133. THE HARD PROBLEM OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS - On The Difficulty and Need For Waking From Dogmatic Slumbers
I’ve been thinking a lot about consciousness this week. Not the traditional philosophical questions about mind and body, but political consciousness. Specifically Black Consciousness.
Having started reading Lewis R. Gordon’s book, Fear of Black Consciousness, recently, I was reminded of some of my earliest work as a teacher, lecturing at Cardiff University about Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa. Black Consciousness was forged there in the anti-apartheid struggle as a way of giving strength and power back to a colonised and subjugated people. It was built to combat years of mental warfare against the black population of South Africa and restore to black minds a positive recognition of one’s self-worth and cultural history, an affinity and solidarity with other black groups and people, and self-reliant confidence for black citizens to put an end to their dependency on well-meaning, but ultimately problematic, whites, who made decisions about what was best for black South Africans that was, in Biko’s words, ‘set up on a wrong analysis of our situation’. A similar critique has been made by feminist thinkers such as Audre Lorde, Angela Davis and bell hooks, or more recently, Rafia Zakaria, about how white feminist thinkers and feminist movements in the West have failed to address the intersections of gender and race that inform the lived experiences of women of colour there. Failing to understand or give voice to, and thus fully liberate, black women. Biko was witnessing a similar thing in South Africa, with blacks ‘standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing.’ He rightly noted that, instead of being passive spectators to their own struggle, ‘they want to do things for themselves and all by themselves‘, without misguided white assistance.
While the ultimate aim was to create, eventually, a non-racial, egalitarian, socialist society, Biko wrote, as the movement began ‘what we want is not black visibility but real black participation…it does not help us to see several quiet black faces in a multiracial student gathering which ultimately concentrates on what the white students believe are the needs for the black students’ . Black Consciousness was distinctly and unapologetically black. It was not something non-black people could be part of. But the reason for this exclusion was not the familiar logic of prejudice or racism, it was about the legitimate need to create space away from colonial distortions, disparities of power, and the ignorance of privileged white worldviews towards the lived experience of black South Africans, to allow the black population to forge for themselves a true sense of self. Away from unconsciousness, or false consciousness, and towards full consciousness: Black Consciousness. As Frantz Fanon has said, ‘because it is a systemic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: “In reality, who am I?”’ Black Consciousness was about, in Biko’s words, answering that question positively and expressing ‘group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self’ the apartheid system had been systematically attempting to destroy. ‘At the heart of this kind of thinking’, Biko continues, ‘is the realisation by blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.’
The genius of the Black Consciousness Movement was that it was a revolution of the mind, rather than a material struggle bound to any particular organisation, group, or person. It was the mental key against white supremacy and apartheid segregation that would ultimately unlock radical transformations and change in the physical world. Being something as ephemeral as an idea, however, it was something impossible for the authorities to repress and shut down, as much as they repeatedly tried. Although South African police ultimately murdered Steve Biko, his tragic death did not mean the defeat of Black Consciousness. You cannot kill an idea. Eventually, the apartheid regime fell, even if the racism and white supremacist thinking which underpinned it did not.
