajole into a liberation mindset don’t exist…because a segment of our population has espoused individualism to the point where they’re ready to defect from their group and create another entity within minutes of a verbal disagreement” (294). I found his most conclusive statement to be “those of us with the heart of lions must close ranks and learn all that we can in separating away from this society” (297). His last points remind all of us of how Africans came to the West: “chattel slavery and subsequent forms of European exploitation thrived on the cooperation of Africans who lacked courage and fidelity to Pan African nationhood” (299).
Collins’s book leaves me motivated to not allow the surveillance state to manipulate squabbles with me or Africans I know to continue the centuries long exploitation. Collins’s book underscores the importance of theory which is, how you look at or study an event, person or phenomena. His book encourages me to understand the ease with which nation is maintained. -RF.
Suzan-Lori Parks’s stage adaptation of Perry Henzell’s 1972 film “The Harder They Come” opens within the week at the Public Theater.
In the original 1972 film, Jimmy Cliff plays the character of Ivan, who comes from the Jamaican countryside to live in urban Kingston and make his name as a recording artist. The audience likes him and cares about him because he stands up for the exploited and the oppressed in the major institutions in Jamaica that wield influence in this country: the church, the music industry, and the ganja trade.
This stage adaptation by Suzan-Lori Parks must be seen for three reasons.
One, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the popular influence that the music like artists like Ivan had on their urban environment. This aspect should remind the audience that the role of an artist is that of a public servant, and not a corporate manufactured Western celebrity.
Two, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the potential for all record label owners, like the character Mr. Hilton, to become a convert and promote the conscious music of artists like the film’s Ivan, the real life Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, and Bob Marley who stood up for the oppressed. In the original, Hilton never becomes a convert and never promotes Ivan’s music throughout the film, like the real-life treatment of Bob Marley’s music in 1970s Jamaica. Parks’s adaptation shows how record label owners can squander billions by ignoring the demands of the masses for music with a political message.
Three, this adaptation must be seen for the UNFORGETTABLE performance of Ivan by Natey Jones. Jones sounds so much like the original Jimmy Cliff. His performance makes you root for him; Jones’s performance makes you want him to get the record deal; his performance makes the audience want to have his music played across the city in order to raise the consciousness of his listeners.
In these aspects, Parks’s adaptation captured the essence of the original film.
Although this adaptation must be seen, it also suffers from serious flaws that detract from the meaning of the film.
First is the undeveloped or childish way the relationship between Ivan and his love interest Elsa is shown. In the stage adaptation, Ivan covers his selling ganja from Elsa and his mother and refers to it as a “fishing business.” This makes the stage version of Elsa look foolish and gullible. In the original film, it is obvious that Elsa is aware of and condones Ivan’s selling ganja, as she cares for Pedro’s son. This part of Parks’s script panders to U.S. respectability politics and undermines the power of the relationship between Ivan and Elsa.
It also forms the shaky foundation for their relationship, as it furthers the gap between Ivan’s growth in Parks’s stage version. Elsa is unable to grow WITH Ivan instead of against him, and by the second act, as Ivan is growing in his consciousness and militance, Elsa begs for Ivan to turn himself to the Jamaican police, a serious betrayal of the original script.
That is not the only relationship that Parks’s adaptation leaves undeveloped.
After a series of rewrites, its clear that Parks’s adaptation cannot handle the social relationship between Jamaica and Cuba. Her adaptation can’t appreciate how in the original film Jamaican Pedro forcefully sought to heal Ivan’s shoulder wound after his gun fight with police. In the original film, Pedro encourages Ivan to board a boat to Cuba where he can get free medical treatment for his wounded shoulder.
The film shows Ivan, his wounded shoulder, the consequent difficulty from swimming with such a shoulder, the boat, the Caribbean sea, as glaring metaphors for the barriers the average Jamaican faces living in a neocolonial island nation. These are absent in the adaptation.
The version I saw on March 11th completely erased Pedro’s lines to Ivan about going to Cuba, and simply shows Pedro changing the bandage on Ivan’s shoulder. This betrays the message of the original film about the reality of Jamaican life.
Despite these betrayals, this stage adaptation should be seen for many reasons.
Her adaptation fleshed out the characters of Ivan’s love interest Elsa and his mother Daisy who sing original songs that speak to their own development. It allows for Daisy’s awesome song in the second act “Many Rivers to Cross” to show the singing talent of Jeannette Bayardelle.
The song “Aim and Ambition” that Parks originates for Ivan is powerful.
There were scenes that the audience LOVED, which was the scene in the church where they members transformed themselves from church dancers to dancehall dancers. This scene is AMAZING and highlights the sacred nature of dancehall music.
