Afrocentricity, “Culture” and Ujamaa without Socialism as Ideological Expressions of European Capital & Black Middle Class Material Life: A Review of Dr. Amos Wilson’s “Black on Black Violence”
This was written as a part of the Black Socialist Formation’s W.L. Nolen Program in which we engage in collective study with people on the other side of the walls in PA state prisons. The first text we studied together was Dr. Amos Wilson’s “Black on Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation in Service of White Domination.” This was my reflection to complete the book. If you or a loved one would like to participate, please send an email to pbs@pghblackworkercenter.org.
A month after our target date, and thirty-six years after it was written, I completed Dr. Amos Wilson’s “Black-on-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation In Service of White Domination.” Shout out to everyone who read parts or all of it. Very glad to have done this collectively. We noticed a tapering off of responses from the group and I myself struggled to finish. A consistent feeling was that I was reading something that had been said in the previous chapter. Making completing this text more challenging, chapters did not build on or reference one another, almost as if it was twelve different essays on the same topic. My response is broken up into the sections we were to read for July (chapters 7-9) and August (10-Epilogue) and then do a final reflection.
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Cover of “Black on Black Violence”
Chapters 7-9
In Chapter 7 “Inculcating the Beast,” Wilson’s focus is the “Black-on-Black criminal,” however, the term “Black on Black criminal,” and references to “the beast” in the title, and the very damning way he writes about this class of people he has created was more striking to me than the analysis. For me, this kind of framing actually essentializes Black people incarcerated for violence as completely defined by those acts. In other words, where else does a Black on Black criminal belong but in prison? Wilson’s framing forced me to try and remember that someone who has committed that kind of violence may be struggling with the effects of drug addiction, sexual abuse, or another trauma relating to the MAAFA, the great tragedy impacting Afrikan people over the last 500 years and not simply to see a monster. Curious how folks inside found this depiction. To my mind, this doubles down on the stereotypes created by the settler capital class about Black male savagery that justified enslavement and then incarceration.
Chapter 8, ‘Chasing the American Mirage,” looks at Black life and how criminal desires in the “Black on Black criminal” are created by the White ruling class. However, because these desires are unachievable with the use of legal means, criminal, violent means are used. However, because the White American ruling class wants this kind of violence, it rewards this behavior with a lack of punishment. While it is true that the U.S. legal apparatus has always allowed a certain level of homicide in Black communities to go unprosecuted as one means of dominance and population control, Wilson’s statement felt to me like a subtle call for greater use of incarceration as a means to solve the problem of violence. However, the fact that the ruling class that ostensibly created these desires and manages the courts is the same one behind the lack of availability of employment, and the miseducating school systems makes it clear no solution of theirs such as prisons will solve anything.
The chapter ends with Wilson suggesting three remedies
Seize the means of production or influence them in such a way that they can satisfy the desires that are created;
Radically modify the desires of the working/criminalized classes so that their pursuit of these values does not lead to their own self-destruction;
Radically transform the U.S. production and value systems and replace it with a new fairer, (blacker), more humane economic and social order.
Do we agree that remedies 1 and 3 are essentially the same? Up to this point, the text has not encouraged, or explained how to conduct, a national revolutionary struggle against the European settler colonial ruling class that would be needed to achieve remedies 1& 3, so the only feasible option in the context of this book appears to be #2. This becomes even more clear in chapter 12 when we see Wilson’s discussion of the Black community’s relationship with the police. This option is also one that serves the Black professional/salaried classes because it is proposing that all of the changes be made in the behavior of the working/criminalized classes, while demanding nothing of the ruling class and its State and I’ll say a little more about this in closing.