Writing in 2003, bell hooks reminds us that maintaining consciousness of the way such racism infects much of the western world’s current norms is a constant struggle, and that, perhaps surprisingly, ‘teachers are often among the group most reluctant to acknowledge the extent to which white-supremacist thinking informs every aspect of our culture including the way we learn, and the manner in which we are taught. Much of the consciousness-raising around the issue of white supremacy and racism has focused attention on teaching what racism is and how it manifests itself in the daily workings of our lives. In anti-racist workshops and seminars, much of the time is often spent simply breaking through the denial that leads many unenlightened white people, as well as people of colour, to pretend that racist and white-supremacist thought and action are no longer pervasive in our culture.’ One of the significant reasons the Black Consciousness Movement needed to emerge independent of Biko’s ‘well-meaning whites’ was precisely this: it can be frustrating for someone already conscious to have to constantly explain basic facts of reality to those who are still doggedly committed to sleeping, or who refuse to acknowledge that they are asleep. Robin Diangelo has written about ‘white fragility’, the knee-jerk defensiveness that arises frequently in white-supremacist cultures whenever white people are asked to confront the reality of their own comparative privileges which maintain ‘the racial status quo’. Especially those white people who believe themselves to be free from racism or prejudice. This is the same knee-jerk defensiveness at the heart of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s famous decision to no longer talk to white people about race. ‘Describing and defining this absence’, says Eddo-Lodge - the ‘absence of the consequences of racism…absence of structural discrimination…absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost…absence of “less likely to succeed because of my race”…absence of funny looks directed at you because you’re believed to be in the wrong place…absence of cultural expectations…absence of violence enacted on your ancestors because of the colour of their skin…absence of a lifetime of subtle marginalisation and othering - exclusion from the narrative of being human’ that is the norm for a life of white privilege - will always mean ‘to some extent upsetting the centring of whiteness, and reminding white people that their experience is not the norm for the rest of us.’ Even for those ‘well-meaning whites’ who already acknowledge that there is a problem, confronting the true extent of that problem can still be an eye-opening shock to the system. But attempting to open the eyes of those who don’t even see the problem yet, and then refuse to look when told, can be especially heartbreaking for those whose daily experiences give them no choice but to have first-hand indisputable evidence of the realities of structural racism they are being told repeatedly doesn’t exist. As philosopher Tommie Shelby has suggested, in his own defence of a ‘pragmatic black nationalism’ in America which, like Biko’s vision for the future non-racial world built from the foundations of a temporarily separatist Black Consciousness Movement ‘aims, ultimately, to transcend itself’, black people must ‘reserve the right to act independently and to define their own political agenda in order to defend themselves against unjust treatment and to help bring about a racially just society.’ Such a defence must sometimes mean freeing oneself from those who refuse to acknowledge reality and stay in an unconscious dream-world that leads to misdiagnosis of the problem.
Shelby’s book, We Who Are Dark, begins with an example from philosopher, Charles Mills, that supports hooks’ claim about the lack of consciousness in education, certainly in the field of philosophy, and illustrates the cultural permeation of white-supremacist thinking which Black Consciousness is able to break through: ‘Drawing parallels with the development of feminist philosophy, Charles Mills has usefully distinguished three necessary steps to bring issues of race and black experience closer to the centre of philosophical concern. First there is the discovery, analysis, and critique of the racism of the major figures in the philosophical canon (such as Hume, Locke, Kant, and Hegel). This is meant to be a general challenge to the Eurocentric bias of academic philosophy and its implicit assumption about the universality of white experience. Second, there is the effort to rediscover oppositional writings by members of racially subordinate groups (for example, Frederick Douglas, Anna Julia Cooper, and W. E. B. Du Bois). Within African American philosophy, the primary goal here is not so much to vindicate “the race” but to show there is a rich philosophical tradition of resistance that can be developed and built upon. Third, there is the effort to reconceptualise the sociopolitical order so as to make explicit what would be necessary to bring blacks and other subordinate racialised groups into the body politic on terms of equality, reciprocity, and mutual respect.’ What Shelby, through Mills, is bringing to light here is that, once conscious of the significant racism and racist assumptions which exist in the traditional philosophical canon, one cannot just sit idly by and accept it. However, the task of being woken up and brought to consciousness in the first place is one which does not happen without an active and sustained disruption of the current slumber by those already fully conscious. The disruption cannot come from those groups currently benefitting from, or unaware of, our default state of collective unconsciousness.