Clint Ramos’s set design is absolutely remarkable awesome, it transforms from the stage to a church, to a recording studio, to a street in downtown Kingston, to a bedroom, and deftly handled Parks’s variety of scenes.
Japhy Weideman’s lighting was equally flawless and made the scene with Ivan and Elsa on the bicycle come alive, along with the scene of Ivan’s swim for the boat.
Emilio Sosa’s costume design is flawless for each character.
The intimacy between Ivan and his love interest Elsa was hard to believe and needed more work. The live band needed all the elements of the original film specifically the organ that was played in the original film. The live stage band’s sound was more like U.S. gospel instead of the tambourined Jamaican Shouter Baptist church that Ska sound came from.
With the exception of those playing Ivan, Lyle, Hilton, and J. Bernard, the entire cast needed more work on their Jamaican dialect to sound more convincing.
Chelsea-Ann Jones’s performance in the ensemble as shopkeeper, to whom Ivan pleads, was powerful and unforgettable.
Housso Semon’s performance as a Radio DJ named Lemon Soul and Newscaster was strong and convincing.
Garfield Hammonds’s performance as Hilton was stern and strong.
J. Bernard Callloway’s performance as the Preacher, and Ivan’s nemesis was strong and, like Natey Jones’s performance, deserves critical acclaim.
Special thanks to Jana Zschoche of the Public Theater for her gracious hospitality that enabled me to see this performance; special thanks to the House Manager at the March 12th performance for accommodating my guests Carlene Taylor and her son Caleb. Thanks to Saundra Gilliard for her support in my writing this. Special thanks to playwright David Heron for his phone call and conversation that inspired my review. -RF.
From Saturday November 5th to Saturday December 10th, Dr. Jared Ball and I read and discussed two chapters a week of Neal Gabler’s book “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. On Saturday November 5th, we discussed the introduction and the first chapter; on Saturday November 12th, we discussed the second, third, and fourth chapters; on Saturday November 19th we discussed the fifth and sixth chapters; on Saturday December 3rd, the seventh and eighth chapters, and on Saturday, December 10th we discussed the ninth and tenth chapters. -RF.
Photo of Dr. James Turner (left) with writer James Baldwin, ca.1970, from the book Discourse on Africana Studies: James Turner and Paradigms of Knowledge, edited by Scot Brown
Dr. James Turner who passed this August, was one of the pioneers of Black Studies in the U.S. university who wrote a 1984 article called “Africana Studies and Epistemology.” In this article, Turner writes that many faculty “have succumbed to the orthodox norms of academic traditionalism in their pursuit of careerist aspirations for legitimacy and acceptability for the purposes of job stability and security” (181).
The books written by Keisha Blain clearly show that she is academic traditionalist because she writes about influential figures–specifically Amy Ashwood Garvey and Fannie Lou Hamer– in a context that makes these women look like lackeys for the Democratic Party.
A close personal study of each of these women, shows they are not simply lackeys for the Democratic Party but were radicals who challenged the machinations of the Wall Street-backed Democratic Party, a party whose popularity has dropped 33 percent this year.
In the September 9th issue of The New Republic, Keisha Blain penned an article called “Black Historians Know There’s No Such Thing as Objective History,” where she claims that “in a white dominated world and academy,” Black historians “are always fighting to assert our voices and histories into spaces designed to exclude us.” However in the process of asserting “voices and histories” Blain downplays the seminal work of these women in resisting the harmful policies of the two party mainstream.
In her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, Blain writes more of Amy Ashwood Garvey’s public statements endorsing integrationism than Black Nationalism. For example, in quoting Ashwood’s words at the April 1944 conference hosted by the Council on African Affairs, Blain writes: “maintaining the belief that interracial political unity was a necessary step toward ending political rule, Ashwood added ‘I see no ill in finding white allies’” (Blain 149). In Blain’s words, Amy Ashwood Garvey becomes an integrationist. Blain’s writings about Amy Ashwood Garvey turn her into an integrationist who sought cooperation with the N.A.A.C.P. when in fact Tony Martin writes about her nationalist identity, seeking advertising space in the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Speaks newspaper for sponsors of her concrete enterprise in Liberia.
Tony Martin put Amy Ashwood Garvey in her proper nationalist context, rather than a figure seeking approval and integration into Western white organizations.
