note on the destruction of American democracy

 

 

A NOTE ON THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

 

For all its legendary imperfections, the Black Arts Movement (BAM)  produced much good.  It steadfastly produced texts for black communities.  Kalamu ya Salaam's The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (2016) is an excellent introduction to the subject. BAM provided the relative freedom from being measured by "alien rulers."  Under new names which change frequently, BAM is still operative in its quest for an elusive Black solidarity.  Do not believe the liars who would tell you that BAM fizzled and died.

 

Diversity and contradictions within co-existing  communities abound.  This fact is a heavy burden for thinkers who want to address the idea of Blackness, who want to discover effective languages for everyday use.  In the dialectics of Blackness (or any "color-nest" ), the thinker is assumed to be subjectively guilty until proven to be objectively innocent.  The burden is a trip.

 

Derrick R. Spires gives us a valuable clue about methods and methodologies in The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (2019), particularly in what he explains about "the dialectic-dialogic model of deliberative politics" (110). He directs us to the crucial relevance of using print in contemporary studies of publics, readers, and systemic , capitalist disaster. Now, of course, it is print plus electronic/digital phenomena that we must study.  Thus, for me, BAM is an ongoing Middle Passage enterprise, a grounding in the motions of many histories.  We should not forget that in our current  century, deceptive "progress" notwithstanding, certain militant right-wingers relentlessly intrude and work to destroy the natural and legal entitlements of citizenship.  Decent human beings have a rich opportunity to freeze these radical militants with the very tools they manufacture with blind alacrity.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 5, 2021

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