Even thinkers more sympathetic to a long-term or permanent black separatism than Shelby, such as Kehinde Andrews, cautioning us that ‘anti-discrimination movements are not immune from Whiteness’ and arguing that, while ‘coalitions can be important strategically…we must always remember that there can be no liberation within this political and economic system for Black people’, still acknowledge the need for eventual solidarity against oppression between both the conscious and the unconscious. While Andrews advocates for black people specifically to ‘always be agitating for revolution and building an alternative that can bring us freedom’, he also concedes in his book, Back to Black, that ‘as long as the system that oppresses you remains in place you cannot be free from it, no matter how separate you feel’ and concludes ‘it is only by rejecting the system of Western imperialism that we can ever be free. But as we leave the house we must bring it crashing down in order to truly liberate not only the Black nation, but all oppressed people.’ Once self-conscious of the systemic oppression faced by your own distinct group, it becomes difficult to just stand there and allow similar oppressions to continue to be faced by any others, even if the initial awakening to consciousness was spurred primarily by self-preservation. It is not the oppressed’s job to bring their oppressors to consciousness, but once their eyes are fully open, like Plato’s prisoner freed from the shackles of the cave, it becomes a natural inclination to want to return to those looking still at shadows and try and bring them into the light.
Gordon’s book on Black Consciousness, which made me think about all this, reminds us that ‘there were not always black people, in the way racist societies understand us; there were not always white people. Black and white, in the sense used by racist societies, are codependent. Black people were fabricated from the forces and trepidations that created white people.’ The entire construct of white supremacy is ‘a set of beliefs and institutions handed down across generations saturated with bad faith’. Drawing on this idea from Sartre, ‘bad faith’, Gordon tells us, ‘works by lying to oneself, which requires eliminating one’s relationship to evidence - that which clearly shows lies to be lies. To protect itself, bad faith must disarm the evidentiality of evidence - that is, its ability to appear. Rendered impotent, evidence can no longer interfere with the ability of a person or group to believe something in bad faith.’ This is the role of white fragility: it is a means by which those currently complicit in, and benefitting from, unequal systems, even if they are not totally aware of this privilege they enjoy, can continue to believe they are doing nothing wrong and do not have to change. It is a way of preserving blissful unconsciousness and ignoring reality. A means to maintaining epistemic ignorance within the dominant white consciousness, either intentionally or through negligence. But while there remains this pathological ‘white narcissism’ that ‘forces negative and false images of the self onto others’, Gordon urges that we also keep in mind that ‘black people live, however, beyond negative projections of white consciousness.’ There remain cracks in the attempted totality of white supremacy and Black Consciousness develops in this context. As an open-eyed awareness of both the falsity of white supremacy’s claims, and yet also an awareness of the oppressive permeation across culture which manifests from this falseness and requires constant vigilance, vocal self-protection, and resistance.
Black Consciousness is not alone in its promotion of a situated and necessarily radical consciousness-raising against the dominant perspective of slumber. Feminist thinkers, too, have long attempted to open our eyes to everyday misogynies and the patriarchal structures in which our understanding of gender has been formed, and Queer Theorists ask us to wake up to heteronormative assumptions which underly the dominant way we tend to approach questions of sexuality, relationships, and family. In each case, as with consciousness around racial oppression, consciousness-raising has first focused on the oppressed groups themselves, to bring affirmation and strength to people who have been made to feel inferior or otherwise psychologically undone when compared to constructed dominant norms. However, unless total separatism is advocated, the challenge in all case eventually becomes one of sharing that new consciousness with all those who remain asleep. As Thomas Nagel has been warning us since his seminal paper ‘What Is It Like To Be A Bat?’, this is one of the profound philosophical problems surrounding the subjectivity of any conscious phenomena. While, intellectually, in the objective third person, I can consider as a non-bat, what existence might be like for a blind, nocturnal, Chiroptera, radically different from myself, I will never know from that first-person subjective standpoint what the experience of being a bat truly feels like. Similarly, as a white heterosexual man, while I may understand and even perhaps be able to describe the experience of what it is like to be a black person living within dominant white supremacy, a female living within a patriarchy, or an LGBTQ+ person in our heteronormative world, without sharing that lived experience myself I have to concede that I will never actually know, from the subjective first person perspective of consciousness, what it is truly like to be such a person. To experience the ‘raw feels’ or qualia of this oppression. To be conscious of it in any way comparable to those whose lived experience it actually is. Like the life of a bat, guided seamlessly by echolocation in the dark and flying on wings I do not have, I can imagine what such an experience might be like, but I will never truly know.