Chapter 9, “Dreams Without Means,”
This chapter focuses on conspicuous consumption, again, pointing out a relationship between a pathology in Black people’s lives, this one an obsession for expensive clothes, jewelry, etc. and what serves White people. Dr. Wilson argues the Black-on-Black criminal makes no investments in legal businesses like European settlers have done, which is not actually true. However, there were two insights in this chapter that resonated with me (a) Dr. Wilson offers a critique of the law-abiding general Black community as even more criminal for partnering with White society:
“The relative “non-criminality” and “law abidingness” of the vast majority of the African American community is not due so much to their moral superiority, (as is no more the case for the White American community), better judgement or “family background.” Rather it is due, in large part, to their introjection of a self-serving White American religious conscience, of White American ethical and cultural values, and more important —their desperate acceptance of an alien identity. For this acceptance they have been, and are, materially and socially rewarded (the poorer ones will be rewarded in Heaven) and have been permitted, unlike their criminal relatives, to purchase or to buy on credit the trinkets, condescending tolerance and attention of their White American or European counterparts.” (pp. 146-147)
This critique of the professional/salaried working class within the internal colony builds on the work of so many including, Dr. Carter G Woodson’s “The Miseducation of the Negro,” E Franklin Frazier’s “The Black Bourgeoise,” Malcolm X, and many more. Ironically, I think the African centered movement is itself concerned with being law abiding, which, again, Wilson’s discussion of law enforcement in chapter 12 clarifies. The second comment I felt was really insightful was his discussion of the alienation of Afrikan people from our body because of the alienation from Afrikan land and culture.
Chapters 10-Epilogue
Chapter 10, “Suicide,” returns to the theme that it is White society controlling Black people, particularly, Black men’s minds and that suicide is simply the other side of the Black-on-Black violent crime. I was disappointed to read Wilson, particularly as a psychologist, refer to someone who takes their own life as a “coward.” However, this feels aligned with Wilson’s emphasis on the need for “manhood,” a running theme of Wilson’s the conception of which needed more examination for its role as a contributor to violence.
Chapter 11, “Cosmic Causation,” put something forward I really liked and that is that it is unethical to not fight for Black liberation and to not do so has led to the “cosmic” consequences that have befallen the Black nation. Wilson’s description of the struggle for liberation as one for our future reincarnated selves, whether we take this literally and/or as a comment about how are present in our descendants, adds a Black cultural perception on struggle that I appreciate.
Chapter 12, “The Neutralization of Black-on-Black Violence offers Dr. Wilson’s solutions, which include the development of the Afrocentric ego or personality, development of Afrocentric values, creation of military, socio-political, economic systems and educational systems, the overthrowing of White leadership and the commitment to self-leadership and governance seemingly within an existing U.S. The section includes an extensive discussion on how to construct healthy relationships with law enforcement and how police might be both reformed and usefully engaged to deal with the violent Black on Black criminals that cannot be reformed, a view also shared in chapter eight.
The Epilogue is a series of press clippings and I didn’t really understand the point that was being made.
Overall reflection on the book
I walk away from this book with confirmation of the need to struggle within the African Centered movement about the contradictions in working to reconcile capitalism with African ontologies (the nature of our being/the universe) and epistemologies (the nature of knowledge) and the ease with deciding socialism is outside of these ontologies and epistemologies the way Wilson decides at the outset of the book. Looking at histories of socialism and its support for Black liberation struggles on the continent and in this country, socialism is a practice that is more focused on benefitting the Black working and criminalized classes, not only in the U.S. but around the Pan Afrikan world.
While there are powerful elements to the Afrocentricity framework that is promoted as a solution in this book as a protection from the harm, or self-annihilation, that capitalist racism causes the dominant tendencies of Afrocentricity are organized to materially benefit, predominantly, the Black professional classes that developed it as a framework. It provides material benefit to professional classes in three ways:
African-centered education and cultural development, provides jobs for Black professionals with the specialized training to provide art and culture for after school and summer programs, and festivals or arts organizations, analysis for the Black community and other forms of Black cultural programming.
We provide a type of community leadership that is appreciated and provides us some social benefits from this kind of work.
In its current formation, Ujamaa, or cooperative economics, is compatible with capitalism and Black capitalism and so we can create businesses, support one another and offer this as a strategy to the larger Black community.
