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The Future of Public Health Must be Radical: Incorporating Racial Capitalism

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The Future of Public Health Must be Radical: Incorporating Racial Capitalism

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Yesnely Anacari Flores, Harris Munger Greenwood

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The Future of Public Health Must be Radical: Incorporating Racial Capitalism - Yesnely Anacari Flores, Harris Munger Greenwood, 2023

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Racism impedes the health of communities of color and, more recently, has been declared a public health crisis. Social uprisings in response to the police brutalities in the summer of 2020 have fur…

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Dissipating historical medical inequity through decolonising healthcare education

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Dissipating historical medical inequity through decolonising healthcare education

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Dissipating historical medical inequity through decolonising healthcare education - Journal of Medical Ethics blog

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By Amali U. Lokugamage Decolonisation is an effort to ‘turn tables’ on the enduring inequities established by colonial rule. It is also about dismantling unfair power imbalances in society. The three authors of the article ‘Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education’ originate from Sri Lanka…

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Dissipating historical medical inequity through decolonising healthcare education

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Coloniality lives on through medical education

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Coloniality lives on through medical education

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Thirusha Naidu , associate professor

Department of Behavioural Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Medical schools must promote decolonial perspectives to counter the bias and discrimination that persists in medical research and practice, writes Thirusha Naidu

The long reach of European colonisation lives on despite many colonised countries having gained political independence. Discriminatory and unjust colonial practices endure through the knowledge, structures, and systems of colonising and settler colonial countries and are replicated in institutions of formerly colonised countries in a powerful condition called coloniality. 1 Medicine was a crucial cog in the colonial machine. 2 3 4 Wherever colonisation originated or existed, medical education is still influenced by colonial tenets, shaping future healthcare practitioners and practice.

The London School of Tropical Medicine was created at the height of colonisation to manage "tropical diseases" such as malaria that hindered colonisation of new territories. 5 Under the British empire, the conquest of land led to the silencing of Indigenous people and denigration of their ways of understanding health, healing, and their relationship with the natural world. Indigenous ways were obscured by colonial thinking. 6

Global health, encompassing research, policy, practice, and teaching is a modern iteration of tropical medicine. It has been criticised for its imperialist and para-colonial practices, including sending students from high income countries to previously colonised countries for electives, thus reinforcing currently unequal relationships through education. 7 Similarly, through "helicopter research" researchers in the global north replicate colonial interactions in formerly colonised countries by imposing Euro-American motivations, knowledge systems, and research methods while marginalising local priorities, extracting local knowledge, and excluding local researchers.

Organisations establishing medical education standards are dominated by high income countries, 8 and representatives of previous colonial and settler-colonial countries determine medical education standards worldwide. Yet institutions in these countries often do not readily accept medical graduates from previously colonised countries as physicians. 9 Medical schools in previously colonised countries comply under internal and external pressure to maintain international standards, resulting in practitioners who are unfit to meet the needs of their countries. 9 Standardised testing for training admissions, feedback, professionalism, and validity in assessment are based on colonially founded global north knowledge bases, perpetuating discrimination towards racially, ethnically, or gender diverse students universally. 10

Medical education's basis in colonial epistemology poorly prepares global south and marginalised students everywhere for practice. At worst it leads them to break medicine's central tenant of "do no harm" by upholding the discriminatory view of the able bodied, white, Christian, straight, cisgender male as the "zero point perspective." 11 Consequently, gender and racially diverse practitioners may doubt their lived experience and discriminate against people who share their identity. 12

Modern medicine is a colonial artifact that racialises and genders the body, blaming or disbelieving illnesses in female and black people under the guise of objective science yet based on the zero point perspective. 13 14 The covid-19 pandemic laid bare medicine's gendered and racialised nature 15- revealing worsening social and structural health inequalities as black and brown people experienced and were blamed for the worst effects. Medical education is complicit in sustaining coloniality in medicine. Medical schools teach evidence from methods skewed to the zero point perspective as scientific fact. This may be colonisation's deepest cut, and its effects will continue to harm the most vulnerable people in society until the epistemology of medical education is revised. 16

Medical education research continues to uphold the colonial project. Much research originates from the global north, with five previously colonising or settler colonial countries-the UK, US, Canada, Netherlands, and Australia-dominating lead authorship positions. The editors in chief of medical education journals are located in the global north. 17

Shifting perspectives

Equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives in medicine are usually top-down, spotlighting representation and visibility of racial, gender, and ethnic minorities, without confronting colonialism, imperialism, power, and the historical roots shaping inequities in modern healthcare. Decolonial perspectives are bottom-up, placing contemporary life in the context of history. They aim to redistribute power and resources to elevate and restore marginalised knowledge and Indigenous perspectives on health and healing. 18 Decolonising medical education requires changing actors, dismantling institutions, and shifting power concurrently. 10 Equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives prioritise changing actors, which alone is inadequate for effective change.

Dismantling institutions and shifting power requires decolonising the medical curriculum by acknowledging the historical exploitation of Indigenous knowledge and the impact of modern medical practices on marginalised communities. 2 It involves recognising Indigenous and traditional healing practices as equal or superior to western medicine by incorporating Indigenous knowledge experts and teachings into curriculums. 4 10 Educating students and faculty to employ cultural humility to collaborate equitably with patients and communities is imperative. 19 Local community partnerships, particularly among marginalised communities, should form an integral part of medical education teaching and research. 16 Medical education must look beyond western centric perspectives by studying global healthcare systems. 4 20 The humanities must form part of medical curriculums to improve understanding of the sociocultural contexts and social determinants of health and illness for equitable care. Collective and collaborative action is critical if medical education is to step out of the shadow of its colonial past.

This article is part of a series of articles and podcasts on decolonising health and medicine: www.bmj.com/decolonising-health

Competing interest: None declared

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

Footnotes

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Coloniality lives on through medical education

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Medical schools must promote decolonial perspectives to counter the bias and discrimination that persists in medical research and practice, writes Thirusha Naidu The long reach of European colonisation lives on despite many colonised countries having gained political independence.

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Rhiannon Osborne

MEDICAL SECTOR STRATEGIST

Rhiannon (she/her) is a Welsh-Armenian student doctor, researcher and organiser. Her work focuses on on health and climate justice, in particular extractivism, re-imagining health and access to medicines. She loves doing mutual aid work, learning to practise abolition, and trying to work out how to be a healer amidst the violence of colonial capitalism. You can find out more about her work and the collectives she organises with here.

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Our research lab uses neuroscience and environmental data to identify how biological inequity contributes to poor health outcomes in neighbourhoods and peoples that have been racialised and marginalised. We use this research to build open-access community tools, create new narratives and framings of

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Nonetheless, it can be useful to draw a distinction between colonialism and settler colonialism. Broadly speaking, colonialism can be seen as the subjugation, domination and exploitation of another people, their land and their resources. Settler colonialism, meanwhile, is of colonialism, or one way in which colonial regimes can operate.

Under settler colonialism, the colonised population is not just subjugated: it is physically removed and then replaced by a settler population. This physical removal can occur through displacement, forced expulsion, and/or actual extermination and genocide. In settler colonial contexts, the colonised population, or the Indigenous inhabitants, are seen as obstacles in the way of control of the land and its resources. For this reason, settler colonialism is often seen as the most violent and even deadly form of colonial rule.

Global examples of settler colonialism

Historical examples of settler colonial projects, or what are sometimes described as settler societies, include the Dutch in South Africa, the French in Algeria, the Italians in Libya, the British in Kenya, and perhaps most prominently, the range of European powers which colonised the Americas, including the Portuguese, the Spanish and the British.

In the case of , for example, in the 1920s the fascist Italian government undertook a campaign of ethnic cleansing in eastern Libya to make way for Italian settlers, forcibly relocating over 100,000 Libyans to concentration camps and killing tens of thousands. The British colonisation of involved the forced displacement of indigenous farmers and herders onto infertile land and/or forcing them to work on British-owned farms and plantations. This colonial regime saw , ethnic cleansing and use of concentration camps.

It is important to bear in mind that not all settler colonial projects operate in the same way or "look" the same: some are more "exterminationist" than others, and the precise relationship between settlers and Indigenous populations can vary.

Are there any settler colonial states that still exist?

In the United States and Canada, for example, or as Indigenous peoples call it, Turtle Island, expropriation of Indigenous lands for infrastructure projects continues, threatening Indigenous communities and continuing to erode Indigenous sovereignty. In the US, around 35% of the country's fossil fuel reserves are located directly on or near Indigenous lands. such as North Dakota, New Mexico and Alaska are homes to significant communities of Indigenous peoples and sites of major oil and gas infrastructure.

Imprisonment is another serious issue disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities in contemporary settler colonial societies, with Indigenous communities vastly overrepresented in prisons. In Canada, for example, a 2020/2021 study found that on an average day that year there were 42.6 Indigenous people in provincial custody per 10,000 population, compared to 4.0 non-Indigenous people.

What impact does settler colonialism tend to have on Indigenous culture?

Because settler colonial projects are based on the removal and replacement of an Indigenous population, this means there is also an exterminationist attitude towards the culture of that population as well. The culture of the Indigenous population can pose a threat to the settler colonial project because it may challenge the claims of settler society, and it gives Indigenous populations a sense of who they are, their history and ancestry, their ties to the land, and their ties to each other. These can all act as drivers of resistance.

What does an anti-imperial framework of resistance look like?

The British saw in the Zionist project an opportunity to entrench their influence in the increasingly significant Middle East region, and so formalised their support for Zionism in the 1917 Balfour Declaration which they then put into practice when the British Mandate for Palestine was established in 1920. The US, meanwhile, sees Israel as a regional enforcer against those states which challenge US interests, such as the Arab nationalist states during the Cold War.

What ways have communities resisted this/are still resisting this?

The way in which we resist these forms of power depends on where we are. In the Middle East itself, protestors in countries such as Jordan and Egypt have been voicing opposition to their governments' subordination to the United States and Israel, calling for the dissolution of security agreements and economic ties.

Across Europe and North America, protestors have been taking to the streets for months and students have been carrying out occupations, sit-ins and encampments to call for breaking ties not just to Israeli institutions but to arms manufacturers and fossil fuel producers.

And of course, most significantly, Palestinians themselves have been waging not just an anti-colonial but also an anti-imperialist struggle for decades, forging ties with similar struggles elsewhere, from the Vietnamese struggle for liberation to the Black freedom movement in the US.

What does international solidarity look like: How can we use the framework of anti-imperialism to mobilise our resistance?

We can use the framework of anti-imperialism to understand where our countries fit in within the international order and strategise accordingly. For example, in Europe and North America, opposition to wars either led by or supported by Western countries is paramount. It is also important more broadly to challenge the role of key Western countries in global arms proliferation.

Forging links with movements and struggles around the world is key, in building strength through cooperation, targeting vital centres of power, and increasing our knowledge of different contexts and movements and learning from them.

Why is the language of settler colonialism so important?

In the case of Palestine, the framework of settler colonialism helps us to move away from simply describing what is happening to understanding why it is happening and what the key drivers are.

Settler colonialism allows us to recognise the significance of land and resources in driving Israeli policy and the imperative that the Israeli state sees in displacing and dispossessing the Palestinian population, and even physically destroying the Palestinians as a national group, in order to exercise full control over as much of that land as possible.

How does settler colonialism impact the environment?

Settler colonial projects often include drastic levels of ecological destruction because access to land, frequently for purposes of natural resource exploitation, is paramount. Settler ideology and settler societies tend to have a different way of viewing the land and relating to it.

The land exists for settlement and exploitation. Indigenous populations, because of their historic attachment to the land and different ways of organising their societies, often see themselves as custodians and caretakers of the land, and the land and ecosystem are seen to provide sustenance.

The very process of Israeli colonial rule is an ecological catastrophe. Israel has destroyed over 1 million olive trees in Palestine since 1967, which harms both ecosystems and Palestinian farmers. Israel has also destroyed hundreds of hectares of Palestinian crops by spraying polluting herbicides over farmlands, leaving already vulnerable populations without adequate food. In the Gaza Strip, 7th October, Israel's blockade of the territory had created a situation where 97% of the was unsafe to drink or use for irrigation. Since the blockade prevented building materials from entering Gaza and water treatment plants could not be repaired, untreated sewage was left to flow into the Mediterranean Sea daily.

From settlement expansion and settler violence, which commonly includes uprooting ancient olive trees, to the theft of precious resources like water, to the Apartheid Wall and land grabs, the violence of the Israeli state includes violence against nature.

Organisations to follow:

Useful articles:

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shado explains what settler colonialism is, how it differs from colonialism, global examples and how communities are resisting it

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Seeing patterns and making uncanny connections are perhaps the traits of my autism that I cherish the most. They come in handy in my field of work, decoloniality, as they allow me to draw parallels between the ways in which both my Blackness (historically) and my autism (currently) have been studied and understood by Eurocentric science.

Take this quote from Michael Tomasello and colleagues, from 2005, in Monique Botha's 2021 paperwork compiling the most outrageous quotes from autism researchers about autism:

'In general, it seems that neither apes nor children with autism have - at least not to the same extent as typically developing human children - the motivation or capacity to share things psychologically with others. This means that they both have very limited skills for creating things culturally with other persons.'

I couldn't help but recognise the familiar combination of a certain institutional arrogance, lack of self-awareness, and complete lack of empathy. But for the first time, my Blackness wasn't being insulted by likening me to an ape... my Autism was! I guess we can call this progress?

Standing at my intersection of race and neurotype, the despairing similarities in the ways the 'scientific method' studied Blackness then, and studies autism now, are not lost on me. White Western Male scientists spent most of the 19th century and part of the 20th century trying to 'scientifically' demonstrate the intellectual inferiority of Black people, their higher propensity to commit crime, and justify their enslavement by studying the morphology of their skulls.

Meanwhile, this century, autistic people have been described as having less domesticated traits, abnormally shaped ears, facial morphology and pronounced facial phenotypes, all of which - supposedly - impact cognition (Benítez-Burraco et al., 2016). One hundred years later, and the discredited, pseudo-scientific principles of phrenology are back in scientific literature: it didn't work for race, but surely, it will work for autism?

Sarcasm aside, it is hard for me to trust that 'science' will see me as a valid member of society and recognise my humanity. I hope that this juxtaposition of epistemological violence towards Black people, and epistemological violence towards autistic people has appealed to the very thing that autism research has argued I am incapable of: your sense of empathy. And if I played my cards right, reading those quotes has revolted the 'Angry Black Woman' inside of you. (Yes, another terribly harmful trope. Did I say 'sarcasm aside'? ... I lied.)

The next logical question is: how did we get here? Why does Western science reproduce the same mechanisms of stigmatisation, dehumanisation, and objectification across the centuries, seemingly only swapping the group that is being targeted by those forms of violence?

Colonial Mindset Assumptions

Science is not objective. The idea of the objectivity of science has been questioned by many feminist and anti-racist scholars who argue that products of science often reflect social and cultural norms, which in turn perpetuates inequalities and mechanisms of violence (Fondacaro & Winberg, 2002). When the observer, the person 'doing the science', belongs to a hegemonic (or dominant) social group, and the subject being studied exists outside of that group, their respective positionalities may be reflected in the implicit biases, and assumption of superiority of the observer over their subject. In the context of colonisation, this mindset is illustrated by what I call the three Colonial Mindset Assumptions:

What is invisible to the coloniser is non-existent to the coloniser.

What is incomprehensible to the coloniser is deficient to the coloniser.

What seems different to the coloniser is inferior or wrong to the coloniser.

These assumptions exclusively centre and validate the dominant group's perception. They served as the basis for the moral justification for Colonisation, Slavery and Genocide. In this principle, it's not only that most of us are blinkered to the experiences of others because 'we do not know what we do not know', it's the peculiar assumption that 'What we don't know must be rubbish' that facilitates the continued impact of colonialism via systemic structures and systems of oppression by privileging the experience of the dominant group.

The Deficit Model of Autism

The Deficit Model of Autism holds similar assumptions and these can be seen in how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DMS-5) categorises autism. Any divergence from the norm is viewed as a deficit, abnormality or failure.

One might argue, that while no consensus exists on the meaning of 'mental disorder', as traditional value accounts suggest, a condition is a mental disorder only if it is harmful to the patient (Wakefield, 2007), and this is reflected in the way the DSM-5 is commonly used by professionals. I would point out that with the autism criteria, the DSM-5 seemingly breaks from centring the patient's experiences. The DSM-5 only provides a list of external traits, making no mention of the internal experience of the autistic person, de-centering the person and contributing to the dehumanisation of autistic people.

The de-centring of the subject is a form of Epistemological Violence, which is when data on a group is interpreted as that group being inferior or a problem, while other possible interpretations are discarded (Thomas Teo, 2011). Similarly to the study of colonised people, 'Autism research has had a history of conducting research "on" autistic people and not "with" them' (Botha, 2022). It has been argued that this is due to autistic people 'lacking epistemic authority' (Frith & Happe, 1999; Hens et al., 2019) or their accounts being biased (Botha, 2021).

In the context of social power dynamics, neurotypical is the default, the norm, the dominant and privileged group. Autistic people, just like any other marginalised group and colonised people, have been stigmatised, dehumanised, infantilised and essentialised on a systemic level, often understood as objects, sometimes subjects, reduced to their utility to society, but rarely as agents. Furthermore, little consideration is given to the role society has in producing autistic people's outcomes (Botha, 2022).

So, decolonising autism?

Can the tools designed to dismantle the colonial project also help autistic people?

Michael Rebhahn defines 'decoloniality' as a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions (Rebhahn, 2021). Furthermore, Quijano (2007) specifies that decoloniality can be understood as the struggle for liberation from all forms of oppressive power that leads to inequality, discrimination, exploitation and domination.

The emergence of the conceptualisation of autism (and Aspergers) is 'rooted in socially constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, disability and productivity, and those notions are connected to the colonial ideas of anti-Blackness, patriarchy, and capitalism' (Lewis, 2021). If we recognise that autism is a marginalised experience constructed from a place of hegemony, then deconstructing that perception is necessary, and decoloniality can be useful.

My decolonial critique of autism - applied to epistemic, social and political aspects - is based on the framework that Dr Lucia Kula, Dr Dominik Jackson-Cole and I have developed. I will use our Framework to recontextualise our current understanding of autism as culturally specific, non-universal, non-objective and non-neutral, and show how decoloniality can ultimately benefit autistic people.

The challenges involved include:

Power imbalances: in the context of autism, as members of a marginalised group existing in a supremacist society, autistic people experience discrimination and oppression from hegemonic powers.

Epistemological violence: working towards giving agency to autistic people and the autistic community, centring discourses, research and knowledge around the autistic lived experience, and recognising it as a valid form of expertise would contribute to redress the harm caused by Epistemological Violence.

Assumed universality and apolitical character of being in society: our existence, knowledge and perception of the world are informed by our positionality. Dominant discourses and practices reflect the implicit biases of society and reinforce normative, supremacist assumptions. Existing inside or outside of 'the norm' is inherently political.

Social constructs of gender, race, class, disability, sexuality, etc.: existing as an autistic person already gives us the experience of being, thinking, and feeling outside of the norm. Understanding the socially constructed nature of norms and conventions is crucial to understanding the ways in which they may fail autistic people, and how to remedy it.

It is important to recognise that implementing the decolonial principles of centring the lived experience of the subject and honouring their agency might be more challenging when dealing with non-speaking autistic people, and autistic people with learning disabilities, as communication differences may affect how we understand their needs, desires and agency.

This is precisely why The Decolonial Framework can provide us with tools to dismantle oppressive power dynamics and challenge the dehumanising discourses and practices that particularly affect autistic people who have higher communication and/or support needs. It encourages us to recentre the groups that have been systemically oppressed, erased or silenced, to rehumanise the members of those groups and reaffirm their personhood regardless of their individual circumstances. Such actions would benefit all experiences of autism, across the spectrum.

Disability or social construct?

Autism as a neurotype exists independently of social context. Mottron (2011) argued that autism should be understood and researched as a natural variation of being human, rather than an error that needs to be corrected.

I argue that autism as a Social Disorder - as well as the stigma, misconceptions and discrimination attached to it - are entirely socially constructed. The Decolonial Framework can help us depart from the Medical Model of Autism, which "relies on the pathologization of disabled people and sustains a powerful industry built on being able to identify 'deficits' and finding ways of 'fixing' or 'treating' these perceived deviations from an assumed norm" (Botha, 2022).

The DSM diagnostic criteria for autism relies heavily on deviance from social norms, but in doing so perpetuates the assumption that social norms are shared universally across cultures, traditions and positionalities. Let's consider what the autistic 'failure of normal back-and-forth conversation' looks like in a culture where the listener is required to interrupt and interject in a conversation to signal that they're listening like it is the norm in Japan with Aizuchi ( 相槌) (Saft, 2007)? How do we define a 'deficit in nonverbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction' in someone who has been socialised to suppress the expression of their affect, or in someone whose society places huge expectations on their ability to perform agreeableness because of their gender identity or social status (Nandkeolyar et al., 2022)? How do we identify 'abnormalities in eye contact' in an individual from a culture where eye contact tends to be taken as an affront or a challenge of authority, as is the case in many Asian, African and Latin American cultures (Uono & Hietanen, 2015)?

Decoloniality can help us recognise when Western centrism might influence our understanding of social norms, and help us develop an approach to autism that does not exclude people and cultures that exist outside, or at the margin of Western society.

The 'why?'

Besides the moral case for treating autistic people with compassion and dignity, it is also in society's best interest to decolonise autism, as the whole of society benefits from dismantling systems of oppression, allowing for a more inclusive environment (Mottron, 2011). Reducing stigma and discrimination against one identity lays the ground for doing the same with other marginalised identities, and even for those who aren't marginalised but still do not feel comfortable showing their authentic selves in society (Smith & Yoshino, 2013).

If we can agree that autism is a colonial construct, or at least, that neuronormativity is a colonial construct, it can intersect with other forms of oppression, that are the legacy of the colonial project. The damages and violence of colonisation compound when you are racialised and autistic, when you are queer and autistic, a woman and autistic etc.

Decoloniality can also be used as a tool to combat ableism within marginalised communities. Many forms of oppression stemming from colonial projects (e.g. racism, xenophobia, patriarchy, social precarity), represent an extra stress on minorities and affect their ability to conceptualise, accept, and accommodate for neurodiversity and mental health in general. When systemic oppression forces communities to prioritise coping strategies, it creates a toxic environment that is not conducive to recognising and affirming everyone's specific needs and differences (Cyrus, 2017).

The answer is never to further demonise said communities for being 'intolerant' or 'ableist', but to work to remove the social pressures that exacerbate the coping strategy of erasing differences among themselves. Decoloniality can provide the framework to close the gap between the experience of autism of a woman of colour and that of a white man, and ultimately the gap between the autistic experience and the neurotypical experience.

The 'how?'

One of the core principles of decoloniality is letting go of the myth of a one-size-fits-all solution. Rather than giving you oven-ready solutions, my intention with this article is to make you aware of the problem, and the goal of my work as a trainer is to support individuals or institutions to ask themselves the right questions, that ultimately only they can find the answers to. In that logic, I have limited myself to broadly drawing a connection between a few decolonial key points, and their possible relevance to the context of autism.

So, decolonising Autism could mean:

Acknowledging your own positionality and the pervasiveness of systemic power in the field of autism research and autism care.

Acknowledging that the lived experience of autism is also shaped by cultural and social norms that aren't universal.

Contextualising the identification/diagnosis of autistic traits within the social and cultural context of the individual.

Understanding how the intersection of their multiple identities and marginalisations affects their experience of autism and poses unique challenges to each individual.

If you deal with data - analyse it using a diversity lens (e.g. ethnicity).

Engaging in Autism research through the juxtaposition of different autistic perspectives: intersectionality is a thing!

Recognising lived experience as a valid form of expertise.

Collaborating with autistic people.

Collaborating with autistic people of diverse identities!

Compensating autistic people for their labour.

Decolonising autism will not 'cure' or 'prevent' autism... And that's the point! When we look at racism, we do not seek to 'cure Blackness', we try to dismantle the extra hurdles, barriers and systems of oppression that society has placed in someone's way. The Decolonial Framework can help us depart from the medical model and can give us a map to trace back the epistemological pathways that lead society to exclude, erase or oppress minoritised groups. We have the tools to avoid further perpetuating the same mistakes.
Joris Lechêne (He/Him) is a trainer in anti-racism, bias, and decoloniality who has lived experience of autism and ADHD. He draws from both his lived experiences as a marginalised person (Black, Queer, Neurodivergent) and his practice of Sociology as a trainer to explore the parallels between all forms of oppression, breaking them down to their essential power dynamics between dominant groups and marginalised groups. Joris has lived and worked in five countries, on three continents, in both white and black-majority societies. He uses this vantage point on both sides of privilege and disadvantage, to communicate and explain social concepts and speak up on the topics of inequalities, discrimination and biases. Find him on his website, Instagram and Tiktok.
References

American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC.
Benítez-Burraco, A., Lattanzi, W., & Murphy, E. (2016). Language impairments in ASD resulting from a failed domestication of the human brain. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10, 373.
Botha, M. (2021). Academic, activist, or advocate? Angry, entangled, and emerging: A critical reflection on autism knowledge production. Frontiers in Psychology, 4196.
Botha, M., & Gillespie-Lynch, K. (2022). Come as you are: Examining autistic identity development and the neurodiversity movement through an intersectional lens. Human Development, 66(2), 93-112.
Cyrus, K. (2017). Multiple minorities as multiply marginalized: Applying the minority stress theory to LGBTQ people of color. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 21(3), 194-202.
Frith, U., & Happé, F. (1999). Theory of mind and self‐consciousness: What is it like to be autistic?. Mind & language, 14(1), 82-89.
Hens, K., Robeyns, I., & Schaubroeck, K. (2019). The ethics of autism. Philosophy Compass, 14(1), e12559.
Jackson-Cole, D, Lechêne, J. and Kula, L. (2023, Unpublished) Decolonising the curriculum toolkit.
Lewis, M. S. (2021). Barrett, Frank J.: The Social Construction of Organizing. The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, 115-131.
Mottron, L. (2011). The power of autism. Nature, 479(7371), 33-35.
Nandkeolyar, A. K., Bagger, J., & Ekkirala, S. (2022). Damned if she does, damned if she doesn't: The interactive effects of gender and agreeableness on performance evaluation. Journal of Business Research, 143, 62-71.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.
Rebhahn, M., & Freydank, S. (Eds.). (2021). Defragmentation: Curating Contemporary Music. Schott Music.
Saft, S. (2007). Exploring aizuchi as resources in Japanese social interaction: The case of a political discussion program. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(7), 1290-1312.
Smith, C., & Yoshino, K. (2013). Uncovering talent A new model of inclusion.
Teo, T. (2011). Empirical race psychology and the hermeneutics of epistemological violence. Human Studies, 34, 237-255.
Uono, S., & Hietanen, J. K. (2015). Eye contact perception in the west and east: A cross-cultural study. Plos one, 10(2), e0118094.
Wakefield, J. C. (2007). The concept of mental disorder: diagnostic implications of the harmful dysfunction analysis. World Psychiatry, 6(3), 149.

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Joris Lechêne with some advice for research and practice.

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The King's Fund was proud to host the Open Wounds exhibition from October 2022 to March 2023. This is an online and interactive version of that exhibition. Created and developed by Tottenham Rights, the exhibition explores the connections between health, racism and inequalities, and how this has affected generations of Black people.

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Imperial disintegration: What’s happening in West Africa?

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Imperial disintegration: What’s happening in West Africa?

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Imperial disintegration: What’s happening in West Africa?

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Imperial disintegration: What’s happening in West Africa?

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News of a military coup in the West African country of Niger has reignited condemnations of the colonial West, and marks at least the 10th coup in the Sahel region since 2008: Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, 2022), Mali (2012, 2020, 2021), Mauritania (2008), Gambia (2014), and Guinea (2021)—and all have..…

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Toward decolonizing nursing: the colonization of nursing and strategies for increasing the counter-narrative

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Toward decolonizing nursing: the colonization of nursing and strategies for increasing the counter-narrative

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Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition

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A critique that anticipated the political currents of contemporary America.

Cedric J. Robinson's passing this summer at the age of seventy-five went virtually unnoticed. Professor emeritus of political science and black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and arguably one of the most original political theorists of his generation, no major U.S. newspaper determined that Robinson's passing merited even a single paragraph. Although he deliberately avoided the pitfalls of intellectual celebrity, his influence was greater than perhaps he may have realized. Today's insurgent black movements against state violence and mass incarceration call for an end to "racial capitalism" and see their work as part of a "black radical tradition"-terms associated with Robinson's work.

Cedric Robinson's critique anticipated the political currents in contemporary movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

Born November 5, 1940, Robinson grew up in a black working-class neighborhood in West Oakland. A genuine polymath educated in public schools, he spent hours in the public library absorbing everything from Greek philosophy and world history to modern literature. Soft-spoken but never "quiet," he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in social anthropology and rose to prominence as a campus activist. He helped bring Malcolm X to campus and protested the Bay of Pigs Invasion, for which he received a one-semester suspension. After graduation in 1963 and a brief stint in the army, Robinson worked briefly for the Alameda County Probation Department, encountering both a racially biased criminal justice system and fellow employees determined to change it-including his future wife, Elizabeth Peters. By 1967, inspired by the urban rebellions and the antiwar movement, the couple chose to join those determined to change the world, pursuing a life of social activism and intellectual work.

In 1974 Robinson earned his doctorate in political theory from Stanford University. His dissertation, "Leadership: A Mythic Paradigm," challenges the conceits of liberal and Marxist theories of political change, arguing that leadership-the idea that effective social action is determined by a leader who is separate from or above the masses of people-and political order are essentially fictions. Contending that "orthodox Western thought was neither universal nor coherent," he ultimately arrives at the conclusion that "the political is an historical . . . illusion." When he submitted a draft of his dissertation in 1971, the faculty was ill-prepared to sign off on a project that questioned the epistemological foundations of the entire discipline. Since no one could reasonably reject a thesis so sound, elegant, and erudite, some members resigned from his committee citing an inability to understand the work. It took three years and the threat of a lawsuit for his dissertation to be approved, and another six years before it was published as The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership (1980).

Capitalism and racism did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of "racial capitalism."

Robinson's critique of political order and the authority of leadership anticipated the political currents in contemporary movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter-movements organized horizontally rather than vertically. His monumental Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) takes Karl Marx to task for failing to comprehend radical movements outside of Europe. He rewrites the history of the West from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century, scrutinizing the idea that Marx's categories of class can be universally applied outside of Europe. Instead he characterized black rebellions as expressions of what he called the "Black Radical Tradition," movements whose objectives and aspirations confounded Western social analysis. Marxism also failed to account for the racial character of capitalism. Having written much of the book during a sabbatical year in England, Robinson encountered intellectuals who used the phrase "racial capitalism" to refer to South Africa's economy under apartheid. He developed it from a description of a specific system to a way of understanding the general history of modern capitalism.

So what did Robinson mean by "racial capitalism"? Building on the work of another forgotten black radical intellectual, sociologist Oliver Cox, Robinson challenged the Marxist idea that capitalism was a revolutionary negation of feudalism. Instead capitalism emerged within the feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of "racial capitalism" dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide. Capitalism was "racial" not because of some conspiracy to divide workers or justify slavery and dispossession, but because racialism had already permeated Western feudal society. The first European proletarians were racial subjects (Irish, Jews, Roma or Gypsies, Slavs, etc.) and they were victims of dispossession (enclosure), colonialism, and slavery within Europe. Indeed, Robinson suggested that racialization within Europe was very much a colonial process involving invasion, settlement, expropriation, and racial hierarchy. Insisting that modern European nationalism was completely bound up with racialist myths, he reminds us that the ideology of Herrenvolk (governance by an ethnic majority) that drove German colonization of central Europe and "Slavic" territories "explained the inevitability and the naturalness of the domination of some Europeans by other Europeans." To acknowledge this is not to diminish anti-black racism or African slavery, but rather to recognize that capitalism was not the great modernizer giving birth to the European proletariat as a universal subject, and the "tendency of European civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate-to exaggerate regional, subcultural, and dialectical differences into 'racial' ones."

"My happiest and most stunning opportunity for raising hell with corruption and deceit are with other Black people."

Black Marxism was largely ignored for two decades, until its return to print in 2000 generated renewed interest. And yet, while Black Marxism and its discussion of racial capitalism and the "Black Radical Tradition" have taken center stage, Robinson leaves a vast body of work as a political and cultural theorist, notably Black Movements in America (1997), An Anthropology of Marxism (2001), and Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before World War II (2007).

Robinson was a challenging thinker who understood that the deepest, most profound truths tend to bewilder, breaking with inherited paradigms and "common sense." When asked to define his political commitments, he replied, "There are some realms in which names, nomination, is premature. My only loyalties are to the morally just world; and my happiest and most stunning opportunity for raising hell with corruption and deceit are with other Black people."

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what did cedric robinson mean by racial capitalism?

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What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?

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A critique that anticipated the political currents of contemporary America. Cedric J. Robinson's passing this summer at the age of seventy-five went virtually unnoticed. Professor emeritus of political science and black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and arguably one of the most original political theorists of his generation, no major U.S.

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anti-racist labs in teaching and research

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anti-racist labs in teaching and research

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Abstract

Demographics of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the US and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM are bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs). These issues persist due to continued marginalization, power imbalances, and lack of adequate policies against misconduct in academic and other scientific institutions. All scientists can play important roles in reversing this trend by shifting the culture of academic workplaces to intentionally implement equitable and inclusive policies, set norms for acceptable workplace conduct, and provide opportunities for mentorship and networking. As scientists are increasingly acknowledging the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in science, there is a need for clear direction on how to take antiracist action. Here we present 10 rules to help labs develop antiracists policies and action in an effort to promote racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

Citation: Chaudhary VB, Berhe AA (2020) Ten simple rules for building an antiracist lab. PLoS Comput Biol 16(10): e1008210. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008210

Editor: Russell Schwartz, Carnegie Mellon University, UNITED STATES

Published: October 1, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Chaudhary, Berhe. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: VBC and AAB are supported by the National Science Foundation (DEB-1844531 and HRD-1725650, respectively). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Racial and ethnic diversity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce remains low, particularly at the PhD level and above [ 1- 3]. The May 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked a global uprising against systemic racism and police brutality against Black people [ 4]. At the same time, racism faced by Christian Cooper while birding in Central Park in New York City demonstrated the danger that Black scientists face in natural spaces, including during scientific fieldwork and while being #BlackInNature [ 5]. Days later, Black academics began sharing on social media thousands of harrowing stories accounting the racism they face in academic institutions using the hashtag #BlackintheIvory [ 6]. On June 8, 2020, Black scientists initiated a global strike to eliminate racism and encouraged colleagues to spend the day reading about antiracism, reflecting on its pervasiveness, and developing antiracism plans of action [ 7]. These events infused new energy into decades-long efforts working to address racial inequities in STEM [ 8- 10].

Scientists increasingly acknowledge the problematic lack of racial and ethnic representation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in science and are in search of clear actionable steps they themselves have the power to immediately enact. Professional scientific organizations, universities, and departments all have a role in developing programs and policies that promote racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In addition, there are swift actions that research group leaders or primary investigators (PIs) can take to build a lab environment that fosters a racially inclusive environment and ultimately promotes DEI across scientific fields.

Scientists who are beginners to discussions of race, lacking guidance or background knowledge, may adopt unevolved viewpoints or weak policies that unintentionally harm BIPOC [ 11] or contribute to an erosion of trust among people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds in a lab group. Harmful approaches include engaging in objectifying thought experiments that question the instrumental value of BIPOC in science, confusing race as a biological entity as indicated by human genetic variation instead of a socially constructed concept [ 12], arguing that the unbiased nature of science and scientists precludes racial biases in scientific workplaces, and hijacking discussions of race with anecdotes from other types of discrimination (e.g., gender-based and/or class-based) without employing an intersectional framework [ 13]. As scientists of color who actively engage in work to promote racial and ethnic DEI, we have encountered all of these harmful scenarios and more.

Building a lab that is antiracist is very different from building a lab that simply avoids racism. Avoiding racism or stating that one's lab is "not racist" adopts a neutral stance in a struggle that inherently has no neutrality [ 14]. As the scholar Ibram X. Kendi writes, "One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.'" [ 15]. We support recent calls to promote the health and well-being of lab members [ 16] and supportive lab groups that are resilient to outside stressors [ 17]. But building an antiracist lab goes beyond being kind, treating people equally, or taking a color-blind approach. Being antiracist means developing and supporting antiracist policies through intentional introspection and subsequent action.

Many current and future PIs are looking for clear advice on how to move beyond statements of solidarity and toward concrete achievable antiracist action in their labs. We share these 10 rules (Figs 1 and 2) to contribute to antiracist STEM discourse and help springboard scientists toward immediate achievable action in realms under their control. It is our hope that partaking in such actions will help lead to improved racial and ethnic diversity and inclusion in the lab and successful scientific lives for all.

Rule 1: Lead informed discussions about antiracism in your lab regularly

Most PIs would be appalled to learn about members of their lab group being victims of racism. Unfortunately, both overt and covert racist incidents (e.g., microaggressions, tokenism, white savior complex, tone policing, etc.) routinely occur in science labs and go unreported. Unreported racism leads to isolation, anxiety, and stress among BIPOC and can ultimately lead to BIPOCs leaving STEM fields. Part of the responsibility of a PI in creating a safe working environment is developing a lab where lab members feel comfortable talking about race and reporting racism, including individual, institutional, or systemic racism in society and especially within academic workplaces [ 18]. Leading regular discussions on race informed by scholarly readings signals to lab members, BIPOC and white, that racial discrimination is not tolerated and that silence is implicit acceptance of racism [ 19]. Initiate a preliminary discussion on promoting antiracist STEM with lab members and then revisit the topic each term. Discussions can be structured around journal club readings of peer-reviewed literature on equity in STEM, invited DEI speakers, and/or brainstorming sessions to develop antiracist lab policies. PIs should initiate conversations and actively moderate them to ensure that privileged individuals do not dominate the conversation and racial and ethnic minorities are heard [ 20].

Rule 2. Address racism in your lab and field safety guidelines

Racist violence targets BIPOC in the workplace and threatens the ability of students and staff to work safely. Black and Brown people are particularly targeted, even in academic institutions and at research sites. Lab and field safety guidelines should be written with the recognition that some lab members require additional supports to safely conduct their work. Ask BIPOC lab members what you can do to facilitate their safety on campus and in the field. PIs should advocate for BIPOC lab members who may be harassed or harmed by campus security or others that think they don't "belong" in academic spaces. In the field, PIs should familiarize themselves with any historical and contemporary racist climate present at field sites and prepare accordingly. Provide BIPOC with safety nets such as easy-to-see identification, official-looking field apparel, or work buddies. An open dialogue about race will encourage BIPOC lab members to speak up about what measures they want or need to ensure their safety.

Rule 3: Publish papers and write grants with BIPOC colleagues

The most important metrics of success in the academy are papers and grants. Publications and grants are also key to tenure, promotion, and career longevity in the academic and other STEM professions. More and more, the most impactful science is done in teams [ 21], but collaboration networks can be insular. Supportive peer networks in STEM that involve diverse voices produce better quality and highly cited publications [ 22]. Hence, the most important thing anyone can do to improve the success and retention of BIPOC folx in STEM is to provide opportunities for collaborations that lead to publications and grants. For scientists that work with minoritized communities, it is particularly important to ensure BIPOC are involved in not just manual work and/or data entry but are also provided opportunities to make intellectual contributions that lead to publications and further funding. When organizing workshops or symposia, invite BIPOC scientists to co-lead and not just participate.

Rule 4: Evaluate your lab's mentoring practices

Building antiracism into your lab's mentoring strategy begins with the recognition that racial biases, conscious and unconscious, have the potential to taint mentor-mentee relationships and hinder mentee success. BIPOC mentees report racially motivated gatekeeping behaviors by mentors such as being advised not to pursue advanced degrees or prestigious opportunities, receiving little mentorship in areas associated with issues of identity, experiencing tone policing, and being advised to avoid politics (real and perceived) [ 23]. Increasingly in STEM, multi-mentor models are being favored over one-on-one top-down mentoring relationships to better center mentee needs and career goals [ 24]. PIs can help mentees build networks of mentors outside of the lab or institution through culturally relevant professional societies (e.g., Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, the different national associations and societies for Black scholars, and Black British Professionals in STEM) or strong online communities (e.g., #BlackandSTEM, #VanguardSTEM, #NativeandSTEM, and #LatinxandSTEM on Twitter) that contribute to a greater sense of agency and confidence and lead to increased academic success. This also encourages lab members to think deeply about their various mentoring needs (e.g., substantive feedback, sponsorship, professional development, and emotional support) and take an active role in cultivating their own science networks [ 25, 26].

Rule 5: Amplify voices of BIPOC scientists in your field

Read papers by BIPOC scientists in your lab group meetings, cite the work of BIPOC scholars, and nominate BIPOC for awards. Social media outlets like Twitter are a good place to identify BIPOC scholars that are in your field but outside of your professional bubble. When amplifying BIPOC voices, ensure to highlight their science achievements and not just their contributions to DEI. For example, if you want a BIPOC scientist to speak about DEI to your group or department, first make sure they have a venue to speak about their science. Even if you have a policy of not compensating speakers for presenting on their scholarly work, consider compensating them for the extra labor of educating your community on DEI initiatives.

Rule 6: Support BIPOC in their efforts to organize

Support the development of safe and brave spaces for BIPOC to organize and discuss issues surrounding race in the absence of white people. For students and trainees, provide meeting space (and additional resources to facilitate effective discussions) where BIPOC can meet and share experiences without fear of retribution. Likewise, support faculty of color in efforts to form separate identity affinity groups within your institution and/or professional organizations. As scholars, we should not forget that our job literally is to educate and mentor the next generation of scholars on how to identify barriers that affect our academic endeavors (including issues related to justice, equity, and inclusion) and come up with plans of actions needed to break down barriers that can prevent us from furthering scientific knowledge.

Rule 7: Intentionally recruit BIPOC students and staff

After working to foster an inclusive, antiracist lab environment, PIs can begin to evaluate their lab hiring practices for racial or ethnic biases. This rule focusing on increasing lab diversity is purposefully placed after the above rules, which prioritize efforts towards inclusion and retention that should be addressed first. Developing programs for support and retention first helps ensure that BIPOC are not recruited into toxic environments. In recruitment efforts, do not assume racial or ethnic identity from appearances or names; information should be collected from lab members or applicants in a self-reported and voluntary manner. Many of the same efforts used to improve equity in faculty hiring, such as candidate and job ad diversity statements, targeted recruitment of promising candidates, and targeted listservs and databases (e.g., DiverseScholar.org), also apply to recruiting BIPOC lab personnel and trainees [ 27]. Along with recruiting, PIs can advocate for targeted retention and inclusion initiatives at the department or university level, such as a cohort or cluster approach to diversify STEM student and/or faculty hiring [ 28, 29].

Rule 8: Adopt a dynamic research agenda

PIs may be hesitant to hire prospective BIPOC trainees or staff if their research interests do not align closely with the specific research agenda of the lab. A flexible research agenda that accommodates intellectual perspectives outside of the prevailing conversations in one's field could not only help diversify the lab but also lead to more innovative science. URM scholars produce higher rates of scientific novelty but are also more likely to have their novel contributions discounted and not incorporated into dominant paradigms [ 30]. PIs, by cultivating dynamic research agendas, can amplify and champion out-of-the-box, innovative contributions from BIPOC scholars.

Rule 9: Advocate for racially diverse leadership in science

Too often, BIPOC are encouraged to participate in the scientific endeavor in purely supportive or subjugative roles. Go beyond mentoring BIPOC scholars in your lab to sponsoring them (i.e., talk about them to others) to improve their chances of securing jobs, fellowships, awards, and, eventually, leadership roles. Efforts to promote racial and ethnic diversity in science must advocate for BIPOC in leadership positions in labs, institutions, professional societies, editorial boards, and funding agencies. Nominate BIPOC for status elevating roles in science. Early career scholars working in your group should feel empowered to get involved in leadership and advocacy groups within the university and beyond. If possible, their labor in advocating for leadership that addresses the needs of all members of the research group should be accommodated, including with provision of time and resources.

Rule 10: Hold the powerful accountable and don't expect gratitude

The goal of cultivating an antiracist lab group is to improve a broader system with known racial inequities. Recognize that white scientists are frequently lauded for DEI work while BIPOC are punished for it [ 31]. Recognize the difference between performative action and action that doesn't bring personal glory. We should educate ourselves on effective bystander intervention techniques for addressing issues of inequity, harassment, and discrimination. We should also be able to use accountability mechanisms in our own institutions (if we don't have them, work to set them up) and hold our colleagues and ourselves accountable for creating healthy workplace climates. Academics are noted for holding those who mishandle text or data (plagiarize or fabricate data) accountable as we consider these acts to be scientific misconduct. Well, if these constitute misconduct, then mistreating people who do the research should definitely rise to the same level of concern and be considered scientific misconduct too [ 32].

Conclusion

Scientific labs play an important role in confronting the racism that permeates our social institutions and PIs are uniquely positioned to step up and be leaders in confronting this racism in our everyday work environments. Despite the title of this paper, it may not be easy to rectify the long history of racist behaviors and structures that permeate all scientific disciplines [ 33]. However, as leaders in science, it is our responsibility to take action and simple concrete steps can and must be made toward addressing individual, institutional, and systemic racism. The work in our labs can begin today; no additional committees, focus groups, or surveys are required.

Acknowledgments

VBC and AAB met on Twitter, where they both sought and found a community of like-minded scholars who are passionate about equity and inclusion in the academy.

References

1. 25. Gleßmer M, Adams A, Hastings M, Barnes R. Taking Ownership of Your Mentoring: Lessons Learned from Participating in the Earth Science Women's Network. The Graduate School Press; 2015.

2. 28. Kosinski-Collins MS, Godsoe K, Epstein IR. The brandeis science posse: Building a cohort model program to retain underserved students in the sciences. Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs: ACS Publications; 2017. p. 45-58.

3. 33. Saini A. Superior: the return of race science: Beacon Press; 2019.

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Ten simple rules for building an antiracist lab

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Demographics of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the US and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM are bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs).

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Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

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Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

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https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/slavery-and-british-industrial-revolution?s=09

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Race in the workplace: The McGregor-Smith Review

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Race in the workplace: The McGregor-Smith Review

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Decolonizing the Business School Curriculum | AACSB

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Decolonizing the Business School Curriculum

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Decolonizing the Business School Curriculum

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The views expressed on AACSB Insights do not represent an official position of AACSB, unless clearly stated. For more information on AACSB's position on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, please visit aacsb.edu/diversity.

Business schools in Western and European countries have benefited from an imperialism that placed their ideologies in a powerful and privileged position.

To decolonize the curriculum, schools must do more than diversify the reading list; they must incorporate the knowledge and educational approaches of scholars from different philosophical and cultural backgrounds.

By doing this, we will open our field to greater diversity and wider analysis, which will strengthen the discipline as a whole.

Education is powerful, and the knowledge that forms the root of any curriculum is even more so. Business academics often take for granted our sources of knowledge, but we need to realize how those sources have influenced the way we think and the way our discipline has evolved.

For too long, thinkers and scholars from wealthy countries that make up a minority of the world have been privileged over those in poorer countries that represent the majority of the world's population and landmass. Business school research has continued to focus on the white, the Western and Eurocentric, and the male.

But today, business schools around the world seek to become more inclusive and diverse. Some of us want to go even further-to address racial injustices, dismantle global power structures, and decolonize the typical business school curriculum. This requires us to do more than broaden our reading lists, change the language we employ, and ensure that the images and examples we use with our students are more representative. It requires us to engage in a fundamental rethink of business education and question the sources that form the base of our knowledge.

To do this, we must engage in a deeper level of reflection and change at every level of the faculty. We must revise established programs through unlearning and critical questioning.

Such a massive overhaul presents us with both a challenge and an opportunity. Judy Muthuri, a professor of sustainable business and development, explains it this way: Each of us needs "to be an activist in our classroom" so we can build anti-racist, socially just business programs. Ultimately, we will strengthen not only our understanding, but also our discipline as a whole.

Countering the Arguments

When I discuss decolonizing business education, I often face skepticism and reluctance. "The business theories are the theories-they're not malleable like the arts and humanities," other professors tell me. But these established theories did not develop in a bubble, away from the realities of imperialism and the legacies of colonialism. Universities in Western countries benefited greatly from having their ideologies prioritized and lauded above other forms of thought from the wider world.

I have regularly been told that the established models need to be taught to put business in a historical context. But if we're going to make that argument, we need to understand how financial global business operations were influenced by the interconnected histories of wealth-what Yasmeen Narayan, a scholar on postcolonial and psychosocial studies, calls "the detailed cartographies of colonial wealth production."

