by
DuBois prepared the world for Afrocentricity; the protector
of an idea who did not fully recognize its power but who would have shouted to
see it come. — Molefi Kete Asante (1988:16)
In
light of new attention on W.E.B. DuBois to commemorate the hundredth
anniversary of The Souls of Black Folks publication,
including David Levering Lewis’ (1993, 2000) monumental two volume biography of
DuBois, it is fitting to add an Afrocentric reading of this great African
American Ancestor. The apparent
popularity of Afrocentricity is reflected in movements of African Americans who
resist Western cultural hegemony by embracing their African heritage. This development is herein commended because
it suggests that African American communities are boldly engaging a functional
cultural philosophy[1] the lack of
which Harold Cruse lamented in his Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Cruse (1984) sees W.E.B. DuBois as the first
African American intellectual to point explicitly toward a functional cultural
philosophy,[2] directed, as
it were, toward: a) developing and maintaining the integrity of African
American culture, b) relieving African American economic plight and c)
recognizing the African agency and unmistakable influence on “American
culture.” Curse’s recognition of
DuBois’ contribution, was a passing exemplum.
The objective here is to reveal DuBois’ specific contribution to such a
philosophy and by extension, his ancestral bearings on the Afrocentricity - a
normative, socio-axiological corrective, intellectual paradigm and one of three
formidable Afrocentric answers to Cruse’s culture crisis thesis.
A
fundamental imperative of the Afrocentric paradigm is promotion of a
vindicationist commitment to the welfare of African peoples everywhere. It is in this light that DuBois is viewed as
an archetype for contemporary Afrocentric scholars. Molefi Kete Asante (1993) has proposed specific guidelines by
which one can assess scholarship for alignment with Afrocentric goals. Analysis or “location" of the language,
attitude and direction of writers assists in the vindacationist
need to determine a narrative’s relevance to African peoples' well being.
This essay affirms the sankofa principle in its
assessment of DuBois as an inspirational force under-girding such seminal
Afrocentric works as Asante (1987, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993), Harding (1981)
Carruthers (1972), Carruthers and Harris (1997) Karenga (1980, 1998, 2002), Ani
(1980, 1994), Nobles (1986) Welsh Asante (1994), James-Myers (1994), Alleyne
(1988), Gayle (1971) and Kambon (1998).
Development of an Afrocentric Sensibility
W.E.B. DuBois’ path toward accepting the cultural
imperative to forge a functional or corrective philosophy, as seen particularly
in his writings between 1903 (Souls of Black Folk) and 1940 (Dusk of
Dawn), is illuminated by the developments and influences on his life before
and during this period. Considering
some of the forces that shaped DuBois’ consciousness, we understand better his
connections to the Afrocentric project.
Despite relative freedom from overt racism
while growing up in Great Barrington Massachusetts, it was racism and white paternalism
that steered DuBois from a Harvard undergraduate degree. Nonetheless, it would have been impossible
for DuBois to regret, in retrospect, attending Fisk. For it was there in rural Tennessee that DuBois’ profound respect
for the African American culture was developed through extensive and dynamic
contact with the masses, who still exhibited African cultural world views and
aesthetic sensibilities, maintained because of their large numbers and relative
segregation from white society. During
this period, assessed as a “magical” fulfillment of his fondest dreams, he
“willed and lo! my people came dancing about me, - riotous in color, gay in
laughter, full of sympathy, need, and pleading; darkly delicious girls. Boys...who knew and understood, wrought out
with me great remedies.”[3] Such reflections on his Fisk years, reveal
an appreciation and love for African American culture and recognition of the
imperative that “rank imposes obligations.”[4] In addition, serving as a teacher in rural
Tennessee during summer breaks, DuBois observed and understood the poverty that
imprisoned most African Americans, although not his particular experience
growing up in Great Barrington. His
struggles to fund a Harvard and Berlin education, coupled with the realization of
social limitations at Harvard were realities that vented constructively toward
serving local communities in Boston via article submissions to local African
American periodicals.
Publication
of The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, affirmed DuBois as a significant
intellectual culture agent. His first
works, Suppression of the African Slave Trade (1896) and The
Philadelphia Negro (1899) had already distinguished him as a social science
voice of note. The Philadelphia
Negro was the result of another opportunity,
since Fisk, to intimately interact with the African American masses. In fact, this experience revealed insights
such as realization that African Americans “had a natural dislike to being
studied like a strange species” and his own confession that “I did not know so
much as I might about my own people.” (Huggins
1986, 14)
Nonetheless, DuBois was involved in the process of taking time to
meaningfully connect with and truly understand, the “souls of black.” This process would prove important to the
formulation and expression of the corrective cultural theories for which DuBois
is herein credited as progenitor.