In Blain’s latest book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, she situates Hamer as an inspiration for Democratic politicians like Kamala Harris. Although Blain puts Hamer’s work in the context of the popular causes of the Black Lives Matter movement, she does not apply the most enduring and important principles of Ms. Hamer’s speeches. For example, Blain quotes Hamer saying “time out for white people…hand picking the leader that [is] going to lead me ’cause we ain’t going to follow” (65-7). However she does not show how Hamer practiced this principle in her own life. In the conclusion of this book, Blain references Kamala Harris’s 2020 Democratic National Convention speech that mentioned “structural racism” as evidence that Hamer “helped to frame” Harris’s political vision.
This is a vision by Harris that allows the city of Jackson in Hamer’s state of Mississippi, to not have running water, while the federal government stands by, failing to respond. Yet this government finds the money and the weapons to deliver to the Ukraine, which has clean running water. A close read of Hamer’s autobiography, available on SNCC Digital, reveals that Hamer did not believe the policies of the Democratic Party should go unchecked by Wall Street.
Blain’s frame of Fannie Lou Hamer as one who inspired Kamala Harris downplays the failure of the federal government in addressing the very real systemic racism in Mississippi that the Democratic Party has demonstrated it is unable to address.
My forthcoming book details exactly how Blain mischaracterizes Amy Ashwood Garvey and is scheduled for release in June 2023 by Arawak Publications. It is entitled To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin and features articles by Joshua Myers, Ian Smart, Rupert Lewis, Geoffrey Philp, Latif Tarik, Wendy McBurnie, Ophera Davis and April Shemak.
Blain writes that “the work we do has the potential to shape national debates and inform policies that have broad implications for all Americans.” It behooves her and the academic establishment that supports her to ensure she writes about these influential women in a deeper context from which they emerge so as not to distort them into corporate lackeys for personal career advancement. -RF.
In the first ten days of our trip, we stayed at a pastoral or “bucolic” retreat named Volmoed. We attended a service like the Anglican church service I grew up in. This service was attended by young Cape Townians, one of them who reminded me so much of my sister named Amahle. On the first day, we attended a service of a church in Zwelihle and later that evening. We later had an important conversation on poverty of the material versus poverty of the spirit. Those we passed in Zwelihle definitely were rich in spirit.
The next day, which was Day 4, we attempted to get a whale watching tour, however the weather conditions were too windy, so the tour (photo below) was cancelled. We did however visit one of the highest peaks of Hermanus, the suburb of Cape Town, which was Hoy’s Koppie (photo above with Dr. Navita Cummings James of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida).
That Sunday the 21st, so many things happened. First, I was invited to preach at the same church in Hermanus that the Archbishop Desmond Tutu attended; second, I attended an amazing service at the All Saints Church in Zwelihle that reminded me of my mom’s Baptist church in Mitchell Town, Clarendon, Jamaica. The All Saints Church in Zwelihle was spoken in Xhosa, a language first exposed to me by my father when he took me and my younger sister to see the Broadway musical Sarafina! in 1988.
Above is a photo of the All Saints Church in Zwelihle and with his hands raised is Father Jerry Gelant who introduced me when I gave my sermon at the All Saints.
When I finished my sermon, I thought I heard an owl hooting loudly outside the church building. When I asked Father Jerry whether that was in fact an owl hooting he said yes. For me the owl is a reminder of my grandfather, who came to me on May 13th, when I lived thousands of miles away from him the year he passed in 2019. And again on November 13, 2019 when I saw the same white owl outside my window. The first day I returned from South Africa, my mother told me that my Godmother, Aunt Laurel, passed on Sunday the 21st which was the day I heard the owl after my homily, or my small sermon.
On the fifth day we visited the headquarters of Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation which exhibited his work that included his notes and archival video including his early speeches. Below are notes on the Craddock Four who were murdered by South African security police.
Below is a photo of one of the most inspiring quotes I believe Archbishop Tutu said, which was that “the Holy book [or the Bible] says when a ruler gives you unjust laws, disobey.” This is what John Brown and Harriet Tubman did in the United States, they used the Bible to justify their intentional disobedience of the laws that upheld chattel slavery.
I want to thank Professor Michael Battle (pictured below) for planning an incredible experience in the #TutuTravelSeminar2022 and for writing an extensive 300 page biography of Archbishop Desmond Tutu that I reviewed in my previous post.
I want to thank Father Edwin Arrison for his outstanding guidance of this travel seminar and knowledge he shared about Archbishop Tutu.
On our second to last day we visited the Robben Island Museum where we saw the cell that Mandela was confined to. I couldnt help but think about how Mandela was originally sentenced to five years but after giving this speech entitled “I Am Prepared to Die,” he was sentenced to life on Robben Island. Knowing this inspires me to continue to fight for what I believe. It makes me continue to fight for the compassionate release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, whose only crime was trying to release U.S. citizens from the grip of drug addiction.