Colonization is not an artifact of the past-it's happening right now as multinational corporations exploit the dependency relationship between the Global North and the Global South.

For example, as British historians Catherine Hall and Nicolas Draper point out, those of us in the U.K. must look at the legacies of British slave ownership and be open about how Britain benefited-and still benefits-from the " slavery business." On a broader scale, we should not shy away from considering how central the plantation economy was to the development of capitalism globally.

Just as important, we need to recognize that colonization is not an artifact of the past-it's happening right now as multinational corporations exploit the dependency relationship between the Global North and the Global South. It is incumbent upon business scholars to highlight how contemporary geo-colonial capitalist formations are playing out in business practices in today's world. If we don't, as South African scholar Stella Nkomo has pointed out, we may well be perpetuating the "miseducation" of our students.

Going Beyond the Reading List

If we are serious about decolonizing the business school, we must take four vital actions:

Question and expand our sources of knowledge. While the demographics of business school professors and students have changed significantly in recent decades, the scholarship we draw on for our course materials frequently remains Eurocentric and American. Therefore, the first thing we must do is actively unlearn the knowledge and approaches that have dominated business education. We must rethink what we have been taught to prioritize and legitimize.

To do so, we must include materials from a range of scholars from different philosophical and cultural backgrounds. This is not to suggest that all theories and thought that come from outside of Western traditions are identical or even similar. But practices and theories that have their foundations outside of colonial realms provide valuable and essential contributions to our fields of study. Including them in our classes will enable us to create more just and inclusive learning environments.

As part of this change, we should amend assessment criteria. Professors should cite different perspectives in their classroom materials, and students should include perspectives from scholars in the Global South.

We must actively unlearn the knowledge and approaches that have dominated business education. We must rethink what we have been taught to prioritize and legitimize.

Design and teach courses in an inclusive manner. In addition to focusing on the topics we teach and the materials we use, we need to consider how we teach. Does our personal teaching style encourage diverse perspectives to be presented? What voices do we listen to in class? What types of stories do we perpetuate?

Engage a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders. Inside the classroom, this means ensuring that people who are Black, Asian, and from marginalized ethnic populations are sufficiently represented as students and teachers. Outside the classroom, it means seeking out guest speakers and community leaders who come from diverse backgrounds.

Hold a collective conversation with our colleagues about decolonization. If we each reflect on our own privilege and positionality, we can lay the foundation of an honest dialogue. When we discuss new theories and make visible what for so long has been invisible, we are taking steps toward decolonizing our thought processes.

Inviting Student Voices

Another powerful way to achieve decolonization is to seek input from our students and make sure their voices are truly heard. So often business educators do not have the lived experiences to authentically relay the impact of imperialist thinking on daily life, but our students do. We must give students the chance to speak truth to power.

Recently, we did just that at King's Business School at King's College London when we invited some of our MSc International Management students to present their own research on the importance of Indigenous management theories. They outlined the chronological shift in how management theory has treated the importance of the natural environment. They also explored how Indigenous practices can contribute to the formulation of corporate social responsibility strategies-not by appropriating Indigenous knowledge, but by incorporating it alongside Western knowledge.

As one student put it, "After all, the business leaders of tomorrow will only be able to have a holistic worldview if their education is holistic and inclusive in the first place." Their work was enlightening for us all.

As we decolonize the curriculum, we broaden the epistemologies that shape our knowledge. We expand the methods we use to investigate ideas, gather data, and conduct analysis.

We also held a universitywide event in which 100 students offered their views on how to decolonize the curriculum. One noted that decolonizing is about more than just learning about other cultures; it's about celebrating them as well. A different student said that teachers should be made aware of the importance of decolonizing the curriculum, because such a shift crucially transforms the educational experience.

Others were equally blunt. One felt that the term itself was important because it "imposes a certain obligation on the 'colonizers' to decolonize the curriculum since they have been in control of the whole narrative." A fourth one summarized it this way: "It is time to hear from other people and groups."

Building a Stronger Discipline

As we take a deeper approach to decolonizing the curriculum, we open up our discipline to greater academic rigor. We show that we recognize the ways that empire and racism have shaped management forces and business practices.

Not only that, we broaden the epistemologies that shape our knowledge. We expand the methods we use to investigate ideas, gather data, and conduct analysis. Frameworks and disciplines that have sat too comfortably on their pedestals will be thoroughly tested by a greater range of thought. This will allow us to come to more thoroughly contested conclusions and build a stronger discipline.

It is easy to virtue signal and talk about making changes, but decolonizing the business school curriculum is a challenge. We cannot expect to easily undo ways of thinking that are so deeply entrenched.

Nor is it possible to make these changes within one specific academic cohort. It is up to all of us in our fields to challenge our familiar mental habits, no matter how uncomfortable that is. We must all be involved, and we must all be responsible for achieving change.

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Decolonizing the Business School Curriculum | AACSB

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As more business schools strive to become diverse and inclusive, they should consider the very sources of knowledge they teach in their classrooms.

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What decolonization isn't | Tommy Curry, Adjoa Andoh, Kehinde Andrews, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and more!

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What decolonization isn't | Tommy Curry, Adjoa Andoh, Kehinde Andrews, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and more!

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For decades, researchers have found that teachers in public schools have undervalued the potential for academic success among students of color, setting low expectations for them and thinking of cultural differences as barriers rather than assets to learning.

In response, scholars developed teaching methods and practices-broadly known as asset-based pedagogies-that incorporate students' cultural identities and lived experiences into the classroom as tools for effective instruction. The terms for these approaches to teaching vary, from culturally responsive teaching and culturally sustaining pedagogy to the more foundational culturally relevant pedagogy. Though each term has its own components defined by different researchers over time, all these approaches to teaching center the knowledge of traditionally marginalized communities in classroom instruction. As a result, all students, and in particular students of color, are empowered to become lifelong learners and critical thinkers.

This explainer unpacks what it means to be a culturally responsive teacher, how all these research terms are related, and where other academic concepts such as critical race theory tie in-or not.

What is the definition of culturally responsive teaching?

Culturally responsive teaching means using students' customs, characteristics, experience, and perspectives as tools for better classroom instruction.

The term was coined by researcher Geneva Gay in 2000, who wrote that "when academic knowledge and skills are situated within the lived experiences and frames of reference for students, they are more personally meaningful, have higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly."

It's the kind of teaching that helps students of color see themselves and their communities as belonging in schools and other academic spaces, leading to more engagement and success.

What is culture, and why is it relevant to student learning?

Culture refers to the customs, languages, values, beliefs, and achievements of a group of people. Students' culture and lived experiences that influence how they understand and make sense of the world or themselves are an integral part of who they are as learners. As Emily Style, the former founding co-director of the National SEED Project (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity), once wrote, "Half the curriculum walks in the door with the students."

While more than half of public school students are students of color, most schools are organized around the mainstream culture of white Americans. The culture that many students experience at home and in their communities is not always represented at school-or is represented in a stereotypical way.

Also, 80 percent of teachers are white. Research has found that teachers are just as likely to have racial biases as non-teachers, and those biases tend to influence the expectations they have for their students and their ways of managing their classrooms. For example, past research has found that white teachers have lower expectations for Black students than they do for white students, and those can turn into "self-fulfilling prophecies" when students internalize them or when teachers change their approach to students as a result of their mindsets.

One study found that white teachers were more likely to praise a poorly written essay if they thought it was written by a student of color than if they thought the essay was by a white student. Teachers' racial biases can also result in decreased access to advanced coursework and higher rates of suspensions.

When did culturally responsive teaching start?

Culturally responsive teaching stems from the framework of culturally relevant pedagogy, which was introduced by scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings in the 1990s. Ladson-Billings was tired of the commonly held narrative that Black children were deficient and deviant, and that there was something wrong with them. Instead, she wanted to find out what was right with Black children, their families, and their communities. To do so, she researched the practices of effective teachers of Black students.

For about two years, Ladson-Billings observed teachers who were identified by both principals and Black parents as being excellent. The teachers had different ways of teaching, but they all had high expectations for their students and fostered academic success. They also all valued and integrated themselves in the community from which their students came.

Ladson-Billings distilled the commonalities in those teachers' beliefs and practices into the framework of culturally relevant pedagogy, which she defined as a model that "not only addresses student achievement but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate."

There are three components of culturally relevant pedagogy:

student learning-prioritizing students' intellectual growth, including their ability to problem-solve;

cultural competence-creating an environment where students affirm and appreciate their culture of origin while also developing fluency in at least one other culture; and

critical consciousness-teaching students how to identify, analyze, and solve real-world problems, especially those that result in societal inequities against marginalized groups.

So, what are the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching?

Gay's research shows five essential components of culturally responsive teaching:

A strong knowledge base about cultural diversity. Teachers should understand different racial and ethnic groups' cultural values, traditions, and contributions to society, and incorporate that knowledge into their instruction.

Culturally relevant curricula. Teachers should include multiple perspectives in their instruction and make sure the images displayed in classrooms-such as on bulletin boards-represent a wide range of diversity. Teachers should also contextualize issues within race, class, ethnicity, and gender.

High expectations for all students. Teachers should help students achieve academic success while still validating their cultural identities.

An appreciation for different communication styles. Teachers should understand different communication styles and modify classroom interactions accordingly. For example, many communities of color have an active, participatory style of communication. A teacher who doesn't understand this cultural context might think a student is being rude and tell the student to be quiet. The student may then shut down.

The use of multicultural instructional examples. Teachers should connect students' prior knowledge and cultural experiences with new knowledge.

Doesn't that require teachers to reinforce stereotypes about students of color and even discriminate against white children?

In short, no. While the academic framework of culturally responsive teaching and other asset-based pedagogies emerged from how to best support students of color, it evolved into a teaching approach that serves all students, regardless of their racial background.

Sharroky Hollie, the director of the nonprofit Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, works with teachers to practice what he calls cultural and linguistic responsiveness. In his work, he talks about the rings of culture, meaning the various aspects of students' identities that can impact how they interact with the world around them.

To Hollie, it's not just about thinking of ways to validate and incorporate a student's racial background into the classroom. It's not about thinking of students in a one-dimensional, stereotypical way. Culturally responsive teachers must also consider the student's gender, age, socio-economic status, whether they live in the suburbs or a rural area, and more.

"It's not as simplistic as we're trying to value our students of color," he said. "We're actually trying to value the rings of culture that they bring to our schools, regardless of their racial background."

For instance, in predominately white school districts, there are white students who, due to where they live or their family's socio-economic status, are underserved by their school district and could benefit from a culturally responsive approach to education, Hollie said.

What is culturally sustaining pedagogy, and how is it different than culturally relevant teaching?

Schools are still places where white norms are considered the default standard in the curricula, behavioral expectations, linguistic practices, and more. Culturally sustaining pedagogy says that students of color should not be expected to adhere to white middle-class norms, but their own cultural ways of being should be explored, honored, and nurtured by educators.

The framework builds on the work of Ladson-Billing and others but offers a "loving critique" that cultural relevance in the curriculum is not enough for students in today's world, given demographic shifts toward a more diverse society. Paris and Alim also argue that asset-based pedagogies, like culturally relevant teaching, traditionally haven't paid enough attention to young people's more fluid relationships with their identities.

Ladson-Billings has embraced the evolution of her foundational pedagogy, writing in 2014 that "culturally sustaining pedagogy uses culturally relevant pedagogy as the place where the beat drops." She also told Education Week that she is now paying close attention to how teenagers shape culture, an aspect that wasn't present in her original work.

It's important to remember that these asset-based pedagogies-culturally responsive, culturally relevant, and culturally sustainable, among others-are not in conflict with each other. While their frameworks vary, they all have the same goal of dismantling a deficit approach to educating students of color and focusing instead on their strengths, assets, and communities in the classroom.

What does the research say about the effectiveness of these teaching frameworks?

A 2016 synthesis of decades of research on culturally responsive teaching and related frameworks found that engaging in culturally affirming practices across subject matters, including mathematics and science, led to positive increases in students' understanding and engagement with academic skills and concepts.  For instance, students in high school math class could learn about statistics by assessing the probabilities of racial profiling cases in various neighborhoods or using other datasets applicable to their communities that bring up questions about justice and injustice.

Culturally responsive teaching and similar approaches to teaching also increased students' motivation, interest in content, and the perception of themselves as capable students, among other benefits, the study found. Brittany Aronson, an associate professor in educational leadership at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a co-author of the study, said, whenever teachers drew direct connections between classroom lessons and students' experiences outside of school, students could see greater value in the academic content as it applies to the real world. Such work helps students see themselves as knowledge producers and researchers.

Overall, teaching that makes school relevant to students helps them succeed both in terms of quantitative measures such as high test scores, and more qualitative measures such as becoming life-long learners able to ask critical questions about the world around them, both in and out of school, Aronson said.

What are some examples of culturally responsive teaching?

Teachers who practice culturally responsive teaching have a classroom full of books featuring characters and images that represent a variety of ages, genders, ethnicities, and other types of diversity. They share the achievements and expertise of people from different ethnic groups in every subject area. They include multiple perspectives when discussing historical and contemporary events, including those from oppressed groups who are often left out of the narrative. And they encourage students to draw on their prior knowledge and cultural experiences to make connections to the academic content.

Culturally responsive teaching also must have an element of critical consciousness, where students are empowered to critique and analyze societal inequities. For example, Teddi Beam-Conroy, an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington, was teaching the Declaration of Independence to a class of 5th graders. When they got to the line that said, "All men are created equal," Beam-Conroy asked her students, "Who were the men who were considered equal at that point?" To illustrate the point, she asked everyone to stand up-and then told them to sit down if they didn't identify as male, if they didn't identify as white, or if their parents rented instead of owned a home.

That exercise opened the door to a conversation about how Americans weren't all equal in the late 18th century. Beam-Conroy's students discussed when women and African Americans got the right to vote-and what implications that has had on the composition of U.S. Congress or the Supreme Court. The critical consciousness piece is "examining how historically, power has been distributed and guarded among particular folks who make the laws," Beam-Conroy said. "Fifth graders can understand that."

Culturally responsive teaching can also involve a deeper reimagining of classroom codes of conduct. For instance, in some students' culture, talking while someone else talks shows how invested and engaged they are in the conversation, said Hollie with the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning. Culturally responsive teachers find ways to incorporate that verbal overlap into their lesson rather than seeing it as rude or worthy of discipline.

What isn't culturally responsive teaching?

Researchers note that some educators say they're practicing culturally responsive teaching, but it's an overly simplified version. For example, for some teachers, a multicultural school potluck meal or adding diverse books to their classroom library sufficiently counts as affirming students' culture in education. But culturally responsive teaching is deeper, more critical work.

"There's a tendency to truncate culturally responsive teaching to be about a whole myriad of things-it's about relationships, it's about anti-racist education, it's about diverse books," said Zaretta Hammond, the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. "It's like that old parable of the king who asks nine blind men to describe an elephant. Each one grabs a different part of the elephant. 'Oh, it's flat and wide'-he's got the ear. 'No, it's like a rope'-he's got the tail. No one has the whole picture."

Too often, she said, white progressive educators view culturally responsive teaching as an add-on to their regular instruction instead of a fundamental shift in their pedagogy. For example, a teacher might think students of color just need to see themselves in order to feel motivated and do the work, so she'll incorporate diverse books into her classroom or syllabus-but not change anything to the content or her way of instruction.

Another common misconception is that culturally responsive teaching is a way of addressing student trauma, which is a deficit-based ideology that assumes the universal experience of people of color is one of trauma, Hammond said.

How widespread is culturally responsive teaching?

Most teacher-preparation programs have also incorporated culturally responsive teaching into their courses. And some school districts, including New York City and Baltimore City, have adopted a culturally responsive and/or sustaining approach to education.

Still, experts say it's difficult to pinpoint exactly how many teachers have adopted these asset-based pedagogies because some may use only certain tenets. For instance, helping students develop a critical consciousness is often ignored.

What does all of this have to do with critical race theory?

Critical race theory, broadly speaking, is an academic concept with the core idea that race is a social construct, and racism is not only the product of individual bias or prejudice but is also embedded in policies and systems, such as a legal system-or as some scholars such as Ladson-Billings propose, an educational system.

Aspiring K-12 teachers in graduate level courses may study aspects of critical race theory to better understand how school systems are designed in ways that don't serve the needs of students of color. But critical race theory is not taught as a guide for classroom instruction, nor is it typically used as a culturally relevant or culturally responsive lesson plan for kids and teens, said Aronson with Miami University.

Asset-based pedagogies, like culturally relevant or culturally responsive teaching, are not the same thing as critical race theory. They have different theoretical bases and different goals. However, there might be some commonalities-for example, the questions students are encouraged to ask about social systems, including education, may ring close to the consciousness critical race theory is meant to evoke.

In an interview with Education Week, Ladson-Billings stressed that culturally relevant teaching, as she defined it, has nothing to do with critical race theory. But opponents to critical race theory have glossed over those nuances, she said, adding that deliberative public debate is hard when people don't know what they're talking about.

"The attack on anything that allows more participation and moves us toward equity is going full force," she said.

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Here's what it means to be a culturally responsive teacher and where critical race theory ties in-or not.

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Decolonising Education: The Challenge of Whiteness

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Decolonising Education: The Challenge of Whiteness

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Decolonising Education: The Challenge of Whiteness

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Recorded sessions on decolonizing education

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Recorded sessions on decolonizing education

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The role of learning design in decolonisation in academic practice - Melissa Coley

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We need to develop our approach to socially constructed concepts including socioeconomic factors, power, ethnicity and racism in pain care and research.

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We need to develop our approach to socially constructed concepts including socioeconomic factors, power, ethnicity and racism in pain care and research.

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Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 June 2021

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We need to develop our approach to socially constructed concepts ...: Ingenta Connect

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Document Type: Research Article Publication date: 01 June 2021 More about this publication? Pain and Rehabilitation is a peer-reviewed, Bi-annual journal of the Physiotherapy Pain Association and special interest group of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. The journal comprises a range of different articles types from orignial articles to systematic reviews and letters around the topic of pain and rehabilitation.

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Affiliations

¹ Center for Global Health Education, Institute for Global Health, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

² Department of Public Health, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA.

³ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

⁴ Division of Hospital Medicine, Departments of Medicine and Medical Education, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Affiliations

¹ Center for Global Health Education, Institute for Global Health, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

² Department of Public Health, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA.

³ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

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Abstract

Issue: The framework of cultural humility, which emphasizes curiosity and self-reflection over mastery, was identified over 20 years ago as a way to address implicit bias in health care, an important factor in health disparities. Despite growing interest from researchers and educators, as well as the urgent call to adopt these values, the foundational elements of cultural humility remain challenging to teach in medical education and have not yet been widely adopted.

Evidence: Health disparities persist throughout the United States among a growing population of diverse patients. The cultural humility framework undermines power imbalances by encouraging the clinician to view their patient as an expert of their own experience. This approach strengthens relationships within the community, illuminates racial and historical injustices, and contributes to equitable care. However, recent reviews have shown that humility-based principles have yet to be widely integrated into cultural curricula. Based on available evidence, this article introduces the foundational concepts of cultural humility with the aim of helping medical educators better understand and implement the principles of cultural humility into undergraduate medical education.

Implications: Cultural humility is a powerful and feasible adjunct to help student physicians cultivate effective tools to provide the best patient care possible to an increasingly diverse patient population. However, there is little known about how best to implement the principles of cultural humility into existing undergraduate medical education curricula. The analyses and strategies presented provide educators with the background, instructional and curricular methods to enable learners to cultivate cultural humility. Future systematic research will need to focus on investigating design, implementation and impact.

Keywords: Cultural humility; social determinants of health; undergraduate medical education.

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Integrating Cultural Humility into the Medical Education Curriculum: Strategies for Educators - PubMed

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Cultural humility is a powerful and feasible adjunct to help student physicians cultivate effective tools to provide the best patient care possible to an increasingly diverse patient population. However, there is little known about how best to implement the principles of cultural humility into exist ...

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Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education

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Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education

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So, you want to decolonize your syllabus?

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So, you want to decolonize your syllabus?

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So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread: 
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.

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So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread: 
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.

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So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread:
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.
— Joseph M. Pierce (@PepePierce) December 21, 2022

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So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread: 
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread: 
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.

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So you want to decolonize your syllabus, a thread: 
1. Start by understanding what decolonization means, and that it is not a metaphor (Tuck and Yang), but a material, tangible, physical process.

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Decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in England and Wales

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Decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in England and Wales

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Souls of Black Folk

Release Date: January, 1996 [eBook #408]
[Most recently updated: August 11, 2021]

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK ***

by W. E. B. Du Bois

Herein is Written

To
Burghardt and Yolande
The Lost and the Found

The Forethought

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.

I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,-the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.

Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,-some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?

W.E.B. Du B.

Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 1, 1903.

I.
Of Our Spiritual Strivings

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,-peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards-ten cents a package-and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,-refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,-some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,-a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,-this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,-it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan-on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde-could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,-has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain-Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,-suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:-

"Shout, O children!
Shout, you're free!
For God has bought your liberty!"

Years have passed away since then,-ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:-

"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble!"

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,-a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,-like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,-a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of "book-learning"; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,-darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,-not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.

A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the "higher" against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,-before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom "discouragement" is an unwritten word.

But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force or fraud,-and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good,-the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes' social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past,-physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,-all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,-all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,-the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,-the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,-else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,-the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,-all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen's sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers' fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.

II.
Of the Dawn of Freedom

Careless seems the great Avenger;
History's lessons but record
One death-grapple in the darkness
'Twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.

LOWELL.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,-the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points, of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,-What shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this way and that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro problems of to-day.

It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history from 1861 to 1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro. In effect, this tale of the dawn of Freedom is an account of that government of men called the Freedmen's Bureau,-one of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition.

The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the President, and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies, East and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night, when the flickering camp-fires shone like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon: old men and thin, with gray and tufted hair; women with frightened eyes, dragging whimpering hungry children; men and girls, stalwart and gaunt,-a horde of starving vagabonds, homeless, helpless, and pitiable, in their dark distress. Two methods of treating these newcomers seemed equally logical to opposite sorts of minds. Ben Butler, in Virginia, quickly declared slave property contraband of war, and put the fugitives to work; while Fremont, in Missouri, declared the slaves free under martial law. Butler's action was approved, but Fremont's was hastily countermanded, and his successor, Halleck, saw things differently. "Hereafter," he commanded, "no slaves should be allowed to come into your lines at all; if any come without your knowledge, when owners call for them deliver them." Such a policy was difficult to enforce; some of the black refugees declared themselves freemen, others showed that their masters had deserted them, and still others were captured with forts and plantations. Evidently, too, slaves were a source of strength to the Confederacy, and were being used as laborers and producers. "They constitute a military resource," wrote Secretary Cameron, late in 1861; "and being such, that they should not be turned over to the enemy is too plain to discuss." So gradually the tone of the army chiefs changed; Congress forbade the rendition of fugitives, and Butler's "contrabands" were welcomed as military laborers. This complicated rather than solved the problem, for now the scattering fugitives became a steady stream, which flowed faster as the armies marched.

Then the long-headed man with care-chiselled face who sat in the White House saw the inevitable, and emancipated the slaves of rebels on New Year's, 1863. A month later Congress called earnestly for the Negro soldiers whom the act of July, 1862, had half grudgingly allowed to enlist. Thus the barriers were levelled and the deed was done. The stream of fugitives swelled to a flood, and anxious army officers kept inquiring: "What must be done with slaves, arriving almost daily? Are we to find food and shelter for women and children?"

It was a Pierce of Boston who pointed out the way, and thus became in a sense the founder of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was a firm friend of Secretary Chase; and when, in 1861, the care of slaves and abandoned lands devolved upon the Treasury officials, Pierce was specially detailed from the ranks to study the conditions. First, he cared for the refugees at Fortress Monroe; and then, after Sherman had captured Hilton Head, Pierce was sent there to found his Port Royal experiment of making free workingmen out of slaves. Before his experiment was barely started, however, the problem of the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken from the hands of the over-burdened Treasury Department and given to the army officials. Already centres of massed freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe, Washington, New Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Ky., and Cairo, Ill., as well as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields; "superintendents of contrabands" multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the others.

Then came the Freedmen's Aid societies, born of the touching appeals from Pierce and from these other centres of distress. There was the American Missionary Association, sprung from the Amistad, and now full-grown for work; the various church organizations, the National Freedmen's Relief Association, the American Freedmen's Union, the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission,-in all fifty or more active organizations, which sent clothes, money, school-books, and teachers southward. All they did was needed, for the destitution of the freedmen was often reported as "too appalling for belief," and the situation was daily growing worse rather than better.

And daily, too, it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary matter of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for here loomed a labor problem of vast dimensions. Masses of Negroes stood idle, or, if they worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if perchance they received pay, squandered the new thing thoughtlessly. In these and other ways were camp-life and the new liberty demoralizing the freedmen. The broader economic organization thus clearly demanded sprang up here and there as accident and local conditions determined. Here it was that Pierce's Port Royal plan of leased plantations and guided workmen pointed out the rough way. In Washington the military governor, at the urgent appeal of the superintendent, opened confiscated estates to the cultivation of the fugitives, and there in the shadow of the dome gathered black farm villages. General Dix gave over estates to the freedmen of Fortress Monroe, and so on, South and West. The government and benevolent societies furnished the means of cultivation, and the Negro turned again slowly to work. The systems of control, thus started, rapidly grew, here and there, into strange little governments, like that of General Banks in Louisiana, with its ninety thousand black subjects, its fifty thousand guided laborers, and its annual budget of one hundred thousand dollars and more. It made out four thousand pay-rolls a year, registered all freedmen, inquired into grievances and redressed them, laid and collected taxes, and established a system of public schools. So, too, Colonel Eaton, the superintendent of Tennessee and Arkansas, ruled over one hundred thousand freedmen, leased and cultivated seven thousand acres of cotton land, and fed ten thousand paupers a year. In South Carolina was General Saxton, with his deep interest in black folk. He succeeded Pierce and the Treasury officials, and sold forfeited estates, leased abandoned plantations, encouraged schools, and received from Sherman, after that terribly picturesque march to the sea, thousands of the wretched camp followers.

Three characteristic things one might have seen in Sherman's raid through Georgia, which threw the new situation in shadowy relief: the Conqueror, the Conquered, and the Negro. Some see all significance in the grim front of the destroyer, and some in the bitter sufferers of the Lost Cause. But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them. In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands. There too came the characteristic military remedy: "The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John's River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war." So read the celebrated "Field-order Number Fifteen."

All these experiments, orders, and systems were bound to attract and perplex the government and the nation. Directly after the Emancipation Proclamation, Representative Eliot had introduced a bill creating a Bureau of Emancipation; but it was never reported. The following June a committee of inquiry, appointed by the Secretary of War, reported in favor of a temporary bureau for the "improvement, protection, and employment of refugee freedmen," on much the same lines as were afterwards followed. Petitions came in to President Lincoln from distinguished citizens and organizations, strongly urging a comprehensive and unified plan of dealing with the freedmen, under a bureau which should be "charged with the study of plans and execution of measures for easily guiding, and in every way judiciously and humanely aiding, the passage of our emancipated and yet to be emancipated blacks from the old condition of forced labor to their new state of voluntary industry."

Some half-hearted steps were taken to accomplish this, in part, by putting the whole matter again in charge of the special Treasury agents. Laws of 1863 and 1864 directed them to take charge of and lease abandoned lands for periods not exceeding twelve months, and to "provide in such leases, or otherwise, for the employment and general welfare" of the freedmen. Most of the army officers greeted this as a welcome relief from perplexing "Negro affairs," and Secretary Fessenden, July 29, 1864, issued an excellent system of regulations, which were afterward closely followed by General Howard. Under Treasury agents, large quantities of land were leased in the Mississippi Valley, and many Negroes were employed; but in August, 1864, the new regulations were suspended for reasons of "public policy," and the army was again in control.

Meanwhile Congress had turned its attention to the subject; and in March the House passed a bill by a majority of two establishing a Bureau for Freedmen in the War Department. Charles Sumner, who had charge of the bill in the Senate, argued that freedmen and abandoned lands ought to be under the same department, and reported a substitute for the House bill attaching the Bureau to the Treasury Department. This bill passed, but too late for action by the House. The debates wandered over the whole policy of the administration and the general question of slavery, without touching very closely the specific merits of the measure in hand. Then the national election took place; and the administration, with a vote of renewed confidence from the country, addressed itself to the matter more seriously. A conference between the two branches of Congress agreed upon a carefully drawn measure which contained the chief provisions of Sumner's bill, but made the proposed organization a department independent of both the War and the Treasury officials. The bill was conservative, giving the new department "general superintendence of all freedmen." Its purpose was to "establish regulations" for them, protect them, lease them lands, adjust their wages, and appear in civil and military courts as their "next friend." There were many limitations attached to the powers thus granted, and the organization was made permanent. Nevertheless, the Senate defeated the bill, and a new conference committee was appointed. This committee reported a new bill, February 28, which was whirled through just as the session closed, and became the act of 1865 establishing in the War Department a "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands."

This last compromise was a hasty bit of legislation, vague and uncertain in outline. A Bureau was created, "to continue during the present War of Rebellion, and for one year thereafter," to which was given "the supervision and management of all abandoned lands and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen," under "such rules and regulations as may be presented by the head of the Bureau and approved by the President." A Commissioner, appointed by the President and Senate, was to control the Bureau, with an office force not exceeding ten clerks. The President might also appoint assistant commissioners in the seceded States, and to all these offices military officials might be detailed at regular pay. The Secretary of War could issue rations, clothing, and fuel to the destitute, and all abandoned property was placed in the hands of the Bureau for eventual lease and sale to ex-slaves in forty-acre parcels.

Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation. It was a tremendous undertaking. Here at a stroke of the pen was erected a government of millions of men,-and not ordinary men either, but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken and embittered population of their former masters. Any man might well have hesitated to assume charge of such a work, with vast responsibilities, indefinite powers, and limited resources. Probably no one but a soldier would have answered such a call promptly; and, indeed, no one but a soldier could be called, for Congress had appropriated no money for salaries and expenses.

Less than a month after the weary Emancipator passed to his rest, his successor assigned Major-Gen. Oliver O. Howard to duty as Commissioner of the new Bureau. He was a Maine man, then only thirty-five years of age. He had marched with Sherman to the sea, had fought well at Gettysburg, and but the year before had been assigned to the command of the Department of Tennessee. An honest man, with too much faith in human nature, little aptitude for business and intricate detail, he had had large opportunity of becoming acquainted at first hand with much of the work before him. And of that work it has been truly said that "no approximately correct history of civilization can ever be written which does not throw out in bold relief, as one of the great landmarks of political and social progress, the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau."

On May 12, 1865, Howard was appointed; and he assumed the duties of his office promptly on the 15th, and began examining the field of work. A curious mess he looked upon: little despotisms, communistic experiments, slavery, peonage, business speculations, organized charity, unorganized almsgiving,-all reeling on under the guise of helping the freedmen, and all enshrined in the smoke and blood of the war and the cursing and silence of angry men. On May 19 the new government-for a government it really was-issued its constitution; commissioners were to be appointed in each of the seceded states, who were to take charge of "all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen," and all relief and rations were to be given by their consent alone. The Bureau invited continued cooperation with benevolent societies, and declared: "It will be the object of all commissioners to introduce practicable systems of compensated labor," and to establish schools. Forthwith nine assistant commissioners were appointed. They were to hasten to their fields of work; seek gradually to close relief establishments, and make the destitute self-supporting; act as courts of law where there were no courts, or where Negroes were not recognized in them as free; establish the institution of marriage among ex-slaves, and keep records; see that freedmen were free to choose their employers, and help in making fair contracts for them; and finally, the circular said: "Simple good faith, for which we hope on all hands for those concerned in the passing away of slavery, will especially relieve the assistant commissioners in the discharge of their duties toward the freedmen, as well as promote the general welfare."

No sooner was the work thus started, and the general system and local organization in some measure begun, than two grave difficulties appeared which changed largely the theory and outcome of Bureau work. First, there were the abandoned lands of the South. It had long been the more or less definitely expressed theory of the North that all the chief problems of Emancipation might be settled by establishing the slaves on the forfeited lands of their masters,-a sort of poetic justice, said some. But this poetry done into solemn prose meant either wholesale confiscation of private property in the South, or vast appropriations. Now Congress had not appropriated a cent, and no sooner did the proclamations of general amnesty appear than the eight hundred thousand acres of abandoned lands in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau melted quickly away. The second difficulty lay in perfecting the local organization of the Bureau throughout the wide field of work. Making a new machine and sending out officials of duly ascertained fitness for a great work of social reform is no child's task; but this task was even harder, for a new central organization had to be fitted on a heterogeneous and confused but already existing system of relief and control of ex-slaves; and the agents available for this work must be sought for in an army still busy with war operations,-men in the very nature of the case ill fitted for delicate social work,-or among the questionable camp followers of an invading host. Thus, after a year's work, vigorously as it was pushed, the problem looked even more difficult to grasp and solve than at the beginning. Nevertheless, three things that year's work did, well worth the doing: it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering; it transported seven thousand fugitives from congested centres back to the farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England schoolma'am.

The annals of this Ninth Crusade are yet to be written,-the tale of a mission that seemed to our age far more quixotic than the quest of St. Louis seemed to his. Behind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of women who dared, and after the hoarse mouthings of the field guns rang the rhythm of the alphabet. Rich and poor they were, serious and curious. Bereaved now of a father, now of a brother, now of more than these, they came seeking a life work in planting New England schoolhouses among the white and black of the South. They did their work well. In that first year they taught one hundred thousand souls, and more.

Evidently, Congress must soon legislate again on the hastily organized Bureau, which had so quickly grown into wide significance and vast possibilities. An institution such as that was well-nigh as difficult to end as to begin. Early in 1866 Congress took up the matter, when Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, introduced a bill to extend the Bureau and enlarge its powers. This measure received, at the hands of Congress, far more thorough discussion and attention than its predecessor. The war cloud had thinned enough to allow a clearer conception of the work of Emancipation. The champions of the bill argued that the strengthening of the Freedmen's Bureau was still a military necessity; that it was needed for the proper carrying out of the Thirteenth Amendment, and was a work of sheer justice to the ex-slave, at a trifling cost to the government. The opponents of the measure declared that the war was over, and the necessity for war measures past; that the Bureau, by reason of its extraordinary powers, was clearly unconstitutional in time of peace, and was destined to irritate the South and pauperize the freedmen, at a final cost of possibly hundreds of millions. These two arguments were unanswered, and indeed unanswerable: the one that the extraordinary powers of the Bureau threatened the civil rights of all citizens; and the other that the government must have power to do what manifestly must be done, and that present abandonment of the freedmen meant their practical reenslavement. The bill which finally passed enlarged and made permanent the Freedmen's Bureau. It was promptly vetoed by President Johnson as "unconstitutional," "unnecessary," and "extrajudicial," and failed of passage over the veto. Meantime, however, the breach between Congress and the President began to broaden, and a modified form of the lost bill was finally passed over the President's second veto, July 16.

The act of 1866 gave the Freedmen's Bureau its final form,-the form by which it will be known to posterity and judged of men. It extended the existence of the Bureau to July, 1868; it authorized additional assistant commissioners, the retention of army officers mustered out of regular service, the sale of certain forfeited lands to freedmen on nominal terms, the sale of Confederate public property for Negro schools, and a wider field of judicial interpretation and cognizance. The government of the unreconstructed South was thus put very largely in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau, especially as in many cases the departmental military commander was now made also assistant commissioner. It was thus that the Freedmen's Bureau became a full-fledged government of men. It made laws, executed them and interpreted them; it laid and collected taxes, defined and punished crime, maintained and used military force, and dictated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for the accomplishment of its varied ends. Naturally, all these powers were not exercised continuously nor to their fullest extent; and yet, as General Howard has said, "scarcely any subject that has to be legislated upon in civil society failed, at one time or another, to demand the action of this singular Bureau."

To understand and criticise intelligently so vast a work, one must not forget an instant the drift of things in the later sixties. Lee had surrendered, Lincoln was dead, and Johnson and Congress were at loggerheads; the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, the Fourteenth pending, and the Fifteenth declared in force in 1870. Guerrilla raiding, the ever-present flickering after-flame of war, was spending its forces against the Negroes, and all the Southern land was awakening as from some wild dream to poverty and social revolution. In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth, the social uplifting of four million slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been a herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict, the hell of war; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement,-in such a case, the work of any instrument of social regeneration was in large part foredoomed to failure. The very name of the Bureau stood for a thing in the South which for two centuries and better men had refused even to argue,-that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the maddest of experiments.

The agents that the Bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst, it was the occasional fly that helped spoil the ointment.

Then amid all crouched the freed slave, bewildered between friend and foe. He had emerged from slavery,-not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness,-but withal slavery, which, so far as human aspiration and desert were concerned, classed the black man and the ox together. And the Negro knew full well that, whatever their deeper convictions may have been, Southern men had fought with desperate energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses, with half-articulate thought, had writhed and shivered. They welcomed freedom with a cry. They shrank from the master who still strove for their chains; they fled to the friends that had freed them, even though those friends stood ready to use them as a club for driving the recalcitrant South back into loyalty. So the cleft between the white and black South grew. Idle to say it never should have been; it was as inevitable as its results were pitiable. Curiously incongruous elements were left arrayed against each other,-the North, the government, the carpet-bagger, and the slave, here; and there, all the South that was white, whether gentleman or vagabond, honest man or rascal, lawless murderer or martyr to duty.

Thus it is doubly difficult to write of this period calmly, so intense was the feeling, so mighty the human passions that swayed and blinded men. Amid it all, two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming ages,-the one, a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes;-and the other, a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime quailed at that white master's command, had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and daughters, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife,-aye, too, at his behest had laid herself low to his lust, and borne a tawny man-child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after "damned Niggers." These were the saddest sights of that woful day; and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the present-past; but, hating, they went to their long home, and, hating, their children's children live today.

Here, then, was the field of work for the Freedmen's Bureau; and since, with some hesitation, it was continued by the act of 1868 until 1869, let us look upon four years of its work as a whole. There were, in 1868, nine hundred Bureau officials scattered from Washington to Texas, ruling, directly and indirectly, many millions of men. The deeds of these rulers fall mainly under seven heads: the relief of physical suffering, the overseeing of the beginnings of free labor, the buying and selling of land, the establishment of schools, the paying of bounties, the administration of justice, and the financiering of all these activities.

Up to June, 1869, over half a million patients had been treated by Bureau physicians and surgeons, and sixty hospitals and asylums had been in operation. In fifty months twenty-one million free rations were distributed at a cost of over four million dollars. Next came the difficult question of labor. First, thirty thousand black men were transported from the refuges and relief stations back to the farms, back to the critical trial of a new way of working. Plain instructions went out from Washington: the laborers must be free to choose their employers, no fixed rate of wages was prescribed, and there was to be no peonage or forced labor. So far, so good; but where local agents differed toto cælo in capacity and character, where the personnel was continually changing, the outcome was necessarily varied. The largest element of success lay in the fact that the majority of the freedmen were willing, even eager, to work. So labor contracts were written,-fifty thousand in a single State,-laborers advised, wages guaranteed, and employers supplied. In truth, the organization became a vast labor bureau,-not perfect, indeed, notably defective here and there, but on the whole successful beyond the dreams of thoughtful men. The two great obstacles which confronted the officials were the tyrant and the idler,-the slaveholder who was determined to perpetuate slavery under another name; and, the freedman who regarded freedom as perpetual rest,-the Devil and the Deep Sea.

In the work of establishing the Negroes as peasant proprietors, the Bureau was from the first handicapped and at last absolutely checked. Something was done, and larger things were planned; abandoned lands were leased so long as they remained in the hands of the Bureau, and a total revenue of nearly half a million dollars derived from black tenants. Some other lands to which the nation had gained title were sold on easy terms, and public lands were opened for settlement to the very few freedmen who had tools and capital. But the vision of "forty acres and a mule"-the righteous and reasonable ambition to become a landholder, which the nation had all but categorically promised the freedmen-was destined in most cases to bitter disappointment. And those men of marvellous hindsight who are today seeking to preach the Negro back to the present peonage of the soil know well, or ought to know, that the opportunity of binding the Negro peasant willingly to the soil was lost on that day when the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau had to go to South Carolina and tell the weeping freedmen, after their years of toil, that their land was not theirs, that there was a mistake-somewhere. If by 1874 the Georgia Negro alone owned three hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, it was by grace of his thrift rather than by bounty of the government.

The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South. It not only called the school-mistresses through the benevolent agencies and built them schoolhouses, but it helped discover and support such apostles of human culture as Edmund Ware, Samuel Armstrong, and Erastus Cravath. The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know. Perhaps some inkling of this paradox, even in the unquiet days of the Bureau, helped the bayonets allay an opposition to human training which still to-day lies smouldering in the South, but not flaming. Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton were founded in these days, and six million dollars were expended for educational work, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of which the freedmen themselves gave of their poverty.

Such contributions, together with the buying of land and various other enterprises, showed that the ex-slave was handling some free capital already. The chief initial source of this was labor in the army, and his pay and bounty as a soldier. Payments to Negro soldiers were at first complicated by the ignorance of the recipients, and the fact that the quotas of colored regiments from Northern States were largely filled by recruits from the South, unknown to their fellow soldiers. Consequently, payments were accompanied by such frauds that Congress, by joint resolution in 1867, put the whole matter in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau. In two years six million dollars was thus distributed to five thousand claimants, and in the end the sum exceeded eight million dollars. Even in this system fraud was frequent; but still the work put needed capital in the hands of practical paupers, and some, at least, was well spent.

The most perplexing and least successful part of the Bureau's work lay in the exercise of its judicial functions. The regular Bureau court consisted of one representative of the employer, one of the Negro, and one of the Bureau. If the Bureau could have maintained a perfectly judicial attitude, this arrangement would have been ideal, and must in time have gained confidence; but the nature of its other activities and the character of its personnel prejudiced the Bureau in favor of the black litigants, and led without doubt to much injustice and annoyance. On the other hand, to leave the Negro in the hands of Southern courts was impossible. In a distracted land where slavery had hardly fallen, to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized, and imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks. Almost every law and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the legislatures to reduce the Negroes to serfdom,-to make them the slaves of the State, if not of individual owners; while the Bureau officials too often were found striving to put the "bottom rail on top," and gave the freedmen a power and independence which they could not yet use. It is all well enough for us of another generation to wax wise with advice to those who bore the burden in the heat of the day. It is full easy now to see that the man who lost home, fortune, and family at a stroke, and saw his land ruled by "mules and niggers," was really benefited by the passing of slavery. It is not difficult now to say to the young freedman, cheated and cuffed about who has seen his father's head beaten to a jelly and his own mother namelessly assaulted, that the meek shall inherit the earth. Above all, nothing is more convenient than to heap on the Freedmen's Bureau all the evils of that evil day, and damn it utterly for every mistake and blunder that was made.

All this is easy, but it is neither sensible nor just. Someone had blundered, but that was long before Oliver Howard was born; there was criminal aggression and heedless neglect, but without some system of control there would have been far more than there was. Had that control been from within, the Negro would have been re-enslaved, to all intents and purposes. Coming as the control did from without, perfect men and methods would have bettered all things; and even with imperfect agents and questionable methods, the work accomplished was not undeserving of commendation.

Such was the dawn of Freedom; such was the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, which, summed up in brief, may be epitomized thus: for some fifteen million dollars, beside the sums spent before 1865, and the dole of benevolent societies, this Bureau set going a system of free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietorship, secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law, and founded the free common school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good-will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land. Its successes were the result of hard work, supplemented by the aid of philanthropists and the eager striving of black men. Its failures were the result of bad local agents, the inherent difficulties of the work, and national neglect.

Such an institution, from its wide powers, great responsibilities, large control of moneys, and generally conspicuous position, was naturally open to repeated and bitter attack. It sustained a searching Congressional investigation at the instance of Fernando Wood in 1870. Its archives and few remaining functions were with blunt discourtesy transferred from Howard's control, in his absence, to the supervision of Secretary of War Belknap in 1872, on the Secretary's recommendation. Finally, in consequence of grave intimations of wrong-doing made by the Secretary and his subordinates, General Howard was court-martialed in 1874. In both of these trials the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was officially exonerated from any wilful misdoing, and his work commended. Nevertheless, many unpleasant things were brought to light,-the methods of transacting the business of the Bureau were faulty; several cases of defalcation were proved, and other frauds strongly suspected; there were some business transactions which savored of dangerous speculation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of the Freedmen's Bank.

Morally and practically, the Freedmen's Bank was part of the Freedmen's Bureau, although it had no legal connection with it. With the prestige of the government back of it, and a directing board of unusual respectability and national reputation, this banking institution had made a remarkable start in the development of that thrift among black folk which slavery had kept them from knowing. Then in one sad day came the crash,-all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disappeared; but that was the least of the loss,-all the faith in saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness has never yet made good. Not even ten additional years of slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freedmen as the mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series of savings banks chartered by the Nation for their especial aid. Where all the blame should rest, it is hard to say; whether the Bureau and the Bank died chiefly by reason of the blows of its selfish friends or the dark machinations of its foes, perhaps even time will never reveal, for here lies unwritten history.

Of the foes without the Bureau, the bitterest were those who attacked not so much its conduct or policy under the law as the necessity for any such institution at all. Such attacks came primarily from the Border States and the South; and they were summed up by Senator Davis, of Kentucky, when he moved to entitle the act of 1866 a bill "to promote strife and conflict between the white and black races... by a grant of unconstitutional power." The argument gathered tremendous strength South and North; but its very strength was its weakness. For, argued the plain common-sense of the nation, if it is unconstitutional, unpractical, and futile for the nation to stand guardian over its helpless wards, then there is left but one alternative,-to make those wards their own guardians by arming them with the ballot. Moreover, the path of the practical politician pointed the same way; for, argued this opportunist, if we cannot peacefully reconstruct the South with white votes, we certainly can with black votes. So justice and force joined hands.

The alternative thus offered the nation was not between full and restricted Negro suffrage; else every sensible man, black and white, would easily have chosen the latter. It was rather a choice between suffrage and slavery, after endless blood and gold had flowed to sweep human bondage away. Not a single Southern legislature stood ready to admit a Negro, under any conditions, to the polls; not a single Southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible without a system of restrictions that took all its freedom away; there was scarcely a white man in the South who did not honestly regard Emancipation as a crime, and its practical nullification as a duty. In such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud. And some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity; and some felt and feel only indifference and contempt.

Had political exigencies been less pressing, the opposition to government guardianship of Negroes less bitter, and the attachment to the slave system less strong, the social seer can well imagine a far better policy,-a permanent Freedmen's Bureau, with a national system of Negro schools; a carefully supervised employment and labor office; a system of impartial protection before the regular courts; and such institutions for social betterment as savings-banks, land and building associations, and social settlements. All this vast expenditure of money and brains might have formed a great school of prospective citizenship, and solved in a way we have not yet solved the most perplexing and persistent of the Negro problems.

That such an institution was unthinkable in 1870 was due in part to certain acts of the Freedmen's Bureau itself. It came to regard its work as merely temporary, and Negro suffrage as a final answer to all present perplexities. The political ambition of many of its agents and protégés led it far afield into questionable activities, until the South, nursing its own deep prejudices, came easily to ignore all the good deeds of the Bureau and hate its very name with perfect hatred. So the Freedmen's Bureau died, and its child was the Fifteenth Amendment.

The passing of a great human institution before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men. The legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation. To-day, when new and vaster problems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul, would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must have been, lawlessness and crime. That is the large legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau, the work it did not do because it could not.

I have seen a land right merry with the sun, where children sing, and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest. And there in the King's Highways sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed, by which the traveller's footsteps hasten as they go. On the tainted air broods fear. Three centuries' thought has been the raising and unveiling of that bowed human heart, and now behold a century new for the duty and the deed. The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

III.
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

BYRON.

Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,-then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to war-time had striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary Association had from the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into his programme, and changed it from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he did this is a fascinating study of human life.

It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.

To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white South was Mr. Washington's first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This "Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and to-day its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.

Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place and consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the North. And so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this.

And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. So Mr. Washington's cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world.

The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character. In the South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,-and naturally so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to that section. Twice-once when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American War he alluded to the color-prejudice that is "eating away the vitals of the South," and once when he dined with President Roosevelt-has the resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten seriously his popularity. In the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that Mr. Washington's counsels of submission overlooked certain elements of true manhood, and that his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow. Usually, however, such criticism has not found open expression, although, too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not failed to follow Mr. Washington, yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too willing to deliver the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, "If that is all you and your race ask, take it."

Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even today continuing strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.

But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,-criticism of writers by readers,-this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,-a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth. History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?-that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student's inspiration and despair.

Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group leaders, founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worth while studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people, their attitude is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group may take three main forms,-a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization and self-development despite environing opinion. The influence of all of these attitudes at various times can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution of his successive leaders.

Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, there was in all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,-typified in the terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection. The liberalizing tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought, along with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the martyrdom of Attucks, the fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of Banneker and Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.

Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian ardor. The disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused undoubtedly by vague rumors of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts at insurrection,-in 1800 under Gabriel in Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat Turner. In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development was made. In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious institution among the Negroes known as the African Church,-an organization still living and controlling in its various branches over a million of men.

Walker's wild appeal against the trend of the times showed how the world was changing after the coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus, Forten and Purvis of Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston, and others, strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as "people of color," not as "Negroes." The trend of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving as freemen. Schemes of migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.

Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and self-development dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance, and John Brown's raid was the extreme of its logic. After the war and emancipation, the great form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Self-assertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of greater social significance, Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.

Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing and shifting of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old age, still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood,-ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms. For a time Price arose as a new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give up, but to re-state the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white South. But he passed away in his prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly all the former ones had become leaders by the silent suffrage of their fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save Douglass, little known outside their race. But Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two,-a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro. Naturally the Negroes resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their civil and political rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic development. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race problem, but was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of peaceful cooperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,-

First, political power,

Second, insistence on civil rights,

Third, higher education of Negro youth,-and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.

These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.

2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.

3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

This triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they hate the white South blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines,-for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying and brute force?

The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud. They deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a general discharge of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless, the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E. Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent. Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:

1. The right to vote.

2. Civic equality.

3. The education of youth according to ability. They acknowledge Mr. Washington's invaluable service in counselling patience and courtesy in such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black men vote when ignorant whites are debarred, or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage should not be applied; they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the nation knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro's degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They advocate, with Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools supplemented by thorough industrial training; but they are surprised that a man of Mr. Washington's insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college and university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such institutions throughout the South to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and leaders.

This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white South; they accept the "Atlanta Compromise" in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him, many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But, nevertheless, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility. They do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.

In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even at the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a heavy responsibility,-a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation,-this common Fatherland. It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.

First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid"; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,-needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while others-usually the sons of the masters-wish to help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against "the South" is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of thinking black men.

It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro's degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro's failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro's position; second, industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,-it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.

In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North-her co-partner in guilt-cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by "policy" alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,-a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,-so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,-we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

VI.
Of the Training of Black Men

OMAR KHAYYÁM (FITZGERALD).

From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown, have flowed down to our day three streams of thinking: one swollen from the larger world here and overseas, saying, the multiplying of human wants in culture-lands calls for the world-wide cooperation of men in satisfying them. Hence arises a new human unity, pulling the ends of earth nearer, and all men, black, yellow, and white. The larger humanity strives to feel in this contact of living Nations and sleeping hordes a thrill of new life in the world, crying, "If the contact of Life and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life." To be sure, behind this thought lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,-the making of brown men to delve when the temptation of beads and red calico cloys.

The second thought streaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South,-the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro,-a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,-some of them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defence we dare not let them, and we build about them walls so high, and hang between them and the light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through.

And last of all there trickles down that third and darker thought,-the thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious mutter of men who are black and whitened, crying "Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity-vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living men!" To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,-suppose, after all, the World is right and we are less than men? Suppose this mad impulse within is all wrong, some mock mirage from the untrue?

So here we stand among thoughts of human unity, even through conquest and slavery; the inferiority of black men, even if forced by fraud; a shriek in the night for the freedom of men who themselves are not yet sure of their right to demand it. This is the tangle of thought and afterthought wherein we are called to solve the problem of training men for life.

Behind all its curiousness, so attractive alike to sage and dilettante, lie its dim dangers, throwing across us shadows at once grotesque and awful. Plain it is to us that what the world seeks through desert and wild we have within our threshold,-a stalwart laboring force, suited to the semi-tropics; if, deaf to the voice of the Zeitgeist, we refuse to use and develop these men, we risk poverty and loss. If, on the other hand, seized by the brutal afterthought, we debauch the race thus caught in our talons, selfishly sucking their blood and brains in the future as in the past, what shall save us from national decadence? Only that saner selfishness, which Education teaches, can find the rights of all in the whirl of work.

Again, we may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being let alone. They must be recognized as facts, but unpleasant facts; things that stand in the way of civilization and religion and common decency. They can be met in but one way,-by the breadth and broadening of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture. And so, too, the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with. To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires; to flout their striving idly is to welcome a harvest of brutish crime and shameless lethargy in our very laps. The guiding of thought and the deft coordination of deed is at once the path of honor and humanity.

And so, in this great question of reconciling three vast and partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of Education leaps to the lips of all:-such human training as will best use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing; such training as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and to stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil, and the mounting fury of shackled men.

But when we have vaguely said that Education will set this tangle straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable living together of black men and white? A hundred and fifty years ago our task would have seemed easier. Then Dr. Johnson blandly assured us that education was needful solely for the embellishments of life, and was useless for ordinary vermin. To-day we have climbed to heights where we would open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its treasures to many, and select the few to whom its mystery of Truth is revealed, not wholly by birth or the accidents of the stock market, but at least in part according to deftness and aim, talent and character. This programme, however, we are sorely puzzled in carrying out through that part of the land where the blight of slavery fell hardest, and where we are dealing with two backward peoples. To make here in human education that ever necessary combination of the permanent and the contingent-of the ideal and the practical in workable equilibrium-has been there, as it ever must be in every age and place, a matter of infinite experiment and frequent mistakes.

In rough approximation we may point out four varying decades of work in Southern education since the Civil War. From the close of the war until 1876, was the period of uncertain groping and temporary relief. There were army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedmen's Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system and co-operation. Then followed ten years of constructive definite effort toward the building of complete school systems in the South. Normal schools and colleges were founded for the freedmen, and teachers trained there to man the public schools. There was the inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the prejudices of the master and the ignorance of the slave, and all seemed clear sailing out of the wreckage of the storm. Meantime, starting in this decade yet especially developing from 1885 to 1895, began the industrial revolution of the South. The land saw glimpses of a new destiny and the stirring of new ideals. The educational system striving to complete itself saw new obstacles and a field of work ever broader and deeper. The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools were doing little more than common-school work, and the common schools were training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly. At the same time the white South, by reason of its sudden conversion from the slavery ideal, by so much the more became set and strengthened in its racial prejudice, and crystallized it into harsh law and harsher custom; while the marvellous pushing forward of the poor white daily threatened to take even bread and butter from the mouths of the heavily handicapped sons of the freedmen. In the midst, then, of the larger problem of Negro education sprang up the more practical question of work, the inevitable economic quandary that faces a people in the transition from slavery to freedom, and especially those who make that change amid hate and prejudice, lawlessness and ruthless competition.

The industrial school springing to notice in this decade, but coming to full recognition in the decade beginning with 1895, was the proffered answer to this combined educational and economic crisis, and an answer of singular wisdom and timeliness. From the very first in nearly all the schools some attention had been given to training in handiwork, but now was this training first raised to a dignity that brought it in direct touch with the South's magnificent industrial development, and given an emphasis which reminded black folk that before the Temple of Knowledge swing the Gates of Toil.

Yet after all they are but gates, and when turning our eyes from the temporary and the contingent in the Negro problem to the broader question of the permanent uplifting and civilization of black men in America, we have a right to inquire, as this enthusiasm for material advancement mounts to its height, if after all the industrial school is the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race; and to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever-recurring query of the ages, Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? And men ask this to-day all the more eagerly because of sinister signs in recent educational movements. The tendency is here, born of slavery and quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day, to regard human beings as among the material resources of a land to be trained with an eye single to future dividends. Race-prejudices, which keep brown and black men in their "places," we are coming to regard as useful allies with such a theory, no matter how much they may dull the ambition and sicken the hearts of struggling human beings. And above all, we daily hear that an education that encourages aspiration, that sets the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end culture and character rather than bread-winning, is the privilege of white men and the danger and delusion of black.

Especially has criticism been directed against the former educational efforts to aid the Negro. In the four periods I have mentioned, we find first, boundless, planless enthusiasm and sacrifice; then the preparation of teachers for a vast public-school system; then the launching and expansion of that school system amid increasing difficulties; and finally the training of workmen for the new and growing industries. This development has been sharply ridiculed as a logical anomaly and flat reversal of nature. Soothly we have been told that first industrial and manual training should have taught the Negro to work, then simple schools should have taught him to read and write, and finally, after years, high and normal schools could have completed the system, as intelligence and wealth demanded.

That a system logically so complete was historically impossible, it needs but a little thought to prove. Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground. Thus it was no accident that gave birth to universities centuries before the common schools, that made fair Harvard the first flower of our wilderness. So in the South: the mass of the freedmen at the end of the war lacked the intelligence so necessary to modern workingmen. They must first have the common school to teach them to read, write, and cipher; and they must have higher schools to teach teachers for the common schools. The white teachers who flocked South went to establish such a common-school system. Few held the idea of founding colleges; most of them at first would have laughed at the idea. But they faced, as all men since them have faced, that central paradox of the South,-the social separation of the races. At that time it was the sudden volcanic rupture of nearly all relations between black and white, in work and government and family life. Since then a new adjustment of relations in economic and political affairs has grown up,-an adjustment subtle and difficult to grasp, yet singularly ingenious, which leaves still that frightful chasm at the color-line across which men pass at their peril. Thus, then and now, there stand in the South two separate worlds; and separate not simply in the higher realms of social intercourse, but also in church and school, on railway and street-car, in hotels and theatres, in streets and city sections, in books and newspapers, in asylums and jails, in hospitals and graveyards. There is still enough of contact for large economic and group cooperation, but the separation is so thorough and deep that it absolutely precludes for the present between the races anything like that sympathetic and effective group-training and leadership of the one by the other, such as the American Negro and all backward peoples must have for effectual progress.

This the missionaries of '68 soon saw; and if effective industrial and trade schools were impracticable before the establishment of a common-school system, just as certainly no adequate common schools could be founded until there were teachers to teach them. Southern whites would not teach them; Northern whites in sufficient numbers could not be had. If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers. This conclusion was slowly but surely reached by every student of the situation until simultaneously, in widely separated regions, without consultation or systematic plan, there arose a series of institutions designed to furnish teachers for the untaught. Above the sneers of critics at the obvious defects of this procedure must ever stand its one crushing rejoinder: in a single generation they put thirty thousand black teachers in the South; they wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee possible.

Such higher training-schools tended naturally to deepen broader development: at first they were common and grammar schools, then some became high schools. And finally, by 1900, some thirty-four had one year or more of studies of college grade. This development was reached with different degrees of speed in different institutions: Hampton is still a high school, while Fisk University started her college in 1871, and Spelman Seminary about 1896. In all cases the aim was identical,-to maintain the standards of the lower training by giving teachers and leaders the best practicable training; and above all, to furnish the black world with adequate standards of human culture and lofty ideals of life. It was not enough that the teachers of teachers should be trained in technical normal methods; they must also, so far as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and women, to scatter civilization among a people whose ignorance was not simply of letters, but of life itself.

It can thus be seen that the work of education in the South began with higher institutions of training, which threw off as their foliage common schools, and later industrial schools, and at the same time strove to shoot their roots ever deeper toward college and university training. That this was an inevitable and necessary development, sooner or later, goes without saying; but there has been, and still is, a question in many minds if the natural growth was not forced, and if the higher training was not either overdone or done with cheap and unsound methods. Among white Southerners this feeling is widespread and positive. A prominent Southern journal voiced this in a recent editorial.

"The experiment that has been made to give the colored students classical training has not been satisfactory. Even though many were able to pursue the course, most of them did so in a parrot-like way, learning what was taught, but not seeming to appropriate the truth and import of their instruction, and graduating without sensible aim or valuable occupation for their future. The whole scheme has proved a waste of time, efforts, and the money of the state."

While most fair-minded men would recognize this as extreme and overdrawn, still without doubt many are asking, Are there a sufficient number of Negroes ready for college training to warrant the undertaking? Are not too many students prematurely forced into this work? Does it not have the effect of dissatisfying the young Negro with his environment? And do these graduates succeed in real life? Such natural questions cannot be evaded, nor on the other hand must a Nation naturally skeptical as to Negro ability assume an unfavorable answer without careful inquiry and patient openness to conviction. We must not forget that most Americans answer all queries regarding the Negro a priori, and that the least that human courtesy can do is to listen to evidence.

The advocates of the higher education of the Negro would be the last to deny the incompleteness and glaring defects of the present system: too many institutions have attempted to do college work, the work in some cases has not been thoroughly done, and quantity rather than quality has sometimes been sought. But all this can be said of higher education throughout the land; it is the almost inevitable incident of educational growth, and leaves the deeper question of the legitimate demand for the higher training of Negroes untouched. And this latter question can be settled in but one way,-by a first-hand study of the facts. If we leave out of view all institutions which have not actually graduated students from a course higher than that of a New England high school, even though they be called colleges; if then we take the thirty-four remaining institutions, we may clear up many misapprehensions by asking searchingly, What kind of institutions are they? what do they teach? and what sort of men do they graduate?

And first we may say that this type of college, including Atlanta, Fisk, and Howard, Wilberforce and Claflin, Shaw, and the rest, is peculiar, almost unique. Through the shining trees that whisper before me as I write, I catch glimpses of a boulder of New England granite, covering a grave, which graduates of Atlanta University have placed there,-

"IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THEIR FORMER TEACHER AND FRIEND AND OF THE UNSELFISH LIFE HE LIVED, AND THE NOBLE WORK HE WROUGHT; THAT THEY, THEIR CHILDREN, AND THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN MIGHT BE BLESSED."

This was the gift of New England to the freed Negro: not alms, but a friend; not cash, but character. It was not and is not money these seething millions want, but love and sympathy, the pulse of hearts beating with red blood;-a gift which to-day only their own kindred and race can bring to the masses, but which once saintly souls brought to their favored children in the crusade of the sixties, that finest thing in American history, and one of the few things untainted by sordid greed and cheap vainglory. The teachers in these institutions came not to keep the Negroes in their place, but to raise them out of the defilement of the places where slavery had wallowed them. The colleges they founded were social settlements; homes where the best of the sons of the freedmen came in close and sympathetic touch with the best traditions of New England. They lived and ate together, studied and worked, hoped and harkened in the dawning light. In actual formal content their curriculum was doubtless old-fashioned, but in educational power it was supreme, for it was the contact of living souls.

From such schools about two thousand Negroes have gone forth with the bachelor's degree. The number in itself is enough to put at rest the argument that too large a proportion of Negroes are receiving higher training. If the ratio to population of all Negro students throughout the land, in both college and secondary training, be counted, Commissioner Harris assures us "it must be increased to five times its present average" to equal the average of the land.

Fifty years ago the ability of Negro students in any appreciable numbers to master a modern college course would have been difficult to prove. To-day it is proved by the fact that four hundred Negroes, many of whom have been reported as brilliant students, have received the bachelor's degree from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and seventy other leading colleges. Here we have, then, nearly twenty-five hundred Negro graduates, of whom the crucial query must be made, How far did their training fit them for life? It is of course extremely difficult to collect satisfactory data on such a point,-difficult to reach the men, to get trustworthy testimony, and to gauge that testimony by any generally acceptable criterion of success. In 1900, the Conference at Atlanta University undertook to study these graduates, and published the results. First they sought to know what these graduates were doing, and succeeded in getting answers from nearly two-thirds of the living. The direct testimony was in almost all cases corroborated by the reports of the colleges where they graduated, so that in the main the reports were worthy of credence. Fifty-three per cent of these graduates were teachers,-presidents of institutions, heads of normal schools, principals of city school-systems, and the like. Seventeen per cent were clergymen; another seventeen per cent were in the professions, chiefly as physicians. Over six per cent were merchants, farmers, and artisans, and four per cent were in the government civil-service. Granting even that a considerable proportion of the third unheard from are unsuccessful, this is a record of usefulness. Personally I know many hundreds of these graduates, and have corresponded with more than a thousand; through others I have followed carefully the life-work of scores; I have taught some of them and some of the pupils whom they have taught, lived in homes which they have builded, and looked at life through their eyes. Comparing them as a class with my fellow students in New England and in Europe, I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their life-work, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among Negro college-bred men. They have, to be sure, their proportion of ne'er-do-wells, their pedants and lettered fools, but they have a surprisingly small proportion of them; they have not that culture of manner which we instinctively associate with university men, forgetting that in reality it is the heritage from cultured homes, and that no people a generation removed from slavery can escape a certain unpleasant rawness and gaucherie, despite the best of training.

With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these men have usually been conservative, careful leaders. They have seldom been agitators, have withstood the temptation to head the mob, and have worked steadily and faithfully in a thousand communities in the South. As teachers, they have given the South a commendable system of city schools and large numbers of private normal-schools and academies. Colored college-bred men have worked side by side with white college graduates at Hampton; almost from the beginning the backbone of Tuskegee's teaching force has been formed of graduates from Fisk and Atlanta. And to-day the institute is filled with college graduates, from the energetic wife of the principal down to the teacher of agriculture, including nearly half of the executive council and a majority of the heads of departments. In the professions, college men are slowly but surely leavening the Negro church, are healing and preventing the devastations of disease, and beginning to furnish legal protection for the liberty and property of the toiling masses. All this is needful work. Who would do it if Negroes did not? How could Negroes do it if they were not trained carefully for it? If white people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors, do black people need nothing of the sort?

If it is true that there are an appreciable number of Negro youth in the land capable by character and talent to receive that higher training, the end of which is culture, and if the two and a half thousand who have had something of this training in the past have in the main proved themselves useful to their race and generation, the question then comes, What place in the future development of the South ought the Negro college and college-bred man to occupy? That the present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of culture, as the South grows civilized, is clear. But such transformation calls for singular wisdom and patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy,-if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment American civilization will triumph. So far as white men are concerned, this fact is to-day being recognized in the South, and a happy renaissance of university education seems imminent. But the very voices that cry hail to this good work are, strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.

Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat. Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world. By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you not rather transfer their leading from the hands of men taught to think to the hands of untrained demagogues? We ought not to forget that despite the pressure of poverty, and despite the active discouragement and even ridicule of friends, the demand for higher training steadily increases among Negro youth: there were, in the years from 1875 to 1880, 22 Negro graduates from Northern colleges; from 1885 to 1890 there were 43, and from 1895 to 1900, nearly 100 graduates. From Southern Negro colleges there were, in the same three periods, 143, 413, and over 500 graduates. Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this Talented Tenth the key to knowledge, can any sane man imagine that they will lightly lay aside their yearning and contentedly become hewers of wood and drawers of water?

No. The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortions; that color and race are not crimes, and yet it is they which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.

I will not say such arguments are wholly justified,-I will not insist that there is no other side to the shield; but I do say that of the nine millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one out of the cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves in the guise of terrible truth. I insist that the question of the future is how best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of the past and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may be bent toward a cheerful striving and cooperation with their white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future. That one wise method of doing this lies in the closer knitting of the Negro to the great industrial possibilities of the South is a great truth. And this the common schools and the manual training and trade schools are working to accomplish. But these alone are not enough. The foundations of knowledge in this race, as in others, must be sunk deep in the college and university if we would build a solid, permanent structure. Internal problems of social advance must inevitably come, -problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true valuing of the things of life; and all these and other inevitable problems of civilization the Negro must meet and solve largely for himself, by reason of his isolation; and can there be any possible solution other than by study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of the past? Is there not, with such a group and in such a crisis, infinitely more danger to be apprehended from half-trained minds and shallow thinking than from over-education and over-refinement? Surely we have wit enough to found a Negro college so manned and equipped as to steer successfully between the dilettante and the fool. We shall hardly induce black men to believe that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains. They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the black men emancipated by training and culture.

The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation. And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men. Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which the centres of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development; that will love and hate and labor in its own way, untrammeled alike by old and new. Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhinegold, they shall again. Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human hearts. And to themselves in these the days that try their souls, the chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

VII.
Of the Black Belt

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,
Because the sun hath looked upon me:
My mother's children were angry with me;
They made me the keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

THE SONG OF SOLOMON.

Out of the North the train thundered, and we woke to see the crimson soil of Georgia stretching away bare and monotonous right and left. Here and there lay straggling, unlovely villages, and lean men loafed leisurely at the depots; then again came the stretch of pines and clay. Yet we did not nod, nor weary of the scene; for this is historic ground. Right across our track, three hundred and sixty years ago, wandered the cavalcade of Hernando de Soto, looking for gold and the Great Sea; and he and his foot-sore captives disappeared yonder in the grim forests to the west. Here sits Atlanta, the city of a hundred hills, with something Western, something Southern, and something quite its own, in its busy life. Just this side Atlanta is the land of the Cherokees and to the southwest, not far from where Sam Hose was crucified, you may stand on a spot which is to-day the centre of the Negro problem,-the centre of those nine million men who are America's dark heritage from slavery and the slave-trade.

Not only is Georgia thus the geographical focus of our Negro population, but in many other respects, both now and yesterday, the Negro problems have seemed to be centered in this State. No other State in the Union can count a million Negroes among its citizens,-a population as large as the slave population of the whole Union in 1800; no other State fought so long and strenuously to gather this host of Africans. Oglethorpe thought slavery against law and gospel; but the circumstances which gave Georgia its first inhabitants were not calculated to furnish citizens over-nice in their ideas about rum and slaves. Despite the prohibitions of the trustees, these Georgians, like some of their descendants, proceeded to take the law into their own hands; and so pliant were the judges, and so flagrant the smuggling, and so earnest were the prayers of Whitefield, that by the middle of the eighteenth century all restrictions were swept away, and the slave-trade went merrily on for fifty years and more.

Down in Darien, where the Delegal riots took place some summers ago, there used to come a strong protest against slavery from the Scotch Highlanders; and the Moravians of Ebenezer did not like the system. But not till the Haytian Terror of Toussaint was the trade in men even checked; while the national statute of 1808 did not suffice to stop it. How the Africans poured in!-fifty thousand between 1790 and 1810, and then, from Virginia and from smugglers, two thousand a year for many years more. So the thirty thousand Negroes of Georgia in 1790 doubled in a decade,-were over a hundred thousand in 1810, had reached two hundred thousand in 1820, and half a million at the time of the war. Thus like a snake the black population writhed upward.

But we must hasten on our journey. This that we pass as we near Atlanta is the ancient land of the Cherokees,-that brave Indian nation which strove so long for its fatherland, until Fate and the United States Government drove them beyond the Mississippi. If you wish to ride with me you must come into the "Jim Crow Car." There will be no objection,-already four other white men, and a little white girl with her nurse, are in there. Usually the races are mixed in there; but the white coach is all white. Of course this car is not so good as the other, but it is fairly clean and comfortable. The discomfort lies chiefly in the hearts of those four black men yonder-and in mine.

We rumble south in quite a business-like way. The bare red clay and pines of Northern Georgia begin to disappear, and in their place appears a rich rolling land, luxuriant, and here and there well tilled. This is the land of the Creek Indians; and a hard time the Georgians had to seize it. The towns grow more frequent and more interesting, and brand-new cotton mills rise on every side. Below Macon the world grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt,-that strange land of shadows, at which even slaves paled in the past, and whence come now only faint and half-intelligible murmurs to the world beyond. The "Jim Crow Car" grows larger and a shade better; three rough field-hands and two or three white loafers accompany us, and the newsboy still spreads his wares at one end. The sun is setting, but we can see the great cotton country as we enter it,-the soil now dark and fertile, now thin and gray, with fruit-trees and dilapidated buildings,-all the way to Albany.

At Albany, in the heart of the Black Belt, we stop. Two hundred miles south of Atlanta, two hundred miles west of the Atlantic, and one hundred miles north of the Great Gulf lies Dougherty County, with ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The Flint River winds down from Andersonville, and, turning suddenly at Albany, the county-seat, hurries on to join the Chattahoochee and the sea. Andrew Jackson knew the Flint well, and marched across it once to avenge the Indian Massacre at Fort Mims. That was in 1814, not long before the battle of New Orleans; and by the Creek treaty that followed this campaign, all Dougherty County, and much other rich land, was ceded to Georgia. Still, settlers fought shy of this land, for the Indians were all about, and they were unpleasant neighbors in those days. The panic of 1837, which Jackson bequeathed to Van Buren, turned the planters from the impoverished lands of Virginia, the Carolinas, and east Georgia, toward the West. The Indians were removed to Indian Territory, and settlers poured into these coveted lands to retrieve their broken fortunes. For a radius of a hundred miles about Albany, stretched a great fertile land, luxuriant with forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar; hot with the sun and damp with the rich black swamp-land; and here the corner-stone of the Cotton Kingdom was laid.

Albany is to-day a wide-streeted, placid, Southern town, with a broad sweep of stores and saloons, and flanking rows of homes,-whites usually to the north, and blacks to the south. Six days in the week the town looks decidedly too small for itself, and takes frequent and prolonged naps. But on Saturday suddenly the whole county disgorges itself upon the place, and a perfect flood of black peasantry pours through the streets, fills the stores, blocks the sidewalks, chokes the thoroughfares, and takes full possession of the town. They are black, sturdy, uncouth country folk, good-natured and simple, talkative to a degree, and yet far more silent and brooding than the crowds of the Rhine-pfalz, or Naples, or Cracow. They drink considerable quantities of whiskey, but do not get very drunk; they talk and laugh loudly at times, but seldom quarrel or fight. They walk up and down the streets, meet and gossip with friends, stare at the shop windows, buy coffee, cheap candy, and clothes, and at dusk drive home-happy? well no, not exactly happy, but much happier than as though they had not come.

Thus Albany is a real capital,-a typical Southern county town, the centre of the life of ten thousand souls; their point of contact with the outer world, their centre of news and gossip, their market for buying and selling, borrowing and lending, their fountain of justice and law. Once upon a time we knew country life so well and city life so little, that we illustrated city life as that of a closely crowded country district. Now the world has well-nigh forgotten what the country is, and we must imagine a little city of black people scattered far and wide over three hundred lonesome square miles of land, without train or trolley, in the midst of cotton and corn, and wide patches of sand and gloomy soil.

It gets pretty hot in Southern Georgia in July,-a sort of dull, determined heat that seems quite independent of the sun; so it took us some days to muster courage enough to leave the porch and venture out on the long country roads, that we might see this unknown world. Finally we started. It was about ten in the morning, bright with a faint breeze, and we jogged leisurely southward in the valley of the Flint. We passed the scattered box-like cabins of the brickyard hands, and the long tenement-row facetiously called "The Ark," and were soon in the open country, and on the confines of the great plantations of other days. There is the "Joe Fields place"; a rough old fellow was he, and had killed many a "nigger" in his day. Twelve miles his plantation used to run,-a regular barony. It is nearly all gone now; only straggling bits belong to the family, and the rest has passed to Jews and Negroes. Even the bits which are left are heavily mortgaged, and, like the rest of the land, tilled by tenants. Here is one of them now,-a tall brown man, a hard worker and a hard drinker, illiterate, but versed in farmlore, as his nodding crops declare. This distressingly new board house is his, and he has just moved out of yonder moss-grown cabin with its one square room.

From the curtains in Benton's house, down the road, a dark comely face is staring at the strangers; for passing carriages are not every-day occurrences here. Benton is an intelligent yellow man with a good-sized family, and manages a plantation blasted by the war and now the broken staff of the widow. He might be well-to-do, they say; but he carouses too much in Albany. And the half-desolate spirit of neglect born of the very soil seems to have settled on these acres. In times past there were cotton-gins and machinery here; but they have rotted away.

The whole land seems forlorn and forsaken. Here are the remnants of the vast plantations of the Sheldons, the Pellots, and the Rensons; but the souls of them are passed. The houses lie in half ruin, or have wholly disappeared; the fences have flown, and the families are wandering in the world. Strange vicissitudes have met these whilom masters. Yonder stretch the wide acres of Bildad Reasor; he died in war-time, but the upstart overseer hastened to wed the widow. Then he went, and his neighbors too, and now only the black tenant remains; but the shadow-hand of the master's grand-nephew or cousin or creditor stretches out of the gray distance to collect the rack-rent remorselessly, and so the land is uncared-for and poor. Only black tenants can stand such a system, and they only because they must. Ten miles we have ridden to-day and have seen no white face.

A resistless feeling of depression falls slowly upon us, despite the gaudy sunshine and the green cottonfields. This, then, is the Cotton Kingdom,-the shadow of a marvellous dream. And where is the King? Perhaps this is he,-the sweating ploughman, tilling his eighty acres with two lean mules, and fighting a hard battle with debt. So we sit musing, until, as we turn a corner on the sandy road, there comes a fairer scene suddenly in view,-a neat cottage snugly ensconced by the road, and near it a little store. A tall bronzed man rises from the porch as we hail him, and comes out to our carriage. He is six feet in height, with a sober face that smiles gravely. He walks too straight to be a tenant,-yes, he owns two hundred and forty acres. "The land is run down since the boom-days of eighteen hundred and fifty," he explains, and cotton is low. Three black tenants live on his place, and in his little store he keeps a small stock of tobacco, snuff, soap, and soda, for the neighborhood. Here is his gin-house with new machinery just installed. Three hundred bales of cotton went through it last year. Two children he has sent away to school. Yes, he says sadly, he is getting on, but cotton is down to four cents; I know how Debt sits staring at him.

Wherever the King may be, the parks and palaces of the Cotton Kingdom have not wholly disappeared. We plunge even now into great groves of oak and towering pine, with an undergrowth of myrtle and shrubbery. This was the "home-house" of the Thompsons,-slave-barons who drove their coach and four in the merry past. All is silence now, and ashes, and tangled weeds. The owner put his whole fortune into the rising cotton industry of the fifties, and with the falling prices of the eighties he packed up and stole away. Yonder is another grove, with unkempt lawn, great magnolias, and grass-grown paths. The Big House stands in half-ruin, its great front door staring blankly at the street, and the back part grotesquely restored for its black tenant. A shabby, well-built Negro he is, unlucky and irresolute. He digs hard to pay rent to the white girl who owns the remnant of the place. She married a policeman, and lives in Savannah.

Now and again we come to churches. Here is one now,-Shepherd's, they call it,-a great whitewashed barn of a thing, perched on stilts of stone, and looking for all the world as though it were just resting here a moment and might be expected to waddle off down the road at almost any time. And yet it is the centre of a hundred cabin homes; and sometimes, of a Sunday, five hundred persons from far and near gather here and talk and eat and sing. There is a schoolhouse near,-a very airy, empty shed; but even this is an improvement, for usually the school is held in the church. The churches vary from log-huts to those like Shepherd's, and the schools from nothing to this little house that sits demurely on the county line. It is a tiny plank-house, perhaps ten by twenty, and has within a double row of rough unplaned benches, resting mostly on legs, sometimes on boxes. Opposite the door is a square home-made desk. In one corner are the ruins of a stove, and in the other a dim blackboard. It is the cheerfulest schoolhouse I have seen in Dougherty, save in town. Back of the schoolhouse is a lodgehouse two stories high and not quite finished. Societies meet there,-societies "to care for the sick and bury the dead"; and these societies grow and flourish.

We had come to the boundaries of Dougherty, and were about to turn west along the county-line, when all these sights were pointed out to us by a kindly old man, black, white-haired, and seventy. Forty-five years he had lived here, and now supports himself and his old wife by the help of the steer tethered yonder and the charity of his black neighbors. He shows us the farm of the Hills just across the county line in Baker,-a widow and two strapping sons, who raised ten bales (one need not add "cotton" down here) last year. There are fences and pigs and cows, and the soft-voiced, velvet-skinned young Memnon, who sauntered half-bashfully over to greet the strangers, is proud of his home. We turn now to the west along the county line. Great dismantled trunks of pines tower above the green cottonfields, cracking their naked gnarled fingers toward the border of living forest beyond. There is little beauty in this region, only a sort of crude abandon that suggests power,-a naked grandeur, as it were. The houses are bare and straight; there are no hammocks or easy-chairs, and few flowers. So when, as here at Rawdon's, one sees a vine clinging to a little porch, and home-like windows peeping over the fences, one takes a long breath. I think I never before quite realized the place of the Fence in civilization. This is the Land of the Unfenced, where crouch on either hand scores of ugly one-room cabins, cheerless and dirty. Here lies the Negro problem in its naked dirt and penury. And here are no fences. But now and then the crisscross rails or straight palings break into view, and then we know a touch of culture is near. Of course Harrison Gohagen,-a quiet yellow man, young, smooth-faced, and diligent,-of course he is lord of some hundred acres, and we expect to see a vision of well-kept rooms and fat beds and laughing children. For has he not fine fences? And those over yonder, why should they build fences on the rack-rented land? It will only increase their rent.

On we wind, through sand and pines and glimpses of old plantations, till there creeps into sight a cluster of buildings,-wood and brick, mills and houses, and scattered cabins. It seemed quite a village. As it came nearer and nearer, however, the aspect changed: the buildings were rotten, the bricks were falling out, the mills were silent, and the store was closed. Only in the cabins appeared now and then a bit of lazy life. I could imagine the place under some weird spell, and was half-minded to search out the princess. An old ragged black man, honest, simple, and improvident, told us the tale. The Wizard of the North-the Capitalist-had rushed down in the seventies to woo this coy dark soil. He bought a square mile or more, and for a time the field-hands sang, the gins groaned, and the mills buzzed. Then came a change. The agent's son embezzled the funds and ran off with them. Then the agent himself disappeared. Finally the new agent stole even the books, and the company in wrath closed its business and its houses, refused to sell, and let houses and furniture and machinery rust and rot. So the Waters-Loring plantation was stilled by the spell of dishonesty, and stands like some gaunt rebuke to a scarred land.

Somehow that plantation ended our day's journey; for I could not shake off the influence of that silent scene. Back toward town we glided, past the straight and thread-like pines, past a dark tree-dotted pond where the air was heavy with a dead sweet perfume. White slender-legged curlews flitted by us, and the garnet blooms of the cotton looked gay against the green and purple stalks. A peasant girl was hoeing in the field, white-turbaned and black-limbed. All this we saw, but the spell still lay upon us.

How curious a land is this,-how full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise! This is the Black Belt of Georgia. Dougherty County is the west end of the Black Belt, and men once called it the Egypt of the Confederacy. It is full of historic interest. First there is the Swamp, to the west, where the Chickasawhatchee flows sullenly southward. The shadow of an old plantation lies at its edge, forlorn and dark. Then comes the pool; pendent gray moss and brackish waters appear, and forests filled with wildfowl. In one place the wood is on fire, smouldering in dull red anger; but nobody minds. Then the swamp grows beautiful; a raised road, built by chained Negro convicts, dips down into it, and forms a way walled and almost covered in living green. Spreading trees spring from a prodigal luxuriance of undergrowth; great dark green shadows fade into the black background, until all is one mass of tangled semi-tropical foliage, marvellous in its weird savage splendor. Once we crossed a black silent stream, where the sad trees and writhing creepers, all glinting fiery yellow and green, seemed like some vast cathedral,-some green Milan builded of wildwood. And as I crossed, I seemed to see again that fierce tragedy of seventy years ago. Osceola, the Indian-Negro chieftain, had risen in the swamps of Florida, vowing vengeance. His war-cry reached the red Creeks of Dougherty, and their war-cry rang from the Chattahoochee to the sea. Men and women and children fled and fell before them as they swept into Dougherty. In yonder shadows a dark and hideously painted warrior glided stealthily on,-another and another, until three hundred had crept into the treacherous swamp. Then the false slime closing about them called the white men from the east. Waist-deep, they fought beneath the tall trees, until the war-cry was hushed and the Indians glided back into the west. Small wonder the wood is red.

Then came the black slaves. Day after day the clank of chained feet marching from Virginia and Carolina to Georgia was heard in these rich swamp lands. Day after day the songs of the callous, the wail of the motherless, and the muttered curses of the wretched echoed from the Flint to the Chickasawhatchee, until by 1860 there had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever knew. A hundred and fifty barons commanded the labor of nearly six thousand Negroes, held sway over farms with ninety thousand acres tilled land, valued even in times of cheap soil at three millions of dollars. Twenty thousand bales of ginned cotton went yearly to England, New and Old; and men that came there bankrupt made money and grew rich. In a single decade the cotton output increased four-fold and the value of lands was tripled. It was the heyday of the nouveau riche, and a life of careless extravagance among the masters. Four and six bobtailed thoroughbreds rolled their coaches to town; open hospitality and gay entertainment were the rule. Parks and groves were laid out, rich with flower and vine, and in the midst stood the low wide-halled "big house," with its porch and columns and great fireplaces.

And yet with all this there was something sordid, something forced,-a certain feverish unrest and recklessness; for was not all this show and tinsel built upon a groan? "This land was a little Hell," said a ragged, brown, and grave-faced man to me. We were seated near a roadside blacksmith shop, and behind was the bare ruin of some master's home. "I've seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they were kicked aside, and the plough never stopped. Down in the guard-house, there's where the blood ran."

With such foundations a kingdom must in time sway and fall. The masters moved to Macon and Augusta, and left only the irresponsible overseers on the land. And the result is such ruin as this, the Lloyd "home-place":-great waving oaks, a spread of lawn, myrtles and chestnuts, all ragged and wild; a solitary gate-post standing where once was a castle entrance; an old rusty anvil lying amid rotting bellows and wood in the ruins of a blacksmith shop; a wide rambling old mansion, brown and dingy, filled now with the grandchildren of the slaves who once waited on its tables; while the family of the master has dwindled to two lone women, who live in Macon and feed hungrily off the remnants of an earldom. So we ride on, past phantom gates and falling homes,-past the once flourishing farms of the Smiths, the Gandys, and the Lagores,-and find all dilapidated and half ruined, even there where a solitary white woman, a relic of other days, sits alone in state among miles of Negroes and rides to town in her ancient coach each day.

This was indeed the Egypt of the Confederacy,-the rich granary whence potatoes and corn and cotton poured out to the famished and ragged Confederate troops as they battled for a cause lost long before 1861. Sheltered and secure, it became the place of refuge for families, wealth, and slaves. Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell. The red-clay sub-soil already had begun to peer above the loam. The harder the slaves were driven the more careless and fatal was their farming. Then came the revolution of war and Emancipation, the bewilderment of Reconstruction,-and now, what is the Egypt of the Confederacy, and what meaning has it for the nation's weal or woe?

It is a land of rapid contrasts and of curiously mingled hope and pain. Here sits a pretty blue-eyed quadroon hiding her bare feet; she was married only last week, and yonder in the field is her dark young husband, hoeing to support her, at thirty cents a day without board. Across the way is Gatesby, brown and tall, lord of two thousand acres shrewdly won and held. There is a store conducted by his black son, a blacksmith shop, and a ginnery. Five miles below here is a town owned and controlled by one white New Englander. He owns almost a Rhode Island county, with thousands of acres and hundreds of black laborers. Their cabins look better than most, and the farm, with machinery and fertilizers, is much more business-like than any in the county, although the manager drives hard bargains in wages. When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes,-two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,-the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.

The Jew is the heir of the slave baron in Dougherty; and as we ride westward, by wide stretching cornfields and stubby orchards of peach and pear, we see on all sides within the circle of dark forest a Land of Canaan. Here and there are tales of projects for money-getting, born in the swift days of Reconstruction,-"improvement" companies, wine companies, mills and factories; most failed, and the Jew fell heir. It is a beautiful land, this Dougherty, west of the Flint. The forests are wonderful, the solemn pines have disappeared, and this is the "Oakey Woods," with its wealth of hickories, beeches, oaks and palmettos. But a pall of debt hangs over the beautiful land; the merchants are in debt to the wholesalers, the planters are in debt to the merchants, the tenants owe the planters, and laborers bow and bend beneath the burden of it all. Here and there a man has raised his head above these murky waters. We passed one fenced stock-farm with grass and grazing cattle, that looked very home-like after endless corn and cotton. Here and there are black free-holders: there is the gaunt dull-black Jackson, with his hundred acres. "I says, 'Look up! If you don't look up you can't get up,'" remarks Jackson, philosophically. And he's gotten up. Dark Carter's neat barns would do credit to New England. His master helped him to get a start, but when the black man died last fall the master's sons immediately laid claim to the estate. "And them white folks will get it, too," said my yellow gossip.

I turn from these well-tended acres with a comfortable feeling that the Negro is rising. Even then, however, the fields, as we proceed, begin to redden and the trees disappear. Rows of old cabins appear filled with renters and laborers,-cheerless, bare, and dirty, for the most part, although here and there the very age and decay makes the scene picturesque. A young black fellow greets us. He is twenty-two, and just married. Until last year he had good luck renting; then cotton fell, and the sheriff seized and sold all he had. So he moved here, where the rent is higher, the land poorer, and the owner inflexible; he rents a forty-dollar mule for twenty dollars a year. Poor lad!-a slave at twenty-two. This plantation, owned now by a foreigner, was a part of the famous Bolton estate. After the war it was for many years worked by gangs of Negro convicts,-and black convicts then were even more plentiful than now; it was a way of making Negroes work, and the question of guilt was a minor one. Hard tales of cruelty and mistreatment of the chained freemen are told, but the county authorities were deaf until the free-labor market was nearly ruined by wholesale migration. Then they took the convicts from the plantations, but not until one of the fairest regions of the "Oakey Woods" had been ruined and ravished into a red waste, out of which only a Yankee or an immigrant could squeeze more blood from debt-cursed tenants.

No wonder that Luke Black, slow, dull, and discouraged, shuffles to our carriage and talks hopelessly. Why should he strive? Every year finds him deeper in debt. How strange that Georgia, the world-heralded refuge of poor debtors, should bind her own to sloth and misfortune as ruthlessly as ever England did! The poor land groans with its birth-pains, and brings forth scarcely a hundred pounds of cotton to the acre, where fifty years ago it yielded eight times as much. Of his meagre yield the tenant pays from a quarter to a third in rent, and most of the rest in interest on food and supplies bought on credit. Twenty years yonder sunken-cheeked, old black man has labored under that system, and now, turned day-laborer, is supporting his wife and boarding himself on his wages of a dollar and a half a week, received only part of the year.

The Bolton convict farm formerly included the neighboring plantation. Here it was that the convicts were lodged in the great log prison still standing. A dismal place it still remains, with rows of ugly huts filled with surly ignorant tenants. "What rent do you pay here?" I inquired. "I don't know,-what is it, Sam?" "All we make," answered Sam. It is a depressing place,-bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil,-now, then, and before the war. They are not happy, these black men whom we meet throughout this region. There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro. At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger. I remember one big red-eyed black whom we met by the roadside. Forty-five years he had labored on this farm, beginning with nothing, and still having nothing. To be sure, he had given four children a common-school training, and perhaps if the new fence-law had not allowed unfenced crops in West Dougherty he might have raised a little stock and kept ahead. As it is, he is hopelessly in debt, disappointed, and embittered. He stopped us to inquire after the black boy in Albany, whom it was said a policeman had shot and killed for loud talking on the sidewalk. And then he said slowly: "Let a white man touch me, and he dies; I don't boast this,-I don't say it around loud, or before the children,-but I mean it. I've seen them whip my father and my old mother in them cotton-rows till the blood ran; by-" and we passed on.

Now Sears, whom we met next lolling under the chubby oak-trees, was of quite different fibre. Happy?-Well, yes; he laughed and flipped pebbles, and thought the world was as it was. He had worked here twelve years and has nothing but a mortgaged mule. Children? Yes, seven; but they hadn't been to school this year,-couldn't afford books and clothes, and couldn't spare their work. There go part of them to the fields now,-three big boys astride mules, and a strapping girl with bare brown legs. Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;-these are the extremes of the Negro problem which we met that day, and we scarce knew which we preferred.

Here and there we meet distinct characters quite out of the ordinary. One came out of a piece of newly cleared ground, making a wide detour to avoid the snakes. He was an old, hollow-cheeked man, with a drawn and characterful brown face. He had a sort of self-contained quaintness and rough humor impossible to describe; a certain cynical earnestness that puzzled one. "The niggers were jealous of me over on the other place," he said, "and so me and the old woman begged this piece of woods, and I cleared it up myself. Made nothing for two years, but I reckon I've got a crop now." The cotton looked tall and rich, and we praised it. He curtsied low, and then bowed almost to the ground, with an imperturbable gravity that seemed almost suspicious. Then he continued, "My mule died last week,"-a calamity in this land equal to a devastating fire in town,-"but a white man loaned me another." Then he added, eyeing us, "Oh, I gets along with white folks." We turned the conversation. "Bears? deer?" he answered, "well, I should say there were," and he let fly a string of brave oaths, as he told hunting-tales of the swamp. We left him standing still in the middle of the road looking after us, and yet apparently not noticing us.

The Whistle place, which includes his bit of land, was bought soon after the war by an English syndicate, the "Dixie Cotton and Corn Company." A marvellous deal of style their factor put on, with his servants and coach-and-six; so much so that the concern soon landed in inextricable bankruptcy. Nobody lives in the old house now, but a man comes each winter out of the North and collects his high rents. I know not which are the more touching,-such old empty houses, or the homes of the masters' sons. Sad and bitter tales lie hidden back of those white doors,-tales of poverty, of struggle, of disappointment. A revolution such as that of '63 is a terrible thing; they that rose rich in the morning often slept in paupers' beds. Beggars and vulgar speculators rose to rule over them, and their children went astray. See yonder sad-colored house, with its cabins and fences and glad crops! It is not glad within; last month the prodigal son of the struggling father wrote home from the city for money. Money! Where was it to come from? And so the son rose in the night and killed his baby, and killed his wife, and shot himself dead. And the world passed on.

I remember wheeling around a bend in the road beside a graceful bit of forest and a singing brook. A long low house faced us, with porch and flying pillars, great oaken door, and a broad lawn shining in the evening sun. But the window-panes were gone, the pillars were worm-eaten, and the moss-grown roof was falling in. Half curiously I peered through the unhinged door, and saw where, on the wall across the hall, was written in once gay letters a faded "Welcome."

Quite a contrast to the southwestern part of Dougherty County is the northwest. Soberly timbered in oak and pine, it has none of that half-tropical luxuriance of the southwest. Then, too, there are fewer signs of a romantic past, and more of systematic modern land-grabbing and money-getting. White people are more in evidence here, and farmer and hired labor replace to some extent the absentee landlord and rack-rented tenant. The crops have neither the luxuriance of the richer land nor the signs of neglect so often seen, and there were fences and meadows here and there. Most of this land was poor, and beneath the notice of the slave-baron, before the war. Since then his poor relations and foreign immigrants have seized it. The returns of the farmer are too small to allow much for wages, and yet he will not sell off small farms. There is the Negro Sanford; he has worked fourteen years as overseer on the Ladson place, and "paid out enough for fertilizers to have bought a farm," but the owner will not sell off a few acres.

Two children-a boy and a girl-are hoeing sturdily in the fields on the farm where Corliss works. He is smooth-faced and brown, and is fencing up his pigs. He used to run a successful cotton-gin, but the Cotton Seed Oil Trust has forced the price of ginning so low that he says it hardly pays him. He points out a stately old house over the way as the home of "Pa Willis." We eagerly ride over, for "Pa Willis" was the tall and powerful black Moses who led the Negroes for a generation, and led them well. He was a Baptist preacher, and when he died, two thousand black people followed him to the grave; and now they preach his funeral sermon each year. His widow lives here,-a weazened, sharp-featured little woman, who curtsied quaintly as we greeted her. Further on lives Jack Delson, the most prosperous Negro farmer in the county. It is a joy to meet him,-a great broad-shouldered, handsome black man, intelligent and jovial. Six hundred and fifty acres he owns, and has eleven black tenants. A neat and tidy home nestled in a flower-garden, and a little store stands beside it.

We pass the Munson place, where a plucky white widow is renting and struggling; and the eleven hundred acres of the Sennet plantation, with its Negro overseer. Then the character of the farms begins to change. Nearly all the lands belong to Russian Jews; the overseers are white, and the cabins are bare board-houses scattered here and there. The rents are high, and day-laborers and "contract" hands abound. It is a keen, hard struggle for living here, and few have time to talk. Tired with the long ride, we gladly drive into Gillonsville. It is a silent cluster of farmhouses standing on the crossroads, with one of its stores closed and the other kept by a Negro preacher. They tell great tales of busy times at Gillonsville before all the railroads came to Albany; now it is chiefly a memory. Riding down the street, we stop at the preacher's and seat ourselves before the door. It was one of those scenes one cannot soon forget:-a wide, low, little house, whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,-the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven hundred acres across up yonder, and paid for it; but they cheated us out of it. Sells was the owner." "Sells!" echoed the ragged misfortune, who was leaning against the balustrade and listening, "he's a regular cheat. I worked for him thirty-seven days this spring, and he paid me in cardboard checks which were to be cashed at the end of the month. But he never cashed them,-kept putting me off. Then the sheriff came and took my mule and corn and furniture-" "Furniture? But furniture is exempt from seizure by law." "Well, he took it just the same," said the hard-faced man.