In
Souls of Black Folk, Dubois (1969: xi) tries to “show the strange meaning of being black” in the
U.S., which reveals his process of getting to know African Americans and by
extension, their deep-structure cultural store - all the better to formulate
ideas for a liberating philosophy later explicit in such later books as Darkwater (1920) and Dusk of Dawn (1940).
His Atlanta based sociological studies of the Black Belt, partly
presented in Souls, further affirms DuBois’ commitment to engaging the
cultural power of the African American masses.
Concerning the spirituals, when DuBois (1969: 265) asserts that “they are out of the south unknown to me ...
and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine” he affirms his cultural
connection, across class, to all African Americans and by pan-Africanist
extension, Africans everywhere.
When DuBois (1969: 265) further argues that these “rhythmic cr[ies] of the slave
... stand today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most
beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas” he does two additional things of
significance. He affirms Cruse’s (1984:189)
assertion that “the cultural and artistic originality
of the American nation is founded, historically, on the ingredients of a black
aesthetic.” This assertion confirms the
“dogged” strength of African culture - a resiliency DuBois (1969:45) metaphorically attributes to our ability to keep from
“being torn asunder” by the struggle between two different and “warring”
cultural asilis[5]
as Africans enslaved by Eurocentric hegemony.
Secondly, DuBois’ (1969:265) statements
are nascent responses to what constitutes an African American aesthetic. In fact, he clearly vindicates African
Americans from the cultural crisis that finds them “neglected...half
despised...persistently mistaken and misunderstood.”
For
DuBois, the next logical step was to establish a propaganda apparatus by which
he could dialog with as many African Americans as possible. He found tremendous success with the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) backed
monthly The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races from 1910 until
1934. In fact DuBois’ path to
establishing a successful periodical exemplifies one of the stumbling blocks
Cruse attributes to African American cultural agents’ failure to procure a
functional cultural philosophy. DuBois’
prior attempts at editing a periodical by way of The Moon Illustrated Weekly
(1905-1906) and the Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line (1907-1910)
failed for a lack of financial and political support. In fact, DuBois’ famed political rows with Booker T. Washington
resulted in Washington’s effectively undermining the success of the Niagara
Movement and other ‘radical’ efforts. (Marable
1986:58)
DuBois’ dream for a successful and autonomous propaganda machine was
deferred yet again with the dissolution of the Niagara Movement and its organ, The
Horizon in 1910.
In an attempt to salvage the Niagara Movement,
the resilient DuBois (Marable 1986:70) proposed “a most ambitious proposal for
black unity” by proposing a coalition with the American Negro Academy, the
Afro-American Council, and the National Negro American Political League,
whereby resources could be pooled for effective civil rights battles. However, this proposal was defeated by
Archibald Grimké’s near-sighted insistence that the American Negro Academy, as
an academic institution, should steer clear of politics.
Despite
the fact that the NAACP was not conceived or organized by African Americans,
DuBois appears to have strategically supported this nobly intended, even if
paternalistic civil rights project. (Marable
1986:71) In fact, even as the only African American
to sit on its original board of directors, he undoubtedly jumped at this
opportunity to edit a periodical assured of sustained financial support. David Levering Lewis describes DuBois’ work
on The Crisis as a tremendous success, achieving a circulation of 350
thousand between 1910 and 1912. DuBois
packed each issue with critical views and information of the day, providing
readers with reviews of relevant books, profiles of accomplished African
Americans, and new research such as the March 1911 article on the “black”
characteristics of Ancient Egypt by Mary MacLean. For DuBois, the Crisis was an opportunity to offer the
gift of his blessings to inform, enlighten and inspire African American masses
from whom he had gained much insight, including a sense of group identity. DuBois had done similar work with the
Atlanta University People’s College, which offered affordable evening courses
to local folks. (Marable
1986:151) Thus, despite these distractions, DuBois remained attentive to the
compelling imperative to remain attuned to the pulse and needs of the African
American masses.