At the same time though, where Nagel’s thought experiment falls down, is that bats, unlike human beings, do not attempt to share their consciousness with us non-bats. We do not have the books, the stories, the art, the movies, the music, the television shows, the testimonies, the lectures, the journalism and years and years of attempted communication that humans have used forever to try and put other people in their shoes and share with them what it is like to be someone different. Black Consciousness is both a positive affirmation of our ability as humans to share our consciousness with others, and it is a response to the negative impact of some of that historical sharing. The white consciousness that has been chipping away at alternative ways of seeing the world for generations, shared through overwhelming repetition in the dominant culture or through the barrel of a colonial gun. When Fanon speaks of the ‘white masks’ forced over ‘black skin’ he is talking about the imposition of another consciousness over what was there before. However, he then tries to share with us a different type of consciousness too, with the aim of waking up his readers. One not of lacking and untapped potential, but one of self-worth and self-sufficiency: ‘black consciousness’ Fanon tells us, ‘is immanent in itself. I am not a potentiality of something; I am fully what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. There’s no room for probability inside me. My black consciousness does not claim to be a loss. It is. It merges with itself.’ If Fanon didn’t believe it to be possible to make somebody open up their eyes to a new way of being conscious, if Biko didn’t, if Gordon didn’t, they would not have written their books on the subject. Nor would the many other writers trying everyday to wake people up to the impact of ongoing racism and white-supremacist thinking. And if sharing consciousness wasn’t possible, then their words and ideas would not have had the enduring impact that they have done, and continue to do. Yes, I may not ever know what it is to be a bat, and as a white, heterosexual male I may never know exactly what it is to be black, LGBTQ+, or a woman; but consciousness-raising attempts have certainly got me closer to knowing what it is like to be the latter than I will ever know about being the former. And crucially, such consciousness-raising is not meant for people like me. The analogy with knowing what it is like to be a bat is, in itself, another example of the pathology of white supremacy: a need to know everything, to even take over someone else’s private subjective experiences and see the impossibility of doing so as some sort of fundamental flaw in a theory of consciousness. A better analogy would be of a bat who does not know they are a bat. Told for generations that their lack of sight is a deficit and their nocturnal nature strange by the dominant class of day-dwelling sighted people. That their echolocation is clumsy and subnormal. And for such a bat to be made aware by another bat who shares their situation that their self-perception of what it is like to be a bat has been distorted by the biases and self-interest of those trying to undermine them. That being nocturnal, flying Chiroptera, and seeing through the movement of sound, is to be celebrated, not shunned. That it is a way of being that does not require justification or apology. It is something with just as much right to exist as the way of being lived by the day-dwelling sighted people. A non-bat may not ever fully know what it is like to be a bat, but a bat - not yet fully conscious - may well be brought to consciousness of an alternative way of experiencing, more accurately, existing subjective phenomena.
So as a non-black philosopher, I share these thoughts on Black Consciousness with you during this year’s Black History Month to hopefully achieve several things:
1) To demonstrate the philosophically interesting possibility that consciousness can, to some extent, be shared. That although I will never know firsthand what it is subjectively like to be a black man, let alone a black woman, in a structurally racist society, the words of people like Biko, Shelby, Andrews, hooks, Lorde, Davis, Fanon, Gordon, Diangelo, Eddo-Lodge, and Zakaria have shared with me a glimmer of understanding and have had some impact on transforming my perspective and waking me up from the dogmatic slumbers of privilege that made me believe that, just because I didn’t consider myself to be a racist, I wasn’t still part of the problem.
And
2) To shine a light on some thinkers all-too often excluded from philosophical canons, and definitely missing from existing A-level or IB specifications, in the hope that those readers whose consciousness their work is directed towards - readers of colour, who might see themselves in their writing - might be able to explore their work further and, perhaps, upon reading their marginalised words, wake up more fully from their own dogmatic slumbers, imposed upon them in plain sight for too long.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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