VIII.
Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece

But the Brute said in his breast, "Till the mills I grind have ceased,
The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!

"On the strong and cunning few
Cynic favors I will strew;
I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;
From the patient and the low
I will take the joys they know;
They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go.
Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise;
Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies."

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY.

Have you ever seen a cotton-field white with harvest,-its golden fleece hovering above the black earth like a silvery cloud edged with dark green, its bold white signals waving like the foam of billows from Carolina to Texas across that Black and human Sea? I have sometimes half suspected that here the winged ram Chrysomallus left that Fleece after which Jason and his Argonauts went vaguely wandering into the shadowy East three thousand years ago; and certainly one might frame a pretty and not far-fetched analogy of witchery and dragons' teeth, and blood and armed men, between the ancient and the modern quest of the Golden Fleece in the Black Sea.

And now the golden fleece is found; not only found, but, in its birthplace, woven. For the hum of the cotton-mills is the newest and most significant thing in the New South to-day. All through the Carolinas and Georgia, away down to Mexico, rise these gaunt red buildings, bare and homely, and yet so busy and noisy withal that they scarce seem to belong to the slow and sleepy land. Perhaps they sprang from dragons' teeth. So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre. Even the markets that once defied the parvenu have crept one by one across the seas, and then slowly and reluctantly, but surely, have started toward the Black Belt.

To be sure, there are those who wag their heads knowingly and tell us that the capital of the Cotton Kingdom has moved from the Black to the White Belt,-that the Negro of to-day raises not more than half of the cotton crop. Such men forget that the cotton crop has doubled, and more than doubled, since the era of slavery, and that, even granting their contention, the Negro is still supreme in a Cotton Kingdom larger than that on which the Confederacy builded its hopes. So the Negro forms to-day one of the chief figures in a great world-industry; and this, for its own sake, and in the light of historic interest, makes the field-hands of the cotton country worth studying.

We seldom study the condition of the Negro to-day honestly and carefully. It is so much easier to assume that we know it all. Or perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts. And yet how little we really know of these millions,-of their daily lives and longings, of their homely joys and sorrows, of their real shortcomings and the meaning of their crimes! All this we can only learn by intimate contact with the masses, and not by wholesale arguments covering millions separate in time and space, and differing widely in training and culture. To-day, then, my reader, let us turn our faces to the Black Belt of Georgia and seek simply to know the condition of the black farm-laborers of one county there.

Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The keynote of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave régime; but it was emphasized and brought to a crisis by the Emancipation of the slaves. In 1860, Dougherty County had six thousand slaves, worth at least two and a half millions of dollars; its farms were estimated at three millions,-making five and a half millions of property, the value of which depended largely on the slave system, and on the speculative demand for land once marvellously rich but already partially devitalized by careless and exhaustive culture. The war then meant a financial crash; in place of the five and a half millions of 1860, there remained in 1870 only farms valued at less than two millions. With this came increased competition in cotton culture from the rich lands of Texas; a steady fall in the normal price of cotton followed, from about fourteen cents a pound in 1860 until it reached four cents in 1898. Such a financial revolution was it that involved the owners of the cotton-belt in debt. And if things went ill with the master, how fared it with the man?

The plantations of Dougherty County in slavery days were not as imposing and aristocratic as those of Virginia. The Big House was smaller and usually one-storied, and sat very near the slave cabins. Sometimes these cabins stretched off on either side like wings; sometimes only on one side, forming a double row, or edging the road that turned into the plantation from the main thoroughfare. The form and disposition of the laborers' cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days. Some live in the self-same cabins, others in cabins rebuilt on the sites of the old. All are sprinkled in little groups over the face of the land, centering about some dilapidated Big House where the head-tenant or agent lives. The general character and arrangement of these dwellings remains on the whole unaltered. There were in the county, outside the corporate town of Albany, about fifteen hundred Negro families in 1898. Out of all these, only a single family occupied a house with seven rooms; only fourteen have five rooms or more. The mass live in one- and two-room homes.

The size and arrangements of a people's homes are no unfair index of their condition. If, then, we inquire more carefully into these Negro homes, we find much that is unsatisfactory. All over the face of the land is the one-room cabin,-now standing in the shadow of the Big House, now staring at the dusty road, now rising dark and sombre amid the green of the cotton-fields. It is nearly always old and bare, built of rough boards, and neither plastered nor ceiled. Light and ventilation are supplied by the single door and by the square hole in the wall with its wooden shutter. There is no glass, porch, or ornamentation without. Within is a fireplace, black and smoky, and usually unsteady with age. A bed or two, a table, a wooden chest, and a few chairs compose the furniture; while a stray show-bill or a newspaper makes up the decorations for the walls. Now and then one may find such a cabin kept scrupulously neat, with merry steaming fireplaces and hospitable door; but the majority are dirty and dilapidated, smelling of eating and sleeping, poorly ventilated, and anything but homes.

Above all, the cabins are crowded. We have come to associate crowding with homes in cities almost exclusively. This is primarily because we have so little accurate knowledge of country life. Here in Dougherty County one may find families of eight and ten occupying one or two rooms, and for every ten rooms of house accommodation for the Negroes there are twenty-five persons. The worst tenement abominations of New York do not have above twenty-two persons for every ten rooms. Of course, one small, close room in a city, without a yard, is in many respects worse than the larger single country room. In other respects it is better; it has glass windows, a decent chimney, and a trustworthy floor. The single great advantage of the Negro peasant is that he may spend most of his life outside his hovel, in the open fields.

There are four chief causes of these wretched homes: First, long custom born of slavery has assigned such homes to Negroes; white laborers would be offered better accommodations, and might, for that and similar reasons, give better work. Secondly, the Negroes, used to such accommodations, do not as a rule demand better; they do not know what better houses mean. Thirdly, the landlords as a class have not yet come to realize that it is a good business investment to raise the standard of living among labor by slow and judicious methods; that a Negro laborer who demands three rooms and fifty cents a day would give more efficient work and leave a larger profit than a discouraged toiler herding his family in one room and working for thirty cents. Lastly, among such conditions of life there are few incentives to make the laborer become a better farmer. If he is ambitious, he moves to town or tries other labor; as a tenant-farmer his outlook is almost hopeless, and following it as a makeshift, he takes the house that is given him without protest.

In such homes, then, these Negro peasants live. The families are both small and large; there are many single tenants,-widows and bachelors, and remnants of broken groups. The system of labor and the size of the houses both tend to the breaking up of family groups: the grown children go away as contract hands or migrate to town, the sister goes into service; and so one finds many families with hosts of babies, and many newly married couples, but comparatively few families with half-grown and grown sons and daughters. The average size of Negro families has undoubtedly decreased since the war, primarily from economic stress. In Russia over a third of the bridegrooms and over half the brides are under twenty; the same was true of the antebellum Negroes. Today, however, very few of the boys and less than a fifth of the Negro girls under twenty are married. The young men marry between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; the young women between twenty and thirty. Such postponement is due to the difficulty of earning sufficient to rear and support a family; and it undoubtedly leads, in the country districts, to sexual immorality. The form of this immorality, however, is very seldom that of prostitution, and less frequently that of illegitimacy than one would imagine. Rather, it takes the form of separation and desertion after a family group has been formed. The number of separated persons is thirty-five to the thousand,-a very large number. It would of course be unfair to compare this number with divorce statistics, for many of these separated women are in reality widowed, were the truth known, and in other cases the separation is not permanent. Nevertheless, here lies the seat of greatest moral danger. There is little or no prostitution among these Negroes, and over three-fourths of the families, as found by house-to-house investigation, deserve to be classed as decent people with considerable regard for female chastity. To be sure, the ideas of the mass would not suit New England, and there are many loose habits and notions. Yet the rate of illegitimacy is undoubtedly lower than in Austria or Italy, and the women as a class are modest. The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of Emancipation. It is the plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master's consent, "took up" with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed with. If now the master needed Sam's work in another plantation or in another part of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam's married life with Mary was usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master's interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years. To-day Sam's grandson "takes up" with a woman without license or ceremony; they live together decently and honestly, and are, to all intents and purposes, man and wife. Sometimes these unions are never broken until death; but in too many cases family quarrels, a roving spirit, a rival suitor, or perhaps more frequently the hopeless battle to support a family, lead to separation, and a broken household is the result. The Negro church has done much to stop this practice, and now most marriage ceremonies are performed by the pastors. Nevertheless, the evil is still deep seated, and only a general raising of the standard of living will finally cure it.

Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it is fair to characterize it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent, are poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding, and to a degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class lines are by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say, with the price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function of government, of individual worth and possibilities,-of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from learning. Much that the white boy imbibes from his earliest social atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's mature years. America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.

It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring to grasp and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human beings. We often forget that each unit in the mass is a throbbing human soul. Ignorant it may be, and poverty stricken, black and curious in limb and ways and thought; and yet it loves and hates, it toils and tires, it laughs and weeps its bitter tears, and looks in vague and awful longing at the grim horizon of its life,-all this, even as you and I. These black thousands are not in reality lazy; they are improvident and careless; they insist on breaking the monotony of toil with a glimpse at the great town-world on Saturday; they have their loafers and their rascals; but the great mass of them work continuously and faithfully for a return, and under circumstances that would call forth equal voluntary effort from few if any other modern laboring class. Over eighty-eight per cent of them-men, women, and children-are farmers. Indeed, this is almost the only industry. Most of the children get their schooling after the "crops are laid by," and very few there are that stay in school after the spring work has begun. Child-labor is to be found here in some of its worst phases, as fostering ignorance and stunting physical development. With the grown men of the county there is little variety in work: thirteen hundred are farmers, and two hundred are laborers, teamsters, etc., including twenty-four artisans, ten merchants, twenty-one preachers, and four teachers. This narrowness of life reaches its maximum among the women: thirteen hundred and fifty of these are farm laborers, one hundred are servants and washerwomen, leaving sixty-five housewives, eight teachers, and six seamstresses.

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. The dull monotony of daily toil is broken only by the gayety of the thoughtless and the Saturday trip to town. The toil, like all farm toil, is monotonous, and here there are little machinery and few tools to relieve its burdensome drudgery. But with all this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a day when fresh air is scarce.

The land on the whole is still fertile, despite long abuse. For nine or ten months in succession the crops will come if asked: garden vegetables in April, grain in May, melons in June and July, hay in August, sweet potatoes in September, and cotton from then to Christmas. And yet on two-thirds of the land there is but one crop, and that leaves the toilers in debt. Why is this?

Away down the Baysan road, where the broad flat fields are flanked by great oak forests, is a plantation; many thousands of acres it used to run, here and there, and beyond the great wood. Thirteen hundred human beings here obeyed the call of one,-were his in body, and largely in soul. One of them lives there yet,-a short, stocky man, his dull-brown face seamed and drawn, and his tightly curled hair gray-white. The crops? Just tolerable, he said; just tolerable. Getting on? No-he wasn't getting on at all. Smith of Albany "furnishes" him, and his rent is eight hundred pounds of cotton. Can't make anything at that. Why didn't he buy land! Humph! Takes money to buy land. And he turns away. Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,-the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals,-not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free! On Saturday, once or twice a month, the old master, before the war, used to dole out bacon and meal to his Negroes. And after the first flush of freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the freedman, he came back and picked up his hoe, and old master still doled out his bacon and meal. The legal form of service was theoretically far different; in practice, task-work or "cropping" was substituted for daily toil in gangs; and the slave gradually became a metayer, or tenant on shares, in name, but a laborer with indeterminate wages in fact.

Still the price of cotton fell, and gradually the landlords deserted their plantations, and the reign of the merchant began. The merchant of the Black Belt is a curious institution,-part banker, part landlord, part banker, and part despot. His store, which used most frequently to stand at the cross-roads and become the centre of a weekly village, has now moved to town; and thither the Negro tenant follows him. The merchant keeps everything,-clothes and shoes, coffee and sugar, pork and meal, canned and dried goods, wagons and ploughs, seed and fertilizer,-and what he has not in stock he can give you an order for at the store across the way. Here, then, comes the tenant, Sam Scott, after he has contracted with some absent landlord's agent for hiring forty acres of land; he fingers his hat nervously until the merchant finishes his morning chat with Colonel Saunders, and calls out, "Well, Sam, what do you want?" Sam wants him to "furnish" him,- i.e., to advance him food and clothing for the year, and perhaps seed and tools, until his crop is raised and sold. If Sam seems a favorable subject, he and the merchant go to a lawyer, and Sam executes a chattel mortgage on his mule and wagon in return for seed and a week's rations. As soon as the green cotton-leaves appear above the ground, another mortgage is given on the "crop." Every Saturday, or at longer intervals, Sam calls upon the merchant for his "rations"; a family of five usually gets about thirty pounds of fat side-pork and a couple of bushels of cornmeal a month. Besides this, clothing and shoes must be furnished; if Sam or his family is sick, there are orders on the druggist and doctor; if the mule wants shoeing, an order on the blacksmith, etc. If Sam is a hard worker and crops promise well, he is often encouraged to buy more,-sugar, extra clothes, perhaps a buggy. But he is seldom encouraged to save. When cotton rose to ten cents last fall, the shrewd merchants of Dougherty County sold a thousand buggies in one season, mostly to black men.

The security offered for such transactions-a crop and chattel mortgage-may at first seem slight. And, indeed, the merchants tell many a true tale of shiftlessness and cheating; of cotton picked at night, mules disappearing, and tenants absconding. But on the whole the merchant of the Black Belt is the most prosperous man in the section. So skilfully and so closely has he drawn the bonds of the law about the tenant, that the black man has often simply to choose between pauperism and crime; he "waives" all homestead exemptions in his contract; he cannot touch his own mortgaged crop, which the laws put almost in the full control of the land-owner and of the merchant. When the crop is growing the merchant watches it like a hawk; as soon as it is ready for market he takes possession of it, sells it, pays the landowner his rent, subtracts his bill for supplies, and if, as sometimes happens, there is anything left, he hands it over to the black serf for his Christmas celebration.

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant. The currency of the Black Belt is cotton. It is a crop always salable for ready money, not usually subject to great yearly fluctuations in price, and one which the Negroes know how to raise. The landlord therefore demands his rent in cotton, and the merchant will accept mortgages on no other crop. There is no use asking the black tenant, then, to diversify his crops,-he cannot under this system. Moreover, the system is bound to bankrupt the tenant. I remember once meeting a little one-mule wagon on the River road. A young black fellow sat in it driving listlessly, his elbows on his knees. His dark-faced wife sat beside him, stolid, silent.

"Hello!" cried my driver,-he has a most imprudent way of addressing these people, though they seem used to it,-"what have you got there?"

"Meat and meal," answered the man, stopping. The meat lay uncovered in the bottom of the wagon,-a great thin side of fat pork covered with salt; the meal was in a white bushel bag.

"What did you pay for that meat?"

"Ten cents a pound." It could have been bought for six or seven cents cash.

"And the meal?"

"Two dollars." One dollar and ten cents is the cash price in town. Here was a man paying five dollars for goods which he could have bought for three dollars cash, and raised for one dollar or one dollar and a half.

Yet it is not wholly his fault. The Negro farmer started behind,-started in debt. This was not his choosing, but the crime of this happy-go-lucky nation which goes blundering along with its Reconstruction tragedies, its Spanish war interludes and Philippine matinees, just as though God really were dead. Once in debt, it is no easy matter for a whole race to emerge.

In the year of low-priced cotton, 1898, out of three hundred tenant families one hundred and seventy-five ended their year's work in debt to the extent of fourteen thousand dollars; fifty cleared nothing, and the remaining seventy-five made a total profit of sixteen hundred dollars. The net indebtedness of the black tenant families of the whole county must have been at least sixty thousand dollars. In a more prosperous year the situation is far better; but on the average the majority of tenants end the year even, or in debt, which means that they work for board and clothes. Such an economic organization is radically wrong. Whose is the blame?

The underlying causes of this situation are complicated but discernible. And one of the chief, outside the carelessness of the nation in letting the slave start with nothing, is the widespread opinion among the merchants and employers of the Black Belt that only by the slavery of debt can the Negro be kept at work. Without doubt, some pressure was necessary at the beginning of the free-labor system to keep the listless and lazy at work; and even to-day the mass of the Negro laborers need stricter guardianship than most Northern laborers. Behind this honest and widespread opinion dishonesty and cheating of the ignorant laborers have a good chance to take refuge. And to all this must be added the obvious fact that a slave ancestry and a system of unrequited toil has not improved the efficiency or temper of the mass of black laborers. Nor is this peculiar to Sambo; it has in history been just as true of John and Hans, of Jacques and Pat, of all ground-down peasantries. Such is the situation of the mass of the Negroes in the Black Belt to-day; and they are thinking about it. Crime, and a cheap and dangerous socialism, are the inevitable results of this pondering. I see now that ragged black man sitting on a log, aimlessly whittling a stick. He muttered to me with the murmur of many ages, when he said: "White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits bread and meat; white man sittin' down gits all. It's wrong. " And what do the better classes of Negroes do to improve their situation? One of two things: if any way possible, they buy land; if not, they migrate to town. Just as centuries ago it was no easy thing for the serf to escape into the freedom of town-life, even so to-day there are hindrances laid in the way of county laborers. In considerable parts of all the Gulf States, and especially in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the Negroes on the plantations in the back-country districts are still held at forced labor practically without wages. Especially is this true in districts where the farmers are composed of the more ignorant class of poor whites, and the Negroes are beyond the reach of schools and intercourse with their advancing fellows. If such a peon should run away, the sheriff, elected by white suffrage, can usually be depended on to catch the fugitive, return him, and ask no questions. If he escape to another county, a charge of petty thieving, easily true, can be depended upon to secure his return. Even if some unduly officious person insist upon a trial, neighborly comity will probably make his conviction sure, and then the labor due the county can easily be bought by the master. Such a system is impossible in the more civilized parts of the South, or near the large towns and cities; but in those vast stretches of land beyond the telegraph and the newspaper the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment is sadly broken. This represents the lowest economic depths of the black American peasant; and in a study of the rise and condition of the Negro freeholder we must trace his economic progress from the modern serfdom.

Even in the better-ordered country districts of the South the free movement of agricultural laborers is hindered by the migration-agent laws. The "Associated Press" recently informed the world of the arrest of a young white man in Southern Georgia who represented the "Atlantic Naval Supplies Company," and who "was caught in the act of enticing hands from the turpentine farm of Mr. John Greer." The crime for which this young man was arrested is taxed five hundred dollars for each county in which the employment agent proposes to gather laborers for work outside the State. Thus the Negroes' ignorance of the labor-market outside his own vicinity is increased rather than diminished by the laws of nearly every Southern State.

Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched for by some white man. This is really a revival of the old Roman idea of the patron under whose protection the new-made freedman was put. In many instances this system has been of great good to the Negro, and very often under the protection and guidance of the former master's family, or other white friends, the freedman progressed in wealth and morality. But the same system has in other cases resulted in the refusal of whole communities to recognize the right of a Negro to change his habitation and to be master of his own fortunes. A black stranger in Baker County, Georgia, for instance, is liable to be stopped anywhere on the public highway and made to state his business to the satisfaction of any white interrogator. If he fails to give a suitable answer, or seems too independent or "sassy," he may be arrested or summarily driven away.

Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a system of white patronage exists over large areas. Besides this, the chance for lawless oppression and illegal exactions is vastly greater in the country than in the city, and nearly all the more serious race disturbances of the last decade have arisen from disputes in the county between master and man,-as, for instance, the Sam Hose affair. As a result of such a situation, there arose, first, the Black Belt; and, second, the Migration to Town. The Black Belt was not, as many assumed, a movement toward fields of labor under more genial climatic conditions; it was primarily a huddling for self-protection,-a massing of the black population for mutual defence in order to secure the peace and tranquillity necessary to economic advance. This movement took place between Emancipation and 1880, and only partially accomplished the desired results. The rush to town since 1880 is the counter-movement of men disappointed in the economic opportunities of the Black Belt.

In Dougherty County, Georgia, one can see easily the results of this experiment in huddling for protection. Only ten per cent of the adult population was born in the county, and yet the blacks outnumber the whites four or five to one. There is undoubtedly a security to the blacks in their very numbers,-a personal freedom from arbitrary treatment, which makes hundreds of laborers cling to Dougherty in spite of low wages and economic distress. But a change is coming, and slowly but surely even here the agricultural laborers are drifting to town and leaving the broad acres behind. Why is this? Why do not the Negroes become land-owners, and build up the black landed peasantry, which has for a generation and more been the dream of philanthropist and statesman?

To the car-window sociologist, to the man who seeks to understand and know the South by devoting the few leisure hours of a holiday trip to unravelling the snarl of centuries,-to such men very often the whole trouble with the black field-hand may be summed up by Aunt Ophelia's word, "Shiftless!" They have noted repeatedly scenes like one I saw last summer. We were riding along the highroad to town at the close of a long hot day. A couple of young black fellows passed us in a muleteam, with several bushels of loose corn in the ear. One was driving, listlessly bent forward, his elbows on his knees,-a happy-go-lucky, careless picture of irresponsibility. The other was fast asleep in the bottom of the wagon. As we passed we noticed an ear of corn fall from the wagon. They never saw it,-not they. A rod farther on we noted another ear on the ground; and between that creeping mule and town we counted twenty-six ears of corn. Shiftless? Yes, the personification of shiftlessness. And yet follow those boys: they are not lazy; to-morrow morning they'll be up with the sun; they work hard when they do work, and they work willingly. They have no sordid, selfish, money-getting ways, but rather a fine disdain for mere cash. They'll loaf before your face and work behind your back with good-natured honesty. They'll steal a watermelon, and hand you back your lost purse intact. Their great defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive beyond the mere pleasure of physical exertion. They are careless because they have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as well as the provident. Above all, they cannot see why they should take unusual pains to make the white man's land better, or to fatten his mule, or save his corn. On the other hand, the white land-owner argues that any attempt to improve these laborers by increased responsibility, or higher wages, or better homes, or land of their own, would be sure to result in failure. He shows his Northern visitor the scarred and wretched land; the ruined mansions, the worn-out soil and mortgaged acres, and says, This is Negro freedom!

Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful. "Why, you niggers have an easier time than I do," said a puzzled Albany merchant to his black customer. "Yes," he replied, "and so does yo' hogs."

Taking, then, the dissatisfied and shiftless field-hand as a starting-point, let us inquire how the black thousands of Dougherty have struggled from him up toward their ideal, and what that ideal is. All social struggle is evidenced by the rise, first of economic, then of social classes, among a homogeneous population. To-day the following economic classes are plainly differentiated among these Negroes.

A "submerged tenth" of croppers, with a few paupers; forty per cent who are metayers and thirty-nine per cent of semi-metayers and wage-laborers. There are left five per cent of money-renters and six per cent of freeholders,-the "Upper Ten" of the land. The croppers are entirely without capital, even in the limited sense of food or money to keep them from seed-time to harvest. All they furnish is their labor; the land-owner furnishes land, stock, tools, seed, and house; and at the end of the year the laborer gets from a third to a half of the crop. Out of his share, however, comes pay and interest for food and clothing advanced him during the year. Thus we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees' wages. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer and hired, and is usually in vogue on poor land with hard-pressed owners.

Above the croppers come the great mass of the black population who work the land on their own responsibility, paying rent in cotton and supported by the crop-mortgage system. After the war this system was attractive to the freedmen on account of its larger freedom and its possibility for making a surplus. But with the carrying out of the crop-lien system, the deterioration of the land, and the slavery of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of practically unrewarded toil. Formerly all tenants had some capital, and often considerable; but absentee landlordism, rising rack-rent, and failing cotton have stripped them well-nigh of all, and probably not over half of them to-day own their mules. The change from cropper to tenant was accomplished by fixing the rent. If, now, the rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incentive to the tenant to strive. On the other hand, if the rent was too high, or if the land deteriorated, the result was to discourage and check the efforts of the black peasantry. There is no doubt that the latter case is true; that in Dougherty County every economic advantage of the price of cotton in market and of the strivings of the tenant has been taken advantage of by the landlords and merchants, and swallowed up in rent and interest. If cotton rose in price, the rent rose even higher; if cotton fell, the rent remained or followed reluctantly. If the tenant worked hard and raised a large crop, his rent was raised the next year; if that year the crop failed, his corn was confiscated and his mule sold for debt. There were, of course, exceptions to this,-cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.

The average metayer pays from twenty to thirty per cent of his crop in rent. The result of such rack-rent can only be evil,-abuse and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers, and a widespread sense of injustice. "Wherever the country is poor," cried Arthur Young, "it is in the hands of metayers," and "their condition is more wretched than that of day-laborers." He was talking of Italy a century ago; but he might have been talking of Dougherty County to-day. And especially is that true to-day which he declares was true in France before the Revolution: "The metayers are considered as little better than menial servants, removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of the landlords." On this low plane half the black population of Dougherty County-perhaps more than half the black millions of this land-are to-day struggling.

A degree above these we may place those laborers who receive money wages for their work. Some receive a house with perhaps a garden-spot; then supplies of food and clothing are advanced, and certain fixed wages are given at the end of the year, varying from thirty to sixty dollars, out of which the supplies must be paid for, with interest. About eighteen per cent of the population belong to this class of semi-metayers, while twenty-two per cent are laborers paid by the month or year, and are either "furnished" by their own savings or perhaps more usually by some merchant who takes his chances of payment. Such laborers receive from thirty-five to fifty cents a day during the working season. They are usually young unmarried persons, some being women; and when they marry they sink to the class of metayers, or, more seldom, become renters.

The renters for fixed money rentals are the first of the emerging classes, and form five per cent of the families. The sole advantage of this small class is their freedom to choose their crops, and the increased responsibility which comes through having money transactions. While some of the renters differ little in condition from the metayers, yet on the whole they are more intelligent and responsible persons, and are the ones who eventually become land-owners. Their better character and greater shrewdness enable them to gain, perhaps to demand, better terms in rents; rented farms, varying from forty to a hundred acres, bear an average rental of about fifty-four dollars a year. The men who conduct such farms do not long remain renters; either they sink to metayers, or with a successful series of harvests rise to be land-owners.

In 1870 the tax-books of Dougherty report no Negroes as landholders. If there were any such at that time,-and there may have been a few,-their land was probably held in the name of some white patron,-a method not uncommon during slavery. In 1875 ownership of land had begun with seven hundred and fifty acres; ten years later this had increased to over sixty-five hundred acres, to nine thousand acres in 1890 and ten thousand in 1900. The total assessed property has in this same period risen from eighty thousand dollars in 1875 to two hundred and forty thousand dollars in 1900.

Two circumstances complicate this development and make it in some respects difficult to be sure of the real tendencies; they are the panic of 1893, and the low price of cotton in 1898. Besides this, the system of assessing property in the country districts of Georgia is somewhat antiquated and of uncertain statistical value; there are no assessors, and each man makes a sworn return to a tax-receiver. Thus public opinion plays a large part, and the returns vary strangely from year to year. Certainly these figures show the small amount of accumulated capital among the Negroes, and the consequent large dependence of their property on temporary prosperity. They have little to tide over a few years of economic depression, and are at the mercy of the cotton-market far more than the whites. And thus the land-owners, despite their marvellous efforts, are really a transient class, continually being depleted by those who fall back into the class of renters or metayers, and augmented by newcomers from the masses. Of one hundred land-owners in 1898, half had bought their land since 1893, a fourth between 1890 and 1893, a fifth between 1884 and 1890, and the rest between 1870 and 1884. In all, one hundred and eighty-five Negroes have owned land in this county since 1875.

If all the black land-owners who had ever held land here had kept it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes would have owned nearer thirty thousand acres than the fifteen thousand they now hold. And yet these fifteen thousand acres are a creditable showing,-a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant. But for a few thousand poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress, to save and capitalize two hundred thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.

Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black Belt, only six per cent of the population have succeeded in emerging into peasant proprietorship; and these are not all firmly fixed, but grow and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton-market. Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of escape toward which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely, migration to town. A glance at the distribution of land among the black owners curiously reveals this fact. In 1898 the holdings were as follows: Under forty acres, forty-nine families; forty to two hundred and fifty acres, seventeen families; two hundred and fifty to one thousand acres, thirteen families; one thousand or more acres, two families. Now in 1890 there were forty-four holdings, but only nine of these were under forty acres. The great increase of holdings, then, has come in the buying of small homesteads near town, where their owners really share in the town life; this is a part of the rush to town. And for every land-owner who has thus hurried away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters, have joined that long procession? Is it not strange compensation? The sin of the country districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of city life to-day may, here in Dougherty County, and perhaps in many places near and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.

IX.
Of the Sons of Master and Man

Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart.

MRS. BROWNING.

The world-old phenomenon of the contact of diverse races of men is to have new exemplification during the new century. Indeed, the characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with the world's undeveloped peoples. Whatever we may say of the results of such contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon. War, murder, slavery, extermination, and debauchery,-this has again and again been the result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the heathen without the law. Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors. It would certainly be soothing if one could readily believe all this; and yet there are too many ugly facts for everything to be thus easily explained away. We feel and know that there are many delicate differences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude social measurements are not yet able to follow minutely, which explain much of history and social development. At the same time, too, we know that these considerations have never adequately explained or excused the triumph of brute force and cunning over weakness and innocence.

It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and impudence and cruelty. To bring this hope to fruition, we are compelled daily to turn more and more to a conscientious study of the phenomena of race-contact,-to a study frank and fair, and not falsified and colored by our wishes or our fears. And we have in the South as fine a field for such a study as the world affords,-a field, to be sure, which the average American scientist deems somewhat beneath his dignity, and which the average man who is not a scientist knows all about, but nevertheless a line of study which by reason of the enormous race complications with which God seems about to punish this nation must increasingly claim our sober attention, study, and thought, we must ask, what are the actual relations of whites and blacks in the South? and we must be answered, not by apology or fault-finding, but by a plain, unvarnished tale.

In the civilized life of to-day the contact of men and their relations to each other fall in a few main lines of action and communication: there is, first, the physical proximity of home and dwelling-places, the way in which neighborhoods group themselves, and the contiguity of neighborhoods. Secondly, and in our age chiefest, there are the economic relations,-the methods by which individuals cooperate for earning a living, for the mutual satisfaction of wants, for the production of wealth. Next, there are the political relations, the cooperation in social control, in group government, in laying and paying the burden of taxation. In the fourth place there are the less tangible but highly important forms of intellectual contact and commerce, the interchange of ideas through conversation and conference, through periodicals and libraries; and, above all, the gradual formation for each community of that curious tertium quid which we call public opinion. Closely allied with this come the various forms of social contact in everyday life, in travel, in theatres, in house gatherings, in marrying and giving in marriage. Finally, there are the varying forms of religious enterprise, of moral teaching and benevolent endeavor. These are the principal ways in which men living in the same communities are brought into contact with each other. It is my present task, therefore, to indicate, from my point of view, how the black race in the South meet and mingle with the whites in these matters of everyday life.

First, as to physical dwelling. It is usually possible to draw in nearly every Southern community a physical color-line on the map, on the one side of which whites dwell and on the other Negroes. The winding and intricacy of the geographical color-line varies, of course, in different communities. I know some towns where a straight line drawn through the middle of the main street separates nine-tenths of the whites from nine-tenths of the blacks. In other towns the older settlement of whites has been encircled by a broad band of blacks; in still other cases little settlements or nuclei of blacks have sprung up amid surrounding whites. Usually in cities each street has its distinctive color, and only now and then do the colors meet in close proximity. Even in the country something of this segregation is manifest in the smaller areas, and of course in the larger phenomena of the Black Belt.

All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities. A Negro slum may be in dangerous proximity to a white residence quarter, while it is quite common to find a white slum planted in the heart of a respectable Negro district. One thing, however, seldom occurs: the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost never live in anything like close proximity. It thus happens that in nearly every Southern town and city, both whites and blacks see commonly the worst of each other. This is a vast change from the situation in the past, when, through the close contact of master and house-servant in the patriarchal big house, one found the best of both races in close contact and sympathy, while at the same time the squalor and dull round of toil among the field-hands was removed from the sight and hearing of the family. One can easily see how a person who saw slavery thus from his father's parlors, and sees freedom on the streets of a great city, fails to grasp or comprehend the whole of the new picture. On the other hand, the settled belief of the mass of the Negroes that the Southern white people do not have the black man's best interests at heart has been intensified in later years by this continual daily contact of the better class of blacks with the worst representatives of the white race.

Coming now to the economic relations of the races, we are on ground made familiar by study, much discussion, and no little philanthropic effort. And yet with all this there are many essential elements in the cooperation of Negroes and whites for work and wealth that are too readily overlooked or not thoroughly understood. The average American can easily conceive of a rich land awaiting development and filled with black laborers. To him the Southern problem is simply that of making efficient workingmen out of this material, by giving them the requisite technical skill and the help of invested capital. The problem, however, is by no means as simple as this, from the obvious fact that these workingmen have been trained for centuries as slaves. They exhibit, therefore, all the advantages and defects of such training; they are willing and good-natured, but not self-reliant, provident, or careful. If now the economic development of the South is to be pushed to the verge of exploitation, as seems probable, then we have a mass of workingmen thrown into relentless competition with the workingmen of the world, but handicapped by a training the very opposite to that of the modern self-reliant democratic laborer. What the black laborer needs is careful personal guidance, group leadership of men with hearts in their bosoms, to train them to foresight, carefulness, and honesty. Nor does it require any fine-spun theories of racial differences to prove the necessity of such group training after the brains of the race have been knocked out by two hundred and fifty years of assiduous education in submission, carelessness, and stealing. After Emancipation, it was the plain duty of some one to assume this group leadership and training of the Negro laborer. I will not stop here to inquire whose duty it was-whether that of the white ex-master who had profited by unpaid toil, or the Northern philanthropist whose persistence brought on the crisis, or the National Government whose edict freed the bondmen; I will not stop to ask whose duty it was, but I insist it was the duty of some one to see that these workingmen were not left alone and unguided, without capital, without land, without skill, without economic organization, without even the bald protection of law, order, and decency,-left in a great land, not to settle down to slow and careful internal development, but destined to be thrown almost immediately into relentless and sharp competition with the best of modern workingmen under an economic system where every participant is fighting for himself, and too often utterly regardless of the rights or welfare of his neighbor.

For we must never forget that the economic system of the South to-day which has succeeded the old regime is not the same system as that of the old industrial North, of England, or of France, with their trade-unions, their restrictive laws, their written and unwritten commercial customs, and their long experience. It is, rather, a copy of that England of the early nineteenth century, before the factory acts,-the England that wrung pity from thinkers and fired the wrath of Carlyle. The rod of empire that passed from the hands of Southern gentlemen in 1865, partly by force, partly by their own petulance, has never returned to them. Rather it has passed to those men who have come to take charge of the industrial exploitation of the New South,-the sons of poor whites fired with a new thirst for wealth and power, thrifty and avaricious Yankees, and unscrupulous immigrants. Into the hands of these men the Southern laborers, white and black, have fallen; and this to their sorrow. For the laborers as such, there is in these new captains of industry neither love nor hate, neither sympathy nor romance; it is a cold question of dollars and dividends. Under such a system all labor is bound to suffer. Even the white laborers are not yet intelligent, thrifty, and well trained enough to maintain themselves against the powerful inroads of organized capital. The results among them, even, are long hours of toil, low wages, child labor, and lack of protection against usury and cheating. But among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before, by the wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from slavery. With this training it is difficult for the freedman to learn to grasp the opportunities already opened to him, and the new opportunities are seldom given him, but go by favor to the whites.

Left by the best elements of the South with little protection or oversight, he has been made in law and custom the victim of the worst and most unscrupulous men in each community. The crop-lien system which is depopulating the fields of the South is not simply the result of shiftlessness on the part of Negroes, but is also the result of cunningly devised laws as to mortgages, liens, and misdemeanors, which can be made by conscienceless men to entrap and snare the unwary until escape is impossible, further toil a farce, and protest a crime. I have seen, in the Black Belt of Georgia, an ignorant, honest Negro buy and pay for a farm in installments three separate times, and then in the face of law and decency the enterprising American who sold it to him pocketed the money and deed and left the black man landless, to labor on his own land at thirty cents a day. I have seen a black farmer fall in debt to a white storekeeper, and that storekeeper go to his farm and strip it of every single marketable article,-mules, ploughs, stored crops, tools, furniture, bedding, clocks, looking-glass,-and all this without a sheriff or officer, in the face of the law for homestead exemptions, and without rendering to a single responsible person any account or reckoning. And such proceedings can happen, and will happen, in any community where a class of ignorant toilers are placed by custom and race-prejudice beyond the pale of sympathy and race-brotherhood. So long as the best elements of a community do not feel in duty bound to protect and train and care for the weaker members of their group, they leave them to be preyed upon by these swindlers and rascals.

This unfortunate economic situation does not mean the hindrance of all advance in the black South, or the absence of a class of black landlords and mechanics who, in spite of disadvantages, are accumulating property and making good citizens. But it does mean that this class is not nearly so large as a fairer economic system might easily make it, that those who survive in the competition are handicapped so as to accomplish much less than they deserve to, and that, above all, the personnel of the successful class is left to chance and accident, and not to any intelligent culling or reasonable methods of selection. As a remedy for this, there is but one possible procedure. We must accept some of the race prejudice in the South as a fact,-deplorable in its intensity, unfortunate in results, and dangerous for the future, but nevertheless a hard fact which only time can efface. We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves. For some time men doubted as to whether the Negro could develop such leaders; but to-day no one seriously disputes the capability of individual Negroes to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to their fellows. If this is true, then here is the path out of the economic situation, and here is the imperative demand for trained Negro leaders of character and intelligence,-men of skill, men of light and leading, college-bred men, black captains of industry, and missionaries of culture; men who thoroughly comprehend and know modern civilization, and can take hold of Negro communities and raise and train them by force of precept and example, deep sympathy, and the inspiration of common blood and ideals. But if such men are to be effective they must have some power,-they must be backed by the best public opinion of these communities, and able to wield for their objects and aims such weapons as the experience of the world has taught are indispensable to human progress.

Of such weapons the greatest, perhaps, in the modern world is the power of the ballot; and this brings me to a consideration of the third form of contact between whites and blacks in the South,-political activity.

In the attitude of the American mind toward Negro suffrage can be traced with unusual accuracy the prevalent conceptions of government. In the fifties we were near enough the echoes of the French Revolution to believe pretty thoroughly in universal suffrage. We argued, as we thought then rather logically, that no social class was so good, so true, and so disinterested as to be trusted wholly with the political destiny of its neighbors; that in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected; consequently that it is only by arming every hand with a ballot,-with the right to have a voice in the policy of the state,-that the greatest good to the greatest number could be attained. To be sure, there were objections to these arguments, but we thought we had answered them tersely and convincingly; if some one complained of the ignorance of voters, we answered, "Educate them." If another complained of their venality, we replied, "Disfranchise them or put them in jail." And, finally, to the men who feared demagogues and the natural perversity of some human beings we insisted that time and bitter experience would teach the most hardheaded. It was at this time that the question of Negro suffrage in the South was raised. Here was a defenceless people suddenly made free. How were they to be protected from those who did not believe in their freedom and were determined to thwart it? Not by force, said the North; not by government guardianship, said the South; then by the ballot, the sole and legitimate defence of a free people, said the Common Sense of the Nation. No one thought, at the time, that the ex-slaves could use the ballot intelligently or very effectively; but they did think that the possession of so great power by a great class in the nation would compel their fellows to educate this class to its intelligent use.

Meantime, new thoughts came to the nation: the inevitable period of moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in the wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics consequently became disreputable. Men began to pride themselves on having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree tacitly with those who regarded public office as a private perquisite. In this state of mind it became easy to wink at the suppression of the Negro vote in the South, and to advise self-respecting Negroes to leave politics entirely alone. The decent and reputable citizens of the North who neglected their own civic duties grew hilarious over the exaggerated importance with which the Negro regarded the franchise. Thus it easily happened that more and more the better class of Negroes followed the advice from abroad and the pressure from home, and took no further interest in politics, leaving to the careless and the venal of their race the exercise of their rights as voters. The black vote that still remained was not trained and educated, but further debauched by open and unblushing bribery, or force and fraud; until the Negro voter was thoroughly inoculated with the idea that politics was a method of private gain by disreputable means.

And finally, now, to-day, when we are awakening to the fact that the perpetuity of republican institutions on this continent depends on the purification of the ballot, the civic training of voters, and the raising of voting to the plane of a solemn duty which a patriotic citizen neglects to his peril and to the peril of his children's children,-in this day, when we are striving for a renaissance of civic virtue, what are we going to say to the black voter of the South? Are we going to tell him still that politics is a disreputable and useless form of human activity? Are we going to induce the best class of Negroes to take less and less interest in government, and to give up their right to take such an interest, without a protest? I am not saying a word against all legitimate efforts to purge the ballot of ignorance, pauperism, and crime. But few have pretended that the present movement for disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose; it has been plainly and frankly declared in nearly every case that the object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination of the black man from politics.

Now, is this a minor matter which has no influence on the main question of the industrial and intellectual development of the Negro? Can we establish a mass of black laborers and artisans and landholders in the South who, by law and public opinion, have absolutely no voice in shaping the laws under which they live and work? Can the modern organization of industry, assuming as it does free democratic government and the power and ability of the laboring classes to compel respect for their welfare,-can this system be carried out in the South when half its laboring force is voiceless in the public councils and powerless in its own defence? To-day the black man of the South has almost nothing to say as to how much he shall be taxed, or how those taxes shall be expended; as to who shall execute the laws, and how they shall do it; as to who shall make the laws, and how they shall be made. It is pitiable that frantic efforts must be made at critical times to get law-makers in some States even to listen to the respectful presentation of the black man's side of a current controversy. Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.

I should be the last one to deny the patent weaknesses and shortcomings of the Negro people; I should be the last to withhold sympathy from the white South in its efforts to solve its intricate social problems. I freely acknowledged that it is possible, and sometimes best, that a partially undeveloped people should be ruled by the best of their stronger and better neighbors for their own good, until such time as they can start and fight the world's battles alone. I have already pointed out how sorely in need of such economic and spiritual guidance the emancipated Negro was, and I am quite willing to admit that if the representatives of the best white Southern public opinion were the ruling and guiding powers in the South to-day the conditions indicated would be fairly well fulfilled. But the point I have insisted upon and now emphasize again, is that the best opinion of the South to-day is not the ruling opinion. That to leave the Negro helpless and without a ballot to-day is to leave him not to the guidance of the best, but rather to the exploitation and debauchment of the worst; that this is no truer of the South than of the North,-of the North than of Europe: in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.

Moreover, the political status of the Negro in the South is closely connected with the question of Negro crime. There can be no doubt that crime among Negroes has sensibly increased in the last thirty years, and that there has appeared in the slums of great cities a distinct criminal class among the blacks. In explaining this unfortunate development, we must note two things: (1) that the inevitable result of Emancipation was to increase crime and criminals, and (2) that the police system of the South was primarily designed to control slaves. As to the first point, we must not forget that under a strict slave system there can scarcely be such a thing as crime. But when these variously constituted human particles are suddenly thrown broadcast on the sea of life, some swim, some sink, and some hang suspended, to be forced up or down by the chance currents of a busy hurrying world. So great an economic and social revolution as swept the South in '63 meant a weeding out among the Negroes of the incompetents and vicious, the beginning of a differentiation of social grades. Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily from the ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward like a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould. The appearance, therefore, of the Negro criminal was a phenomenon to be awaited; and while it causes anxiety, it should not occasion surprise.

Here again the hope for the future depended peculiarly on careful and delicate dealing with these criminals. Their offences at first were those of laziness, carelessness, and impulse, rather than of malignity or ungoverned viciousness. Such misdemeanors needed discriminating treatment, firm but reformatory, with no hint of injustice, and full proof of guilt. For such dealing with criminals, white or black, the South had no machinery, no adequate jails or reformatories; its police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a member of that police. Thus grew up a double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimination. For, as I have said, the police system of the South was originally designed to keep track of all Negroes, not simply of criminals; and when the Negroes were freed and the whole South was convinced of the impossibility of free Negro labor, the first and almost universal device was to use the courts as a means of reenslaving the blacks. It was not then a question of crime, but rather one of color, that settled a man's conviction on almost any charge. Thus Negroes came to look upon courts as instruments of injustice and oppression, and upon those convicted in them as martyrs and victims.

When, now, the real Negro criminal appeared, and instead of petty stealing and vagrancy we began to have highway robbery, burglary, murder, and rape, there was a curious effect on both sides the color-line: the Negroes refused to believe the evidence of white witnesses or the fairness of white juries, so that the greatest deterrent to crime, the public opinion of one's own social caste, was lost, and the criminal was looked upon as crucified rather than hanged. On the other hand, the whites, used to being careless as to the guilt or innocence of accused Negroes, were swept in moments of passion beyond law, reason, and decency. Such a situation is bound to increase crime, and has increased it. To natural viciousness and vagrancy are being daily added motives of revolt and revenge which stir up all the latent savagery of both races and make peaceful attention to economic development often impossible.

But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime. And here again the peculiar conditions of the South have prevented proper precautions. I have seen twelve-year-old boys working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front of the schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and this indiscriminate mingling of men and women and children makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauchery. The struggle for reformatories, which has gone on in Virginia, Georgia, and other States, is the one encouraging sign of the awakening of some communities to the suicidal results of this policy.

It is the public schools, however, which can be made, outside the homes, the greatest means of training decent self-respecting citizens. We have been so hotly engaged recently in discussing trade-schools and the higher education that the pitiable plight of the public-school system in the South has almost dropped from view. Of every five dollars spent for public education in the State of Georgia, the white schools get four dollars and the Negro one dollar; and even then the white public-school system, save in the cities, is bad and cries for reform. If this is true of the whites, what of the blacks? I am becoming more and more convinced, as I look upon the system of common-school training in the South, that the national government must soon step in and aid popular education in some way. To-day it has been only by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the thinking men of the South that the Negro's share of the school fund has not been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States; and that movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?

I have thus far sought to make clear the physical, economic, and political relations of the Negroes and whites in the South, as I have conceived them, including, for the reasons set forth, crime and education. But after all that has been said on these more tangible matters of human contact, there still remains a part essential to a proper description of the South which it is difficult to describe or fix in terms easily understood by strangers. It is, in fine, the atmosphere of the land, the thought and feeling, the thousand and one little actions which go to make up life. In any community or nation it is these little things which are most elusive to the grasp and yet most essential to any clear conception of the group life taken as a whole. What is thus true of all communities is peculiarly true of the South, where, outside of written history and outside of printed law, there has been going on for a generation as deep a storm and stress of human souls, as intense a ferment of feeling, as intricate a writhing of spirit, as ever a people experienced. Within and without the sombre veil of color vast social forces have been at work,-efforts for human betterment, movements toward disintegration and despair, tragedies and comedies in social and economic life, and a swaying and lifting and sinking of human hearts which have made this land a land of mingled sorrow and joy, of change and excitement and unrest.

The centre of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the millions of black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so fatefully bound up with that of the nation. And yet the casual observer visiting the South sees at first little of this. He notes the growing frequency of dark faces as he rides along,-but otherwise the days slip lazily on, the sun shines, and this little world seems as happy and contented as other worlds he has visited. Indeed, on the question of questions-the Negro problem-he hears so little that there almost seems to be a conspiracy of silence; the morning papers seldom mention it, and then usually in a far-fetched academic way, and indeed almost every one seems to forget and ignore the darker half of the land, until the astonished visitor is inclined to ask if after all there IS any problem here. But if he lingers long enough there comes the awakening: perhaps in a sudden whirl of passion which leaves him gasping at its bitter intensity; more likely in a gradually dawning sense of things he had not at first noticed. Slowly but surely his eyes begin to catch the shadows of the color-line: here he meets crowds of Negroes and whites; then he is suddenly aware that he cannot discover a single dark face; or again at the close of a day's wandering he may find himself in some strange assembly, where all faces are tinged brown or black, and where he has the vague, uncomfortable feeling of the stranger. He realizes at last that silently, resistlessly, the world about flows by him in two great streams: they ripple on in the same sunshine, they approach and mingle their waters in seeming carelessness,-then they divide and flow wide apart. It is done quietly; no mistakes are made, or if one occurs, the swift arm of the law and of public opinion swings down for a moment, as when the other day a black man and a white woman were arrested for talking together on Whitehall Street in Atlanta.