Historical
Limitation
Assessment
of DuBois’ role as a prototypal Afrocentrist is plagued by his early civilizationist
sensibility. Wilson J. Moses (1978:85)
conceptualizes civilizationist as the
pervasive Eurocentric ideology inflicting 19th and early 20th
century “nationalists” such as Henry Highland Garnet, Edward Wilmot Blyden,
Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell and
Marcus Garvey. The civilizationist
imperative places responsibility upon the shoulders of those who achieved
European education, “freedom and enlightenment” (Moses 1990:85) to bring about universal African redemption. Important to this perspective was an
understanding of civilization as a social developmental process based on
European notions of progress, technology and “enlightenment.”
Moses’ (1978: 85) assessment of Crummell as the
“African civilizationist par excellence” is important here
because DuBois (1969, 234) admittedly “bowed before this man, as one bows before
the prophets of the world.” Moreover,
DuBois (1920:70) is directly implicated by his
conviction that “Negroes in the United
States ... could easily furnish ... leaders of thought, and missionaries of
culture for their backward brethren in the new Africa.” Such a position that
conceives a hierarchy among African peoples, based on the degree of acquisition
of European education deserves assessment beyond what Moses offers. Despite, its merits for identifying DuBois’
intellectual climate and his entrapment by Western hegemonic myths of
“progress” and “modernism”, Wilson’s conception neglects interpretation of the
motive force behind this perspective.
In attempt to resolve the problem of the African colonial holocaust,
DuBois suggests that, faced with European domination Africans would do better
to have their sympathetic sisters and brothers of the Diaspora assist their
negotiations out of colonialism. Concerning
African Americans, DuBois’ assessment that:
Negroes live in districts of low cultural level;
...their contacts with their fellow men involve contacts with people largely
untrained and ignorant, frequently diseased, dirty and noisy, and sometimes anti-social ... not usually protected by the police -
rather victimized and tyrannized over by them ... saloons, brothels, and
gambling seek these areas with open or tacit consent (DuBois 1968:182)
is one of convicted vindicationist insight instead of empty,
malicious critique.
Toward A Functional Cultural Philosophy
During
the time period of 1903 to 1940, DuBois published eleven works, including two
novels, a biography, historical treatises and anthologies of essays on such
topics as African history, geography, socialism, labor, women, children, and
human rights. Of this DuBoisian canon Darkwater: Voices from within the veil,
and Dusk of dawn: An essay toward an autobiography of a race concept,
exemplify DuBois’ archetypal contributions to a functional cultural
philosophy. The scholarship of this
period demonstrates DuBois’ operation within an Afrocentric direction in
that his explicit goal is to liberate the African American ethos from the
clutches of Eurocentric hegemony.
In
addition to Darkwater’s fictional vignettes, DuBois engaged other works
to assist his application of art as functional propaganda. According to Moses (1993), DuBois’ novel The
Quest of the Golden Fleece (1911) is an aggressive challenge to outsiders’
view of African American sexuality.
Although this novel’s use of Eurocentric tropes may be analyzed as lynched
by Afrocentric critical standards (Asante 1992),
it paints a clear distinction between the African dynamic kugusa mtima[6](move
the heart) and the Western static aesthetic of art-for-art-sake. The protagonist asserts that although he
likes his women as well dressed and groomed as rich white women, he “did not
want them like the whites - so cold and formal and precise, without heart or
morrow.” (Moses 1990: 254; DuBois 1911: 235).
More
so than earlier works, Darkwater employs scholarship, polemics and kugusa
mtima to wage, unflinchingly, cogent historical and sociological criticism
of Eurocentric hegemony and its abuses.
For instance, in the essay “The souls of white folk”, DuBois
(1920: 38) deplores Belgium colonization of the Congo
as “invasion of family life, ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the
shattering of every tribal law and the introduction of criminal practices...a
veritable avalanche of filth and immorality” and concluding, as Fanon does
decades later, that “this is not Europe gone mad; this is no aberration nor
insanity; this is Europe; this seeming terrible is the real soul of white
culture.” (DuBois 1920: 39) Such criticisms of Eurocentric abuses
suggest DuBois' (1903: 45) progression from
the civilizationist position that “America has too much to teach the
world and Africa” to a more Afrocentric faith that “the destinies of this world
will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations” (DuBois 1920: 49)
By
way of pointing out specific pathways to African recovery, DuBois advises that
African American cultural productions even religion, ought to serve the
collective - hold the potential to transform social conditions. Each chapter bears a fictional vignette, and
the book opens with the poem “Credo”, which vows belief in “the Negro: in the
beauty of its genius, the sweetness of its soul” and other such ideals and principles
as God, Service, “war is Murder”, “liberty for all men”, “the training of
children”, and “pride of race ... lineage and self.” (DuBois 1920: 49) This
poem, which was also published in the Crisis, could be found framed and
displayed in the homes of many African Americans of the time. (Marable 1986)
Most of the vignettes have religious themes and
offer God’s redemption to the oppressed.