These interventions do provide ideological benefit to Black working and criminalized classes, but, to my mind, without a state or state-like apparatus the interventions will not be at the numerical scale at which we can actually build liberation. Ironically, it is because the dominant, professional class, Afrocentric framework is partly rooted in European ruling class ideological notions about “culture,” that it does not bring us into conflict with that ruling class about the way it exploits the African working and criminalized classes. This reflection of ruling class culture ideology becomes another reason why it needs some adapting to bing the about national liberation for Black people as imagined in this book. This insight is hardly unique to me, revolutionary nationalists have long criticized cultural nationalism, of which Afrocentricity is a branch, for the way it does not engage the primary contradiction of capitalist exploitation. What needs to be sharpened about that criticism is rather than suggesting it is not possible for Afrikan culture to be a tool of liberation as seen in critiques about “dashikis” or “hoteps,” it would benefit from critique and corrections and I offer a mix of three below.
The European Ruling Class Origins of “Culture” As A Solution
African centeredness, as proscribed by the professional class, suggests we engage in African cultural informed, careful, and measured behavior that will not harm ourselves and our community. The model advocates overall Black national unity and the development of knowledge as a means of self-protection and advancement. This is all absolutely important, accurate, and life saving information. Malcolm X’s own testimony of the role of self-knowledge in his life is confirmation. However, because dominant Afrocentricity does not include an analysis of capitalism, and its sociological approach either ignores or explicitly rebukes capitalism’s greatest sociological critique, Marxism-Leninism, it has some similarities to the European framework of “culture” that has been developing since the late 1700’s. This framework of culture was offered by the European ruling classes in England and the U.S. to the European working classes as a counter to their radicality.
As explained in both “Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in American” by Lawrence Levine, and “Culture and Society: 1780-1950 by Raymond Williams, “culture” has been used as a strategy to offer “proper” behavior and cultural ideology as a substitute for better housing, jobs, healthcare, etc. In other words, “culture”can stand in the stead of or be a means to circumvent the material deficits caused by capitalism. Dominant Afrocentricity shares many aspects of this message and, in my experience, the movement is fairly critical of direct action against the system as a kind of fool’s errand to try and change White people. As the Afrocentric message only generally indicts the system and offers a framework of nationalism that heavily features “self-reliance,” it allows advocates to maintain their social/class position. I would also offer that it does not bring one into conflict with a criminal justice setting like a youth prison.
Challenges with Dr. Wilson’s Framework of Ujamaa disconnected from Socialism
In addition to ten pieces of guidance for “improved law enforcement’ and seven recommendations for community preservation and empowerment, the final chapter of the book offers five facts that must be understood in order to understand how to construct what Dr. Wilson calls Afrocentric “countervailing forces.” The 3rd of these facts focuses on the need to create a Pan African economic system because
“Under European domination and organization of the national and internation a economic systems and opportunity structures, disproportionate numbers of Africans are virtually forced to engage in the same criminal acts of violence against and oppression of African peoples as do the Europeans whose values they so vainly try to realize.” (p. 173).
The solution to this problem requires,
“The construction of an African-American ‘nation within a nation,’ a nation with a fully developed socio-political, socioeconomic system, fully invested in the ownership of the American production system to the point of obtaining an influential equity in it, and the conversion of that system from an instrument of African exploitation and death to one of African enhancement and life.”
Then finally,
“Collectively, if the African American population were considered a nation, it would rank as the ninth or tenth richest on earth considering its national income and wealth. It would be considered one of the largest African nations in the world and with its educated and trained classes, its relatively sophisticated population would represent a considerable challenge to the top ranking nations on earth today.”
To this final point about the size of the African American nation, it can be said that Black people in the U.S. have about $2T in “spending power,” but Dr Jared Ball’s work on “The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power” is a good source for us to investigate the limits of spending power framework. One of the limits is that the majority of spending for working class people is on housing, food, transportation, and health care and we don’t own enough of these industries to absorb that spending and, even if we did, under capitalism that would just support the development of the Black capital class. Couple this with the fact that the top .001% of wealthy individuals in the world have $32-$56T in combined wealth, which is about 60,000 individuals, and the problem of this plan and the limit of $2T largely spent on living costs becomes more clear. Add to this the idea of building an influential equity in capitalism when it is built on the exploitation of labor and enactment of imperialism in the African, Latin American and Asian world and this vision of Ujamaa leading to liberation feels both unrealistic and problematic.