Now if one notices carefully one will see that between these two worlds, despite much physical contact and daily intermingling, there is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other. Before and directly after the war, when all the best of the Negroes were domestic servants in the best of the white families, there were bonds of intimacy, affection, and sometimes blood relationship, between the races. They lived in the same home, shared in the family life, often attended the same church, and talked and conversed with each other. But the increasing civilization of the Negro since then has naturally meant the development of higher classes: there are increasing numbers of ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants, mechanics, and independent farmers, who by nature and training are the aristocracy and leaders of the blacks. Between them, however, and the best element of the whites, there is little or no intellectual commerce. They go to separate churches, they live in separate sections, they are strictly separated in all public gatherings, they travel separately, and they are beginning to read different papers and books. To most libraries, lectures, concerts, and museums, Negroes are either not admitted at all, or on terms peculiarly galling to the pride of the very classes who might otherwise be attracted. The daily paper chronicles the doings of the black world from afar with no great regard for accuracy; and so on, throughout the category of means for intellectual communication,-schools, conferences, efforts for social betterment, and the like,-it is usually true that the very representatives of the two races, who for mutual benefit and the welfare of the land ought to be in complete understanding and sympathy, are so far strangers that one side thinks all whites are narrow and prejudiced, and the other thinks educated Negroes dangerous and insolent. Moreover, in a land where the tyranny of public opinion and the intolerance of criticism is for obvious historical reasons so strong as in the South, such a situation is extremely difficult to correct. The white man, as well as the Negro, is bound and barred by the color-line, and many a scheme of friendliness and philanthropy, of broad-minded sympathy and generous fellowship between the two has dropped still-born because some busybody has forced the color-question to the front and brought the tremendous force of unwritten law against the innovators.

It is hardly necessary for me to add very much in regard to the social contact between the races. Nothing has come to replace that finer sympathy and love between some masters and house servants which the radical and more uncompromising drawing of the color-line in recent years has caused almost completely to disappear. In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,-one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.

Here there can be none of that social going down to the people,-the opening of heart and hand of the best to the worst, in generous acknowledgment of a common humanity and a common destiny. On the other hand, in matters of simple almsgiving, where there can be no question of social contact, and in the succor of the aged and sick, the South, as if stirred by a feeling of its unfortunate limitations, is generous to a fault. The black beggar is never turned away without a good deal more than a crust, and a call for help for the unfortunate meets quick response. I remember, one cold winter, in Atlanta, when I refrained from contributing to a public relief fund lest Negroes should be discriminated against, I afterward inquired of a friend: "Were any black people receiving aid?" "Why," said he, "they were all black."

And yet this does not touch the kernel of the problem. Human advancement is not a mere question of almsgiving, but rather of sympathy and cooperation among classes who would scorn charity. And here is a land where, in the higher walks of life, in all the higher striving for the good and noble and true, the color-line comes to separate natural friends and coworkers; while at the bottom of the social group, in the saloon, the gambling-hell, and the brothel, that same line wavers and disappears.

I have sought to paint an average picture of real relations between the sons of master and man in the South. I have not glossed over matters for policy's sake, for I fear we have already gone too far in that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have sincerely sought to let no unfair exaggerations creep in. I do not doubt that in some Southern communities conditions are better than those I have indicated; while I am no less certain that in other communities they are far worse.

Nor does the paradox and danger of this situation fail to interest and perplex the best conscience of the South. Deeply religious and intensely democratic as are the mass of the whites, they feel acutely the false position in which the Negro problems place them. Such an essentially honest-hearted and generous people cannot cite the caste-levelling precepts of Christianity, or believe in equality of opportunity for all men, without coming to feel more and more with each generation that the present drawing of the color-line is a flat contradiction to their beliefs and professions. But just as often as they come to this point, the present social condition of the Negro stands as a menace and a portent before even the most open-minded: if there were nothing to charge against the Negro but his blackness or other physical peculiarities, they argue, the problem would be comparatively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance, shiftlessness, poverty, and crime? can a self-respecting group hold anything but the least possible fellowship with such persons and survive? and shall we let a mawkish sentiment sweep away the culture of our fathers or the hope of our children? The argument so put is of great strength, but it is not a whit stronger than the argument of thinking Negroes: granted, they reply, that the condition of our masses is bad; there is certainly on the one hand adequate historical cause for this, and unmistakable evidence that no small number have, in spite of tremendous disadvantages, risen to the level of American civilization. And when, by proscription and prejudice, these same Negroes are classed with and treated like the lowest of their people, simply because they are Negroes, such a policy not only discourages thrift and intelligence among black men, but puts a direct premium on the very things you complain of,-inefficiency and crime. Draw lines of crime, of incompetency, of vice, as tightly and uncompromisingly as you will, for these things must be proscribed; but a color-line not only does not accomplish this purpose, but thwarts it.

In the face of two such arguments, the future of the South depends on the ability of the representatives of these opposing views to see and appreciate and sympathize with each other's position,-for the Negro to realize more deeply than he does at present the need of uplifting the masses of his people, for the white people to realize more vividly than they have yet done the deadening and disastrous effect of a color-prejudice that classes Phillis Wheatley and Sam Hose in the same despised class.

It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph,

"That mind and soul according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster."

X.
Of the Faith of the Fathers

FIONA MACLEOD.

It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling log-house up the stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn, until we could hear dimly across the fields a rhythmic cadence of song,-soft, thrilling, powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears. I was a country schoolteacher then, fresh from the East, and had never seen a Southern Negro revival. To be sure, we in Berkshire were not perhaps as stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time; yet we were very quiet and subdued, and I know not what would have happened those clear Sabbath mornings had some one punctuated the sermon with a wild scream, or interrupted the long prayer with a loud Amen! And so most striking to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of black folk. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us,-a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible reality to song and word. The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and groan and outcry, and a scene of human passion such as I had never conceived before.

Those who have not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival in the untouched backwoods of the South can but dimly realize the religious feeling of the slave; as described, such scenes appear grotesque and funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things characterized this religion of the slave,-the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy. The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a "boss," an intriguer, an idealist,-all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with consummate ability, gave him his preeminence, and helps him maintain it. The type, of course, varies according to time and place, from the West Indies in the sixteenth century to New England in the nineteenth, and from the Mississippi bottoms to cities like New Orleans or New York.

The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people's sorrow, despair, and hope.

Finally the Frenzy of "Shouting," when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical fervor,-the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and wild waving of arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance. All this is nothing new in the world, but old as religion, as Delphi and Endor. And so firm a hold did it have on the Negro, that many generations firmly believed that without this visible manifestation of the God there could be no true communion with the Invisible.

These were the characteristics of Negro religious life as developed up to the time of Emancipation. Since under the peculiar circumstances of the black man's environment they were the one expression of his higher life, they are of deep interest to the student of his development, both socially and psychologically. Numerous are the attractive lines of inquiry that here group themselves. What did slavery mean to the African savage? What was his attitude toward the World and Life? What seemed to him good and evil,-God and Devil? Whither went his longings and strivings, and wherefore were his heart-burnings and disappointments? Answers to such questions can come only from a study of Negro religion as a development, through its gradual changes from the heathenism of the Gold Coast to the institutional Negro church of Chicago.

Moreover, the religious growth of millions of men, even though they be slaves, cannot be without potent influence upon their contemporaries. The Methodists and Baptists of America owe much of their condition to the silent but potent influence of their millions of Negro converts. Especially is this noticeable in the South, where theology and religious philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods. The mass of "gospel" hymns which has swept through American churches and well-nigh ruined our sense of song consists largely of debased imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of American history.

The Negro church of to-day is the social centre of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character. Take a typical church in a small Virginia town: it is the "First Baptist"-a roomy brick edifice seating five hundred or more persons, tastefully finished in Georgia pine, with a carpet, a small organ, and stained-glass windows. Underneath is a large assembly room with benches. This building is the central club-house of a community of a thousand or more Negroes. Various organizations meet here,-the church proper, the Sunday-school, two or three insurance societies, women's societies, secret societies, and mass meetings of various kinds. Entertainments, suppers, and lectures are held beside the five or six regular weekly religious services. Considerable sums of money are collected and expended here, employment is found for the idle, strangers are introduced, news is disseminated and charity distributed. At the same time this social, intellectual, and economic centre is a religious centre of great power. Depravity, Sin, Redemption, Heaven, Hell, and Damnation are preached twice a Sunday after the crops are laid by; and few indeed of the community have the hardihood to withstand conversion. Back of this more formal religion, the Church often stands as a real conserver of morals, a strengthener of family life, and the final authority on what is Good and Right.

Thus one can see in the Negro church to-day, reproduced in microcosm, all the great world from which the Negro is cut off by color-prejudice and social condition. In the great city churches the same tendency is noticeable and in many respects emphasized. A great church like the Bethel of Philadelphia has over eleven hundred members, an edifice seating fifteen hundred persons and valued at one hundred thousand dollars, an annual budget of five thousand dollars, and a government consisting of a pastor with several assisting local preachers, an executive and legislative board, financial boards and tax collectors; general church meetings for making laws; sub-divided groups led by class leaders, a company of militia, and twenty-four auxiliary societies. The activity of a church like this is immense and far-reaching, and the bishops who preside over these organizations throughout the land are among the most powerful Negro rulers in the world.

Such churches are really governments of men, and consequently a little investigation reveals the curious fact that, in the South, at least, practically every American Negro is a church member. Some, to be sure, are not regularly enrolled, and a few do not habitually attend services; but, practically, a proscribed people must have a social centre, and that centre for this people is the Negro church. The census of 1890 showed nearly twenty-four thousand Negro churches in the country, with a total enrolled membership of over two and a half millions, or ten actual church members to every twenty-eight persons, and in some Southern States one in every two persons. Besides these there is the large number who, while not enrolled as members, attend and take part in many of the activities of the church. There is an organized Negro church for every sixty black families in the nation, and in some States for every forty families, owning, on an average, a thousand dollars' worth of property each, or nearly twenty-six million dollars in all.

Such, then, is the large development of the Negro church since Emancipation. The question now is, What have been the successive steps of this social history and what are the present tendencies? First, we must realize that no such institution as the Negro church could rear itself without definite historical foundations. These foundations we can find if we remember that the social history of the Negro did not start in America. He was brought from a definite social environment,-the polygamous clan life under the headship of the chief and the potent influence of the priest. His religion was nature-worship, with profound belief in invisible surrounding influences, good and bad, and his worship was through incantation and sacrifice. The first rude change in this life was the slave ship and the West Indian sugar-fields. The plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far greater and more despotic powers. Forced and long-continued toil became the rule of life, the old ties of blood relationship and kinship disappeared, and instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and polyandry, which, in some cases, almost reached promiscuity. It was a terrific social revolution, and yet some traces were retained of the former group life, and the chief remaining institution was the Priest or Medicine-man. He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Thus, as bard, physician, judge, and priest, within the narrow limits allowed by the slave system, rose the Negro preacher, and under him the first church was not at first by any means Christian nor definitely organized; rather it was an adaptation and mingling of heathen rites among the members of each plantation, and roughly designated as Voodooism. Association with the masters, missionary effort and motives of expediency gave these rites an early veneer of Christianity, and after the lapse of many generations the Negro church became Christian.

Two characteristic things must be noticed in regard to the church. First, it became almost entirely Baptist and Methodist in faith; secondly, as a social institution it antedated by many decades the monogamic Negro home. From the very circumstances of its beginning, the church was confined to the plantation, and consisted primarily of a series of disconnected units; although, later on, some freedom of movement was allowed, still this geographical limitation was always important and was one cause of the spread of the decentralized and democratic Baptist faith among the slaves. At the same time, the visible rite of baptism appealed strongly to their mystic temperament. To-day the Baptist Church is still largest in membership among Negroes, and has a million and a half communicants. Next in popularity came the churches organized in connection with the white neighboring churches, chiefly Baptist and Methodist, with a few Episcopalian and others. The Methodists still form the second greatest denomination, with nearly a million members. The faith of these two leading denominations was more suited to the slave church from the prominence they gave to religious feeling and fervor. The Negro membership in other denominations has always been small and relatively unimportant, although the Episcopalians and Presbyterians are gaining among the more intelligent classes to-day, and the Catholic Church is making headway in certain sections. After Emancipation, and still earlier in the North, the Negro churches largely severed such affiliations as they had had with the white churches, either by choice or by compulsion. The Baptist churches became independent, but the Methodists were compelled early to unite for purposes of episcopal government. This gave rise to the great African Methodist Church, the greatest Negro organization in the world, to the Zion Church and the Colored Methodist, and to the black conferences and churches in this and other denominations.

The second fact noted, namely, that the Negro church antedates the Negro home, leads to an explanation of much that is paradoxical in this communistic institution and in the morals of its members. But especially it leads us to regard this institution as peculiarly the expression of the inner ethical life of a people in a sense seldom true elsewhere. Let us turn, then, from the outer physical development of the church to the more important inner ethical life of the people who compose it. The Negro has already been pointed out many times as a religious animal,-a being of that deep emotional nature which turns instinctively toward the supernatural. Endowed with a rich tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of Nature, the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and devils, elves and witches; full of strange influences,-of Good to be implored, of Evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of Evil over him. All the hateful powers of the Under-world were striving against him, and a spirit of revolt and revenge filled his heart. He called up all the resources of heathenism to aid,-exorcism and witch-craft, the mysterious Obi worship with its barbarious rites, spells, and blood-sacrifice even, now and then, of human victims. Weird midnight orgies and mystic conjurations were invoked, the witch-woman and the voodoo-priest became the centre of Negro group life, and that vein of vague superstition which characterizes the unlettered Negro even to-day was deepened and strengthened.

In spite, however, of such success as that of the fierce Maroons, the Danish blacks, and others, the spirit of revolt gradually died away under the untiring energy and superior strength of the slave masters. By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity. Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of repression and degradation of the Negro tended to emphasize the elements of his character which made him a valuable chattel: courtesy became humility, moral strength degenerated into submission, and the exquisite native appreciation of the beautiful became an infinite capacity for dumb suffering. The Negro, losing the joy of this world, eagerly seized upon the offered conceptions of the next; the avenging Spirit of the Lord enjoining patience in this world, under sorrow and tribulation until the Great Day when He should lead His dark children home,-this became his comforting dream. His preacher repeated the prophecy, and his bards sang,-

"Children, we all shall be free
When the Lord shall appear!"

This deep religious fatalism, painted so beautifully in "Uncle Tom," came soon to breed, as all fatalistic faiths will, the sensualist side by side with the martyr. Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily, in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime. Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave's ethical growth. Here it was that the Home was ruined under the very shadow of the Church, white and black; here habits of shiftlessness took root, and sullen hopelessness replaced hopeful strife.

With the beginning of the abolition movement and the gradual growth of a class of free Negroes came a change. We often neglect the influence of the freedman before the war, because of the paucity of his numbers and the small weight he had in the history of the nation. But we must not forget that his chief influence was internal,-was exerted on the black world; and that there he was the ethical and social leader. Huddled as he was in a few centres like Philadelphia, New York, and New Orleans, the masses of the freedmen sank into poverty and listlessness; but not all of them. The free Negro leader early arose and his chief characteristic was intense earnestness and deep feeling on the slavery question. Freedom became to him a real thing and not a dream. His religion became darker and more intense, and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of reckoning close at hand. The "Coming of the Lord" swept this side of Death, and came to be a thing to be hoped for in this day. Through fugitive slaves and irrepressible discussion this desire for freedom seized the black millions still in bondage, and became their one ideal of life. The black bards caught new notes, and sometimes even dared to sing,-

For fifty years Negro religion thus transformed itself and identified itself with the dream of Abolition, until that which was a radical fad in the white North and an anarchistic plot in the white South had become a religion to the black world. Thus, when Emancipation finally came, it seemed to the freedman a literal Coming of the Lord. His fervid imagination was stirred as never before, by the tramp of armies, the blood and dust of battle, and the wail and whirl of social upheaval. He stood dumb and motionless before the whirlwind: what had he to do with it? Was it not the Lord's doing, and marvellous in his eyes? Joyed and bewildered with what came, he stood awaiting new wonders till the inevitable Age of Reaction swept over the nation and brought the crisis of to-day.

It is difficult to explain clearly the present critical stage of Negro religion. First, we must remember that living as the blacks do in close contact with a great modern nation, and sharing, although imperfectly, the soul-life of that nation, they must necessarily be affected more or less directly by all the religious and ethical forces that are to-day moving the United States. These questions and movements are, however, overshadowed and dwarfed by the (to them) all-important question of their civil, political, and economic status. They must perpetually discuss the "Negro Problem,"-must live, move, and have their being in it, and interpret all else in its light or darkness. With this come, too, peculiar problems of their inner life,-of the status of women, the maintenance of Home, the training of children, the accumulation of wealth, and the prevention of crime. All this must mean a time of intense ethical ferment, of religious heart-searching and intellectual unrest. From the double life every American Negro must live, as a Negro and as an American, as swept on by the current of the nineteenth while yet struggling in the eddies of the fifteenth century,-from this must arise a painful self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence. The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism.

In some such doubtful words and phrases can one perhaps most clearly picture the peculiar ethical paradox that faces the Negro of to-day and is tingeing and changing his religious life. Feeling that his rights and his dearest ideals are being trampled upon, that the public conscience is ever more deaf to his righteous appeal, and that all the reactionary forces of prejudice, greed, and revenge are daily gaining new strength and fresh allies, the Negro faces no enviable dilemma. Conscious of his impotence, and pessimistic, he often becomes bitter and vindictive; and his religion, instead of a worship, is a complaint and a curse, a wail rather than a hope, a sneer rather than a faith. On the other hand, another type of mind, shrewder and keener and more tortuous too, sees in the very strength of the anti-Negro movement its patent weaknesses, and with Jesuitic casuistry is deterred by no ethical considerations in the endeavor to turn this weakness to the black man's strength. Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy. The one type of Negro stands almost ready to curse God and die, and the other is too often found a traitor to right and a coward before force; the one is wedded to ideals remote, whimsical, perhaps impossible of realization; the other forgets that life is more than meat and the body more than raiment. But, after all, is not this simply the writhing of the age translated into black,-the triumph of the Lie which today, with its false culture, faces the hideousness of the anarchist assassin?

To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. It is no idle regret with which the white South mourns the loss of the old-time Negro,-the frank, honest, simple old servant who stood for the earlier religious age of submission and humility. With all his laziness and lack of many elements of true manhood, he was at least open-hearted, faithful, and sincere. To-day he is gone, but who is to blame for his going? Is it not those very persons who mourn for him? Is it not the tendency, born of Reconstruction and Reaction, to found a society on lawlessness and deception, to tamper with the moral fibre of a naturally honest and straightforward people until the whites threaten to become ungovernable tyrants and the blacks criminals and hypocrites? Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at hand,-the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture? The price of culture is a Lie.

On the other hand, in the North the tendency is to emphasize the radicalism of the Negro. Driven from his birthright in the South by a situation at which every fibre of his more outspoken and assertive nature revolts, he finds himself in a land where he can scarcely earn a decent living amid the harsh competition and the color discrimination. At the same time, through schools and periodicals, discussions and lectures, he is intellectually quickened and awakened. The soul, long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in new-found freedom. What wonder that every tendency is to excess,-radical complaint, radical remedies, bitter denunciation or angry silence. Some sink, some rise. The criminal and the sensualist leave the church for the gambling-hell and the brothel, and fill the slums of Chicago and Baltimore; the better classes segregate themselves from the group-life of both white and black, and form an aristocracy, cultured but pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way of escape. They despise the submission and subserviency of the Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and oppressed minority can exist side by side with its masters. Feeling deeply and keenly the tendencies and opportunities of the age in which they live, their souls are bitter at the fate which drops the Veil between; and the very fact that this bitterness is natural and justifiable only serves to intensify it and make it more maddening.

Between the two extreme types of ethical attitude which I have thus sought to make clear wavers the mass of the millions of Negroes, North and South; and their religious life and activity partake of this social conflict within their ranks. Their churches are differentiating,-now into groups of cold, fashionable devotees, in no way distinguishable from similar white groups save in color of skin; now into large social and business institutions catering to the desire for information and amusement of their members, warily avoiding unpleasant questions both within and without the black world, and preaching in effect if not in word: Dum vivimus, vivamus.

But back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past and seek in the great night a new religious ideal. Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living-Liberty, Justice, and Right-is marked "For White People Only."

XI.
Of the Passing of the First-Born

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten,
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child's blood crying yet,
Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.

SWINBURNE.

"Unto you a child is born," sang the bit of yellow paper that fluttered into my room one brown October morning. Then the fear of fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation; I wondered how it looked and how it felt-what were its eyes, and how its hair curled and crumpled itself. And I thought in awe of her,-she who had slept with Death to tear a man-child from underneath her heart, while I was unconsciously wandering. I fled to my wife and child, repeating the while to myself half wonderingly, "Wife and child? Wife and child?"-fled fast and faster than boat and steam-car, and yet must ever impatiently await them; away from the hard-voiced city, away from the flickering sea into my own Berkshire Hills that sit all sadly guarding the gates of Massachusetts.

Up the stairs I ran to the wan mother and whimpering babe, to the sanctuary on whose altar a life at my bidding had offered itself to win a life, and won. What is this tiny formless thing, this newborn wail from an unknown world,-all head and voice? I handle it curiously, and watch perplexed its winking, breathing, and sneezing. I did not love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my girl-mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the morning-the transfigured woman. Through her I came to love the wee thing, as it grew strong; as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half-formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How beautiful he was, with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had moulded into his features! I held him in my arms, after we had sped far away from our Southern home,-held him, and glanced at the hot red soil of Georgia and the breathless city of a hundred hills, and felt a vague unrest. Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue?-for brown were his father's eyes, and his father's father's. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil.

Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,-a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head-ah, bitterly!-he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand-ah, wearily!-to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life.

So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but eighteen months distant from the All-life,-we were not far from worshipping this revelation of the divine, my wife and I. Her own life builded and moulded itself upon the child; he tinged her every dream and idealized her every effort. No hands but hers must touch and garnish those little limbs; no dress or frill must touch them that had not wearied her fingers; no voice but hers could coax him off to Dreamland, and she and he together spoke some soft and unknown tongue and in it held communion. I too mused above his little white bed; saw the strength of my own arm stretched onward through the ages through the newer strength of his; saw the dream of my black fathers stagger a step onward in the wild phantasm of the world; heard in his baby voice the voice of the Prophet that was to rise within the Veil.

And so we dreamed and loved and planned by fall and winter, and the full flush of the long Southern spring, till the hot winds rolled from the fetid Gulf, till the roses shivered and the still stern sun quivered its awful light over the hills of Atlanta. And then one night the little feet pattered wearily to the wee white bed, and the tiny hands trembled; and a warm flushed face tossed on the pillow, and we knew baby was sick. Ten days he lay there,-a swift week and three endless days, wasting, wasting away. Cheerily the mother nursed him the first days, and laughed into the little eyes that smiled again. Tenderly then she hovered round him, till the smile fled away and Fear crouched beside the little bed.

Then the day ended not, and night was a dreamless terror, and joy and sleep slipped away. I hear now that Voice at midnight calling me from dull and dreamless trance,-crying, "The Shadow of Death! The Shadow of Death!" Out into the starlight I crept, to rouse the gray physician,-the Shadow of Death, the Shadow of Death. The hours trembled on; the night listened; the ghastly dawn glided like a tired thing across the lamplight. Then we two alone looked upon the child as he turned toward us with great eyes, and stretched his stringlike hands,-the Shadow of Death! And we spoke no word, and turned away.

He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train. The day changed not; the same tall trees peeped in at the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun. Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing-a childless mother.

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enough,-is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough,-is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here,-thou, O Death? About my head the thundering storm beat like a heartless voice, and the crazy forest pulsed with the curses of the weak; but what cared I, within my home beside my wife and baby boy? Wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou must needs enter there,-thou, O Death?

A perfect life was his, all joy and love, with tears to make it brighter,-sweet as a summer's day beside the Housatonic. The world loved him; the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes, and the children hovered and fluttered about him. I can see him now, changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns, and then to wondering thoughtfulness as he watched the world. He knew no color-line, poor dear-and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I-yea, all men-are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he had flown, "He will be happy There; he ever loved beautiful things." And I, far more ignorant, and blind by the web of mine own weaving, sit alone winding words and muttering, "If still he be, and he be There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!"

Blithe was the morning of his burial, with bird and song and sweet-smelling flowers. The trees whispered to the grass, but the children sat with hushed faces. And yet it seemed a ghostly unreal day,-the wraith of Life. We seemed to rumble down an unknown street behind a little white bundle of posies, with the shadow of a song in our ears. The busy city dinned about us; they did not say much, those pale-faced hurrying men and women; they did not say much,-they only glanced and said, "Niggers!"

We could not lay him in the ground there in Georgia, for the earth there is strangely red; so we bore him away to the northward, with his flowers and his little folded hands. In vain, in vain!-for where, O God! beneath thy broad blue sky shall my dark baby rest in peace,-where Reverence dwells, and Goodness, and a Freedom that is free?

All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart,-nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veil,-and my soul whispers ever to me saying, "Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free." No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.

Idle words; he might have borne his burden more bravely than we,-aye, and found it lighter too, some day; for surely, surely this is not the end. Surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the Veil and set the prisoned free. Not for me,-I shall die in my bonds,-but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not "Is he white?" but "Can he work?" When men ask artists, not "Are they black?" but "Do they know?" Some morning this may be, long, long years to come. But now there wails, on that dark shore within the Veil, the same deep voice, Thou shalt forego! And all have I foregone at that command, and with small complaint,-all save that fair young form that lies so coldly wed with death in the nest I had builded.

If one must have gone, why not I? Why may I not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this wide waking? Was not the world's alembic, Time, in his young hands, and is not my time waning? Are there so many workers in the vineyard that the fair promise of this little body could lightly be tossed away? The wretched of my race that line the alleys of the nation sit fatherless and unmothered; but Love sat beside his cradle, and in his ear Wisdom waited to speak. Perhaps now he knows the All-love, and needs not to be wise. Sleep, then, child,-sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet-above the Veil.

XII.
Of Alexander Crummell

Then from the Dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

TENNYSON.

This is the story of a human heart,-the tale of a black boy who many long years ago began to struggle with life that he might know the world and know himself. Three temptations he met on those dark dunes that lay gray and dismal before the wonder-eyes of the child: the temptation of Hate, that stood out against the red dawn; the temptation of Despair, that darkened noonday; and the temptation of Doubt, that ever steals along with twilight. Above all, you must hear of the vales he crossed,-the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

I saw Alexander Crummell first at a Wilberforce commencement season, amid its bustle and crush. Tall, frail, and black he stood, with simple dignity and an unmistakable air of good breeding. I talked with him apart, where the storming of the lusty young orators could not harm us. I spoke to him politely, then curiously, then eagerly, as I began to feel the fineness of his character,-his calm courtesy, the sweetness of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before the prophets of the world. Some seer he seemed, that came not from the crimson Past or the gray To-come, but from the pulsing Now,-that mocking world which seemed to me at once so light and dark, so splendid and sordid. Fourscore years had he wandered in this same world of mine, within the Veil.

He was born with the Missouri Compromise and lay a-dying amid the echoes of Manila and El Caney: stirring times for living, times dark to look back upon, darker to look forward to. The black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles seventy years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world. The slave-ship still groaned across the Atlantic, faint cries burdened the Southern breeze, and the great black father whispered mad tales of cruelty into those young ears. From the low doorway the mother silently watched her boy at play, and at nightfall sought him eagerly lest the shadows bear him away to the land of slaves.

So his young mind worked and winced and shaped curiously a vision of Life; and in the midst of that vision ever stood one dark figure alone,-ever with the hard, thick countenance of that bitter father, and a form that fell in vast and shapeless folds. Thus the temptation of Hate grew and shadowed the growing child,-gliding stealthily into his laughter, fading into his play, and seizing his dreams by day and night with rough, rude turbulence. So the black boy asked of sky and sun and flower the never-answered Why? and loved, as he grew, neither the world nor the world's rough ways.

Strange temptation for a child, you may think; and yet in this wide land to-day a thousand thousand dark children brood before this same temptation, and feel its cold and shuddering arms. For them, perhaps, some one will some day lift the Veil,-will come tenderly and cheerily into those sad little lives and brush the brooding hate away, just as Beriah Green strode in upon the life of Alexander Crummell. And before the bluff, kind-hearted man the shadow seemed less dark. Beriah Green had a school in Oneida County, New York, with a score of mischievous boys. "I'm going to bring a black boy here to educate," said Beriah Green, as only a crank and an abolitionist would have dared to say. "Oho!" laughed the boys. "Ye-es," said his wife; and Alexander came. Once before, the black boy had sought a school, had travelled, cold and hungry, four hundred miles up into free New Hampshire, to Canaan. But the godly farmers hitched ninety yoke of oxen to the abolition schoolhouse and dragged it into the middle of the swamp. The black boy trudged away.

The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy,-the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and-sometimes-Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, "Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou known Life?" And then all helplessly we peered into those Other-worlds, and wailed, "O World of Worlds, how shall man make you one?"

So in that little Oneida school there came to those schoolboys a revelation of thought and longing beneath one black skin, of which they had not dreamed before. And to the lonely boy came a new dawn of sympathy and inspiration. The shadowy, formless thing-the temptation of Hate, that hovered between him and the world-grew fainter and less sinister. It did not wholly fade away, but diffused itself and lingered thick at the edges. Through it the child now first saw the blue and gold of life,-the sun-swept road that ran 'twixt heaven and earth until in one far-off wan wavering line they met and kissed. A vision of life came to the growing boy,-mystic, wonderful. He raised his head, stretched himself, breathed deep of the fresh new air. Yonder, behind the forests, he heard strange sounds; then glinting through the trees he saw, far, far away, the bronzed hosts of a nation calling,-calling faintly, calling loudly. He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy. And he girded himself to walk down the world.

A voice and vision called him to be a priest,-a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage. He saw the headless host turn toward him like the whirling of mad waters,-he stretched forth his hands eagerly, and then, even as he stretched them, suddenly there swept across the vision the temptation of Despair.

They were not wicked men,-the problem of life is not the problem of the wicked,-they were calm, good men, Bishops of the Apostolic Church of God, and strove toward righteousness. They said slowly, "It is all very natural-it is even commendable; but the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church cannot admit a Negro." And when that thin, half-grotesque figure still haunted their doors, they put their hands kindly, half sorrowfully, on his shoulders, and said, "Now,-of course, we-we know how you feel about it; but you see it is impossible,-that is-well-it is premature. Sometime, we trust-sincerely trust-all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is."

This was the temptation of Despair; and the young man fought it doggedly. Like some grave shadow he flitted by those halls, pleading, arguing, half angrily demanding admittance, until there came the final No; until men hustled the disturber away, marked him as foolish, unreasonable, and injudicious, a vain rebel against God's law. And then from that Vision Splendid all the glory faded slowly away, and left an earth gray and stern rolling on beneath a dark despair. Even the kind hands that stretched themselves toward him from out the depths of that dull morning seemed but parts of the purple shadows. He saw them coldly, and asked, "Why should I strive by special grace when the way of the world is closed to me?" All gently yet, the hands urged him on,-the hands of young John Jay, that daring father's daring son; the hands of the good folk of Boston, that free city. And yet, with a way to the priesthood of the Church open at last before him, the cloud lingered there; and even when in old St. Paul's the venerable Bishop raised his white arms above the Negro deacon-even then the burden had not lifted from that heart, for there had passed a glory from the earth.

And yet the fire through which Alexander Crummell went did not burn in vain. Slowly and more soberly he took up again his plan of life. More critically he studied the situation. Deep down below the slavery and servitude of the Negro people he saw their fatal weaknesses, which long years of mistreatment had emphasized. The dearth of strong moral character, of unbending righteousness, he felt, was their great shortcoming, and here he would begin. He would gather the best of his people into some little Episcopal chapel and there lead, teach, and inspire them, till the leaven spread, till the children grew, till the world hearkened, till-till-and then across his dream gleamed some faint after-glow of that first fair vision of youth-only an after-glow, for there had passed a glory from the earth.

One day-it was in 1842, and the springtide was struggling merrily with the May winds of New England-he stood at last in his own chapel in Providence, a priest of the Church. The days sped by, and the dark young clergyman labored; he wrote his sermons carefully; he intoned his prayers with a soft, earnest voice; he haunted the streets and accosted the wayfarers; he visited the sick, and knelt beside the dying. He worked and toiled, week by week, day by day, month by month. And yet month by month the congregation dwindled, week by week the hollow walls echoed more sharply, day by day the calls came fewer and fewer, and day by day the third temptation sat clearer and still more clearly within the Veil; a temptation, as it were, bland and smiling, with just a shade of mockery in its smooth tones. First it came casually, in the cadence of a voice: "Oh, colored folks? Yes." Or perhaps more definitely: "What do you expect? " In voice and gesture lay the doubt-the temptation of Doubt. How he hated it, and stormed at it furiously! "Of course they are capable," he cried; "of course they can learn and strive and achieve-" and "Of course," added the temptation softly, "they do nothing of the sort." Of all the three temptations, this one struck the deepest. Hate? He had outgrown so childish a thing. Despair? He had steeled his right arm against it, and fought it with the vigor of determination. But to doubt the worth of his life-work,-to doubt the destiny and capability of the race his soul loved because it was his; to find listless squalor instead of eager endeavor; to hear his own lips whispering, "They do not care; they cannot know; they are dumb driven cattle,-why cast your pearls before swine?"-this, this seemed more than man could bear; and he closed the door, and sank upon the steps of the chancel, and cast his robe upon the floor and writhed.

The evening sunbeams had set the dust to dancing in the gloomy chapel when he arose. He folded his vestments, put away the hymn-books, and closed the great Bible. He stepped out into the twilight, looked back upon the narrow little pulpit with a weary smile, and locked the door. Then he walked briskly to the Bishop, and told the Bishop what the Bishop already knew. "I have failed," he said simply. And gaining courage by the confession, he added: "What I need is a larger constituency. There are comparatively few Negroes here, and perhaps they are not of the best. I must go where the field is wider, and try again." So the Bishop sent him to Philadelphia, with a letter to Bishop Onderdonk.

Bishop Onderdonk lived at the head of six white steps,-corpulent, red-faced, and the author of several thrilling tracts on Apostolic Succession. It was after dinner, and the Bishop had settled himself for a pleasant season of contemplation, when the bell must needs ring, and there must burst in upon the Bishop a letter and a thin, ungainly Negro. Bishop Onderdonk read the letter hastily and frowned. Fortunately, his mind was already clear on this point; and he cleared his brow and looked at Crummell. Then he said, slowly and impressively: "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there."

I sometimes fancy I can see that tableau: the frail black figure, nervously twitching his hat before the massive abdomen of Bishop Onderdonk; his threadbare coat thrown against the dark woodwork of the bookcases, where Fox's "Lives of the Martyrs" nestled happily beside "The Whole Duty of Man." I seem to see the wide eyes of the Negro wander past the Bishop's broadcloth to where the swinging glass doors of the cabinet glow in the sunlight. A little blue fly is trying to cross the yawning keyhole. He marches briskly up to it, peers into the chasm in a surprised sort of way, and rubs his feelers reflectively; then he essays its depths, and, finding it bottomless, draws back again. The dark-faced priest finds himself wondering if the fly too has faced its Valley of Humiliation, and if it will plunge into it,-when lo! it spreads its tiny wings and buzzes merrily across, leaving the watcher wingless and alone.

Then the full weight of his burden fell upon him. The rich walls wheeled away, and before him lay the cold rough moor winding on through life, cut in twain by one thick granite ridge,-here, the Valley of Humiliation; yonder, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And I know not which be darker,-no, not I. But this I know: in yonder Vale of the Humble stand to-day a million swarthy men, who willingly would

all this and more would they bear did they but know that this were sacrifice and not a meaner thing. So surged the thought within that lone black breast. The Bishop cleared his throat suggestively; then, recollecting that there was really nothing to say, considerately said nothing, only sat tapping his foot impatiently. But Alexander Crummell said, slowly and heavily: "I will never enter your diocese on such terms." And saying this, he turned and passed into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. You might have noted only the physical dying, the shattered frame and hacking cough; but in that soul lay deeper death than that. He found a chapel in New York,-the church of his father; he labored for it in poverty and starvation, scorned by his fellow priests. Half in despair, he wandered across the sea, a beggar with outstretched hands. Englishmen clasped them,-Wilberforce and Stanley, Thirwell and Ingles, and even Froude and Macaulay; Sir Benjamin Brodie bade him rest awhile at Queen's College in Cambridge, and there he lingered, struggling for health of body and mind, until he took his degree in '53. Restless still, and unsatisfied, he turned toward Africa, and for long years, amid the spawn of the slave-smugglers, sought a new heaven and a new earth.

So the man groped for light; all this was not Life,-it was the world-wandering of a soul in search of itself, the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world, ever haunted by the shadow of a death that is more than death,-the passing of a soul that has missed its duty. Twenty years he wandered,-twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, "What, in God's name, am I on earth for?" In the narrow New York parish his soul seemed cramped and smothered. In the fine old air of the English University he heard the millions wailing over the sea. In the wild fever-cursed swamps of West Africa he stood helpless and alone.

You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,-you who in the swift whirl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvellous vision, have fronted life and asked its riddle face to face. And if you find that riddle hard to read, remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder; if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty, it is a shade more difficult for him; if your heart sickens in the blood and dust of battle, remember that to him the dust is thicker and the battle fiercer. No wonder the wanderers fall! No wonder we point to thief and murderer, and haunting prostitute, and the never-ending throng of unhearsed dead! The Valley of the Shadow of Death gives few of its pilgrims back to the world.

But Alexander Crummell it gave back. Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, he turned at last home across the waters, humble and strong, gentle and determined. He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls. He fought among his own, the low, the grasping, and the wicked, with that unbending righteousness which is the sword of the just. He never faltered, he seldom complained; he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong.

So he grew, and brought within his wide influence all that was best of those who walk within the Veil. They who live without knew not nor dreamed of that full power within, that mighty inspiration which the dull gauze of caste decreed that most men should not know. And now that he is gone, I sweep the Veil away and cry, Lo! the soul to whose dear memory I bring this little tribute. I can see his face still, dark and heavy-lined beneath his snowy hair; lighting and shading, now with inspiration for the future, now in innocent pain at some human wickedness, now with sorrow at some hard memory from the past. The more I met Alexander Crummell, the more I felt how much that world was losing which knew so little of him. In another age he might have sat among the elders of the land in purple-bordered toga; in another country mothers might have sung him to the cradles.

He did his work,-he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden with no incense of memory or emulation. And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,-all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,-who is good? not that men are ignorant,-what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

He sat one morning gazing toward the sea. He smiled and said, "The gate is rusty on the hinges." That night at star-rise a wind came moaning out of the west to blow the gate ajar, and then the soul I loved fled like a flame across the Seas, and in its seat sat Death.

I wonder where he is to-day? I wonder if in that dim world beyond, as he came gliding in, there rose on some wan throne a King,-a dark and pierced Jew, who knows the writhings of the earthly damned, saying, as he laid those heart-wrung talents down, "Well done!" while round about the morning stars sat singing.

The Afterthought

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.

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Black students' experiences of “acceptable” racism at a UK university

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Black students' experiences of “acceptable” racism at a UK university

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Last month, in response to public demonstrations and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Architectural Record began reaching out to architects and designers to explore racism in the profession and the built environment. As part of that ongoing conversation, RECORD convened a panel of three professionals in practice and education: Mabel O. Wilson, Mario Gooden, and Justin Garrett Moore.

Wilson is a Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), whose field of scholarship is architecture and race. She also has a design practice, Studio &, and is part of the team that designed the just-completed Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. At Columbia, she co-directs the Global Africa Lab with Mario Gooden, who is a professor of practice at the GSAPP and founding principal of the firm Huff + Gooden. His work engages the cultural landscape and the intersectionality of architecture, race, gender, sexuality, and technology, and bridges architectural design and writing, research and performance. Moore, the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission, has extensive experience in urban design and planning, focusing on excellence in the public realm and fostering accessibility, diversity and inclusion. An adjunct faculty member at Columbia, he is co-founder of Urban Patch, which supports the equitable revitalization of communities.

Wilson, Gooden and Moore spoke together with RECORD Editor-in-chief Cathleen McGuigan.
Cathleen McGuigan: I want to begin by asking how racism has shaped and operated in architecture, both as a practice, and in the environment that architecture has built.
Mabel O. Wilson: The idea is, typically, to be inclusive and to bring people into educational institutions and disciplines, but the challenge is that those spaces, those structures, are already racialized. And to understand that, and start to talk about whiteness and white supremacy-whether the oppressor is a human or a system-is really vital for change. As people of color, we can't just continually describe what we're experiencing without everyone understanding the origins.

Justin Garrett Moore: The predominantly white, male profession needs to focus on this. What happens typically is, "Okay, we need to hear from people of color, we need to learn and we need to listen," and it becomes like a hamster wheel. Black people are tired of having that conversation over and over again-but I think this pivot that Mabel has introduced is having the conversation about whiteness. It's so important-it really needs to be the arrow to the heart at this critical time.

Mario Gooden: Yes, the issues need to be unpacked from the other side. Perhaps it can be uncomfortable for those in the profession to put the mirror on themselves. We as Black architects understand those systems. But it's time for you, the profession, to really come to terms with it and own it-and then let's figure out how to dismantle it.
Mabel, the subject of whiteness in the built environment is a big part of your research and scholarship. Can you start to enlighten us?

In my 30 years as an academic, and also having worked in practice, I have come to really understand how much whiteness permeates what we do, from how we are educated in architecture and, really, what architecture is.
-Mabel O. Wilson

Mabel O. Wilson: How does racism operate-and not just anti-Black racism, but also whiteness and white supremacy? Fundamentally, it is the power relations that the concept of race enables, in a range of practices and disciplinary frames. In my 30 years as an academic, and also having worked in practice, I have come to really understand how much whiteness permeates what we do, from how we are educated in architecture and, really, what architecture is. I see architecture as the European art of building that Leon Battista Alberti described-a European way of understanding building.

Filippo Brunelleschi, you know, designed his famous dome not long before Christopher Columbus sailed, right? So at a moment of colonial encounter, and the rise of Renaissance humanism, comes this sense of the European understanding himself in relationships to others. So race has to be conceptualized. It is not natural, but a construct. Yet is has real implications in terms of how architecture is created within those relationships of the nation state, and the bodies of knowledge of philosophy, technology, racial science-and they all have their own impacts on the discipline of architecture and on the discipline of architectural history.

In the West, the concept of the past is riddled with racial assumptions about who was civilized, who was progressive and modern, and who was primitive-who was ahistorical and left behind.

And when we have to read Adolf Loos on ornament and crime in school, it is a racial narrative of white European cultural superiority, of what it means to be civilized and modern, but it's rarely taught that way at all. It's taught about a polemic to remove ornament and advance beyond folk culture, so that it's about "progress." Thus, it's important to recognize how deeply race is embedded in the discipline, and also in civil society-all the things that shape us as beings, our ontology and epistemology in the ways we know the world.

Mario Gooden: Whiteness is at the heart of architecture as a discipline. People tend to think of white supremacy as being about people in white hoods. But white supremacy is a hierarchical system of patterns and practices that continuously privileges the white subject and consistently disadvantages the Black body and people of color. This really goes back to the foundation of architectural theory rooted in Vitruvius's ideal man-a white male European subject-that is formulated and inscribed in architecture in Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture. So the discipline of architecture as a system of orders and rules that we follow is all predicated upon that ideal subject.

And then when we come to modernism, which assumes what I call the myth of the universal subject, we are still dealing with white male European subjectivity. This stems from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who wrote in his Philosophy of History that the Negro lacks subjectivity, consciousness, and had nothing to provide to civilization. Hence from the Enlightenment to today, European epistemology is based upon this white subject that we continue to perpetuate in architecture schools. Even for schools that claim the mantle of experimentation, the conditions of white supremacy continue within the confines of the discipline. And discipline means to follow a set of rules, a set of orders, or else you are subjected to retribution, punishment, or the assessment that your work doesn't belong.

So other bodies are excluded-Black bodies, Brown bodies, people of color-if they aren't following those orders, and that they are somehow in need of bringing back into the discipline. We've heard a lot in the last 10 to 15 years about the re-disciplining of architecture and that architecture should not be engaged in cultural critique or critical theory. Those voices made the claim that architecture needed to be brought back from its margins. This was and is really a kind of conservative backlash and desire for reinstating the privileged white male point of view-away from, for example, discussions from the late 1970s through the '90s of architecture and gender; architecture and sexuality; and architecture and race.

Mabel O. Wilson: Can I just add what I always describe as the boys jumped into cyberspace? With people adopting the computer and paperless architecture in the 90s-and the guys with their algorithms. In a way, with the adaptation of parametrics and fabrication, there was a recuperation of masculinity. And that jump flattened any understanding of what became known as identity politics-race, feminism, and sexuality-in architecture.
Mabel and Mario, please talk about the Global Africa Lab that you co-direct at the Columbia University GSAPP, where you break with the European-centric model that has ruled architecture.
Mario Gooden: When we started Global Africa Lab about seven years ago, it was really looking at the world in terms of architecture and urbanism through the lens of what had been excluded from architecture-and that is the African subject or the Negro subject that Hegel had excluded.

The majority of the world exists in the Global South. Architecture and building had been going on there for centuries before Europe. So the question is, what can we learn from those places that have not been brought into the discourse of architecture?
-Mario Gooden

The lab is not just about the African continent, it's about the diaspora. Our work has been on the continent, yes, but it's also been in Detroit, in other places in the States, and in South America, and in Europe. To be clear, the majority of the world exists in the Global South. Architecture and building had been going on there for centuries before Europe. So the question is, what can we learn from those places that have not been brought into the discourse of architecture?

Mabel O. Wilson: And while those places in the diaspora weren't brought into the discourse of architecture, they were still necessary for architecture's imagination. Africa is central to the creation of whiteness and the concept of Europe through constant scientific, cultural, and historical comparison with those colonized in Asia, Africa, and the New World. There was even the incorporation and desire for African motifs in modernism-masks and textiles-whose legacy has been studied more thoroughly in art history, for example. Part of what Global Africa Lab is trying examine is to show that modernity is not possible without the African continent. African people, resources, land, and culture are how the modern is imagined and how the project of the transatlantic slave trade literally builds the wealth of capitalism as racial capitalism.

As we've seen with the recent toppling of the monument of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England, you cannot have an industrial revolution in England without the mills receiving cotton from India and Jamaica. The Lab is trying to foreground that history, but also emphasize contemporary global linkages by looking at what is happening in the urban spaces of Rio de Janeiro; Detroit; Dakar, Senegal; and Cape Town.
Justin, you work extensively in urban design and planning-can you talk about how our cities have come to be so imbued with racism?
Justin GarrettMoore: The conversation about white supremacy and racism is important, but we equally need to put the focus on the racist-not only the "ism" or the system. One of the ways that architecture and the built environment work is by distancing and "othering." We talk all the time about the policies-whether it's redlining or urban renewal, or the disciplines being regulated-that then become abstract systems of racism. But we don't spend enough time talking about the racist white people that built those systems. It's still acceptable for individuals to not take responsibility for that. So, was Robert Moses a complicated figure? Was Thomas Jefferson a complicated figure? That conversation is not had enough.

There is a gap between being racist and racism existing. Very often we see people operating in ways that are racist but they would never self-identify to say, "I'm being racist." They'll say that "racism is the system that I'm operating within. That's not me, that's not my action." That kind of reflection doesn't happen.

That's why we see difference and racism persist in systems and structures like policing. And when we discuss urbanism, we see the same things, but scaled up and exaggerated, into operations that radically are transforming and shaping space. We get the collective, environmental version of "othering." The white suburb versus the inner city, all of these dynamics are just so ingrained and embedded. And through language, through practice, through culture, all of that racism is acceptable-regardless of the very tangible, real, visible, negative impacts. What is it about white people or people who are in power or have agency that allows that?

To shape space or to control capital or to create conditions-what we're doing as designers constantly is manipulating how space and people operate. That's our job. And architecture is very smart about new ways to exploit and categorize people.
-Justin Garrett Moore

To shape space or to control capital or to create conditions-what we're doing as designers constantly is manipulating how space and people operate. That's our job. And architecture is very smart about new ways to exploit and categorize people.
Mabel, beyond what we have already discussed, what specifically have been your own encounters with racism in architecture?
Mabel O. Wilson: As my initial introduction into architectural education, I never saw myself reflected. How many times have each of us been the first Black person hired in the office? Once I was the second person, and that was huge. And when I decided I wanted to do a Ph.D., the logical place would have been architectural history. But lo and behold, I didn't get into the two architectural history programs I applied to-but I did get into an American studies program. About a year later, I got a call from the dean of one of those institutions with a big fat apology saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, we should have probably let you into our Ph.D. program." Apparently, I was just a very controversial applicant, and I guess some of the older faculty just didn't feel comfortable with me and what I wanted to work on, which was race and architecture. That was not relevant to the field 35 years ago.