Some are short stories in which God and Jesus are represented as African
Americans, to the horrific realization of white characters. For instance, “Jesus Christ in Texas”
features Jesus appearing in Waco as bi-racial, but initially mistaken for white
and rejected after discovery. The story
revolves around the lynching of an ex-convict whose accuser eventually realizes
that her deed is equated with the persecution of Christ. Similarly in "The prayers of God”, a
lyncher makes a startling realization:
in thy Name,
I lynched a
Nigger ...
Awake me God! I
sleep!
What was that
awful word thou saidst?
That black and
riven thing - was it thee?
That gasp - was
it thine?
This pin - is it
thine? (DuBois 1920: 251)
Confrontations with religious regulations at
Fisk and Wilberforce universities, where dancing was forbidden, clarify DuBois’
subsequent disdain for religious myopia.
The ends served by these vignettes are indicative of his Afrocentric
view that spirituality is primarily for celebrating and serving human
individual and communal needs.[7] The vindicationist intention of this work
was so pioneering, courageous and nationalistic that it drew criticism from The
Nation, which complained that the book “carries with it a note of
bitterness, tinctured with hate and the teaching of violence.” (Villard 1920:
727) Similar criticism is leveled
against contemporary Afrocentrists who are similarly unapologetic in
challenging Eurocentric hegemony in the academy.
By
1940, DuBois had garnered the insight to write Dusk of Dawn: An essay toward
an autobiography of a Race Concept.
This work explicitly outlines an African American functional cultural
philosophy, and is the source of Cruse’s celebration of DuBois above other
“Harlem Renaissance” cultural agents.
Typical of DuBois’ broad humanist interest, this volume criticizes a
variety of oppressive forces. He
analyzes his then 72 years of life in context of grappling with racism,
scientific “objectivity”, culture, the NAACP, the European World War II, and
the Pan-African conferences.
Two
essays in this volume are of particular interest to the intellectual heritage
of Afrocentricity. "The Concept of
Race” sets out to define what it means to be of African descent beyond the
villainous pseudoscientific constructs of the time. Maintaining that “race lines were not fixed and fast” in America,
which led to “inner racial distinction in the colored group”, DuBois (Huggins
1986: 628) asserts the need to “emphasize the
cultural aspects of race.”[8] Such a maneuver anticipates the contemporary
Afrocentric emphasis on African cultural reality in analyzing African and
Diaspora phenomena.
DuBois’
account of his first trip to Africa in 1923 reinforced his pan-African
conception of African American culture.
Whereas, continental Africans were once described by DuBois as
“backward”, here his re-conceptualization of the African ethos is
revolutionary:
What of Africa?
Here darkness descends and rests on lovely skins until brown seems
luscious and natural. There is
sunlight... that wraps you like a garment.
And laziness; divine, eternal, languor is right and good and true.
(Huggins
1986:628, 646)
Such a view and celebration of aspects of African life in
African terms instead of through conventional Eurocentric lens, anticipated
today’s Afrocentric concern “with African people being subjects of historic and
contemporary social experiences rather than objects in the margins of European
experiences.” (Asante 1993: 99)
With
the “The colored world within”, DuBois (Huggins 1986: 681) asserts that the overall plight many African Americans face
“have clear … well-known and remedial causes” and proposes an ambitious social
organization plan for remedy. The plan
was to create new social institutions because organizations such as the
American Negro Academy and the NAACP lacked a nationalist thrust[9],
had not meaningfully affirmed or employed African cultural values and
imperatives. In fact DuBois (Huggins
1986: 693) warns against “those who most vehemently
tell the Negro to develop his own classes and social institutions, [but] have
no plan or desire for such help” a view very much in keeping with Cruse’s (1986:518)
concern with the cooption of African American
cultural agents by their European American colleagues and patrons.
DuBois'
(Huggins 1986) Cooperative Commonwealth
proposal capitalizes on the fact that African Americans constitute a segregated
social milieu within the larger U.S. society.