This becomes the challenge we have to wrestle with and be honest about regarding Ujamaa as a form of Black economic cooperation under capitalism. Yes, we can and we should support one another economically, this is critically important as a survival strategy. However, while the capital class remains in place extracting the world’s resources, climate change continues to accelerate, wars are going on all over the world, and most of us are paying a 20% to 33% of our income to the state to police, miseducate and benefit the European settler capital class, it is not a strategy towards liberation. In fact, if the Afrocentric professional class dismiss socialism and radicalism, which have revolutionary aims, and instead claim Ujamaa has liberatory goals, then to my view, it is collaborating with the capital class in keeping us in practices which cannot lead to actual liberation.
The version of economic cooperation Wilson is offering is a certain do-it-ourselves approach that, again, has merit in survival but is not a long term strategy. Deciding to forego challenging the State and ruling class, like the European ruling class frame of “culture,” aligns with a right wing conservatism. I say this because this approach maintains the current class structure by not challenging it and Wilson actually encourages us to invest in it further in order to build “equity.” In fact, this book written in 1990 and demanding very little of the State would be aligned with the dominant political tendency of that era, neoliberalism, which was ushered in with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. We might remember, or do well to consider, Regan’s phrase from his 1981 inauguration speech, “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” In other words do not seek to have the State help you with your problems even though you are spending so much money on it.
We might also remember another part of this era in which the book was written and that is that it came at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic and mass incarceration spurred on in part by the Iran Contra Affair. Here, the cocaine the C.I.A. was bringing into the U.S. was underwriting the U.S. fight against communism in Nicaragua. In other words, it is the capital class that is both seeking to maintain Black people in an internal colonial position in the U.S. political economy while also seeking to stop socialism/communism from preventing their exploitation of other Latin American countries. If an African centered ideology is anti-socialist/communist, anti use of the State to solve problems, and anti-activism, whose ideology is it?
We have a revolutionary Black psychological tradition
I will close by noting one omission from the bibliography that is telling and that is the work of Frantz Fanon. Instead the work relies heavily on the Austrian neurologist and father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, which, again is contradictory in a work focused on getting the White man out of our minds. However, Wilson frequently returns to one of the book’s central themes, “the psycho-spiritual, and therefore true psychological father of the violent Black on Black criminal, is the racist White American man.” Given Wilson’s emphasis on African-centered learning for African American young men, the reliance on Freud was surprising and what a difference it would have made if he had built on the work of Dr. Frantz Fanon, whose Black Skin White Mask focused on internalized colonization almost forty years prior. However, I feel confident from my time working in White controlled or funded cultural spaces, including the two years I spent working as a probation office shortly after the production of this book, raising Frantz Fanon in a serious way would have made Dr. Wilson’s work with incarcerated young people, essentially, impossible.
This gets to the crux of the matter because this criticism is not only towards Dr. Wilson’s writing but just as much to emphasize from a Marxist or historical materialist standpoint, our ideas flow from our material circumstances and the dominant form of Afrocentricity reflects the precarious position of the Black professional classes. Ideas do influence those circumstances, yes, but, ultimately, our material world, the way we live and how that living is sustained will usually have the final say. We have phrases that support this perspective like “Whoever pays the fiddler calls the tune” or “money talks and bulls%^$# walks.”
If we want to be self-determined psychologically, we must be self-determined materially, which means we must collectively own the means of production. However, to my way of thinking, this will require socialism i.e. a state and means of production significantly controlled by Black, Indigenous, Latin and European working class people who have an interest in preserving and advancing African and Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, one that has a priority addressing the MAAFA and the development of people of oppressed nations and the overall working class. As long as capitalist racism remains, prisons for people of oppressed nation and the European working class are necessary. And one of the results of this is that we, particularly Black people, will be constrained both materially and psychologically, the unity of which I would call spirituality, and, tragically “self-annihilation,” and genocide will continue.
If you found this article helpful and have it to spare, would you please “buy me a coffee”? African centered socialist analysis of day-to-day life and organizing is not supported by the European capital class and so all support from working people is greatly appreciated and needed.