Justin GarrettMoore: For me, the most violent or vile example is erasure. Think of "blight" elimination or urban renewal. There's a pipeline problem, yes-not enough Black kids have exposure to architecture and enter the field. That is true. But once you are in this field, the understanding of your culture, your kind of knowledge, your value is just completely erased. It puts one in this very difficult space, emotionally and mentally, where it's very challenging to find power, a base and a platform for your work, because over generations, if not centuries, there has been this complete destruction of everything that is connected to you.

I have many, many different versions of erasure, but I just want to talk through a couple of them to understand how wide-scale and systemic it is.

In Indianapolis, where I grew up, there's this really incredible, wonderful project called Fall Creek Homes, done by an organization called Flanner House. In the '30s and '40s, they did a lot of social service work in the Black community. Different supporting organizations, such as the Quakers, developed an incredible community redevelopment plan that included parks and flood mitigation design for the neighborhood. And it included self-help housing construction, with Black leadership and Black architects- Hilyard Robinson was the architect-and with a complete conception, generated by how these Black people in this community chose to make urban space. It's a great story. I did seven years of education in architecture and design at presumably elite schools. And I learned a lot about what white men think about cities, and what white men think about Black people in cities, and what white men did to Black people in cities, and what Black people couldn't do in cities. And every time as a student, I would kind of challenge and push my knowledge of Fall Creek, I would get, "Oh, that's interesting, but let's talk about this instead." That literally happened to me over and over again in my career. But this was my history-I found out later in life that my grandfather was one of the people who did that work-and yet it was absent, erased. I get in trouble for saying this, but the Black people that we learned about were typically sort of contorted into being European, or modernist, or being near-white, frankly. Their work was considered valuable.

A second form of erasure is when you're in offices, you are constantly erased. Because of all the dynamics and systems at play, very often Black people are in some form of disadvantage. It's just hard because you're doing your work, and you're bringing your value and knowledge, but it's not seen as valuable. It may not be reflecting things that the dominant culture cares about and can relate to. What you're presenting is simply not right-it happens in school, it happens when you go into an office.

And another version is in university admissions. Architecture schools are continually building a community for who gets to participate in design. I was doing admissions and we got applications from all over the world, a lot of students from Asia, some from Europe and Latin America. And I was lamenting to the others on the committee, "Wow, I really wish we had more Black students and students from Africa." And someone commented, "Well, there are over a billion people in China and they really need to have the best education and access to this kind of knowledge." So I challenged that-there are over a billion Black and African-descent people in the world.

That level of just pure dismissal of Black people and African people we know is pervasive. The schools say they are global-but it is acceptable to be global and international and diverse to the exclusion of Black people explicitly, and people of African descent explicitly. It's just fine!

To be Black and in architecture, you cannot be mediocre: to be visible, you have to be excellent. And you have to be excellent at every second of every moment of the day... Yet, sometimes, even with excellence, you can still be invisible.
-Mario Gooden

Mario Gooden: This also operates in very subtle ways. To be Black and in architecture, you cannot be mediocre: to be visible, you have to be excellent. And you have to be excellent at every second of every moment of the day. This is a very subtle but heavy burden that we, and our Black students, are carrying every day. When I grew up, this is one of the first things my mother taught me. I know Justin's parents probably told him the same, as Mabel's did as well, that you have to be twice as good. Yet, sometimes, even with excellence, you can still be invisible.

Justin GarrettMoore: A lot of people will talk about Black people having what W.E.B. Du Bois called the veil or double consciousness, and having to live in two worlds. It's challenging and, sometimes, demoralizing.
How can the profession-within both practice and education-work toward an anti-racist position? What has to happen?
Mabel O. Wilson: When Obama became president, we as a nation claimed that we were post-racial, but we clearly are not. And that's a very difficult thing to comprehend, because if race structures the world for everyone and not just for Black people, the trick that racism does is that it makes itself transparent-especially to those who can claim "the wages of whiteness," David Roediger's term for white privilege-and cannot perceive how race operates, or that they are racialized, too.

And people don't like to bring up race because it makes them uncomfortable, and you quite frankly don't like or want to shame people. But we all have to be accountable, so when someone is erased, someone else has done the erasure. How then should someone be accountable for those actions and the institutional frameworks that allow those actions to occur, to be validated?

I've heard people say, "Why should I be accountable for the sins of my father? Slavery, Jim Crow is in the past." But I would say that if you're white, you benefit from that history. You have opportunities, advantages and wealth. And even if you're poor and white, according to statistics you will still possess more wealth than most Black people. This historical difference in wealth is what allows white Americans to live well, and then pass that wealth on to the next generation. And at the other end of those benefits and privileges, we find historical legacy of deprivation and struggle, when you don't have those opportunities and will not inherit wealth because of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. We have to look at who benefits and who struggles.

We need a holistic accounting of the impact of race in the U.S. I think there are ways to be critically distanced in order to begin to understand and articulate that legacy, but as Black people, we can't be the only ones to do that work. It has to be done by those who benefit from whiteness. That is the work that has yet to be done.

The profession is in crisis, and perhaps it has been for a very long time. It's in crisis not only because it has been complicit with the systems that we've been talking about, but also because it's given away its agency.
-Mario Gooden

Mario Gooden: The profession is in crisis, and perhaps it has been for a very long time. It's in crisis not only because it has been complicit with the systems that we've been talking about, but also because it's given away its agency, in terms of how the city gets formed. Just take New York City, for example, in which the architects have ceded their influence to the developers of Hudson Yards, or to the super-rich commoditization of architecture along Billionaires Row on 57 th Street.

The other truth is that it's very difficult to enter the profession unless you come from money. But because of structural racism and white supremacy, Blacks did not have the ability to acquire wealth through home ownership, for example, because of red-lining. Therefore, there was very little to pass from one generation to the next and the wealth disparities between Blacks and whites are enormous. Unless you're white and you have a lot of money, it's very difficult to enter the profession.

Hence, how do you support other modes of practice and recognize those as being just as important to the built environment? Practitioners may not be working for developers, but they are working in, let's say, cultural practice, trying to formulate different ways of questioning the discipline and making buildings in the public realm. Furthermore, professional organizations have to question themselves, and by that I mean the AIA, for example, really needs to question what it is that it's supporting and what it is that it's propping up.

Justin GarrettMoore: I would echo that practice has been so outmoded that it's no longer well-structured or equipped to serve people and the environment. It's very good at serving wealth and capital, but it's not so good at serving people and places. It is an everyday, common, and accepted practice that you could be paid well, with a lot of public money, to have white people in a room making decisions about what happens to Black people. I think that is unethical and the discipline has to revise, review, evaluate all of its codes of ethics and how it operates to enforce those unethical practices in the built environment, especially as they connect to people, our society and the work that needs to be done.

Mabel O. Wilson: Fundamentally, you have to look at how architecture in the West has always been allied with power and wealth, whether it's the monarchy, the state or private capital, and the church. As architects, how we work is speculative. We're always thinking about the future, which is why architecture allied easily with modernity's concept of progress. Through our drawings we project the future, and that space of projection allows us to imagine that what we're doing is always morally good and will make the world better. But if that was the case, then how do you explain "poor doors"-separate entrances for affordable housing units in high rise development buildings in New York City? Or a past failure like Pruitt-Igoe housing in St. Louis? Buildings are erected but there is no social investment, no financial resources for maintenance. You end up with constant structural neglect and wholesale degradation of Black life in America.

Justin GarrettMoore: And the architecture profession still elevates these figures who did all these things as the most important people that every architect has to learn about and refer to. It's crazy. What Mabel said was something I want to put a pin on, which was talking about care. We don't concern ourselves enough with care-or maintaining things or having a different orientation about what needs design and thought and creativity. And that radically needs to change.

Mario Gooden: We as a profession now also have to recognize the full humanity of who we're designing for-and within the schools and within the profession, we can't proclaim to be champions of the environment, designing for sustainability or for climate change, and not understand the relationships between race and climate change.
How do we get young people of color more interested in the profession so that people who are designing our world reflect our diverse society?.
Justin GarrettMoore: I have a positive story about how I got into architecture. I went to a probably 95 percent Black high school in Indianapolis. At the time, the school was getting a new gymnasium, and the MWBE contractor, Jimmy Beard, said to the architects on the project, "In order for me to work on this, you're going to hire students from this school to work in your office." So as a 15-year-old Black kid, and as Ferguson-like protests against police violence flared in my neighborhood, I started working 40 hours a week as a summer intern for Jim Schellinger at CSO Architects in Indianapolis..

Providing opportunities for young people does not cost a lot; just a little money and making some time to care. This is something that a good number of the firms that read your magazine can do tomorrow.
-Justin Garrett Moore

I think they paid me something like $8 an hour-probably twice the minimum wage at the time. And it was great to have that early exposure, to see what people do, and to make some money. I got behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz and saw that what these people were doing was not magic or completely exceptional. I saw and understood that I could do it, too. Providing opportunities for young people does not cost a lot; just a little money and making some time to care. This is something that a good number of the firms that read your magazine can do tomorrow

Mabel O. Wilson: But in practice, and in academic institutions, the conversation around whiteness has never happened. And until that does, real change can't be instituted, because you can't understand how race operates to produce inequalities. You're just trying to place the Band-Aid on something that's a far deeper social wound and problem.

Justin GarrettMoore: The final thing I would say circles back to the question of personal responsibility: that people need to do more than only say "What can I do," or join a group, or go to a meeting or march. It needs to expand to the personal reflection, conversation, and evaluation that people need to engage around the issues of whiteness and anti-Black racism, and to really try to challenge themselves and each other. It's uncomfortable, and it's going to take time, energy, and resources. This work shouldn't only be happening with allies, or only happening with Black and Brown people. It needs to happen at a much broader scale and with more people being willing to do the work.

Cathleen McGuigan is editor-in-chief of Architectural Record. She is responsible for leading the award-winning editorial team to deliver thorough coverage of news, projects, and practice issues to architects, design professionals, and building product manufacturers. Her broad experience as an editor, journalist, and critic provides strong leadership for this integrated print and digital portfolio, as well as strikingly relevant professional and cultural content for readers across the globe. Cathleen joined RECORD in 2011. Previously an architecture critic and arts editor at Newsweek, she has more than three decades of cultural journalism experience. Cathleen's work has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Harper's Bazaar, and Rolling Stone. A Michigan native, she serves on several design juries and is a former adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

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Three Architects Discuss Whiteness and Racism in the Built Environment

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Last month, in response to public demonstrations and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Architectural Record began reaching out to architects and designers to explore racism in the profession and the built environment. As part of that ongoing conversation, RECORD convened a panel of three professionals in practice and education: Mabel O.

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Academics, primarily those of color, are fighting for a voice to disrupt the neoliberal (some would say white supremacist) logics now embedded in false practices of choice and equality in education today. Academic circles operate as inhospitable sites to faculty of color, as higher education is built on the exclusionary processes of symbolic and tokenistic inclusion. The ways in which those historical exclusionary processes impact nonwhite faculty involve those faculty having to constantly negotiate or say no to extra work -- work that oftentimes involves managing diversity for whiteness.

In this essay, I discuss some of the characteristics of whiteness as embedded in multiple university sites and experienced by many of my colleagues. I also begin to point toward a project of dismantling whiteness in order to make room for an academic transformative engagement.

Scholars' vocal actions against "light" multiculturalism, reactions to shallow accusations of "reverse racism" and active resistance to neoliberal diversity often encounter a challenge. That challenge is, namely, that whiteness and a strong racial inclusion and justice project cannot occupy the same space. By whiteness -- as an institution, as discourse and as the invisible norm -- I am referring to the entitlements provided to most professors by virtue of a white academic institution that privileges cultural norms of formal communication, professionalism and appropriateness. A rule of sameness often applies here: of sameness in hiring practices, in trusting others like them, in the advancement of knowledge and in simple networking endeavors that invoke "fairness and equal opportunity" through the vaguest language of multiculturalism (or the 21st-century upgrade: "diversity and inclusion").

Those institutions may, conversely, tag nonwhite faculty members as unfitting, creating the conditions that make them feel out of place. Indeed, when an institution is not made for you, you are out of place and, indeed, conditionally accepted. When faculty of color speak up, we are often silenced -- and put in "our place." Over all, the failed project of watered-down academic diversity is a reminder of how whiteness is structured -- and structuring our interactions in academe.

It bears repeating that the dismantling of whiteness (as structure) is different from white (as race). When we talk about race in the classroom, I always make sure to distinguish between a race, a group of people, and the system that races encode. Here, I talk about whiteness as a discourse that enables a set of practices, which activates, with its own set of codes, certain responses and actions. But I am not speaking of white people -- whether administrators, colleagues, students -- or even whiteness as a race.

Academe is poised to transform the bias of traditional and canonical curriculum. Yet while the philosophy and policies at many universities have become more robust, inclusive and oh so diverse, in actuality, the leadership of many of those institutions has continued to reinforce whiteness as a rule. Universities may have incompetent administrators in departmental units, but the code of white networks makes any honest actions or comments about the challenges those people create difficult at best. Thus, whiteness remains pretty invisible to the very powers that be and that operate in and through it, maintaining a ruling on norms that directly impact faculty of color in recruitment, retention and promotion.

Networks among the "we" that hire base their decisions on a white collective imaginary of who produces important work (read: gets the right grants), who seems to work hard, who meets the standards -- creating self-fulfilling situations that repeat, and thus reify, whiteness (and that obscure when folks of color do, indeed, produce the work). Universities that are in constant tribulation for their lack of diversity ironically use "target of opportunity" hires, but white people get tenure-track positions in (at best) dubious processes. We also see white folks who leave and come back to institutions as they please, without formal hiring processes, who may be claimed as target recruitments. Nowadays, the process of tenure has become a bargaining of sorts -- with (often) white folks holding other offers in hand, ready to quit and move on.

Indeed, whiteness talks -- it always has, and it does so in silence, as the norm, as whiteness often most successfully reproduces itself. And yet if one notes how that work gets done, those mentioning it become the problem. In neoliberal talk, some of us don't do the work that matters, or that gets us (and the university) funded, or that is published in presses and journals that are ranked, so we best stay in our place. I've heard so many of such versions from colleagues across the country, countless times. This is not new.

I am a Latino queer tenured sociologist at, like most scholars, a white institution, or a majority white institution. But here I use "majority" in the sociological sense. I am referring to the actions that make it a majority white institution irrespective of the numbers. The terms "majority" and "minority" are not literal; rather, these terms are about power, control of institutions and resources, and a sense of ownership and belonging. When academic settings operate in and through whiteness, the process constructs ethnoracial groups as minorities, irrespective of the numbers. Faculty, staff and students are often engaged in sometimes innocent, often implicit, or at times explicit engagements with a code of whiteness that reproduces a specific social order that sets exclusionary traps for most people who feel ill placed (sometimes including women, often gender and sexual minorities, and, generally, people of color).

At many universities in the United States, diversity bypasses race for country of origin, for gender, for sexuality, for queer identity and experience, for working-class status (in white students) and for disability. To bypass here is not just to ignore but also to avoid. Yet this avoidance is also a significant passing through, in that it depends on a loose notion of how to include "the other" in academe, while it co-opts any efforts to confront the structural systems of racism embedded in the culture of universities.

Sites that bypass racial-minority faculty hiring often simultaneously master showcasing how "diverse" they may be -- with white women constituting the majority of the ranks, as well as gays and lesbians. (Some universities go as far as to argue that conservatives, Republicans and religious applicants who hold sexist, racist and homophobic beliefs are minoritized.) This bypassing of diversity is in actuality an erasure of minorities -- and of blackness in particular -- that gets constituted into benign acts of inclusion. These acts serve the dual purpose of salvaging the university's attempts and efforts to diversify, while at the same time justifying why the focus is not on ethnoracial minorities. Students at many campuses have noticed this and begun to demand practices that move beyond tokenism. Faculty and staff members must follow suit.

It is taxing to call out the whiteness of those so comfortably supported by the web underneath that discourse, and it sure has repercussions -- any challenge to systematic control and power does. Sometimes, faculty of color do not find the room to challenge the systems in place; sometimes, we do not even have the energy to communicate this effectively, given our frustration at academe's inability to articulate itself outside of neoliberal markers.

To dismantle whiteness is to enunciate its characteristics, denounce how it works (when it does and through whom), and make evident the patterns that may be obvious to some people (and how and why others are oblivious to it). Dismantling whiteness in academe is about giving up power and privilege, yes. It is also about recognizing how inherently hostile the university spaces and environment are for faculty, staff and students of color. It requires a rage about diversity and that we move into a sociohistorical and cultural analysis of academe as a racist institution.

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How whiteness is structuring interactions in higher education (essay)

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Academics, primarily those of color, are fighting for a voice to disrupt the neoliberal (some would say white supremacist) logics now embedded in false practices of choice and equality in education today. Academic circles operate as inhospitable sites to faculty of color, as higher education is built on the exclusionary processes of symbolic and tokenistic inclusion.

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Racism is a problem in UK universities. For academics, this is not something we can simply put aside for another time.

Racism involves putting people into categories based on their appearance (such as "white" and "black") and then assigning these categories a hierarchy.

This is a highly partisan act that has nothing at all to do with genetic difference and everything to do with politics and power. Everyone has a responsibility to address it.

But is placing people as one side of the divide or the other as simple as it seems?

Whiteness

It has been argued that we cannot understand racism, that is, the constructed hierarchy of these racial categories, without first understanding whiteness, where whiteness is defined as white privilege.

This is about the privileges that many people in predominantly "white", so-called "westernised" countries take for granted, such as being prioritised for job interviews over those with "foreign-sounding" names, never being harassed due to the colour of their skin, and so on.

This doesn't mean that all "white" people are automatically privileged, however. What it does mean is that if a white person experiences a lack of privilege, it is not likely to be due to the colour of their skin.

It has been argued, for example, that discourses about "white, working-class boys" being excluded from university be adjusted to discourses about, simply, "working-class boys", since the "white" aspect is not relevant here in the way that gender and social class are.

Whiteness in higher education

The manifestations of whiteness in the academy are many and varied. These include:

In the revised edition of our A-Z of Creative Teaching in Higher Education book and elsewhere, we consider in particular, the impact of whiteness on the taught curriculum. Thinking of our own subject specialist disciplines, for example, to what extent is it assumed that the "western" way of doing things is "natural", while other ways are "exotic"? Whose knowledge and value systems are being left out of your curriculum? In many cases, has the eurocentric curriculum has become the "norm" or the default, presented as if this is just the way that the world "is"?

This raises the question of who stands to benefit from this "hegemonic canon" or "white ideology", and who feels threatened by the idea of deconstructing and reinventing it. To answer the question of who is threatened, one need only look at who protests the loudest when such a curriculum is under attack. The authors of the recent Sewell report are one such example.

In their account of racism in the UK, for instance, they deny the existence of the structures of oppression that enable "white privilege" to exist, and instead, blame minority groups - such as our aunties of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin - for failing to assimilate, all the while peddling their own imagined curriculum full of bigotry and misplaced national pride.

Other examples might include those who oppose the removal of statues celebrating the lives of slave traders and colonialists, or those who refuse to interrogate the traditional curriculum that they teach as they simply do not see the relevance.

It's all about power

The Sewell report creators - who wish to deny the existence of institutional racism - are all themselves people of colour. Individuals such as these, who appear to deny anti-racist counternarratives in order to aspire to whiteness themselves, have been assigned labels such as "token" or "honorary whites", " native informants ", "coconuts" and other terms.

But perhaps equating whiteness with being "white"- and to label those non-white people who aspire to whiteness as anomalies - is a mistake.

Whiteness is ideological in nature, a social construct with boundaries that change over time. As Arwa Mahdawi puts it, ultimately, what really defines whiteness is not melanin or nationality - it's power. And this makes the debate in higher education about whiteness much more nuanced than we think.

Rather than restricting whiteness to those who "look" white, it is worth examining, as an alternative, how and why different groups have aspired to whiteness over time and space.

We must also stop demanding that "white" people account for their whiteness, and instead focus on who pays the cost of white privilege and the mechanisms that enable this to happen. An example of this is the relatively high percentage of black african and black caribbean students attending low-tariff universities, and the increased likelihood of students from this group dropping out.

Addressing assumptions

In higher education, this work involves unpicking and interrogating many assumptions that we take for granted about students. To what extent do our students feel they can claim their rightful "entitlements" at university, for example? In our book we talk about making university processes and rituals more transparent to students, asking them where (or to whom) they would go first for specific information about an assignment, for instance, and thus uncovering differences in student approaches and expectations which can then be addressed.

We also push past eurocentric notions of knowledge to reveal a wealth of content relating to diversity in the curriculum, and we present case studies of what this might look like across a range of subject disciplines. These range from exploring how ethnicity might relate to expressions of nationality in sporting events on a sports course to interrogating the imperialist culture behind the western on a film and media programme.

The work of dismantling notions of identity, privilege and power in higher education applies to us all, regardless of how light-skinned or dark-skinned we may be or which "category" we most identify with. As academics, we need to lead by example. Rather than pointing the finger at those who might benefit from - or aspire to - white privilege, and demanding that they account for their advantage, let's work with our students to reveal what they themselves feel it is that they are entitled to (or not entitled to) at university.

Let's also mine the subjects we teach to reveal the rich diversity contained within, and let's reinvent the traditions and trappings of higher education so that privilege of any kind becomes, simply, redundant.

This does not mean ignoring the existence of racism in universities - far from it. It means acknowledging that the work of addressing such institutional oppression is a collective endeavour for us all, regardless of which "colour" we are identified as.
On 30 June 2021, join us for a free event that asks: Do black lives still matter in higher education?

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W is for Whiteness in higher education | Wonkhe

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Racism is a problem in UK universities. For academics, this is not something we can simply put aside for another time. Racism involves putting people into categories based on their appearance (such as "white" and "black") and then assigning these categories a hierarchy.

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"5 Black Women Share Their Experiences With the Police" by Darnell Moore - http://mic.com/articles/122714/5-black-women-share-their-experiences-with-the-police "The Pay Gap Is Even Worse for Black Women, and That's Everyone's Problem" - AAUW - http://www.aauw.org/2015/07/21/black-women-pay-gap/ "30 Shocking Domestic Violence Statistics That Remind Us It's An Epidemic" by Alanna Vagianos - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/domestic-violence-statistics_n_5959776.html "7 Truths About ... Continue Reading A Short List of Articles on the Impact of Intersectional Hegemony on the lives of Black People In The US

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"5 Black Women Share Their Experiences With the Police" by Darnell Moore - http://mic.com/articles/122714/5-black-women-share-their-experiences-with-the-police "The Pay Gap Is Even Worse for Black Women, and That's Everyone's Problem" - AAUW - http://www.aauw.org/2015/07/21/black-women-pay-gap/ "30 Shocking Domestic Violence Statistics That Remind Us It's An Epidemic" by Alanna Vagianos - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/domestic-violence-statistics_n_5959776.html "7 Truths About ...

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Achille Mbembe first visited Norway on the occasion of the annual Holberg Debate organised by the Holberg Prize Secretariat at the University of Bergen on 1 December 2018 where he gave a keynote address. Mbembe is scheduled to give three invited lectures on "Bodies as Borders" at the House of Literature in Oslo on 13 and 14 September 2019.

This interview was conducted in Bergen, Norway, on 30 November 2018 by Torbjørn Tumyr Nilsen of the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. It is published here for the first time.

Nilsen: In April 2015, the Rhodes statue fell in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. How did you interpret that event?
Mbembe: For those who are not aware of who we are talking about, Cecil John Rhodes was a privateer. He was a ruthless actor in the mercantile expansionism that characterised 19th century settler colonialism in the southern part of Africa. Through political alliances, sheer brutality and expediency, he carved out for himself a huge chunk of South Africa's mineral wealth, in particular diamonds in Kimberley and gold in the Witwatersrand. He bestowed some of the land he had grabbed in Cape Town to the university which, in return, erected a statue in his honour on the steps of one of its main buildings.

Rhodes prefigured the extraction and privatisation of ill-gotten wealth neoliberalism today has pushed to a refinement unseen in the history of humankind. He was a precursor of the type of predatory economic system and plutocratic politics at work in most parts of the world today, the results of which are the raping of the biosphere and the destruction at a massive scale of the basic conditions of life on Earth.

I interpret the toppling of his statue as a small, symbolic victory, in the long and protracted struggle for universal justice.

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Nilsen: So there is a lineage from Rhodes to the neoliberal order we see today?
Mbembe: There is an explicit kinship between plantation slavery, colonial predation and contemporary forms of resource extraction and appropriation. In each of these instances, there is a constitutive denial of the fact that we, the humans, coevolve with the biosphere, depend on it, are defined with and through it and owe each other a debt of responsibility and care.

An important difference is the technological escalation that has led to the emergence of computational capitalism in our times. We are no longer in the era of the machine but in the age of the algorithm. Technological escalation, in turn, is threatening to turn us all into artefacts - what I have called elsewhere "the becoming-black-of-the world" - and to make redundant a huge chunk of the muscular power capitalism relied upon for a long time. It follows that today, although its main target remains the human body and earthly matter, domination and exploitation are becoming increasingly abstract and reticular. As a repository of our desires and emotions, dreams, fears and fantasies, our mind and psychic life have become the main raw material which digital capitalism aims at capturing and commodifying.

During Rhodes' times, the exploitation of black labour went hand in hand with a virulent form of racism. Contemporary capitalism still relies on racial subsidies. But the technologies of racialisation have become ever more insidious and ever more encompassing. As the world becomes a huge data emporium, tomorrow's technologies of racialisation will be more and more generated and instituted through data, calculation and computation. In short, racism is relocating both underneath and at the surface of the skin. It reproduces itself via screens and mirrors of various kinds. It is becoming both spectral and fractal.

Otherwise, as far as the toppling of Rhodes' statue is concerned, my argument has always been that the statue should have never been there in the first instance.

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Nilsen:  As a symbol?
Mbembe: Yes, as a reminder of the various crimes this cruel man committed in his attempt to deny black people any right to a human future in South Africa. As a reminder, too, of the cynicism with which he tried to launder his ill-gotten wealth under the guise of philanthropy.

But a proper critique of Rhodes' style of predatory economics and plutocratic politics cannot be limited to South Africa alone or to the confines of a specific nation-state. The project he served was colonial and imperial. Its horizon was not South Africa-centric. Ultimately, Rhodes is the symbol of the double damage capitalism in its racial, colonial and imperial form inflicted upon humankind and upon the biosphere. Such should be the starting point of any critique of Rhodes which strives to avoid the pitfalls of national chauvinism.

Nilsen: At the Holberg Debate at the University of Bergen tomorrow, you will discuss social movements through history. How will you describe this social movement, compared to, for example, the student movements in the late 1960s?

Mbembe: These are two different events. They are happening at two different historical moments in two different places. I am not even sure that contemporary protagonists have any knowledge or memory of what happened in 1968.

If my understanding is correct, one of the goals pursued by the decolonisation movement in South Africa is to unbundle what is perceived as a structure of repetition, an old racial order which keeps donning the mantle of the new in its attempt at masking its degeneracy. In this context, to dismantle "whiteness" implies the awakening to self-knowledge and the reshaping of institutions inherited from a brutal past. In this sense, the decolonisation project is both a critique of institutions and a critique of knowledge.

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The actual question is whether in this instance, such a critique has been articulated in a way that is intellectually and politically compelling. Indeed with the drive towards the automatisation of existence, contemporary social movements operate in a context characterised by huge changes in human experience. It is not only that the economy is becoming the eminent site of the new struggles for life. It is also that people and things, nature and objects, we are all increasingly at risk of being transformed into artefacts.

Many of these changes are partly enabled by the technological escalation represented by ubiquitous computing. A major consequence of this "great transformation" is that the human of the first quarter of the 21st century is not exactly the human of the late 1960s. The modes of individuation are not the same. Nor are the forms of subjectivation or its content. The complex entanglement of the human and the technological so typical of our age has deeply transformed the ways in which cognitive processes unfold, how people dream and what kind of change they dream about, in short, how the political is configured and experienced. In assessing the qualities and properties of contemporary mobilisations, we must therefore factor in the impact of media technologies on the formation of political subjectivity.

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Striking in this regard is the apparent shift from a politics of reason to a politics of experience, if not of viscerality. In the eyes of many, personal experience has become the new way of being at home in the world. It's like the bubble that holds the foam at a distance. Experience nowadays trumps reason. We are led to believe that sensibility, emotions, affect, sentiments and feelings are the real stuff of subjecthood and therefore of radical agency. Paradoxically, in the paranoid tenor of our epoch, this is very much in tune with the dominant strictures of neoliberal individualism. It is also in line with the ongoing reconfigurations of the relation between technology, reason and other human faculties.

Whatever the case, this has given rise to ambiguous forms of collective mobilisation, most of which we shouldn't romanticise. Behind the mask of radicalism, there is something fundamentally ambivalent in the political discourse of decolonisation when, for instance, the injunction to decolonise goes hand in hand with high tolerance for xenophobia or the desire to control and defend what amounts to inverse racial borders. There is something fundamentally debilitating when subaltern resistance politics is limited to an endless performance of purity and self-righteousness, or to a competition about who has suffered the most on the spiralling scale of victimisation.

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The same pathos is to be found in most debates on curriculum reform, on what we must or must not read and why, in short, on how to reconfigure or redesign the archive. Although fought in the name of equality and justice, some of these mobilisations might end up reenacting a sectarian logic of enclosure, underpinned as they are by flawed notions of identity, gender or culture as spaces of protection and immunity, as borders which allow for a closing off from "those who are not as radical as us".

Finally, a number of these mobilisations grant a preeminent status to notions of self and experience. The idea according to which self and experience - or for that matter radical agency - must now be found in the intimate microspheres of everyday life must be subjected to a thorough critique. Too often, it is presumed that our intimate interiorities, our moods, our states of mind are "safe spaces", the only spaces immune to racism and neoliberal intoxication. In fact, under contemporary conditions, there is no longer any "zone of being" that is free from "contamination".

The political cannot be reduced to the painstaking management of emotionally safe spaces and shared atmospheres. Radical agency is not about the sharing of boundaries. It is about deborderisation. It is simply not true that unless I have undergone the exact same experience as the other, I know nothing about his or her pain and should simply shut up. Insofar as to be human is to open oneself up to the possibility always already there of becoming (an)other, such a conception of self and identity is by definition antihuman. The political in our time must start from the imperative to reconstruct the world in common. For the idea of decolonisation to have any purchase at a planetary scale, it cannot start from the assumption that I am purer than my neighbour.

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Nilsen: By using the term "planetary scale" here, I take it that you see this decolonisation movement as important also on a global scale?

Mbembe: I am arguing that for the idea of decolonisation to truly become a political, theoretical or aesthetic force on a global scale, a number of conditions must be met and a lot of work still needs to be done. For the time being, it is mostly a legitimate aspiration and, in some unfortunate instances, a compensatory discourse.

Decolonisation never meant the return to some egosphere or to some elective self-image that would procure a stable identity, protection, safety and security and eventually immunity to an embattled self. The search for safety and immunity and the fear of risk so typical of this age is not at all part of, say, Frantz Fanon's decolonisation lexicon which is all about undergoing a trial, or even facing an ordeal.

Furthermore, historically the expansion of colonialism had to do with the broader question, Who is it that the Earth belongs to? That was the key question underlying colonial conquest and imperial expansion since the 15th century. With the partition of Africa in the 19th century, European powers had decided that the Earth in its entirety belonged to them. They were its true owners, and they could occupy lands that were populated by foreign people. They could exploit these lands as well as the people who had always inhabited them, thereby carving out spheres of influence each of them had control over.

To a large extent, colonial expansion was a planetary project. Although driven in large part by national states and national business companies, it mostly had to do with the reallocation of the Earth's resources and their privatisation by those who had the greatest military might and the largest technological advantage. This is why in its most historical sense, decolonisation is by definition a planetary enterprise, a radical openness of and to the world, a deep breathing for the world as opposed to insulation.

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Nilsen: And cynicism?
Mbembe: And cynicism, of course. And racism. Because racism is in the DNA of colonialism. There is no colonialism that doesn't entail a huge dose of structural racism. And there is no colonialism neither that is not driven, let's say, by some form or another of a genocidal impulse.

This genocidal potential can be actualised or it might not, but it is always there. It is there as Hannah Arendt shows in her own work on race and bureaucracy. This genocidal potential was put to work in the Americas, in Australia. It was put to work by the Germans in Namibia. So it is always there. Because where there is racism, this genocidal potential exists. Where there is racism, being-in-the-world is the same thing as being-against-others. The latter are treated as a threat against which one's own existence must be defended. At all cost, if necessary.

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Nilsen: Some would then argue that there are still colonial or postcolonial structures operating in the neoliberal project. Would you say that there is then still a genocidal potential?
Mbembe: Perhaps more than at any other moment in our recent past, we are increasingly faced with the question of what to do with those whose very existence does not seem to be necessary for our reproduction; those whose mere existence or proximity is deemed to represent a physical or biological threat to our own life.

Throughout history, and in response to this question, various paradigms of rules have been designed for human bodies deemed either in excess, unwanted, illegal, dispensable or superfluous. One historical response has consisted in putting in place spatial exclusionary arrangements. Such was, for instance, the case during the early phases of modern settler or genocidal colonialism in relation to Native American reservations in the United States, island prisons, penal colonies such as Australia, camps and even Bantustans in South Africa.

Two late modern examples are Gaza and the encaging of migrant children in the context of the ongoing planetary war on mobility. Gaza and the encaging of migrant children might well prefigure what is yet to come.

In the case of Gaza, control of vulnerable, unwanted, surplus or racialised people is exercised through a combination of tactics, chief among which is modulated blockade or molecular strangulation. A blockade prohibits, obstructs and limits who and what can enter and leave the Strip. The goal might not be to cut the Strip off entirely from supply lines, infrastructural grids or trade routes. The Strip is nevertheless relatively sealed off and strangulated in a way that effectively turns it into an imprisoned territory. Comprehensive or relative closure is accompanied by periodic military escalations and the generalised use of extrajudicial assassinations. Spatial violence, humanitarian strategies and a peculiar biopolitics of punishment all combine to produce, in turn, a peculiar carceral space in which people deemed surplus, unwanted or illegal are governed through abdication of any responsibility for their lives and their welfare.

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But as I have intimated, there is another, early 21st century example, which consists in waging new forms of wars, which can be called wars on speed and mobility. Wars on mobility are wars whose aim is to turn discounted bodies into borders. They generally begin by turning into dust and piles of ruins the milieux as well as means of existence and survival of vulnerable people thus forced to flee in search of a refuge. These kinds of wars against milieux and ecosystems rendered toxic and uninhabitable are not accidental. They are methodically programmed and conducted. Such milieux and ecosystems are sites of experimentation of new weapons. The targets of this kind of warfare are not by any means singular bodies, but rather great swathes of humanity judged worthless and superfluous.
Nilsen: Can you elaborate a bit more on that?
Mbembe: Let me put it differently. Nowadays, the project is to render as many people as superfluous as possible. The novelty is the production at a massive scale of discounted bodies, a residual humanity that is akin to waste. With our entry into a new climatic regime, this process will only intensify. As the global conditions for the production and reproduction of life on Earth keeps changing, population politics at a planetary level will increasingly become synonymous with excess and waste management. In terms of the future geopolitics of our world, populations will be more and more treated not only in the Darwinian terms of sexual selection, but also within an utilitarian and bio-physiologico-organic framework.

Take a place such as South Africa where a very high percentage of the total population is unemployed. This is not because there is no "work as such". This is not because people do not want to work.

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In fact, here as elsewhere in Africa and other parts of the global South, almost everything remains to be done. The amount of work needed in order to create a better life for all is incalculable. But the structure of the economy doesn't really need us all. Nor does it need our time. It doesn't really need every single body, all of our muscles or energies or even the bulk of our social and collective intelligence. And this will be more and more the case in the future, as we move to a phase of human history in which only that which is computable counts. As we speak, many bodies already fall beyond the scope of calculation. Unless we reinvent the terms of what counts and in the process resignify what value stands for as well as the procedures of assigning value, of measuring value, of exchanging value, things won't change. These are some of the key questions any decolonisation project worthy of its name has to address if the injunction to decolonise is to be more than a mere ideological phantasm.

Nilsen: Back to the debate on decolonisation. There was a heated debate in Norway, during the summer of 2018, about the decolonisation of academia. How can #RhodesMustFall in South Africa be relevant for universities worldwide?

Mbembe: The need for a critical reappraisal of the relationship between knowledge, power and institutions is not an exclusively South African preoccupation. In South Africa, the term "decolonisation" is one way in which concerns about "deracialisation" are expressed. The imperative to "deracialise" is also valid for Europe, for the United States, for Brazil and for other parts of the world. The emergence of new varieties of racism in Europe and elsewhere, the reassertion of global white supremacy, of populism and retro-nationalism, the weaponisation of difference and identity are not only symptoms of a deep distrust of the world. They are also fostered by transnational forces capable of making that same world inhospitable, uninhabitable and unbreathable for many of us.

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All of this is, of course, important. But part of what truly frightens me is the recolonisation of various fields of knowledge by all kinds of determinisms. What frightens me is the active confusion between knowledge and data, the reduction of knowledge to information. It's the idea that the world is a matter of numbers and the task of knowledge is to handle quantities. Furthermore, it's the belief that the best way to generate information is with computers and that which is not computable does not exist. It's the creeping sense that the computer is our new brain.

In such a context, "to decolonise" must start from the assumption that knowledge cannot be reduced to computational information processing. There is therefore a massive need to recover the ability to think. And for me, knowledge is on the verge of being reduced to a reified metaphor. As a result, we are witnessing almost everywhere a tremendous impoverishment of thought.
Nilsen: In the Norwegian debate on decolonisation, one of the demands from the young student activists was to have a more global curriculum. What's your take on that?
Mbembe: Right now we are literally assaulted by forces that want to retreat from the world and rebuild a certain idea of the nation, of the community, of identity and difference that is premised on the capacity to determine who belongs, who must be excluded and shouldn't belong, who can settle where, why, how and for how long. Such forces are preoccupied with the erection of all kinds of borders and how they must be policed. They buy in the dream of a "pure" community, a community of people who look the same and act the same. They are sustained by the belief that we can go back to the past because the past is, in truth, our future. Let me just call it the dream of apartheid.

There is another dream, maybe not unrelated to the first. As I have just highlighted, it's the dream of reducing knowledge to calculation by computers. In fact, it's the dream of reducing everything to calculation and explaining everything from within biological and neurological strictures. A planetary library, archive or, for that matter, curriculum is one whose strategic project is to understand the incalculable and the incomputable. It can only be based on the will to go beyond cognitivism. I am not against calculation or mathematics. Nor am I against computation. I am simply saying that neither calculation, nor mathematics, nor computation are sufficient for explaining life. It can't be enough to do correct mathematics. Once we have done correct mathematics, we still need to determine what this exercise implies for the life of beings. Pushed to a certain level, correct mathematics alone impoverishes thought and destroys theory.

Otherwise, we only have one world. We might dream about colonising Mars or Venus or other unknown planets in the future, but for the time being that is not part of our actuality. We only have one world, one solar system and for this world to last as long as possible and for this solar system to not calcinate life as such, we need to become a bit more intelligent and wiser. This Earth is our shared roof and our shared shelter. Sharing this roof and shelter is the great condition for the sustainability of life on Earth. We have to share it as equitably as possible. And, in any case, our lives, here and elsewhere, have become so entangled, that trying to separate them will require a tremendous amount of violence. It will require a lot of violence to disentangle humanity from itself and from the rest of the living species. And therefore, especially in the face of the kinds of ecological challenges we face, it is absolutely important to reinvent forms of life in common that go beyond the requisite of the nation state, ethnicity, race, religion, and so on. A curriculum that takes seriously such concerns is absolutely necessary.

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Nilsen: And you see these two forces visible in the debate on the composition of the curriculum?
Mbembe: Yes, I do. I would go further and argue that to design a truly planetary curriculum implies salvaging whatever remains of reason as a shared human faculty. To be sure and in view of its own history of violence and unreason, reason must be reformed. But I cannot possibly see how, without it, we can adequately answer one of the most urgent questions that will haunt the human race in this century - the question of life futures

For a long time, we have been concerned with how life emerges and the conditions of its evolution. The key question today is how it can be repaired, reproduced, sustained and cared for, made durable, preserved and universally shared, and under what conditions it ends. Overall, these debates about how life on Earth can be reproduced and sustained and under what conditions it ends are forced upon us by the epoch itself, characterised as it is by the impending ecological catastrophe and by technological escalation. I am not sure that they can be properly answered from a purely market logic perspective that addresses life as a commodity to be manipulated and replicated under conditions of volatility.

On the other hand, there is a shifting distribution of powers between the human and the technological in the sense that technologies are moving towards "general intelligence" and self-replication. Over the last decades, we have witnessed the development of algorithmic forms of intelligence. They have been growing in parallel with genetic research, and often in its alliance. The integration of algorithms and big data analysis in the biological sphere does not only bring with it a greater and greater belief in techno-positivism and modes of statistical thought. It also paves the way for regimes of assessment of the natural world, and modes of prediction and analysis that treat life itself as a computable object.

Concomitantly, algorithms inspired by the natural world, and ideas of natural selection and evolution are on the rise. Such is the case with genetic algorithms. As Margarida Mendes ("Molecular Colonialism") has shown, the belief today is that everything is potentially computable and predictable. In the process, what is rejected is the fact that life itself is an open system, nonlinear and exponentially chaotic.

I keep raising these issues because they are not unrelated to a problématique of "decolonisation" that would not be a mere ideological phantasm. In fact, these issues may be symptomatic of a truly momentous event we might not be willing or ready to contemplate. Reason may well have reached its final limits. Or, in any case, reason is on trial. On the one hand, it is increasingly replaced and subsumed by instrumental rationality when it is not simply reduced to procedural or algorithmic processing of information. In other words, the logic of reason is morphing from within machines and computers and algorithms while the human brain is being "downloaded" into nano-machines and all kinds of devices.

As we are increasingly surrounded by multiple and expanding wavefronts of calculation, all we are willing to ask from it is to detect patterns or to recover artifacts whose existence is derived from financial models built on technologies of miniaturisation and automation. As a result, techne is becoming the quintessential language of reason, its only legitimate manifestation. Furthermore, instrumental reason, or reason in the guise of techne is increasingly weaponised. Life itself is increasingly construed via statistics, metadata, modelling, mathematics.

If my description of current trends is accurate, then one of the questions a planetary curriculum must ask is the following: What remains of the human subject in an age when the instrumentality of reason is carried out by and through information machines and technologies of calculation?

The second is: Who will define the threshold or set the boundary that distinguishes between the calculable and the incalculable, between that which is deemed worthy and that which is deemed worthless, and therefore dispensable?

The third is whether we can turn these new instruments of calculation and power into instruments of liberation. In other words, will we be able to invent different modes of measuring that might open up the possibility of a different aesthetics, a different politics of inhabiting the Earth, of repairing and sharing the planet?
Nilsen: But what about those who are concerned about loosening texts from canonised European theorists and thinkers in this process?
Mbembe: I am talking about expanding the archive, not excising it. For this to happen, it must be clear to all that the European archive alone can no longer account for the complexities, both of history, of the present, and of the future of our human and other-than-human world. What we all inherit are the archives of the world at large. Not just one kind of archive. For me, this is a matter of common sense. I am in favour of expanding the archive, reading the different archives of the world critically, each with and against the others. There can't be any other meaning to a planetary curriculum.
Nilsen:  In all fields?
Mbembe: In all fields. Naturally. In any subject that has any impact whatsoever on the future history of the world and of life. Or let me put it this way: I feel sorry for any young person who might go through the Norwegian educational system without ever having learned anything about Africa, Asia or China, without having read any African, Indian or Chinese novels or poetry, or without having studied any African, Japanese or Chinese thinker of note. I am deeply sorry for that person. His or her situation makes me genuinely sad. For it is a kind of mental self-amputation, a form of active or passive rejection of the world. The purpose of a planetary curriculum would be to cure our souls from such human-inflicted ills.
Nilsen: In the debate in Norway, the demand for a more global curriculum was labelled by detractors as a campaign for "identity politics". How do you see this argument?
Mbembe: It is a mischaracterisation of what is at stake. Because that is not what it is. Actually, it is not about identity politics. It's about the challenges we spoke about earlier. It is about how we locate ourselves in the world today. In a world that has to be sustainable, that has to be built in common. It has nothing to do with the dream of apartheid.

There is a critique of "identity politics" that is a right-wing critique. It usually comes from those forces that have used the trope of identity precisely to oppress and exclude certain people, to racialise and dehumanise them. Identity politics has historically been used the most by those who were keen to stigmatise different "races", those who in the first place did not believe in our common humanity. They worshipped difference, which they weaponised.

The drama is that the people who were thus objectified and pushed aside, unfortunately embraced these prejudices and internalised them, as Frantz Fanon and many others have shown. In their attempt to reclaim a voice, they ended up defining themselves in the terms of the "difference" to which they had been assigned. So when we say "identity politics", we have to know exactly what is the historical genealogy of this term, and who is practicing it. Those who are practicing it are, for instance, those who, when a black African lands at an airport in Norway, in the midst of a group of many other people, select exactly that person and racially "profile" him or her.

To talk about a planetary curriculum has nothing to do with racially profiling people or texts or archives. It has to do with bringing as equitably as possible everybody, every person and every text, every archive and every memory in the sphere of care and concern. It has to do with proximity as opposed to insulation, with the invention in common of a shared inside, a shared roof and a shared shelter.
Nilsen: Did "racial profiling" happen to you at a Norwegian airport?
Mbembe: For many people of African descent travelling in the world today, these are regular occurrences. I don't want to say more than that.

But since you opened that door, it seems to me that identity politics and other forms of the politics of difference, that is the new opium for the masses. By expressing myself in this way, I am in no way trying to hurt many people who, today, must still fight to reclaim a voice or to recover a face we can truly identify as a human voice and a human face.

What I mean is that in this age of globalised capitalism, identity is increasingly used both as a weapon to further brutalise the weakest in our midst and as a leverage to claim a status of pure or authentic victim. To have been brutalised or to have been victimised, in turn, is increasingly seen as the most potent way to claim one's rights or one's access to care, justice, redress or reparation. The question I would like to ask is, why is this the case? In the conditions of our times, what are the reasons why vengeance or vengefulness is increasing confused with justice? Is it because we have reached a point where the form of capitalism we live in, the kind of technological progress we have achieved, are no longer compatible with liberal democracies?

The two figures of identity politics I have highlighted will not save liberal democracy from its deadly entanglement with neoliberalism and retronationalism. We can direct as many people as we want to the things that ultimately don't matter - who is wearing a burka in public, who is sporting a Muslim beard, those foreigners who steal our jobs and "our women" and corrupt our culture - such subterfuges won't address what is at the core of the present malaise worldwide. They will only accentuate the present distress that many people feel, inflame negative passions and pave the way for brutalism.
Nilsen: Also in your own country Cameroon you see these forms of identity politics?
Mbembe: In Cameroon in particular, a similar pathos surrounds the question of identities and languages inherited from colonialism. One of the ongoing disputes is about who is more British than French or more French than British. It is totally absurd. Having said that, the question we need to ask is the following: Why is it that various struggles for selfhood and common rights necessarily express themselves in these exclusionary idioms? Why are they not conducted in terms other than those that merely mimic the very categories of oppression? Why do people keep colluding with the forces that objectively work against their own material self-interest? What are the forms of compensation or enjoyment they derive from what appears to be self-servitude?
Nilsen: What is the solution then?
Mbembe: We need to develop a better understanding of what we are up against and throw out a number of old assumptions. This can't happen if we do not recover the faculty of critique, re-educate our desires and rehabilitate reason as a key faculty for any project of freedom or emancipation. Reason is under siege, reduced as it is to its instrumental dimension. It is being replaced by technicism on the one hand and all forms of negative passions on the other hand.

I am, of course, aware of the violent and tragic histories of reason and not only in our part of the world. So maybe it is more a matter of reforming reason than anything else. Maybe it's about educating reason to cohabit with other faculties. But I cannot see how we can possibly dismiss reason wholesale without deeply damaging the category of truth itself. I deeply believe that democracy cannot survive in the absence of reason, that we cannot share the world, repair it or properly take care of life in the absence of a reformed notion of reason, one that marries thinking, feeling and projecting.
Nilsen: Another critique of the decolonisation movement in Norway was that this was smelling of "American campus activism" and that it was therefore not relevant for a Norwegian context.
Mbembe: A proper critique of the decolonisation movement must be well informed. I myself have produced a number of critical observations relating to this project. It is true that there is a circulation of tropes, concepts and categories between activists in the United States and activists in the rest of the world. In the South African case, it is true that the movement has at times been tempted to rely wholesale on concepts and modes of action drawn from the African-American experience or lexicon, in particular insofar as the critique of race or even gender is concerned. This probably has to do with South Africa's own inability to theorise its own historical experience, to speak to its potential universality.