He is also attentive to and thus motivated by the African American
bourgeois concern over being forced to live among the poor masses - fearing
detrimental effects of proximity to “elements of low culture.” Thus to secure “cultural development” for
all and avoiding internal conflict, DuBois' corrective commonwealth plan sought
to raise the "cultural level" of those most oppressed with the
following aims and objectives:
a. “Double taxation” to fund independent schools
b. Unification of African
American church denominations
c. Artistic productions
“deliberately planned” and propagandized
d. Non-profit hospitals
and socialized medicine
e. Interest politics
f. Community-based legal
defense initiatives
g. Organized African
American consumer power
h. Autonomous publishing
firms
Although
such a plan would require extraordinary sacrifices from African Americans
committed to sewing seeds for future generations to reap, DuBois has left a
remarkable legacy which a number of contemporary African American cultural
agents have embraced. Since the 1960’s
Black Power movement, Black Aesthetics, Kawaida Philosophy, Black Studies,
Black Psychology and Afrocentricity as a refinement of Black Studies have
consciously accepted and carried this torch.
Maulana Karenga’s Kawaida Philosophy maps out a cultural guide for
recovery from what he diagnosed as an African American cultural crisis. Kawaida employs the best of African cultural
values from Ancient Egypt (Kemet) to the extant Dogon and Yoruba, in creating
the ritual holiday of Kwanzaa. Kawaida
philosophy was developed in the works of such artists as Amiri Baraka and Haki
Madhubuti who have built institutions that apply Kawaida imperatives. Indeed, DuBois’ cooperative commonwealth is
poised in the same corrective direction as Kwanzaa’s community-building
principles: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective
work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba
(creativity), and Imani (faith).
Beyond the larger African American cultural
crisis, Afrocentricity has addressed the cultural crisis in Black Studies. Asante (1988, 1990, 1991) outlines a path
for scholars and lay intellectuals to revive African cultural integrity, which
should be achieved when there is more discourse respectful of African cultural
reality. In fact, efforts at Temple
University (led primarily by Molefi Kete Asante, Kariamu Welsh (Asante), Ama
Mazama, Abu Abarry and T. C. Kato) to refine African American Studies into an
autonomous Africalogy discipline, fulfills DuBois’ (1933) call for a culturally
centered pedagogy and curriculum for training knowledgeable, conscious and
committed African American intellectual agents.
Additionally, efforts to employ the culture
nationalist imperative to the work of African American artists is articulated
by Addison Gayle (1971: XVI), who credits DuBois for striking “a note that has
found accord in the breast of contemporary black artists.” Gayle offers a forum for the committed
voices of such artists as Hoyt Fuller, Larry Neal, Richard Wright, Amiri
Baraka, Adam David Miller and John Oliver Killens, articulating an impressive
move toward realizing a functional cultural philosophy. Speaking for these cultural agents, Gayle
(1971:xxii) expands the standard American conception of aesthetics to offer
that the “Black aesthetic” is “a corrective - a means of helping black people
out of the polluted mainstream of Americanism." Adam David Miller (Gayle 1971:380) further asserts that “when we
write about ourselves from a point of view that takes black life seriously,
...we are creating a black aesthetic.”
Such a conviction is consistent with DuBois’ (Lewis 1995:514) charge
that the “Criteria for Negro art” should be determined by the extent to which
African American artists promote and secure a cultural ethos that “believe[s]
black blood human, loveable and inspired with new ideals for the world.”
A great many African American Psychologists
have also responded to the DuBoisian culture corrective imperative. Since its organizational emergence in
1968, Black Psychology has developed a committed discourse with a number of
unique theoretical departures from the American Psychological Association brand
of psychology. Black Psychology's
culture-based personality, identity and mental health theories and treatment
models are concerned with restoring and maintaining African American
psycho-spiritual health, injured by the enslavement holocaust and its legacy of
oppression. This paradigm shift in Psychology is attested by the works of Kobi Kambon
(Baldwin 1981, Baldwin 1989, & 1998), Wade Nobles (1975, 1984, 1986), Naim
Akbar (1979, 1985a,b), Linda James Myers (1987, 1993), Daudi Azibo (1991,
1996), Madge Gill Willis (1992) among others.
Conclusions
Afrocentric
location theory suggests that any literature that addresses African subjects,
can be read in light of its language, attitude and direction
to determine its value for African agency.
The direction of DuBois’ work is the attribute most in sync with
the goals of Africology in that his commitment to African and African Diaspora
cultural recovery is explicit. His
conception of culture is as functional as that of Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral,
Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, Molefi Kete Asante and Kobi Kambon and has made
profound theoretical contributions to the functional cultural philosophy to
which we have moved a lot closer today by way of Afrocentric scholarship and
praxis.