Below is the page signed by Michael and Edwin of the book about Tutu’s life.
Thank you to Father Ed Henley for inviting me to be part of this seminar and for funding my travel to and from it. I thank Father Ed for his support of me and my family, for believing in me, for suggesting I preach the homily, for reading my book about Toni Morrison’s last novel and being THE FIRST reader of my book to describe my book’s significance to me. Thanks to Sherre Henley for her tireless support of me and my work, and thanks to my Travel Seminar members who made this experience unforgettable.
(clockwise from left: Lori Reho, Navita Cummings James, Ed Henley, Sherre Henley, and James Reho)
“We cannot say that we believe in God if we hate each other–much less say we love God and do the same.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2021.
This quote by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of the Anglican church summarizes his message to the world profoundly captured by Michael Battle in his biography of him. This quote is in the afterword of Battle’s biography.
I grew up assuming the presence of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that spoke out against one’s own government while at the time encouraging the revolutionary elements to negotiate with the South African government supported by Neo-Nazi elements.
Since his passing in December 2021, I’ve wondered if my country’s government will in fact succeed in ignoring voices like Tutu’s. Michael Battle’s biography necessarily documents the significance of Tutu’s voice for a new generation.
The study of Desmond Tutu’s life is so important because in his lifetime, he criticizes not only the Afrikaner colonial leaders from the 1980s, but also he criticizes native South African neocolonial leaders.
The books is divided into three units: purgation, illumination, and union, each a phase of what Battle calls Christian mysticism. Purgation being Tutu’s formation as a church leader, an illumination which is acceptance of the light which is his leading role as chair of the South African government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The third stage is “union” which Battle writes his Tutu being designated as a global Elder and sage. The single MOST important quote of this entire biography was in the twelfth chapter:
“Tutu helps us see how Western imperialism can no longer shape how Christians engage the world” (284).
The first five chapters make up the first unit, “purgation,” where we learn how Tutu grew up. An important group for Tutu was the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, as well as Trevor Huddleston: Battle wrote that Tutu learned from both that “there should be no effort to ease the tension between his religion and his political activity” (28). Battle would write in this chapter that “getting the oppressor to see God in common with the oppressed was Tutu’s greatest contribution and what Tutu will be known for throughout human history” (34). In the third chapter, Battle writes that for Tutu it seems as if there is a conspiracy “among certain Western countries and big businesses to keep Blacks in South Africa forever in bondage” (65).
Battle details Tutu’s thorough class and color analysis when he writes that “Tutu believed that the South African government provided substantial privileges and concessions to certain blacks in urban areas thereby co-opting them to form a buffer between the white capitalist haves and the Black have nots.” Battle reminds us that Tutu shows us that society is a result of hard work of the Afrikaner (Dutch-descended South African) making the African-descended South African feel inferior. In this formative stage of Tutu’s development, Battle writes that Tutu was thankful that Beyers Nande emerged because he was a leading Afrikaner cleric who challenged the status quo. Battle would write that Nande lost his Anglican parish for “refusing to retract his signature from the 1960 Cottesloe Consultation. The most profound point Battle makes ending this unit is that “the more vilification he got from the government, the higher his stock rose in the Black community and overseas” (98).
Battle begins his fifth chapter equating the election of Nelson Mandela to the “end of apartheid” (127). However the writings of John Pilger and Ali Mazrui tell us that apartheid did not die after the election of Nelson Mandela, it simply changed forms. This is the only part of the book, where Battle did not thoroughly enough describe the consequences of Tutu’s choices. In this fifth chapter, he writes that Tutu “looked forward to international financial investments and he hoped, aid, which would help “our infant democracy to succeed, because South Africa will be the locomotive to drive Africa’s economic train” (127).
However these foreign investments came at a cost. According to John Pilger,
“with Mandela’s reassurances, foreign capital, led by American companies, surged back into Southern Africa, tripling its stake to $11.7 billion. The unspoken deal was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule: the ‘crown of political power’ for the ‘jewel of the South African economy’ as Professor Ali Mazrui put it” (Freedom Next Time p.221)
Tutu’s choice to go to the West asking them to fund the South African government contravened what Malcolm X warned in his 1964 speech to the United Nations warning leaders of African nations not to take foreign aid. As I finished reading this book, I wondered if I would be reading it if Tutu had not chose to appeal to Europe for their funding the South African government.