This having been said, But to our Norwegian friends, I would simply say this. On matters of decolonisation, you should invent forms of student activism relevant to your specific context. But to deny the necessity of decolonising is part of what Jean-Paul Sartre characterised as "bad faith".

Nilsen: But underlying that argument is probably the idea that the Norwegian universities are not connected to colonialism such as other universities in other countries might be.

Mbembe: Throughout our conversation, I have tried to offer a theory of decolonisation that is as expansive as possible. Norway is not an island in the world. Norway is entangled with the rest of the world and has to respond to the address the rest of the world is putting to it. And it has to take this address very seriously, just as South Africa has to respond to the address that is put to her by the rest of the continent, by other parts of the world. That is how we will salvage reason and build a world that is sustainable.

Nilsen: To what extent are our knowledge systems of today still determined by colonialism or oppression?

Mbembe: We need to develop a broader understanding of "colonisation". Knowledge systems worldwide are still underpinned by the logic of value extraction. In fact, knowledge as such is increasingly designed as the principal means for value extraction. Colonisation is going on when the world we inhabit is understood as a vast field of data awaiting extraction. Colonisation is going on when we throw out of the window the role of critical reason and theoretical thinking, and we reduce knowledge to the mere collection of data, its analysis and its use by governments, military bureaucracies and corporations. Colonisation is going on when we are surrounded by so-called smart devices that constantly watch us and record us, harvesting vast quantities of data, or when every activity is captured by sensors and cameras embedded within them. This is what colonisation in the 21st century is all about. It is about extraction, capture, the cult of data, the commodification of human capacity for thought and the dismissal of critical reason in favour of programming.

These are some of the issues the decolonisation project has to embrace if it is to be more than a slogan. Now more than ever before, what we need is a new critique of technology, of the experience of technical life. For all kinds of reasons. What we are witnessing, whether we see it or not, is the emergence of an entirely new species of humans. It is not the human of the Renaissance or of the 18th century, nor the human of the early or mid-20th century. It's an entirely different species of human, which is coupled with it its object.

Related article:

The distinctions we used to make between the human and the object are no longer entirely valid. Because nowadays there is no human being without its prosthesis. Our environment is not only saturated with all kinds of technological devices. In fact, we spend most of our lives living with or thorough screens. This experience has very serious implications in terms of the new natures of cognition, in terms of how we perceive things and reality itself, in terms of what it is that we know or must know, in terms of how we know what we know, in terms of the distinction between fact and fiction, matter and substance or in terms of the monopolisation of thought within technical infrastructures.

For "decolonisation" to be more than a slogan and be given an edge, we need to attend to these shifts, particularly in relation to the anthropocene as well as in relation to the reticular nature of computational technologies and the "softwarisation" of our existence and that of every other living entity on Earth. We must resist the push to reduce knowledge to what can be bought and sold and reinvent the category of "relevance". This can only happen if we put a renewed emphasis on the questions of "ends", and not only of "means". Saying this, I am fully aware of the fact that our world is going through a period when nihilism is lurking, brutalism is the new norm and the desire for an apocalypse is not far.
Nilsen: Recently you have also been writing about what you call "savage objects". What does it mean that these objects are still in the possession of European museums and how can restitution be done in practice?
Mbembe: This is a complex question that has been thoroughly studied by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy. Together they have produced a compelling report on these matters, and I would advise anyone who is concerned about the ongoing presence of African objects in Western museums to read it. I have been trying to relate the call for restitution to broader questions of debt, reparation and universal justice.

In precolonial systems of African thought, restitution was an obligation in the case that a conscious, malicious and deliberate act of violation was undertaken on another's life. The most damaging wrongs were considered those causing harm to one's "vital force". In contexts such as these, where life was fragile or was liable to being diminished, every attack on the integrity and life force of being, human or any other entity, however slight, merited restoration.

The damages or injury could be calculated in economic terms. But in the last instance, damages, injury or loss were assessed according to a measure of the value of life. In line with this philosophy, veritable restitution is therefore one that participates in making reparations to life. The law subtending it is more person- than property-oriented. Wherever material damages and interests came into play, the only sense they had was to undertake that restoration of life.

Ultimately, no real restitution could occur without what we must indeed call avowal, that is to say, the capacity to tell the truth. From this viewpoint, to restitute was part of an unconditional duty - part of the infinitely irrecusable thing that is life, all life, of that form of debt that was the debt of truth.

The truth is that Europe took things from us that it will never be able to restitute. We will learn to live with this loss. Europe, for its part, will have to take responsibility for its acts, for that shady part of our shared history which it keeps denying or of which it has sought to divest itself. The risk is that by restituting our objects without giving an account of itself, it concludes that, with the restitution complete, our right to remind it of the truth is removed. If new ties are to be woven, Europe must honour the truth, as the truth is the teacher of responsibility. This debt of truth cannot be erased as a matter of principle. It will haunt us until the end of times.

Honouring truth comes with the commitment to learn and remember together. As Édouard Glissant never ceased to reiterate, each of us needs the memory of the other. This is not a matter of charity or compassion. It is a condition for the survival of our world. If we want to share the world's beauty, he would add, we ought to learn to be united with all its suffering. We will have to learn to remember together, and this doing, to repair together the world's fabric and its visage. Restitution will always be partial. There are irreparable losses that no compensation can ever bring back - which does not mean it is not necessary to compensate. To have compensated, does not mean to have erased the wrong. To compensate, as Kwame Anthony Appiah underlines, is about offering to repair the relation.

An early Norwegian version of the interview was first published by Klassekampen on 1 December 2018. The transcript has been edited, footnoted, referenced and amended for clarity by Sindre Bangstad, Research Professor, Institute For Church, Religion and Worldview Research in Oslo, Norway. Achille Mbembe has revisited the transcript and substantially amended it where necessary. It is now published with his consent.
Amendment, 5 September 2019: The date for the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town was corrected to April 2015.

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Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe

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Achille Mbembe first visited Norway on the occasion of the annual Holberg Debate organised by the Holberg Prize Secretariat at the University of Bergen on 1 December 2018 where he gave a keynote address. Mbembe is scheduled to give three invited lectures on "Bodies as Borders" at the House of Literature in Oslo on 13 and 14 September 2019.

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Decolonial? Postcolonial? What does it mean to ‘decolonise ourselves’?

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Decolonial? Postcolonial? What does it mean to ‘decolonise ourselves’?

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Decolonizing the Human: an Introduction to Sylvia Wynter

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Decolonizing the Human: an Introduction to Sylvia Wynter

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Across a stunning oeuvre that includes fiction, drama, theory, and criticism, the Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter attempts nothing less than a whole-scale rethinking of the human. For Wynter, the notion of "Man" that has developed since the enlightenment is everywhere and yet exclusive. It projects a narrow Western middle and upper class ideal, fundamentally racist, violent, and constitutive of global exploitation. Drawing on work by Franz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and Aimé Césaire, Wynter prods us, in Katherine McKittrick's words, to consider "the possibility of undoing and unsettling-not replacing or occupying-Western conceptions of what it means to be human." For Wynter, this means decolonizing cultural, literary, and political histories of the Caribbean, as well as a promiscuous combination of science studies, migratory politics, Black studies, and myth-making to generate a new understanding of the human as part of political practice. How, for Wynter, did the Western European become "the figure of man"? And what might it mean to "decolonize" being, power, truth, freedom, and the human?
This course will serve an introduction to Sylvia Wynter's rich body of work. We will read key texts to examine how she develops Fanon's concept of sociogeny, how she analyzes the racial and religious demarcation of humanness historically, and how she understands the importance of storytelling and myth-making. We will ask: How have the legacies of Caliban and capitalism constrained the possibilities of the human? How does Wynter's work open up a new science of human discourse? In what ways has race displaced religion as a framework for human understanding What does Wynter mean when she says, "the rule is love" and how might such a "rule" reshape how we share time and space together? What are the poetic and mythic dimensions of such a praxis-oriented human? In addition to Wynter, we will read select secondary texts, including work by Franz Fanon, Katherine McKittrick, Walter Mignolo, and others.

Instructor: Paige Sweet

Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
January 26 - February 16, 2021

Cost: $315.00
https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/new-york/sylvia-wynter/?fbclid=IwAR0RR_BNRai87cfrAwBSBsAgtBDM3b8LQA4q_I7WIb5z_hPIoFX-Dzk9ZT8

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Decolonizing the Human: an Introduction to Sylvia Wynter - C& AMÉRICA LATINA

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Across a stunning oeuvre that includes fiction, drama, theory, and criticism, the Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter attempts nothing less than a whole-scale rethinking of the human. For Wynter, the notion of "Man" that has developed since the enlightenment is everywhere and yet exclusive.

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Global Social Theory: Decolonising the university

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Global Social Theory: Decolonising the university

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DECOLONISING THE UNIVERSITY - GLOBAL SOCIAL THEORY

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A new co-edited volume by Gurminder K Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Nisancioglu Decolonising the University , was in the Times Higher by Jenny Pickerill arguing that more practical suggestions on where to start the project of decolonisation within universities were required.

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To ‘decolonise’ education, we need to ask different questions

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To ‘decolonise’ education, we need to ask different questions

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On 15 October 1971, the first edition of The Times Higher Education Supplement was published. In the five decades since, the publication now known as Times Higher Education has charted the expansion and marketisation of the UK sector while taking an ever more global perspective. Three editors reflect on their time at the helm

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To 'decolonise' education, we need to ask different questions

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On 15 October 1971, the first edition of The Times Higher Education Supplement was published. In the five decades since, the publication now known as Times Higher Education has charted the expansion and marketisation of the UK sector while taking an ever more global perspective.

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Decolonization refers to 'writing back' against the ongoing colonialism and colonial mentalities that permeate all institutions and systems of government, according to Eric Ritskes, editor of Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society. Indeed, decolonization demands an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous ways of thinking, write Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in their essay "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor".

(Re)building culture must interrogate colonialism's turmoil on the inner world and psyche, explains Franz Fanon. Artists, authors, and activists draw on Fanon's writings, [...]

"The reach of imperialism into 'our heads' challenges those who belong to colonized communities to understand how this occurred, partly because we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity."

~ Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

Anti-Racism is defined as the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach, and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and impacts.

SOURCE: Race Forward, "Race Reporting Guide" (2015).

The Critical Race Theory movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step by step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and principles of constitutional law.

SOURCE: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, NYU Press, 2001 (2nd ed. , 3rd ed. 2017).

1. Decolonization may be defined as the active resistance against colonial powers, and a shifting of power towards political, economic, educational, cultural, psychic independence and power that originate from a colonized nation's own indigenous culture. This process occurs politically and also applies to personal and societal psychic, cultural, political, agricultural, and educational deconstruction of colonial oppression.

2. Per Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang: "Decolonization doesn't have a synonym"; it is not a substitute for 'human rights' or 'social justice', though undoubtedly, they are connected in various ways. Decolonization demands an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous ways of thinking.

SOURCE:

1. The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), "."

2. Eric Ritskes, "What Is Decolonization and Why Does It Matter?"

Related Resources: Decolonization Theory and Practice

Location: FUNDAMENTALS / Core Concepts

Internalized racism is the situation that occurs in a racist system when a racial group oppressed by racism supports the supremacy and dominance of the dominating group by maintaining or participating in the set of attitudes, behaviors, social structures, and ideologies that undergird the dominating group's power. It involves four essential and interconnected elements:

1. Decision-making - Due to racism, people of color do not have the ultimate decision-making power over the decisions that control our lives and resources. As a result, on a personal level, we may think white people know more about what needs to be done for us than we do. On an interpersonal level, we may not support each other's authority and power - especially if it is in opposition to the dominating racial group. Structurally, there is a system in place that rewards people of color who support white supremacy and power and coerces or punishes those who do not.

2. Resources - Resources, broadly defined (e.g. money, time, etc), are unequally in the hands and under the control of white people. Internalized racism is the system in place that makes it difficult for people of color to get access to resources for our own communities and to control the resources of our community. We learn to believe that serving and using resources for ourselves and our particular community is not serving "everybody."

3. Standards - With internalized racism, the standards for what is appropriate or "normal" that people of color accept are white people's or Eurocentric standards. We have difficulty naming, communicating and living up to our deepest standards and values, and holding ourselves and each other accountable to them.

4. Naming the problem - There is a system in place that misnames the problem of racism as a problem of or caused by people of color and blames the disease - emotional, economic, political, etc. - on people of color. With internalized racism, people of color might, for example, believe we are more violent than white people and not consider state-sanctioned political violence or the hidden or privatized violence of white people and the systems they put in place and support.

SOURCE: Donna Bivens, Internalized Racism: A Definition (Women's Theological Center, 1995).

1. Exposing [one's] multiple identities can help clarify the ways in which a person can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression. For example, a Black woman in America does not experience gender inequalities in exactly the same way as a white woman, nor racial oppression identical to that experienced by a Black man. Each race and gender intersection produces a qualitatively distinct life.

2. Per Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw: Intersectionality is simply a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment. It looks at the way that racism, many times, interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, xenophobia - seeing that the overlapping vulnerabilities created by these systems actually create specific kinds of challenges. "Intersectionality 102," then, is to say that these distinct problems create challenges for movements that are only organized around these problems as separate and individual. So when racial justice doesn't have a critique of patriarchy and homophobia, the particular way that racism is experienced and exacerbated by heterosexism, classism etc., falls outside of our political organizing. It means that significant numbers of people in our communities aren't being served by social justice frames because they don't address the particular ways that they're experiencing discrimination.

SOURCE:
1. Intergroup Resources, "Intersectionality" (2012).

2. Otamere Guobadia, "Kimberlé Crenshaw and Lady Phyll Talk Intersectionality, Solidarity, and Self-Care" (2018).

Related Resources: Intersectionality

Location: FUNDAMENTALS / Core Concepts

1. Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities, not just their manifestation. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes, and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or that fail to eliminate them.

2. "A mindset and method for solving problems that have endured for generations, seem intractable, harm people and communities of color most acutely, and ultimately affect people of all races. This will require seeing differently, thinking differently, and doing the work differently. Racial equity is about results that make a difference and last."

SOURCE:

Racial Identity Development Theory discusses how people in various racial groups and with multiracial identities form their particular self-concept. It also describes some typical phases in remaking that identity based on learning and awareness of systems of privilege and structural racism, cultural, and historical meanings attached to racial categories, and factors operating in the larger socio-historical level (e.g. globalization, technology, immigration, and increasing multiracial population).

SOURCE: New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development: Integrating Emerging Frameworks, edited by Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe and Bailey W. Jackson (NYU Press, 2012).

1. The systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Racial justice-or racial equity-goes beyond "anti-racism." It is not just the absence of discrimination and inequities, but also the presence of deliberate systems and supports to achieve and sustain racial equity through proactive and preventative measures.

2. Operationalizing racial justice means reimagining and co-creating a just and liberated world and includes:

understanding the history of racism and the system of white supremacy and addressing past harms,

working in right relationship and accountability in an ecosystem (an issue, sector, or community ecosystem) for collective change,

implementing interventions that use an intersectional analysis and that impact multiple systems,

centering Blackness and building community, cultural, economic, and political power of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC), and

applying the practice of love along with disruption and resistance to the status quo.

SOURCE:

1. Race Forward, "Race Reporting Guide" (2015).

2. Maggie Potapchuk, "Operationalizing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Organizations" (MP Associates, 2020). This definition is based on and expanded from the one described in Rinku Sen and Lori Villarosa, "Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens: A Practical Guide" (Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, 2019).

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Fundamentals, Core Concepts, Decolonization Theory and Practice

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Decolonization refers to 'writing back' against the ongoing colonialism and colonial mentalities that permeate all institutions and systems of government, according to Eric Ritskes, editor of Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society . Indeed, decolonization demands an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous ways of thinking, write Eve Tuck and K.

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It’s Time to Decolonize the Decolonization Movement

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It’s Time to Decolonize the Decolonization Movement

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"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change...I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices."
― Audre Lorde

These days, one can barely throw a stone in a global health space without hitting something to do with decolonizing global health. The decolonization of global health is the latest topic du jour and everyone is an expert. From blog posts to journal articles and webinars to conferences, the calls to decolonize echo throughout the cybersphere of institutions in the Euro-American region, twirling in and out of social justice conversations and dancing on the edges of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) discourse.

"Global health must be decolonized!" is the growing call to action.

But, how? And do folks understand what the term 'decolonization' actually involves?

Is decolonization even possible especially if the same tools and systems of colonialization are employed in attempts to decolonize? Have global health actors reached down into that deep place of knowledge to touch that terror and loathing of difference?

Whose face does it wear?

Some of us in the global health space who were flying the banner of decolonization long before it became lit to do so, have looked upon the growing decolonization movement with mixed feelings and a lot of discomfort.

On the one hand, we see the need for greater awareness about the lasting damages of colonialism, and the power asymmetries that are pervasive in global health. On the other hand, our unease can be categorized in to three concerns:
How is coloniality showing up in the decolonization movement?
Decolonization is often perceived as a means to uncover the histories of the colonized, those whom Frantz Fanon refers to as the "Wretched of the earth", and bring their stories to the awareness of the mainstream. However, it is often confused with any social justice endeavor including diversity, equity, and inclusion and often devoid of a critical analysis of power, history, and sociopolitics. This lack of critical introspective analysis of power, hegemony, and the historical and continuing dynamics of internalized and systemic oppression in contemporary health and higher education structures, results in the reproduction of colonial logics of commodifying human beings, labor, space, and knowledge.

What this looks like is the maintenance of a power hierarchy in global health that is still predominantly white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, male, and European/American. It looks like institutional-community or (neo)colonial-(neo)colonized processes, practices, and policies of funding, partnerships, and program/project development that replicate colonial dynamics of extraction and exploitation. It looks like curricula that re-marginalize, de-prioritize, and minimize the lived experiences, expertise, and epistemologies of indigenous communities. It looks like narratives that obscure the interdependent causative relationship of the development and wealth of Europe and North America and the under-development and poverty of their past and present colonies. It looks like discourse that ignores the role of (neo)colonizer economic and national security decisions and policies that suppress indigenous independence. It looks like co-opting and bending the decolonization discourse to adhere to Eurocentric constraints such as viewing situations in binary terms and, therefore, in "tension" versus in multifaceted, intersectional, and in harmony. Constraints such as framing approaches as pragmatic vs philosophical as opposed to each informing and depending on the other. It looks like language that reinforces the hegemony of Europe and North America over the rest of the word such as "Global North" and "Global South" or defining nations by economic status set to Euro-American indices of prosperity and development. It looks like the absence of a commitment to justice and engagement with community-led justice and liberation movements.
Who is the decolonization movement for?
We have observed a lack of reference and deference to Majority World scholars, thinkers, practitioners, and activists in the rush of Euro-American do-gooders to institutionalize decolonization centers, departments, positions, apply for grants, and create programs, projects, and curricula. This ironic rush to colonize the decolonization movement is done without reflecting on (neo)colonizer intellectual connectivity to indigenous and majority world critical inquiry, often as a result of ongoing epistemological exploitation.

Giants such as Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, George Sefa Dei, Chizoba Imoka, Ngugi Wa Thiong'O, Amilcar Cabral, Es'kia Mphahlele, and many others are omitted from discourse as institutions mobilize to incorporate "decolonization" studies into their neo-liberal academic framework. Institutional norms, epistemologies, ontologies, praxes, policies, and processes built on Euro-American neo-liberal values of the hierarchical dualism of the individual over social, human over environment, and industrialized or "developed" over non-industrialized are expected to embrace what Tshepo Madlingozi and Frantz Fanon describe as a violent and disruptive process, and what Joel Modiri defines as "...an insatiable reparatory demand, an insurrectionary utterance...It entails nothing less than an endless fracturing of the world colonialism created."

The attempt to incorporate the disruptive violent process of undoing colonization within colonial frameworks and matrices is itself an act of colonization as it ignores the inherent intent of decolonization and presents as an unwillingness or an inability to change. It is also emblematic of the ego-centrism and lack of self-introspection that often peppers well-intended decolonization actors and their actions. Often, they do not do the work of reaching down into that deep place of knowledge inside oneself to touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there, and see whose face it wears, so that the personal as the political can begin to illuminate their choices. Often, they do not submit themselves to the endless personal and political fracturing that is decolonization. The urgency dictated by white guilt leaves little space and time for actual reflection, deconstructing, deconditioning, relationship-building, and structural dismantling. Thus, grassroots indigenous and Majority World leaders are left in the dust, their ideas co-opted in the rush to "solutions", while colonial power paradigms and dynamics are left intact, patterns of oppression and structural injustices remaining unfettered and reinforced.
What about intersectionality?
Anchored to the first two concerns, the lack of a critical power analysis rooted in indigenous and Majority World critical inquiry renders the decolonial movement impotent to actualize real fundamental change. This is because a critical analysis of colonialism is fundamentally intersectional and must locate its construction, and thus, deconstruction, at the intersection of white supremacy, global anti-Blackness, patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, homo/transphobia, fatphobia, and xenophobia. It is George Sefa Dei and Chizoba Imoka who state that 'To colonize ... one has to equate the purpose of life to material acquisitions, affirm their personhood only through their ability to dominate/bully others, shrink their mental capacity so as not to respect/understand human diversity and rationalize a wide range of unfettered violence.' A decolonization movement that is not intersectional and does not contend with these mutually reinforcing interdependent systems of oppression and violence in the structural, interpersonal, and internalized dynamics of global health is doomed to fail. The lack of courage to name these intersectional systems of oppression, the paradigms of structural violence that undergird our global health institutions, and call out their perpetuators and benefactors allow these systems to persist un-checked, in so-called decolonization spaces.

The bottom line is that the decolonization movement itself needs to be decolonized. We cannot decolonize global health using the same logics, dynamics, and paradigms that birthed it in the first place. We cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. Unfortunately, many decolonization scholars and advocates, especially in academia are shackled into inaction, as the only tools at their disposal are the same tools of colonialism, the same system into which we have all been baptized. Which is why many anti-colonial thinkers have expressed that decolonization is impossible, but, in the words of Foluke Ifejola, "...we must make her possible if we wish to survive this wretched night that this wretched earth has been plunged into by humanity."

This will require an imagination revolution. A liberatory mindset reset. A paradigm cataclysm.

We must de-construct and re-construct global health spaces using transformative tools created by indigenous, grassroots, and majority world communities. The voices of the poorest, darkest-skinned, most disabled, women (cis and trans), and femmes must be centered at decision-making tables in policy, education, health, economy, & Justice. Tables built by them for them.

Nothing about them without them.

We make decolonization possible by:

Getting comfortable with multiformity and fluidity: Decolonization has multiple definitions and that's okay. The complexity of the concept, process, and movement allows it to accommodate multiple definitions even as its meaning shifts depending on the sociopolitical positionality of the actor, the positionality of their audience, the actor's geographical and epistemological location, their colonial history, their role inside or outside academia/activism/politics, and their access to power. It is a colonial construct that everything has to be rigidly defined and have only one definition. The fluidity of decoloniality allows for a multi-faceted approach to decolonization so that various aspects of the colonial mountain could be attacked simultaneously and synchronously, increasing the likelihood of it being successfully leveled.

Ground decolonization in the work of Majority World leaders: The voices of indigenous and (neo) colonized decolonial and anti-colonial liberation movement scholars, thinkers, strategists, and activists must be centered in all decolonial efforts. Their perspectives, lived experiences, expertise, and knowledge systems come first and must inform all other work. They must inform language, stance, frameworks, and strategies. Funding and infrastructural support must be provided to these indigenous and (neo)colonized communities to power their strategies and solutions towards liberation, autonomy, and independence. They must inform what success looks like and what those metrics are. Intentionality should be performed towards ensuring that Majority World decolonial, anti-colonial, and liberation leaders who are women, LGBTQIA+, and disabled occupy the forefront of the movement.

Center Intersectionality and interdependence: Health does not exist in a vacuum and the health of communities all over the world are informed by social and structural determinants including neo-liberal economic world trade policies that produce and reproduce national poverty, reinforce dependency and neo-colonialism, and lead to poor health outcomes domestically and internationally. These dynamics of exploitation and extraction, which created the conditions for Europe and North America to develop and prosper on the back of Africa, were established during the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism and maintained today within the systems of capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, homo/transphobia, xenophobia, racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. The decolonization movement needs to integrate with movements working to dismantle these intersecting systems of oppressions which undergird coloniality in global health and beyond. Which is why calls to return stolen lands to indigenous communities and pay reparations to the colonized, disenfranchised, racialized, and oppressed must be integral to global health decolonization movements. Similarly, human health is interdependent on the health of animals, plants, the environment, and the plant, which informs the economy and sociopolitical landscape of any society. An intersectional lens is critical to decolonization.

Emphasize a critical analysis of power: Power is fundamental to colonialism, neo-colonialism, and coloniality. Critical introspection as to how individuals as part of institutions, as well as the institutions themselves, produce, re-produce, maintain, and benefit from intersectional systems of oppression within a colonial framework is necessary for decolonization to be realized. What this means is that Euro-American people and the systems they represent and uphold need to divest from power-hoarding and lean out of power and privilege to allow indigenous and Majority World people thrive. While the formerly colonized and neo-colonized lead, the former colonizers and neo-colonizers need to actively dismantle the structures of oppression they created, inherited, maintain, and from which they benefit. This not a light proposition as it will require (neo)colonizers to divest from the very definition of themselves, as their identities were constructed on the basis of dominance acquired through bloody violence, rape, genocide, enslavement all to concentrate power and resources. To divest from an identity that sits at the intersection of coloniality and whiteness will require a fundamental existential shift in consciousness, imagination, decision-making, and politics that sets the (neo)colonizer free from the bondage of their addiction to power and the lies constructed to preserve the un-earned position of power in the social hierarchical house of cards. The challenge would be in the novel act of crafting an identity independent of dominance and oppression.

Return to the Source and Prioritize it: This section is especially and lovingly written to my people, the "unassimilable Majority" - the indigenous, formerly colonized, and (neo)colonized. Ultimately, decolonization should be defined by, led by, and the benefits reaped by who Es'Kia Mphahlele refers to as the "unassimilable Majority". To overcome colonization and achieve decolonization and liberation, we, the Majority people, would need to reject the external as well as the internalized white Euro-American gaze and standards and "return to the source". This means that we must make the journey into our individual and collective self to recover, reclaim, and restore our indigenous cultures, epistemologies, languages, technologies, art, histories, religions, and science. Our stories. Our identities. Our essence. We must name ourselves and own our narratives. We can position ourselves to speak truth to power through taking pride in the complex beauty of our languages. We can create our own definitions and correct the terminologies that reinforce global hegemony and dominance such as "Global North vs Global South" which are alternative terms for "First world vs Third World" or "Developed vs Undeveloped", "The West vs Non-West", "Sub-Sahara vs Super-Sahara?" and other inaccurate, homogenizing terms that were not created by us nor do they represent our reality, ethos, values, and priorities. We can embrace our heterogeneity as strength and re-discover how our indigenous knowledge, resource, and belief systems can inform the structures of our sociopolitical organization. We can remind ourselves that (neo)colonized regions developed and continue to develop the colonizing regions and recognize that their wealth and development is a result of continuing practices and policies designed to exploit and extract from our resource-rich settings. It is also important to note the neocolonial puppet-mastery that use so-called indigenous political leaders and manipulate internal sociocultural and economic dynamics to obscure their continuous plunder of our lands and resources. This acknowledgment is important in framing our own home-grown strategic solutions to achieving true independence and liberation from all forms of oppression. Firstly, liberation begins in our own imagination, in our own individual and collective selves before it can be translated externally. Our possibilities are only limited by our imagination. This is why decolonizing our minds and emancipating our imagination is key to our liberation. We need to be thoroughly purged from centuries of psychosocial conditioning and internalized colonization grounded in European and American myths and lies of who we are, where we come from, our abilities, value, contributions to the world, and how our current state of affairs came to be. These lies were designed for us to internalize their delusion of superiority, even while they depended, and continue to depend, on our wealth, resources, intellect, skills, and labor to survive. We need to engage in individual and collective healing practices to address the cumulative trauma of coloniality, racism, patriarchy, ableism, capitalism, homo-transphobia and all intersecting systems of oppression that have been transmitted intergenerationally and experienced on the levels of the intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, systemic, and structural. Without healing from our own trauma, we are doomed to reproduce it among ourselves and reinforce the same systems of dominance in our problem-solving processes, which are then rendered impotent. Collective healing and restorative justice practices will provide us the courage to reject zero-sum, deficit-based, individualistic thinking taught to us by colonizers. Embracing collective action built on dynamic trusting relationships, weaving the physical and metaphysical, uncovering our stories of the past, present, future and in between, and integrating an ecocentric liberated ethos, empower us to reject old paradigms of being and create new ones. We will find that we do not fear or pathologize what others refer to as "complex", but fondly accept and adapt to so-called complexities, while patiently massaging intersectional creative strategies that are rooted in our indigenous toolkits, ancestral wisdom, and youthful innovation. We will find that we can joyfully explore the beauty, abundance, and intricate multifariousness of our own humanities without parroting colonial stereotypes and unidimensional reductive analyses of our lived experiences and realities.

We will find ourselves liberated.

Global health will not survive its true decolonization. It is not supposed to. Instead, a better, transformed ecocentric world health system should emerge from the ashes of the deconstruction and dismantling of the global health industrial machine. We imagine a compassionate, intersectional, comprehensive, universal healthcare and public health system designed and led by the indigenous and unassimilable Majority people, and representing equity, justice, and liberation benefiting all and sundry.

The author acknowledges with gratitude that the land she lives and works on is the original homelands of the Anishinaabe: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Botawatomi. She acknowledges the painful history of genocide and ongoing colonialism on this land of Detroit or Waawiyatanong and commits to honoring and respecting the diverse indigenous peoples, while learning how to be a better steward of the land.

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It's Time to Decolonize the Decolonization Movement

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We imagine a compassionate, intersectional, comprehensive, universal healthcare and public health system designed and led by the indigenous and unassimilable Majority people, and representing equity, justice, and liberation benefiting all and sundry.

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Decolonising pedagogy - Expanding notions of pedagogy to empower change 

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Decolonising pedagogy - Expanding notions of pedagogy to empower change 

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In recent times, we have heard about decolonisation of the university space - in the UK, and around the world. We have listened intently to podcasts, attended webinars, and read blogs to comprehend the meaning of this rather complex word, and what does it signify for academics and practioner(s) in higher education institutions (HEIs).

For this reflective blog, I wish to explore what it means to decolonise pedagogy with respect to curriculum, and how small changes in our practice hold the potential for bigger, visible impact, to challenge pervasive inequalities within university space.

I focus on pedagogy precisely because it equips the learner with tools for deep learning using critical reflection and examination. Curriculum, intricately linked with pedagogy, encompasses 'what' of the content, 'how' of teaching and assessing, and the 'who' of who teaches and who is taught (Boughey, 2018). To address structural inequalities within university space, it is only rational to empower staff and students alike with the power of knowledge - of the curriculum, and about the curriculum. This will enable them to challenge the root cause of inherent inequalities and re-imagine education that is culturally and socially responsive, and inclusive.

The essence of my academic identity is to offer transformative learning and to make students world ready with global skills. As a course lead, I play a key role in deciding the academic curriculum for the course and establish its underpinning design principles. However, I am also mindful that academic curriculum is not free from institutional curriculum (Lang 2019), that permeates the social fabric of the university space.

Institutional curriculum is knowledge intrinsic to dominant beliefs, values, and behaviours - embedded in many aspects of the institutional life. It is tacit in nature, in such a way that one is socialised into it - through, for example, inductions, student engagement activities, classroom behaviours and negotiated expectations between lecturers and students, cafeteria conversations, student clubs and societies. Given the omni-present and pervasive nature of institutional curriculum, students, and academic staff from outside (socially, linguistically, or culturally) can easily feel either 'warmly welcomed' or 'not fitting in.'

One needs to acknowledge that institutional curriculum through its very nature portrays power laden social relations. It is often about what is valued, who is valued, and by whom. Such socialisation is often (perhaps unconsciously) realised through privileging those in majority, and as a result, leaving others feeling left out, marginalised, not heard or seen. This in no way supports the aspiration of nurturing global graduates but on the contrary runs the danger of making those in minority feel alienated, and isolated- socially, and emotionally.

Academic curriculum, as we now recognise works within the remit of institutional curricula. It is the immersive experience of engagement of staff and students with subject knowledge, its methods, behaviours, and identity pertinent to the discipline. Academic curriculum comes to life through pedagogical tools and practices and hold the power of transforming thinking.

The key question that emerges for us is then - what does decolonisation mean for teaching practice, and pedagogical philosophy? And second, how can it empower staff and students to question structural privileging of some and therefore leaving the rest as feeling other-ed, within the wider institutional space?

Decolonisation is an intricate and often a messy (personal and professional) journey. It has multitude of evolving meanings and interpretations, dependent on what lens and intent one adopts to view it. Decolonisation, as Jansen (2017) articulates is about re-imagining what the alterative can look like, through critical engagement with settled and dominant knowledge.

In the UK, decolonisation is one of the many responses to address disparity in degree outcomes for students from diverse background. I hope you will concur that degree outcomes are not just a result of student performance on assessment tasks. Instead, degree outcomes are linked fundamentally to sense of belonging that students nurture with their institution space, and to the academic curriculum with which they actively engage with.

Therefore, re-thinking the academic curriculum is a pertinent step towards transforming institutional curriculum. It is imperative that critical examination of what we teach, who is teaching, and how is one taught, addresses two key questions-

1. How is the curriculum assimilating all students into the disciplines' knowledge stance?

2. Second, are students are able to see and recognise themselves in that curriculum?

Assimilating students into discipline specific knowledge stance is about dismantling dominant forms or also known as cannon of knowledge. This can be through shared dialogue with students, engaging them to evaluate - who has produced knowledge? What knowledge is produced? How is it legitimised? Is this the only way of knowing? Such questioning will support re-imagining an alternative - where students start to recognise if they see themselves in the curricula - academically, and beyond.

In the hope to engage students in shared dialogic space, I suggest tools and examples that may be creatively used and adapted. These practical suggestions will prompt critical reflection of academic curriculum, thereby, equipping students to challenge the tacit institutional practices.

One of the extended views of teaching and learning is developed through 'stories.' What stories do we tell our students about the past, present, and the future of the discipline? Is it a single narrative or offers scope of plurality of thought? To actualise this is through asking students to, for example:

Choose a text from 'popular' or 'dominant' knowledge

Examine what does that text say (or does not say) about the 'other'

Can the authors' assumptions be gauged from the text, in deciding what is included and excluded from the text?

Can this knowledge now steer students' re-imagination of a different knowledge?

In practice, this encourages students to recognise that dominant discourses of knowledge are not neutral, and therefore universal - both academically and institutionally. Re-imagination activity will allow for creative dialogue and reflective judgement of how the alternative could be, and why.

In another way, within course design, one can incorporate the two-way approach, akin to what is referred to as two-eyed seeing by elders in Canada's Mi'kmaw Nation (cited in Lang, 2019). This approach allows using the strengths of western and non-western/ Indigenous knowledge systems and letting students to choose which aspect of the knowledge system they wish to personally appropriate and adopt. In this way, points of resonance are nurtured to bridge knowledge cultures and points of dissonance are respected in allowing students to decide for themselves which aspects of knowledge they wish to apply in practice.

This approach encourages student voice to be at the forefront, whilst allowing them to engage with their reality at a deeper level, responsive to their socio-cultural sense of belonging to the university space. It fosters respect for all, but more importantly offers valuable opportunities to all students to connect authentically with their disciplinary knowledge. This allows them to develop courage to challenge and question, and appreciate different frames of reference to comprehend all knowledge forms.

Finally, curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived (Aoki, 1999 cited in Lang, 2019), should be nurtured equally. Aoki argues that legitimising how curriculum is lived and experienced creates a space for creativity and transformation. It allows students to build their agency, an integrated social identity with and within their university space. It legitimises their voice to suggest re-sizing dominant knowledge(s) and practices to make space for other(d) views, traditions within the academic discipline, and therefore institutional space.

To be able to sustain a culture that fosters inclusion- one needs to absorb the pedagogy of presence- as part of the discipline, and beyond. Academic and institutional curriculum are a symbiotic means to empower all voices and experiences.

In words of Kappelar (1986, cited in Le Grange 2019), my blog is part of a collective effort from where we explore, question, examine our motivation and beliefs -to not to break the dominant knowledge frame but to enlarge it, to re-focus, to re-centre- using our curricula, pedagogies, practices.
References
Boughey, C. (2018). Using the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning. South African Journal of Science, 114, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2018/a0288

Lang, L. (2019). The Institutional Curriculum, Pedagogy, and The Decolonisation Of The South African University. In Jansen, J. D. (Eds.), Decolonisation in Universities The Politics of Knowledge (pp. 79-99)

Le Grange, L. (2019). The Curriculum Case for Decolonisation. In J. D. (Eds.), Decolonisation in Universities The Politics of Knowledge ( pp. 29-48)
Addition Resources by the author
Web resource written for Educational Developers Thinking Allowed
https://edta.info.yorku.ca/decolonizing-the-curriculum/

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Expanding notions of pedagogy to empower change

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In recent times, we have heard about decolonisation of the university space - in the UK, and around the world. We have listened intently to podcasts, attended webinars, and read blogs to comprehend the meaning of this rather complex word, and what does it signify for academics and practioner(s) in higher education institutions (HEIs).

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Delinking, Decoloniality & Dewesternization: Interview with Walter Mignolo (Part II)

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Christopher Mattison: To continue our earlier discussion about Bolivia in relation to “refunding” or “decolonizing”—you’ve stated on a number of occasions that capitalism or socialism, as they are currently constituted, are not the answers? One of the alternatives that you offer to this issue is “de…

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On Decolonisation and the University (Gopal, 2021)

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On Decolonisation and the University (Gopal, 2021)

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ABSTRACT
Is 'decolonisation' relevant at all to the university situated in Britain and other former colonial centres? Answering broadly in the affirmative, this essay situates the project of 'decolonising' the metropolitan university within a wider historical and intellectual context while delineating some of the key questions such an endeavour might grapple with. It argues that 'Western' universities can lead the increasingly vital task of historical self-understanding in the constituent polities and societies of the geopolitical 'West'. Decolonisation is reparative of the 'European' itself, seeking to understand and to extend knowledge about how cultures and communities outside it have shaped 'Europe'. Reframing discussions of decolonisation in the light of anticolonial thought - as the theory and practice of anticolonialism - gives grounding, heft and direction to them, enabling rich questions to be posed and answered towards the wider horizon of making another world possible.

It is not often that academic exercises draw members of the British royal family into their ambit. In February 2019, the Times newspaper announced to its readership that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 'supported a campaign by black academics and students to 'decolonise the curriculum' in her first apparently 'political' intervention since joining the royal family. In fact, visiting a British university in her capacity as patron of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, not exactly a decolonised entity, Meghan had merely listened to a presentation on an initiative to confront the legacies of empire in one institution's curriculum. The Duchess had also expressed surprise at the very small number (under 10%) of ethnic minorities in the top ranks of the British professoriate. (The figures are even worse for black professors). Blandly enough, if unusually, for a member of a manifestly dated institution, Britain's first known royal of colour suggested that it was good to 'open a debate' that might result in an 'update' of the curriculum. For a British media that had already been overwhelmingly engaged in racialized criticism of the new member of the royal family, these minimal comments were reason enough to launch another round of attacks, not just on Meghan herself but also, in a repeat fusillade, on students and academics of colour for ostensibly wanting to 'replace' work by white men in university curricula. Just a year or so before this particular attempt at stoking racial controversy, when students in my own department at Cambridge called on it to 'decolonise the curriculum', the Telegraph newspaper ran a frontpage story accompanied by a photograph of one of our black students, claiming, falsely, that they and other students wanted white men removed from reading lists. Meghan too, the Times headline shrieked, was 'tak[ing] aim at stale, pale and male universities'.

The sensationalist and sensationalising national media attention given to what might ordinarily be regarded as rather modest academic discussions on revising curricula is an index, calibrated in heat rather than light, of the relatively high-profile that the 'decolonise' imperative has attained in a short space of time. Tailor-made for the heightened xenophobia and anti-migrant rhetoric of the Brexit era, a new set of culture wars was here. In Britain, notoriety had already accrued to the 'Rhodes Must Fall, Oxford' (RMFO) campaign spearheaded by black students at Oxford University in 2016. RMFO - not solely focused on the relocation of the statue of Cecil Rhodes that mars the frontage of Oriel College - had also called for curricular reform and criticised the under-representation of black people in British academe, noting that 'the habits of mind and ways of relating that stoked colonialism continue to hang in Oxford's hall and infuse its institutional cultures'. This drew condemnation, not just from the tabloids which went into characteristic overdrive, but also from more liberal quarters. Student campaigners were accused, even by academics who might have been expected to know more, of refusing to face up to history when, in fact they were calling for a more demanding engagement with history than is usually the case in relation to the British Empire. Indeed, there is a certain irony in the fact that student campaigners were accused of wanting to be 'mollycoddled' and 'safe' at the very moment they were insisting that it was time for the British mainstream to acknowledge the less flattering and more dismaying sides of the empire story - contrary to the sanitised mythologies that prevail as common sense. Who, we might ask, was insisting on being protected from the full and frequently ugly story?

Rhodes Must Fall's Oxford version had drawn its proximate inspiration from student protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. These had unfolded over several months from March 2015 on, after students threw faeces on the statue of the notorious colonialist and racialist, Cecil Rhodes, with (successful) calls for its removal as marking not the end but

the beginning of the long overdue process of decolonising this university. Decolonisation operates at the political, epistemic and ideological heart of the university, with reformative implications for every facet of a university's operation. It involves the decentering of Eurocentric value systems and knowledge production, the overhaul of the hierarchy of European ideologies and the reappraisal of whitewashed history.'

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign at UCT found echoes in other South African universities including Stellenbosch, Witwatersrand and Rhodes. The South African student protests were not focused on a single issue. They brought into their ambit not only questions of economic access (which found specific articulation in the parallel #FeesMustFall movement) but also a living wage for campus workers and ending both corporatisation and outsourcing.

Since 2017, partly in the wake of the Rhodes Must Fall, Oxford (RMFO), campaign, the question of 'decolonising the university' has also been a significant organising theme for students and staff at several university campuses in Britain, Canada and Europe - and there are variants in the United States which has a longer history of student activism around diversifying, if not quite decolonising, curricula in the humanities. These efforts have, of course, been ideal fodder for culture wars stoked by influential right-wing pundits and media outlets in Britain and beyond. As Oxford academic Simukai Chigudu notes, where RMFO and other 'decolonisation' groups were calling for a critical engagement with history and historical consciousness, 'the movement's detractors stressed the role of western values in birthing ... liberalism and progress in the modern world'. Rabidly defensive cries emerged around those figures deemed founders of 'Western values' which were predictably declared to be in peril with, to take but one instance, sections of the British media accusing students at London's School of Oriental and African Studies of wanting Plato and Kant eliminated from the curriculum because they were white. As was manifestly clear in the responses to the slogan 'Black Lives Matter', which emerged in the face of the murderous devaluing of African-American existence in the USA, claims by people of colour to equality and inclusion in Western polities are frequently equated with the total annihilation and subordination of the white majority. (Even in the UK, the counter-slogan, White Lives Matter, found prominent airing in the summer of 2020). Having inherited advantages deriving from dispossession and genocide, when faced with the challenge to decolonise, it is as though the postcolonial imaginary in the geopolitical West can envision nothing less than revenge exacted against itself in the same coin.

In somewhat startling contrast to the peevish harrumphing of conservative pundits and media organs, the 'decolonise' mantra has swiftly buzzed its way into acceptable institutional jargon, with university administrations seemingly open to putting it down as an action point on the managerial agenda. 'Decolonising the curriculum' has been the keynote theme at a many seminars, conferences, and workshops both within individual disciplines and across them. At times, references to 'decolonising' seems so capacious as to stand in for any form of critical engagement with race and representation, or indeed, the mildest of curricular reforms. Here it is worth noting that in its twenty-first century iteration in Britain and Europe, decolonisation as a cultural and educational imperative is a belated project, the line of influence, not for the first time, running from global South northwards. In Anglophone postcolonial contexts, the question of 'decolonising' universities, education, and indeed, 'the mind', was first raised in post-independence Africa. In relation to canon and curriculum, it was discussed most famously in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's classic volume, Decolonising the Mind, which argued that the annihilating 'cultural' and 'psychological' consequences of colonialism had to be taken as seriously as, though not separately from, its economic, political and military ones. For Ngũgĩ, the 'struggle to seize back ... a real control of all the means of communal self-definition' (p.4) was profoundly tied up with recovering the use of African languages which had been, often coercively, marginalised under colonial rule in favour of metropolitan tongues like French, English and Portuguese.

The D-Word

Where diversity might make a certain sense, is 'decolonisation' relevant at all to the university situated in Britain and other former colonial centres? (The term I use to refer to these former imperial polities is 'metropolitan', deriving from 'metropole' or 'the parent state or mother city of a colony; a mother country'). Can the erstwhile coloniser, the metropole, decolonise? Must they? Answering broadly in the affirmative, my aim in this essay is to situate the project of 'decolonising' the metropolitan university within a wider historical and intellectual context while delineating some of the key questions such an endeavour might grapple with. What does it mean to try to decolonise (the metropolitan university) in the full awareness that these are institutions that have benefited historically not just from the flow of resources and profits from colony to metropole but also allied advantages; they have been able to accumulate archives, specimens, objects and information afforded to them, even now, by the power of colonial knowledge-gathering - ethnologising, museumising, mapping, anthropologising, narrating, cataloguing, dissecting and classifying peoples and lands outside what was deemed 'Europe'. Indeed, the Western university form became a widely established colonial institution, flourishing into the post-independence present across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The origins of most modern universities lie in colonial Europe even if precolonial institutions of higher learning have historically existed in places like Morocco, Timbuktu, Egypt and India.

Arguably, it is precisely this well-documented relationship between the institutions of knowledge production in Europe and its colonial endeavours, outlined by Edward Said among others, that makes the question of decolonisation not only relevant but vital to the metropolitan university. Any institution in the business of gathering, producing and disseminating knowledge is called upon to understand how it has constituted itself as well as the materials and methodologies it works with. Precisely because of their location, 'Western' universities can also lead the increasingly vital task of historical self-understanding in the constituent polities and societies of the geopolitical 'West', itself a creation of the colonial project and its imaginative geography. As Mamdani notes, the project of comparing the European and non-European worlds, indeed the task of comparison itself, exercised many eighteenth and nineteenth century minds. If, as Hamid Dabashi, V.Y. Mudimbe and others have observed, the European imperial endeavour 'tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs', that was also a project of self-constitution. Neither Europe nor whiteness as we now experience them 'existed as such in 1492', Michel-Rolph Trouillot notes. If the 'West was created somewhere at the beginning of the sixteenth century' as the 'rulers and merchants of Western Christendom' set out 'to conquer Europe and the rest of the world, then the category of the 'Western' is 'unthinkable' without imperialist power and plunder. It is in the process of going into the world 'beyond' that 'Europe' itself came into being. European colonial projects explain so much in the postcolonial world - how could they not explain Europe to itself?

'Decolonisation' in the European context involves, then, Europe, first, reckoning with its own self-constitution in the crucible of empire and secondly, engaging with the legacies and afterlives of colonialism both 'within' and 'without' its shifting (and colonial) borders which ebb and flow in the Mediterranean and North seas. We might also work with Dabashi's sense here of Europe's 'extended shadow' which includes those national polities - such as the United States - that affiliate, contentiously, to 'Europe' as a progenitor: 'Europe is the mother of the other towering metaphor of our time called "the West"'. Ngũgĩ suggested with regard to 'decolonising the mind' in Africa that it involved 'the search for a liberating perspective within which to see ourselves clearly in relationship to ourselves and to other selves in the universe'. If for him cultural decolonisation begins at home (first in Kenya, going on to wider Africa) as the colonised recentred their own undermined, but varied, cultural resources, then perhaps 'Europe's' engagement with decolonisation must begin in the other direction, i.e. with the world, as it undertakes an unflinchingly truthful engagement with the pivotal role of empire and colonialism in its own making. This would encompass not just 'Europe's' own forays into and influence upon the world, a staple of imperial history, but a sustained study of how those forays and the world itself - made 'Europe' and, certainly, the 'West'. It is to say with Fanon that 'Europe is literally the creation of the Third World' in material terms, its wealth made from labour, resources and profits, and to offer a reckoning; it is also to think about how Europe's cultural and intellectual riches also cannot be sutured from its encounters with that world. Europe's understanding of itself is inseparable from its material and discursive 'worldmaking' or how it interpreted and impacted the globe. We know about 'Third World Debt'. What about the debts accrued by the 'First World' in making itself this entity? What is the relationship between the two debts? Sartre, prefacing Fanon, would elaborate, addressing his fellow Europeans - denizens of a 'fat, pale continent' - to take cognisance of the material underpinnings of their self-fashioning: 'Crammed with riches, Europe accorded the human status de jure to its inhabitants. With us, to be a man is to be an accomplice of colonialism, since all of us without exception have profited by colonial exploitation'. 'Decolonisation' in the former metropole necessarily entails a full reckoning with the economics of empire, showing how institutions, including universities, in Britain and Europe have benefited from labour, profits and commodities from the colonised world. This has begun to happen in a small way with some British universities undertaking research into how they have benefitted from slavery, for example, but even such modest endeavours have become flashpoints for controversy. A properly 'decolonising' reckoning would be far more wide-ranging and reparative.