I
have assessed DuBois’ attitude as vindicationist, an important
Afrocentric imperative, defined in the 19th century as “the defense
of the [African] against vicious assaults.”[10] Thus he identifies and vilifies sources of
oppression against African peoples.
European aggression is described as “evil” and “devilish” in keeping
with a spiritualist tradition of demonizing oppressors who, for instance,
are “never done talking of Man, yet
murder men everywhere … in all the
corners of the globe” tragically resulting in diminished "access to what
is left of their human instinct." (Huggins 1986:694; Morrison 1994)
DuBois’
Cooperative Commonwealth is ammunition against oppression confronting African
Americans. His advocacy of independent
schools addresses his (still relevant) frustration that “it is almost
impossible for a Negro boy trained in a white Northern high school and a white
college to come out with any high idea of his own people or any abiding faith
in what they can do.” (Huggins 1986: 694)
Despite such vindicationist commitments, DuBois’ description of the
African American poor can be offensive to contemporary sensibilities. Such statements as “by practical and present
measurement, Negroes today are inferior to whites” (Huggins 1986:681) abound in
DuBois’ early works. However, careful
examination of the contexts of these statements yields a better understanding
of DuBois’ operation within his time.
Today the Afrocentric imperative to defend African American cultural
integrity makes us naturally very critical of such language[11]. However, appreciation of Dubois without
falling prey to anachronism, would require a fifth Afrocentric location
category, perhaps termed contemporary location, in order to fairly
assess a writer in her appropriate historical context. Thus, examination of DuBois’ work as
dislocated by today’s Afrocentric standards, ignores the vast historical
distance between him and us. It is safe
to assert that DuBois’ language use and attitude is in sync with the dominant
influence of his civilizationist contemporaries, especially those with
whom he shared the same political contexts and sensibilities. For instance, the more nationalistic Marcus
Garvey is no less guilty of a civilizationist sensibility than DuBois. Thus, it is important to observe the flow of
ideas around a writer’s life to determine if the lack of Afrocentric finesse is
primarily a result of their time and context.
Contemporary
African American nationalist consciousness in the form of Kawaida, Black Psychology
and Afrocentricity – especially in a neo-conservative political era - may be
easily taken for granted. However, the
task of determining the nuances of DuBois as a prototypal Afrocentric cultural
agent, requires further inquiry into his direct influence on contemporary
scholars. Further investigation of
DuBois’ contemporary context is also necessary for confirming the utility of
this addition to Asante’s location theory for Afrocentric textual analysis. In this, we rightfully venerate a most worthy
Ancestor in William Edward Burghardt DuBois.
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[1] The author has completed a study which explores Kawaida, Black/African Psychology and Afrocentricity as contemporary manifestations of the African American nationalist tradition toward addressing the issue of African American empowerment.
[2] By cultural philosophy, Cruse (1984:518) means "creative and artistic policies that will govern cultural program, organizations and self-sustained and -administered research institutions" and which would also "maintain a code of cultural ethics, a critical yardstick, … cogent and meaningful critique on society that might enable … viable and lasting institutions … that motivate progressive movements.
[3] Huggins 1986, 14
[4] Ibid., 6
[5] Asili is Marimba Ani’s (1994:xxv) conceptualization of the seed or essence of a culture.
[6] Marimba Ani's (1994) conception of the African dynamic sense of what's beautiful is kugusa mtima, ki-swahili concept meaning "to touch the heart." This dynamic sense of aesthetic includes the Black Aesthetic school's notion that the goal of art is to transform conditions from bad to good. Also see Gayle (1972:p.xxii)
[7] In fact, Ani (1980:52) advocates that African Americans "turn our spirituality, our ethos our Africaness into … a powerful political force for liberation and self-determination."
[8]Karenga (1980:18) has argued similarly that culture is poised in corrective directions when conceptualized as: "the self-conscious, collective thoughts and actions by which a people create, celebrate and present themselves to the world."
[9]Pinkney’s (1993:215) general definition of African American nationalist ideological orientation includes a collective desire for and promotion of: unity, solidarity, pride in cultural heritage, and some degree of autonomy from the larger society.
[10] St. Clair Drake (1987:xvii) draws this conception from the American Negro Academy’s mission statement.
[11] Interestingly, William J. Wilson (1987) would argue that DuBois was correct in painting such nominally harsh descriptions of African American poverty because realistic descriptions of the problem is seen as a critical step toward solutions.