In his second section called “illumination,” Battle describes Tutu’s role as a mediator and how he was seen by some South Africans as a traitor: “he is viewed by Black South African scholars such as Itumeleng Mosala as betraying the struggle of the oppressed with too close a tie with European theology” (154). Battle describes Tutu’s theology as one of Ubuntu, a concept of Bantu cosmology that means “human beings need each other in order to be human” (46). Battle writes that “for Tutu, God takes the side of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien” (197). Tutu played a supportive role in the South African Council of Churches that helped the Anglican church. Although he played a helpful role, he made it clear that “Tutu remained reluctant to be a member of any political organization” (197).
His ninth chapter entitled “Leaving Church” that ends the second unit of “illumination,” Battle describes how Tutu’s work went beyond the Anglican church and that “the Christian must be more aware of how the church cooperated with colonialism and how historically white churches had a lot to gain by separating human beings on the basis of race” (214). This recalls Fidel Castro’s interview with Frei Betto in the book “Fidel and Religion” where he says that “imperialism doesn’t allow social changes to take place; it doesn’t accept them and tries to prevent them by force” (186).
In his last unit called “Union,” Battle describes Tutu’s influence on the world. Battle cites Tutu saying that Blacks would welcome the Russians as their saviors from the evil of apartheid. Battle writes that he was sought over the world to lend his help, from: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, the Congo, Gambia, Honduras, Mauritius, Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the Solomon Islands. Although Battle says that Tutu “never supported the invasion of Iraq on grounds of just war theory,” Battle does not question enough the role the West plays in its setting up “democratic governments” across the world (238). Although Western media calls these “democratic,” the intrepid work of journalists like Marcus Garvey and Julian Assange reveal to us that these governments are “military dictatorships” that absolutely contravene those principles Tutu espouses. Battle comes closest to questioning the role of these dictatorships when he writes what Tutu says about Nicaragua: “The USA supports quite vigorously those called Contras in Nicaragua” (238). Battle comes even closer to the U.S. support for military dictatorships when he asks the question to Christians: “when Christians go to war, what are we defending?” A hierarchy that was set up by Western interests that does the same this former colonial masters did? This should NOT be what we set up.
In his 1986 speech at the National Press Club, James Baldwin said that the European vision of the world is obsolete. This vision relies on supporting military dictatorships. Battle makes clear that Tutu does defend the work of revolutionaries who defend freedom from colonial oppression when he writes that for Tutu “violence may in certain situations be necessary” (243). Battle underscores this point when he writes that “what is most required by spiritual leaders is a prophetic stance against the ready assumption of Western capitalist triumphalism” (251). Battle writes that the Western church “needs unity” so it can address the “sin of an international economic system that depends on an indebted developing world” (252). This speaks to why Tutu appealing to the European banks to fund the South African government is a contradiction.
Because of the Anglican church’s conservatism, Tutu was not able to lead the Church to unity over same sex blessings. And Battle describes South Africans’ resistance to Western feminism which is seen as “just another form of Western imperialism” (259). Battle describes one’s Christian walk as a battle in which one is fighting on every front: ” Those who followed Jesus sought union with God by defeating those forces endemic in the breakdown of human relationships…Jesus discipled those around him to move toward the demonic forces in order to cast them out from the world” (275).
In the twelfth chapter, Tutu writes that “every praying Christian must have a passionate concern for who is neighbor because to treat anyone as if they were less than children of God is to deny them in the validity of one’s own experience” (278). Although Tutu understands where violence can be used, Battle writes the holds up Tutu as a model of a Christian spirituality of liberation, because Tutu shows us how to refuse violence as the normative means by which to rescue the oppressed.
In the last chapter Battle describes differences between the “Western perspectives” and the “African perspectives” but does not describe what he means by “African perspectives.” What he described recalls the work of the Black psychologist Kobi Kambon in differentiating between African and European worldviews.
In his conclusion, Battle writes that “we learn from Tutu that we must oppose injustice and oppression as religious people, even at the cost of personal freedom, or life itself.” By writing this, Tutu recalls from the radical Christian tradition, abolitionists David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Pauline Hopkins and many others, all of whom opposed “injustice and oppression as religious people.” Battle is absolutely accurate in his assessment that “those who live in the Global North are far more socially isolated today than in any other time in history.” Therefore it is incumbent to be intentional about working with others to “oppose injustice and oppression” after a global pandemic. Tutu’s Afterword in Battle’s biography are his last published words: “I pray that I would have made a contribution in forming both a mature consciousness and conscience for those who say they believe in God.” Tutu did just that. Thank you to Michael Battle for documenting this. THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A FELLOW CHRISTIAN AND MY FORMER COLLEGE CLASSMATE CALVIN LIONEL NICHOLSON (1978-2022).