A concomitant task for intellectual decolonisation is to take cognisance of the damage done to the cultural and epistemological resources of colonised regions through the imperial enterprise. Decolonisation in the university context should not be conceived of as a sop to ethnic minorities or a concession to pluralism but as fundamentally reparative of the institution and its constituent fields of inquiry. As several scholars have noted, it entails re-examining the definition of knowledge itself - including what and how we come to know - in very fundamental ways. 'Europe' in its colonial incarnation laid sole claim to sole epistemological authority; legitimate knowledge could only emerge from within its remit. The 'universal' was embodied by Europe leading the way, a horizon of aspiration for others whose own self-assertion could only be understood as parochial. It is, of course, a rare culture, whether European or non-European, that develops knowledge in a vacuum, independent of influence and engagement with others. Much like language, knowledge emerges through a series of intersecting ideas flowing in multiple directions. Rather than delink histories and cultures, our task is to identify these engagements and influences.

It is worth saying that decolonisation in universities, including though not only in the West, remains a difficult but nonetheless modest endeavour especially absent other more far-reaching changes in society and economy. It is not a panacea, and certainly not a substitute for material reparations, whether those be for land dispossession or slavery, nor an outlet for what is sometimes referred to, disparagingly, as 'postcolonial guilt'. It is not a soothing process and it can only always be process, an ongoing interrogation, not a finite or final state (pun intended). That is not in itself a reason to disparage or avoid the endeavour even as it is salutary to bear in mind the sheer global and historical heft of a concept like 'decolonisation'. Its meanings shift with historical context and there is no one-size-fits-all formula, no laundry list of action points for universities to table. Decolonisation in relation to cultural and intellectual work is best posed as a series of questions to address, questions which vary significantly between contexts, say Humboldt and Cape Town Universities, or an ancient English institution with long historic ties to the British empire, and a city university with a large number of black and Asian students from working-class backgrounds. Posing the right questions for each context is itself part of the work of intellectual decolonisation.

What is 'decolonisation'?

In its most skeletal form, 'decolonisation' is the process which signifies the end of rule by a foreign power and the recuperation and/or formation of an 'independent' entity, usually a nation-state, through a process often referred to as a 'transfer of power'. Inasmuch as the second half of the twentieth century saw the substantial (though not complete) withdrawal of the last of the major European powers from colonial possessions in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, bringing to a near close the great age of European invasion and colonisation that could be said to have begun in 1492, 'decolonisation' qua transfer of power can be said to have commenced in the formal sense. (To whom was power transferred though? That question exercised the likes of Fanon and must inflect our considerations of decolonisation). In actuality, the terrain of decolonisation was a constitutively contested, even fractious one in which competing visions of post-colonial entities jostled for a hearing and for primacy. Despite the specific state-forms, vested interests and (frequently elite) actors that may have won the day in polities as distinct as India and Ghana, the contest over the meanings of decolonisation continues to play itself out variously across post-colonial (meaning, after the transfer of power) terrain whether in the form of bitter fights over borders and citizenship in former colonies, or migration and asylum in the former imperial metropole. In the case of settler colonies such as the United States, Canada or Australia, quite apart from disagreements over the meanings and parameters of decolonisation, a whole different set of questions arises as to which communities actually benefit from the formal end of colonial rule and which continue to endure it within the boundaries of formally independent sovereign nation-states.

A term which gained wider usage in the 1830s in the specific context of French military retreat from Algeria, 'decolonisation' has travelled extensively to cover a spectrum of historical processes from the military withdrawal of occupying powers to the 'transfer of power', nation-building and radical economic reforms. Picked up from colonial discourse in the mid twentieth century by the literature of anticolonialism - that is, of resistance to imperial rule - it came to describe, particularly in the later work of Frantz Fanon, not just the overthrow of colonialism and imperialism but a radically transformed future for denizens of both colony and metropole. Stuart Ward suggests that this terminological appropriation entailed a 'radical reordering of its ideological content and rhetorical slant' which turned the table on European accounts of imperial decline. This is certainly true, and it is worth adding that this appropriation was not just a familiar case of 'the empire speaking back' whereby ideas taken from Europe - such as the concept of the nation-state or parliamentary democracy - were repurposed against it. In addition to launching what Ward terms a 'calculated assault' on gradualist and reformist imperial definitions of the term, Fanon and others invested upon it the experience and understanding of ongoing struggles against the combine of colonialism, capitalism and racism. Not only was decolonisation a potentially 'violent process' (as any undoing of a constitutively violent colonial order was bound to be), but it was one with an intellectual and political content that was not reducible to one set of elites handing the levers of state to another. As is evident from Fanon's own work, in this rendition of decolonisation, the targets of critique were often as much both native tyrannies and nationalist elites as they were colonial rulers, just as much indigenous capitalism as foreign firms; the collaboration between these parties was also of relevance. Wider considerations of 'decolonisation' today are obliged to keep this in mind.

Although the term 'decolonisation' found its way to policy documents and political debates in the Anglosphere by the middle of the twentieth century, both its initial and much of its subsequent theorisation has largely taken place in academic contexts, specifically in Britain and Europe, although it found a new life - and set of meanings - in the work of anticolonial writers like Fanon. As Ward notes in a valuable essay on its European spatial provenance, in the 1932 theorisation of the German Jewish economist, Moritz Bonn, then based at the London School of Economics, 'decolonisation' was a term equivalent to the counter-colonisation or 'gegenkolonisation', a concept which he had developed to describe opposition in Germany to the country's bitter and punitive post-Versailles experience. Over time Bonn would drop this term in favour of 'decolonisation,' writing accurately in 1938, despite any lack of references to ongoing anticolonial resistance movements: 'A decolonization movement is sweeping over the continents. The age of empire-breaking is following an age of empire-making'. Bonn's idea was picked up by the likes of the historian, EH Carr, who saw nationalism as the motive-force for 'an age of "decolonisation"' (Ward, pp.240, 245) understood largely as the handing over of the reigns of state from British Crown to, in almost all cases, nationalist leaders.

The sheer range of contending historical accounts of the formal end of empire as well as a vast and variegated literature of anticolonialism threatens to overwhelm 'decolonisation's' current academic currency as shorthand for reforms. For relatively privileged academic institutions located in the geopolitical West to claim to want to 'decolonise' might seem like over-reach at best and bad faith at worst, an aspiration better abandoned for fear of self-parody. Yet, without overlooking the manifest constraints of 'decolonise' exercises in late capitalist societies, it is important to not repudiate the possibilities inherent in bringing questions of decolonisation to universities in the West not least because it reminds us that the West too, perhaps even especially, needs to reckon with the shaping force of the imperial centuries. The university cannot be decolonised independently of society and economy, but it can be a site where these questions are frontally addressed towards wider change, not least in habits of mind. If we take the production of knowledge seriously as a vital contributor to systemic transformation, then it would be equally perverse, indeed, harmful to leave the university out of endeavours to 'decolonise'. It may well be possible to practice a contrapuntal engagement with 'decolonisation' somewhere between impossible dream and tick-box exercise.

Guilt, innocence and the matter of metaphor

In an influential and important piece, 'Decolonization is Not a Metaphor', Eve Tuck and K.W. Yang have offered a series of clear-sighted observations on the academic uses to which the term has been put. The essay examines what it describes as 'moves to white innocence' in academic discourse and articulates some important insights for discussions of 'decolonisation' in metropolitan academic contexts. The authors' first point is that the language of decolonisation has been far too easily adopted into the language of education and the social sciences, and too easily conflated with projects of social justice in general 'with no regard for how decolonization wants something other than those forms of justice'. The language of 'decolonizing schools' or 'decolonizing thinking', they argue, is a form of appropriation which turns it into a metaphor: 'Decolonization is a not a swappable term for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools' (p.3). The context for their argument is the settler colonial nation, specifically in North America, where, Tuck and Yang contend, talk about decolonisation turns into easy, indeed facile, moves towards reconciliation, gliding over very deep fissures. They wish to remind their reader that decolonisation is, in fact, difficult, demanding and, most importantly, material in its implications. In the context of setter colonialism, it is fundamentally about relationships to land. Settlement as colonisation 'inters' existing epistemological, ontological, and cosmological relationships to land, renders them 'savage', in favour of a structure in which 'land is remade into property' and human relationship to land, one of 'ownership'. This is a process in which indigenous peoples - and their very different relationship to the land - are erased. Tuck and Yang are justifiably concerned that the language of decolonising minds is in danger of enacting a second erasure in which the land question is elided in favour of the 'cultivation of critical consciousness', allowing it to 'stand in for the more uncomfortable task of relinquishing stolen land' (p.19). Until this question is settled, the task of developing a critical consciousness simply fails to translate into materially significant decolonising action.

Tuck and Yang's unyielding essay is a necessary corrective to versions of decolonisation that content themselves with the discursive and the cultural. It reminds an academy too easily disposed to rely on culture, that colonisation was lethally material in aim and purview, dispossessing, extracting, enslaving and accumulating at the barrel of a gun and that its afterlife (including its continuation by other means) remains consequential in material terms. Decolonisation is rendered a meaningless piety without an extensive enactment of material reparations - indeed restitution - to people, communities, and countries that still struggle with the consequences of very material losses. In the case of settler colonialism, the repatriation of land, and not just in symbolic ways, is a sine qua non of decolonisation. Decolonisation is, above all, a difficult process and no academic engagement with it should be soothing or, worse, imagine itself adequately reparative. To bolster their point, Tuck and Yang underscore Fanon's observation that 'no phraseology can be a substitute for reality' (p.2) and that decolonisation is a process which is profoundly unsettling (pun intended). In educational contexts where there is an unmistakeably redemptive aspiration to efforts around diversifying the curriculum or anti-racist initiatives, theirs is a salutary reminder that decolonisation cannot take place just in the classroom, and that a singular focus on 'decolonising the mind' runs the risk of standing in for decolonisation itself.

A revolutionary anticolonial thinker, Fanon - to whose authority Tuck and Yang repeatedly appeal - was clear that decolonisation required the complete annihilation of the colonial order. This seems to be the reason Tuck and Yang feel able to enlist him to the cause of an 'ethic of incommensurability' which they equate to 'an acknowledgement that decolonization will require a change in the order of the world' (p.31). It is, however, is a dubious interpretation of Fanon who indeed spoke clearly of decolonisation as revolutionary reordering but not, in the end, of incommensurability, being far too invested in dialectics to have done so. In a dialectical frame, struggles for human and civil rights cannot be conflated with decolonisation but that does not make them incommensurable. Tuck's and Yang's definition of anticolonial critique as '[celebrating] empowered postcolonial subjects who seize denied privileges from the metropole' (p.19) is misleading. For Fanon, it is, in fact, in the context of settler-colonialism that 'the native never ceases to dream of putting himself in the place of the settler ... of substituting himself for the settler'. The use of the loaded word 'privileges' to describe diverse anticolonial aspirations is odd, given Tuck's and Yang's own acknowledgement of 'stolen resources' (when arguing that Asian migrants to former settler colonies are 'following the trail' of that which has been stolen from the colonies). The anticolonial project manifests in the present, they argue somewhat tendentiously, in 'the postcolonial pursuit of resources' which is a 'fundamentally anthropocentric model' since 'land, water, air, animals, and plants are never able to become postcolonial; they remain objects to be exploited by the empowered postcolonial subject' (p.19). We are not told which anti - or post-colonial projects might be quite so simplistically formulated; the critique of bourgeois nationalism-as-capitalism (and as seeking simply to take over colonial advantages) is as old as anticolonialism itself. Indeed, even M.K. Gandhi's highly canonical brand of anticolonial nationalism repudiated both the extraction of resources in the name of modernity and the replacement of white tyranny by brown tyranny. Equally, Fanon's vision of decolonisation was ineluctably modernist, even developmentalist, envisioning the democratic and public command of resources towards industrialisation. The demand for equal rights by migrants (and presumably, descendants of slaves) in white settler societies is certainly at risk of an 'investment in settler colonialism' (p.18) but it can hardly stand in for the entirety of anticolonialism. It is also improbable that ethnic minorities and migrants in settler societies foreswearing their right to equality would further the cause of decolonisation in any way. Those descended from African slaves in North American settler colonies also experience high levels of disenfranchisement in white-majority settler societies; they are as much legatee-victims of foundational crimes in these national polities as those descended from indigenous inhabitants.

Beyond the salutary act of reminding immigrants of colour to white settler societies that uncritical discourses of ethnic minority empowerment participate willy-nilly in the original settler act of dispossession, Tuck and Yang are culpable of what they themselves call 'a vague equating of colonialisms' (p.19). This militates against their own correct observation that in discussing colonialism, the particularities of context matter. Their understanding of the challenges posed by decolonisation is most acute in relation to the North American context of white settler colonies which are also major immigrant destinations; it falters when taken as a generalisable formula for decolonisation. In insisting that 'an anticolonial critique is not the same as a decolonizing framework', Tuck and Yang also elide vast swathes of the history and theory of decolonisation globally which are illegible without an understanding of, precisely, anticolonialism. Certainly, for Fanon, anticolonialism and decolonisation were profoundly connected. If decolonisation is to be thought through in all its particularities, as Tuck and Yang rightly insist, then it is vital not to generalise either decolonisation or anticolonialism and not to overlook the generative relationship between the two. Far from valorising incommensurability, many great theorists of decolonisation have called, precisely, for a making commensurable of human lives globally, 'a humanism made to the measure of the world', in Aimé Césaire's resonant phrase. We shall return to this point.

Whatever happened to anticolonialism?

Contra Tuck and Yang, a serious engagement with 'decolonisation' today requires us precisely to think through the resonances of anticolonialism, the conceptual and historical, though not etymological, source of projects of decolonisation. Between colonialism and decolonisation, comes the anticolonial. If colonialism might be broadly understood - in all its variety - as a project of expansionist racialised capitalism (there is no context to which this definition would not be applicable in some way) - then anticolonialism emerges as the different kinds of resistance to this project. The forms such resistance took naturally varied according to historical exigencies and they cannot be contained under the rubric of movements for national independence or sovereignty. Nationalism may have drawn on the energies released by anticolonialism but these were never restricted to nationalism. Anticolonial activity ranged from non-violent resistance to armed struggle, and from strikes, sabotage, boycotts, demonstrations and civil disobedience to pitched battles, guerrilla warfare, military mutinies and bloody insurrections. In engaging with decolonisation today, we do not necessarily seek to replicate or imitate such anticolonial moments or imagine the imperatives of our various times and places to be identical to those, even as many remain strikingly relevant. Instead, we develop an understanding of what was at stake in the colonial encounter, what made it so globally consequential, and what kinds of aspirations those who resisted empire had. A cursory glance at the kinds of issues that preoccupied anticolonial movements gives us a sense of their resonances for the present: from land claims and land use to working conditions, labour rights, trading terms, market regulation, agricultural policies, anti-racism, educational practices, disarmament, women's rights, resource management and ecological protections. Anticolonialism is the missing term, a pivotal absence, in academic discussions of decolonisation today. Reframing discussions of decolonisation in the light of anticolonial thought - as the theory and practice of anticolonialism rather than as a mere theoretical variant of the postcolonial - gives grounding and historical heft to them. It also enables a discussion of decolonisation as necessarily dialogical, and as a process with a horizon of aspiration. In this regard, the posing of questions is as important as finding answers.

Anticolonialism also has a metropolitan life and history which is often forgotten. I have suggested elsewhere that the many great movements of resistance across the colonial centuries and across geographical contexts, had a determinate effect on British dissident thought and progressive campaigning within Britain on the question of colonialism from the nineteenth century on. Campaigners for ending British rule in the colonies repeatedly drew on anticolonial ideas in order to make their case, frequently arguing that the ordinary people of Britain and the colonised had much in common, including exploitation at the hands of those who profited from empire. In discussions of decolonisation in the British or even the Western university more generally, there may be something to be gleaned from earlier instances of a process I termed 'reverse tutelage' in which it was white metropolitan figures who found themselves learning from rebellion and insurgency in the colonies and from black and Asian anticolonial thinkers. Decolonisation in Western academe might broadly be conceived of as a process of learning from anticolonialism - and the contexts in which it emerged - just as previous generations of dissidents in metropolitan contexts undertook to do in developing their own engagements with empire. Indeed, it might be argued that no call to 'decolonise' can really be fleshed out meaningfully without reference to the great movements of resistance, rebellion and opposition to empire which played a key role in initiating decolonisation (even if a substantial chunk of imperial history has been invested in minimising this or denying it to be the case.

Decolonisation is not a metaphor for social justice, but social justice is integral to decolonisation. This is of particular importance when we reflect not only on the persistence of the colonial presence in settler colonies but also the 'recolonisation' of postcolonial nations by native tyrannies, both old and new, as well as global capitalism, a possibility anticipated by Fanon, among others. Indeed, 'social justice' was very much the stuff of common cause forged by dissidents and oppositional figures across racial and geographical lines. This is not to say that sovereignty and material questions of land possession and restitution are not relevant or must be rendered purely symbolic but that they are precisely not de facto incommensurate with other forms of social justice. Questions of reparations for slavery - as posed by Caricom, the Caribbean Reparations Commission, for instance - have been rightly tied up to broader questions of redistributive social justice and a reparative education which can address both illiteracy as well as cultural losses. There is also a clear acknowledgement here that the genocidal cleansing of indigenous people, and a call for survivors' material conditions, including landlessness, must be addressed.

Thought about as the inheritor of a rich legacy of anticolonial thought and action, decolonisation emerges as both multifaceted and historically specific, inflected for context and particularity, while necessarily universal in its aspirations to equality. The land question was, of course, central to anticolonial struggles in settler colonies from South Africa and New Zealand to East Africa and North America. So too were workers' rights - many anticolonial struggles took the form of labour unrest, such as those which famously rocked the West Indies in the 1930s and India in the 1920s. Jamaica's 'Morant Bay Rebellion' in 1865 was about both land use and the right to withdraw black labour from plantation economies, indeed to provide a whole new vision of political economy. Self-reliance was key both to that rebellion and to the Swadeshi movement in British India in the early 1900s; in later years, 'self-determination' would become a central plank of anticolonial struggles, drawing on both Vladimir Lenin's and Woodrow Wilson's versions of the idea. Anti-racism and claims to equality across racial and religious lines was manifest in much anticolonial resistance as was, frequently, the right to cultural and religious freedoms and other civil liberties. Decolonisation, while not a metaphor, can certainly be a metonym, situated at the heart of and signifying a range of interlinked emancipatory projects that are, in fact, commensurable without flattening. Decolonisation is meaningless without a set of principles - anticolonialism - that enables it to emerge as a practice that is sensitive to the present and to context while yet steeped in historical awareness. Where it might make the land question central in Canada, the United States, Australia and Israel-Palestine, for instance, it would foreground questions of resource extraction (past and ongoing) in swathes of Africa and the exploitation of sweated labour a focal point in relation to, say, Bangladesh, Vietnam or Haiti. It cannot be emphasised enough that decolonisation is a fundamentally material process, requiring radical structural changes, including wide-ranging economic redistribution, not just between nation-states but within them.

The anticolonial university?

Where then does so modest an entity as the university, especially in the former metropole, enter this daunting picture? Can it do more than tinker with its curriculum and broaden its hiring practices? Caught up in the structures of late capitalism, increasingly dependent in its public as well as private versions, on corporate funding and private philanthropy, how can the contemporary university hope to engage with anything resembling 'decolonisation'? Even where there is a degree of (declining) state funding, as in Britain, the imperatives of job 'markets' run by corporate entities and the related concerns of students taking on lifelong debt burdens mean that the university cannot be insulated from the workings of capitalism. Links between universities and corporations have become familiar across the industrialised world, and these also put pressure on research agendas even as the higher education sector becomes increasingly vulnerable to privatisation. Without averting our gaze from these realities, we could note with Chandra Talpade Mohanty that at least in the present, universities are still that 'contradictory space where knowledges are colonized but also contested'. Across the globe, many still function as 'one of the few remaining spaces in a rapidly privatized world that offers some semblance of a public area for dialogue, engagement, and visioning of democracy and justice'. In Britain and beyond, universities have been sites for youth organising not just on issues to do with democratic access to higher education (including public funding and the abolition of fees) but also for racial and climate justice, and against militarism. Two recent domestic successes after protracted student campaigns in Britain include ending the outsourcing of cleaner contracts at the University of London and ensuring divestment from fossil fuels at the University of Cambridge. Such work is essential to the project of decolonisation and suggests that there is still something to be said for universities as sites where intellectual and transformative work can intersect.

What if we conceptualised an anticolonial university that pushed towards the horizon of decolonisation rather than a 'decolonised' one? Anticolonialism may be defined in this specific context of intellectual labour and knowledge generation as the practice of thought and action towards the goals of decolonisation. With the prefix signifying the senses of 'disputing' and 'contradicting' colonialism, 'anti'-colonial practice invokes a critical and radical spirit of enquiry and action rather than a singular state to be feasibly arrived at within the modest - and inevitably compromised - parameters of the university. Anticolonialism harnesses oppositional and interrogative energies, not only enabling contestations and challenges but also the imagining and elaboration of alternatives that are not 'returns' to prior states. For the present, the university, even in former colonial centres, remains a site where such contestations and re-visioning are not only possible, but given depth and heft through research, teaching and learning. From the late fifteenth-century onwards, the anticolonial spirit animated struggles against colonialism, racial capitalism and endemic oppressions across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. It also shaped dissent, opposition and criticism on imperial questions within imperial centres in Britain and Europe. The anticolonial university makes no claims to being a singular site of decolonisation and does not treat education as a metaphor for a process of much greater reach and heft. Rather, it commits to recognising the centrality of European colonialism in shaping the globe as we experience it today; to assessing its consequences for communities and cultures; to interrogating and dismantling harmful mythologies and falsehoods on which the colonial project relied as well as those that underpin its afterlife today; and to repairing the great gaps in our knowledge and understanding that have emerged consequently. This is work that is necessarily critical and interrogative while also, as such, reparative, both in the sense of fleshing out that which is partial, and of transforming harmful conditions. The structures of the university itself, of course, are not exempt from criticism, repair and transformation.

The antinomies of reparation

What does decolonisation want? In his classic polemic, Discourse on Colonialism, originally published in the French, Aimé Césaire's definition of a paradigmatic colonialism invokes 'societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out'. Césaire's poignant emphasis on 'possibilities' is useful for our engagement with decolonisation where one driving question is this: what cultural and social potential might have come to fruition had the European empires not so decisively and brutally changed the shape of the world into what it is today? What other futures might have emerged? These questions are not about a recuperation of lost worlds (in any case impossible), but speak to other trajectories, ways of existing and relating that have been either mutilated or entirely obscured by the triumphalism of racialized capitalism, colonialism's primary purpose and most entrenched legacy. This task of reconstructing lost trajectories - and recovering valuable ideas, insights, and knowledge - is one that anticolonial inquiry in the university is well-suited to undertaking. Since this must be a critical process that eschews the romanticisation familiar from colonial discourse, how do we hold in the same frame, Césaire's 'systematic defense of the non-European civilizations', and his insistence that there is no call here for 'a return of any kind'?

They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few.

They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist.

They were democratic societies, always.

They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies. (p.44)

Despite his protestations - he insists he is no 'prophet of the return to the pre-European past' - we are entitled to ask whether Césaire is culpable of positing a lost utopia against all the evidence of history. Why does he dare his reader to take him hostage to patently unprovable, indeed, disprovable, assertions? In part he is positing this excess against the mighty falsehoods of colonialism; against the despoliation, ruination, and expropriation of that which deems itself 'civilization', Césaire sets up the precolonial as an imaginative counterweight to the colonial, speculating on the potential of societies before they were colonised, proletarianised and 'thingified'. Societies before colonialism are, by definition, societies before capitalism and in that capacity, contain resources for alternatives: the ante carries within it the potential of the anti.

That Césaire is not suggesting a simple-minded 'recuperation' of a romanticised past is evident from two crucial points that I think we need to pay particular attention to in our own considerations of what decolonising might mean today. Far from being an antidote to precolonial ills, colonialism sets up a system of abuses and, moreover, in doing so, takes the help of those who are already oppressors in pre-colonial societies: 'colonialist Europe has grafted modern abuse onto ancient injustice, hateful racism onto old inequality' (p.45). The 'old tyrants', Césaire notes damningly, got on very well with the new ones', having set up between them a process which was fundamental to colonialism, 'a circuit of mutual services and complicity'. This collaboration, of course, was also at the predicted heart of what came to be called neo-colonialism and it is explanatory of many present-day geopolitical realities. Decolonisation now, as then, necessarily involves identifying these complicities and putting pressure on old tyrannies in postcolonial vessels covering themselves in the garb of nationalism, indigeneity and decolonisation. To give one salient example: Hindu ethnonationalism in present-day India, or 'Hindutva', routinely presents itself as a 'decolonial' force, returning India to an idyllic Hindu state before colonial disruption while acting as colonial force upon racialised others from Muslims and Dalits to adivasis (first peoples) and Kashmiris. Decolonising requires that we remain vigilant about its misuse as an alibi for renewed subjugation. Césaire notes correctly that is not the anticolonialist who desires a simple return to a precolonial past, but colonialism itself which 'has actually tended to prolong artificially the survival of local pasts in their most pernicious aspects'. This means a 'return' to any state of what existed before colonialism, stripping away the colonial to achieve a recuperation of the precolonial (or even the 'decolonial') and to segregate cultures and knowledges is a self-defeating project.

It is also worth interrogating the temptation to advocate for a seemingly expansive but potentially misleading model of equal and separate 'alternative' or 'plural' knowledges. The critic and translator, A.K Ramanujan makes this point in a different context:

No culture is immune to other cultures. No idea, invention, or technological device, whether in art, society, or science, is made by a single person or produced by a single sealed-off culture. The printing press, gunpowder, the alphabet, not to speak of stories or poems or languages them- selves - not one of these is the unaided invention or property of a single person or culture, though we often choose to think so. Each is a result of long and continuous interplays, cross-cultural exchanges and transformations.

Where the global influence of the West in knowledge production is widely taken as given, Ramanujan's comments point to the need to acknowledge reverse influence from 'so-called non-Western regions and their cultures'. As Edward Said noted trenchantly, what is most important about cultures is 'not their essence or purity, but their combinations and diversity, their countercurrents, the way they have had of conducting a compelling dialogue with other civilizations'. Part of the work of decolonisation is to excavate these lines of influence and dialogue, often obscured by cultural triumphalism or exceptionalism. This would mean, for instance, not repudiating all ideas marked as 'European' or even 'Enlightenment' but treating them as 'texts that need a new deciphering within a much wider context than has hitherto been given them' (p.55). Is all that is claimed for Europe really strictly 'European'? Should we not interrogate this claim of ownership itself? Césaire writes that 'the great good fortune of Europe was to have been a crossroads' and therefore 'the receptacle of all philosophies, the meeting place of all sentiments'. What do they know of Europe, then, who only Europe know?

The insight that 'Europe cannot be Europe without non-Europe' (Dabashi, p. 26) has particular resonances for the primary task of the university in the metropole which is the expansion and dissemination of knowledge. Intellectual decolonisation in this context requires at least four preliminary undertakings:

1. Acknowledging that much of what we take for granted - methodologies, practices, disciplines - in university contexts in the West and beyond are still structured by the imperatives of the European imperial enterprise (also racial capitalism) and its attendant activities of extraction and ownership. The university was not, and is not, separable from endeavours of 'discovery' and control.

2. Acknowledging the loss, mutilation and marginalisation of bodies of knowledge and ideas as 'Europe' became (and, in many ways, remains) the primary arbiter of what was worth knowing and how it is known.

3. Excavating and recognising lines of influence that run from 'non-Europe' to 'Europe'. This includes undoing what Trouillot calls 'bundles of silences' such that the history of the West is 'retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world'.

4. Opening pathways to dialogue - and mutually transformative engagement - between different cultures, traditions, and approaches to knowledge, bearing in mind structural disadvantages and historic power differentials. We might even call this process 'relinking'.

In relation to the last point and in the face of the temptation to simply pluralise as a 'decolonial' endeavour, it is worth saying, along with both Fanon and Césaire, that 'exchange is oxygen' and that systems and civilisations which withdraw into themselves atrophy. Universities cannot decolonise by just hosting a relativised series of culturally specific, separate and potentially incommensurable 'knowledge systems' or epistemes. To do so is easy but it is to overlook fundamentally porous nature of knowledge which everywhere relies on the flow of ideas and insights. For Fanon, the violence of colonisation arrested the natural dynamic of cultures which retreated into custom - 'a deterioration of culture' rather than what Said called 'a continuous process of self-understanding and self-realization' (p.26).

While the focus remains on the consequential afterlife of various European imperial projects given the continuing world-making force of their twin legacies of capitalism and racism, discussions of decolonisation cannot exclude the question of other legacies and structures of oppression. Césaire, as we have already seen, is clear on the ways in which European colonisers collaborated with domestic tyrants. Here it is worth noting that the use of epistemology and authority as a weapon of subjugation is not restricted to Europe's colonial project: in the case of India, for instance, Brahminism's domination was based on claims to epistemic authority, a fact which colonial rule made use of rather than resorting to 'epistemicide'. Feudalism and the structures of regional and community power also did not disappear entirely with the advent of either colonialism or modernity but mutated to take account of and work with the new dispensations - French, Portuguese, and British colonialism on the subcontinent. This means that decolonisation cannot be simply presented as a cultural face-off between two nations or civilisations but has to, precisely, encompass wider social transformation in both former colony and metropole.

This necessity is addressed explicitly in Fanon's powerful and controversial essay, 'Concerning Violence', often read a principally a justification for the use of violence in anticolonial struggles. In fact, this first essay in his posthumously published collection, The Wretched of the Earth, is an unsparing exposition of the relationship between anticolonialism and decolonisation, and the multiple compromises and betrayals that inhere in both colonial and nationalist visions of what happens after 'independence', or the period when decolonisation is meant to take place. Unfulfilled merely by 'the rise of a new nation', decolonisation ought to entail 'a whole social structure being changed from the bottom up'. Since it is 'a complete calling into question of the colonial system', all those caught up in its purview, whether native or settler, coloniser or colonised, are fundamentally transformed: 'Decolonization is the creation of new men' (pp.36-7). This is important because Fanon identifies incommensurability, as a feature of the colonial condition rather than the postcolonial one. It is under colonialism that the zone of the native is sharply separated from that of the settler, 'opposed, but not in the service of a higher unity', following the 'principle of reciprocal exclusivity'.

For all that he is severely uncompromising about the revolutionary anticolonial imperative to turn the colonial world upside down, Fanon was always attuned to tensions and counterpoints, and to the living necessity of the dialectical. The complete but unfortunate repudiation of anything associated with Europe (a temptation in certain variants of decolonisation) is explained by the Manicheanism that colonialism itself puts into place.

The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity ... On the logical plain, the Manicheism of the settler produces a Manicheanism of the native. (p.61)

Therefore, in the period of decolonisation the very mention of Western culture elicits a violently aversive reaction as 'the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up' (p.43): 'The native replies to the living lie of the colonial situation by an equal falsehood' (p.50). And so, even as he decries the extent to which the native intellectual is in hock to Western cultural supremacism, Fanon points to a contrapuntal danger, 'that of becoming the uncritical mouthpiece of the masses; he becomes a kind of yes-man who nods assent at every word coming from the people, which he interprets as considered judgements' (p.49). Decolonisation is the annihilation of colonialism but it cannot be an uncritical embrace of all that is 'native'; indeed both the 'settler' and the 'native' are subject categories that need to be dismantled.

Fanon's severe critique of the contortions of native intellectuals - a running theme through The Wretched of the Earth - and their complicity in the cosy arrangements made around a 'green baize table' whereby the coloniser withdraws without ceding much - is a critique that is worth bearing in mind in the context of academia's interpretation of 'decolonisation'. At the same time, a complete refusal to engage with other cultures and influences, even the erstwhile coloniser's, is, ironically, a consequence of colonialism itself:

The appearance of the settler has meant in the terms of syncretism the death of the aboriginal society, cultural lethargy, and the petrification of individuals ... By its very structure, colonialism is separatist and regionalist. Colonialism does not simply state the existence of tribes; it also reinforces and separates them. (pp.93-4)

In another essay, 'Medicine and Colonialism', included in A Dying Colonialism, the France-trained medic would be more explicit about the 'tragic lie' imposed by the colonial situation, primarily the asphyxiation of lines of contact and communication that allow cultures to engage dialectically. In the context of colonisation, the colonised are reluctant to 'qualify opposition' to the European presence because of the Manichean nature of the colonial condition, and the way in which every qualification is used to justify and perpetuate colonialism. The rejection of Europe - and modernity in its entirety because of its association with the Europe - therefore becomes absolute in ways that rebound harmfully on the native as, in an instance close to Fanon's heart, with the absolute rejection of 'Western' medicine because of the ways in which it is tied up with colonial oppression. It is only after colonialism ends, that cultural contact and reciprocal learning can take place as it should, not as the 'successful integration' sought by the coloniser, but as a vital social dynamic. It is perhaps in this spirit that Fanon's sometimes convoluted and digressive reflections on decolonisation in 'Concerning Violence' end not on a note of incommensurability but reparation and reconstitution. It is no less radical in envisioning and urging engagement:

The fundamental duel which seemed to be that between colonialism and anticolonialism, and indeed between capitalism and socialism, is already losing some of its importance. What counts today, the question which is looming on the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it. (p.98)

Decolonisation, the act of 'rehabilitating' the world will be carried out 'with the indispensable help of the European peoples' (p.106).

A difficult practice

Thinking through the possibility (or otherwise) of 'decolonisation' in the metropolitan university involves a set of challenges. The first is to think about the constitution of 'Europe' in the crucible of its imperial projects which necessarily involves reckoning with the ways in which the 'well-being and the progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races' (Fanon, p.96). The second is to undertake an intellectual audit of what is often presented as 'European' or 'Western' knowledge and to assess the multiple lines of influence in its making. A related task is to assess what valuable insights and perspectives have been occluded or marginalised by dominant disciplinary formations in universities. Taking cognisance of obscured or overlooked insights that emerge from a variety of sites, decolonisation is not a matter of relativising these alongside received knowledge but of putting them in dialogue. The substantial challenge here is to identify and undo the ways in which forms of knowledge have been undermined, marginalised, dismissed or appropriated without segregating epistemological resources into a series of alternatives in the name of epistemic diversity. As Fanon notes, colonialism is structurally 'separatist and regionalist', reinforcing borders. In academic terms, the task is to undo these just as much as undoing political ones is part of the wider project of decolonisation. It is equally necessary to rescue that which has been levelled or rendered invisible by the homogenising sweep of the colonial without entrenching the radical 'othering' that was also constitutive of colonial typologies.

'Ideas run, like rivers, from the south to the north and are transformed into tributaries in major waves of thought', writes Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Cusincanqui proposes, instead of a 'geopolitics of knowledge', a 'political economy of knowledge', one which takes into account the economic and material mechanisms behind discourses, which render Western, North American universities in particular, able to certify and hierarchise intellectual authority while appropriating and repackaging ideas sourced from the erstwhile periphery. This includes discourses of decolonisation which are selectively re-presented, 'regurgitated and jumbled' as part of a 'limited and illusory discussion regarding modernity and decolonization' (p.104). While her target is specifically the 'decolonial' school of thought now most associated with Walter Mignolo and his associates, Cusicanqui's wider point speaks to the need for a profound rehaul of intellectual hierarchies in which geopolitical global South and West, emerge as interlocutors in the production knowledge and 'have discussions as equals'. Rather than incommensurability, Cusicanqui envisions for mestizos and Indians in Bolivia 'legitimate modes of coexistence based in reciprocity, redistribution, and authority as a service' (p.106). Her vision for decolonisation in Bolivia allows for both drawing on existing cultural resources and admitting 'new forms of community and mixed identities or ch'ixi ',; it looks forward to 'a creative dialogue in a process of exchanging knowledges, aesthetics, and ethics'. In this scenario, where non-colonizing South-South dialogues are also important, modernity is not handed over to the West but emerges organically from 'motley relations and complex and mixed languages' (p.107).

This horizon of decolonisation requires the hard work of examining both the moment and the afterlife of empire, unflinchingly, both in former colony and metropole. It is to return to history, 'so that we understand what exactly happened, why it happened, and who we are'. To me this seemingly unexceptional, but challenging, observation, from Edward Said, is at the heart of 'decolonisation' as critical practice. Said speaks of a return, at once real and metaphorical. In part he is speaking, of course, of the exile's own physical journey to a point of origin, to literally lost, that is, expropriated, land. That is not metaphorical. But a return to history is also to take to understand our own historical formation. Decolonisation - whether in former colonies or in the erstwhile metropole - requires that understanding. It is also a difficult and demanding practice, as Jamaica Kincaid suggests:

And might not knowing why they are the way they are, why they do the things they do, why they live the way they live, why the things happened to them happened, lead these people to a different relationship with the world, a more demanding relationship ... ?

A more demanding relationship with history and with the world. The metropolitan university could do worse than adopt this slogan if, and as, it sets out to decolonise.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

1 Sian Griffiths, '"Oh, my God"-Meghan Takes Aim at Pale, Male and Stale Universities', Sunday Times, February 17, 2019. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/oh-my-god-meghan-takes-aim-at-male-pale-and-stale-universities-p8znzs5gl.

2 'Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford Founding Statement', in Rhodes Must Fall Oxford (eds.), Rhodes Must Fall: the Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire (London: Zed Books, 2018), p. 4.

3 Emma Whitford, 'Rhodes Must Fall', Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/09/20/editors-discuss-new-book-rhodes-must-fall-movement-oxford.

4 Simukai Chigudu, 'Codrington Conference': 'What is to be Done'?' in Rhodes Must Fall: the Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire, p. 57.

5 Akwugo Emejelu 'Decolonising SOAS: Another University is Possible', Rhodes Must Fall: : the Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire, p.170.

6 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1981), p. 4.

7 Mahmood Mamdani, 'Decolonising Universities', in Jonathan D. Jansen (ed.), Decolonisation in Universities: The Politics of Knowledge (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2019), p.18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/22019083351

8 E.S. Atieno Odhiambo, 'Reintroducing the 'People Without History': African Historiographies,' in Stephen Howe (ed.), The New Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 394.

9 This is the title of a National Union of Students campaign in Britain demanding curricular diversity. A similar campaign called Fill in the Blanks, asking for the teaching of British empire history to be made compulsory has been launched by school students.

10 Jonathan D. Jansen, 'Introduction and Overview: Making Sense of Decolonisation in Universities', in Decolonisation in Universities: The Politics of Knowledge, p.4.

11 Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/117701.

12 Most famously in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).

13 Mudimbe cited in Hamid Dabashi, Europe and its Shadows: Coloniality after Empire (London: Pluto Press, 2019), p.188.

14 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 74.

15 Dabashi, Europe and its Shadows, p.11.

16 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 'The Quest for Relevance', in Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature, p.87.

17 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963), p.102.

18 Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Preface', The Wretched of the Earth ', trans Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963), p. 25.

19 CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (London: Allison & Busby, 1977), p 35.

20 Ngũgĩ, Decolonising the Mind, p. 106.

21 Stuart Ward, 'The European Provenance of Decolonization', Past & Present, 230.1 (February 2016), p.253. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtv044.

22 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, 'Decolonization is Not a Metaphor', Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1.1 (2012), p. 2.

23 Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (London: Verso, 2019).

24 The Caricom Reparations Commission, 'Ten-Point Reparation Plan'. https://caricomreparations.org/caricom/caricoms-10-point-reparation-plan/

25 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 'Privatized Citizenship, Corporate Academics, and Feminist Projects', in Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2003), p. 170.

26 Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review/NYU Press, 2001).

27 A.K. Ramanujan, 'Some Thoughts on "Non-Western" Classics, with Indian Examples,' World Literature Today, 68.2 (Spring, 1994), p. 331.

28 Edward W. Said, Humanism and Democratic Critic ism (New York: Columbia UP), pp. 27-28.

29 Frantz Fanon, 'Concerning Violence', in The Wretched of the Earth, p. 35.

30 Frantz Fanon, 'Medicine and Colonialism', in A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965).

31 Frederick Cooper, 'Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History', in Howe (ed.), New Imperial Histories Reader, p. 79.

32 See, for instance, Walter D. Mignolo 'DELINKING: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality,' Cultural Studies, 21.2-3 (2007), pp. 449-514.

33 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, ' Ch'ixinakaz utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization', South Atlantic Quarterly (Winter 2012).

34 'Edward Said talks to Jacqueline Rose', in Paul A. Bové (ed.), Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 22.

35 Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1998), p. 56.

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ABSTRACT Is 'decolonisation' relevant at all to the university situated in Britain and other former colonial centres? Answering broadly in the affirmative, this essay situates the project of 'decolonising' the metropolitan university within a wider historical and intellectual context while delineating some of the key questions such an endeavour might grapple with.

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Decolonizing Healthcare: Addressing Social Stressors In Medicine

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Decolonizing Healthcare: Addressing Social Stressors In Medicine

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Decolonizing Healthcare: Addressing Social Stressors In Medicine - Bioneers

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Rupa Marya, M.D., is exploring how to create a medical system that serves everyone through numerous projects aimed at researching our current medical climate and collaborating with marginalized populations to make healthcare more effective and compassionate.

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Queering Healthcare: Why Integrating Cultural Humility into Medical Education Matters for LGBTQ+ Patients

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Queering Healthcare: Why Integrating Cultural Humility into Medical Education Matters for LGBTQ+ Patients

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Abstract

The medical field is still grappling with how to understand and situate LGBTQ+ patients within healthcare settings. The medicalization of LGBTQ+ identities and the legacy of heteronormativity in the medical field has situated these patients within narrow understandings of gender and sexual orientation. In this paper I outline how the medicalization of queerness and medical management of breast cancer have marginalized LGBTQ+ breast cancer patients as they proceed through diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. Next, I link medicalization to the broader process and context of medical education, specifically the patient-provider relationship, where cross-cultural communication strategies, such as cultural competency training, are being utilized in an effort to understand LGBTQ+ health disparities. However, this approach has limited clinicians' abilities to examine how their own cultural standpoints influence the care of LGBTQ+ patients. In response, I discuss how an alternative approach, cultural humility, motivates clinicians to examine their own cultural biases and assumptions as well as the power imbalances inherent in the patient-provider relationship. Data collection included reviewing studies related to cultural humility, LGBTQ+ health disparities, and how medical education approaches LGBTQ+ health. Using an integrative analysis of the literature, I outline how these studies suggest cultural humility is efficacious in equalizing patient-provider relationships and generating growth through awareness of how identity is relevant to health and healthcare. In conclusion I explore how this change in medical education revolutionizes our understanding of LGBTQ+ individuals' health both by centering and privileging the voices of LGBTQ+ patients and examining how the patient-provider interaction is shaped by sociocultural context.

Keywords: Medicalization, Breast cancer, Cultural humility, Medical education, Patient-provider relationship

How to Cite:

Sarkin, C. A., (2019) "Queering Healthcare: Why Integrating Cultural Humility into Medical Education Matters for LGBTQ+ Patients", Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis 8(2), p.47-61. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/jctp.8207

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Queering Healthcare: Why Integrating Cultural Humility into Medical Education Matters for LGBTQ+ Patients

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The medical field is still grappling with how to understand and situate LGBTQ+ patients within healthcare settings. The medicalization of LGBTQ+ identities and the legacy of heteronormativity in the medical field has situated these patients within narrow understandings of gender and sexual orientation.

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Decolonising the curriculum

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Opinion Pieces

Elizabeth Charles, Assistant Director of Library Services Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom

Abstract

The term 'decolonizing the curriculum' is of high currency in higher education in the UK and in local students' unions at these institutions. This article seeks to give a very brief history and context for why this is fundamental for academic institutions and what role libraries and the scholarly communication sector can play in this movement. I look at why this is so important for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and othered (otherly minoritized, e.g. disabled, LGBTQ, etc.) students and what steps some libraries have already taken. One of the themes of the UKSG 2019 Conference was 'diversity and change'; decolonizing the curriculum is exactly that if done correctly. Two presentations from the plenary session provided a good starting point and the article touches on how decolonizing the curriculum may impact research/researchers. It concludes that there is a need for academia to now move past just identifying that there are issues about retention and progression of BAME and othered students and staff, and for both the library and information and scholarly communication sectors to act to address this now.

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The term 'decolonizing the curriculum' is of high currency in higher education in the UK and in local students' unions at these institutions. This article seeks to give a very brief history and context for why this is fundamental for academic institutions and what role libraries and the scholarly communication sector can play in this movement.

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Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education

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Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education

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Here is a list of books that relate to equity, action and the decolonisation of the curriculum. Don't forget to check out the Leadership, Mental Health and Wellbeing reading lists the Books and Resources page.

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Here is a list of books that relate to equity, action and the decolonisation of the curriculum. Don't forget to check out the Leadership, Mental Health and Wellbeing reading lists the Books and Resources page.

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Decoloniality in physiotherapy education, research and practice

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Decoloniality in physiotherapy education, research and practice

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Decoloniality in physiotherapy education, research and practice in South Africa

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Historically, the profession of physiotherapy in South Africa has closely aligned itself with our former colonial master, the United Kingdom. Whilst efforts have been made in recent years to transform our profession, numerous challenges remain. An improved understanding of the topic of decoloniality is a useful and necessary way of beginning to address these challenges.

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In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. The battle cry '#RhodesMustFall' sparked an international movement calling for the decolonisation of the world's universities.

Today, as this movement grows, how will it radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education.

Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom, Decolonising the University provides the tools for radical pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.

This book is available to download through the Open Access programme.

Gurminder K. Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (Palgrave, 2007) and Connected Sociologies (Bloomsbury, 2014), and the co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2018).

Dalia Gebrial is the editor of a special issue of the Historical Materialism journal on identity politics and co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2017).

Kerem Nişancıoğlu is a Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS, University of London. He is the co-author of How the West Came to Rule (Pluto, 2015), and co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2018). He also blogs at The Disorder of Things.

- Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching - Priyamvada Gopal, Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures, University of Cambridge - Alana Lentin, Western Sydney University

1. Introduction: Decolonising the University? - Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu
PART I - CONTEXTS: HISTORICAL AND DISCIPLINARY
2. Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change - Dalia Gebrial
3. Race and the Neoliberal University: Lessons from the Public University - John Holmwood
4. Black/Academia - Robbie Shilliam
5. Decolonising Philosophy - Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Rafael Vizcaíno, Jasmine Wallace and Jeong Eun Annabel We
PART II - INSTITUTIONAL INITIATIVES
6. Asylum University: Re-situating Knowledge-exchange along Cross-border Positionalities - Kolar Aparna and Olivier Kramsch
7. Diversity or Decolonisation? Researching Diversity at the University of Amsterdam - Rosalba Icaza and Rolando Vázquez
8. The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University - Kehinde Andrews
9. Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum - Pat Lockley
PART III - DECOLONIAL REFLECTIONS
10. Meschachakanis, a Coyote Narrative: Decolonising Higher Education - Shauneen Pete
11. Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention - Carol Azumah Dennis
12. Internationalisation and Interdisciplinarity: Sharing acrossBoundaries? - Angela Last
13. Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science - William Jamal Richardson
Notes on Contributors
Index

Published by Pluto Press in Aug 2018

Paperback ISBN: 9780745338200

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In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campu...

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Decolonising Curriculum ‖ Professor Gus John ‖ BELMAS Annual Lecture 2019

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The long term societal impact of colonial rule is ubiquitous. It is present in the way our institutions are set up. It is present, whether we like it or not, in how we, as individuals, view the world and other people.

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The post-colonial thinker’s seminal book, “The Wretched of the Earth,” described political oppression in psychological terms. What are its lessons for our current moment?

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Decolonisation debate is a chance to rethink the role of universities 

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Decolonisation debate is a chance to rethink the role of universities 

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Decolonisation debate is a chance to rethink the role of universities

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The decolonisation debate in South Africa’s universities raises critical issues about the relationship between power, knowledge and learning.