Leadership 500 Summit - Scottsdale, AZ
You wanna free africa, I stare at yuh
Cuz we ain’t got it too good in America
I can’t f*** with them overseas
My homeboy died over a key of cocaine
It was plain and simple
The 9mm went <pop> to the temple
Ice Cube – Tales from the Darkside (1990)
We went from picking cotton
To chain gang line chopping
To Be-Bopping
To Hip-Hopping
Blues people got the blue chip stock option
Invisible man, got the whole world watching
(where ya at) I'm high, low, east, west,
All over your map
Mos-Def – Hip Hop (1999)
Like all wise scholars, I consult the scrolls of the times to receive knowledge. Hip Hop reveals a great deal. In this context, Hip Hop is the name of the song, not the movement, not the musical form. In short, Mos-Def (taking a more broadly historical view at the dawn of the new millennium) got it right. African Americans are global. They are all over the map. In contrast, Ice Cube (myopically focusing on the present circumstance of the early 1990s) got it wrong. African Americans are not simply consumed by the forces around them unable to experience life beyond that. They are not simply contained within a block, a neighborhood, a city or a nation.
Of course, my Mos-Ice comparison is simply for illustrative purposes. Lyrics merely point to something but they do not fully illuminate it. The larger point, however, is straightforward: Much too often African Americans fail to see their connection with the rest of the world – the good, the bad as well as the ugly. Part of this is due to the fact that being in the United States they exist in a political-economic bubble – still one of the most militarily powerful, wealthy and influential countries on the planet. In this country, blacks sit in but also sit apart from the rest of the world; they are people of color (no doubt), joining the majority of the globe’s population of color, but at the same time they are people with access, in excess where most still live in poverty, autocracy and political violence. Part of this is due to the fact that in the United States they exist in a vacuum where there is very little effort made to understand and engage with the world outside of the country. Watch BBC world news and then watch Nightline, Fox or even CNN for evidence of this or, explore the degree of foreign travel for European citizens compared to Americans. The result is clear: U.S. news is largely local as are the physical movements of its residents.
In this article, I will maintain that African American’s need to adopt a broader view of politics. The importance of this more global focus is twofold. First, African Americans directly influence how others perceive their lives as well as how they attempt to improve it. In short, there are lessons that African Americans can give and blacks should be made aware of them for political as well as psychological reasons. Second, the lives of those outside of this country and how they attempt to improve their situations could directly influence African Americans. In short, there are lessons African Americans can learn and blacks should be made aware of them as they continue to address the many problems they confront. Based on my research on political violence (genocide, civil war, torture and disappearances), restrictions on civil liberties (speech, association and assembly) and social movements, I will illustrate one example of this and then conclude with a call for engagement.
The Invisible Man Meets the Untouchables (or, Jim Crowing India)
In 2004, I began research with a small organization called Navsarjan Trust, which means Trust New Creation in the Indian language, Gujarati (www.navsarjan.org). Specifically, I worked with a man named Martin Macwan who had recently been given a human rights award for his work on documenting, challenging and ending social, economic and political discriminatory practice “untouchability” in Gujarat (a state in the Western part of India whose biggest claim to fame is that it was the home base for Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle). Martin and Navsarjan had been collecting information about what was done against untouchables since 1985 and they needed some assistance with organizing the large amount of information, collecting some new information about the diverse discriminatory practices and analyzing the information. The objective of all this effort was to figure out how untouchability was (if at all) changing over time and space as well as what impact (if any) Navsarjan was having on the practice of untouchability. This is where I came in. A quantitatively trained social scientist, I was going to join an advocacy team to assist Navsarjan on their quest to document and evaluate.
Now, you may ask – what is untouchability? This is the first thing that I tried to figure out upon being asked to assist in this project. The answer is not simple. Untouchability is a state of existence as much as it is an existence within a state that is approximately 3000 years old. It is not simply racism for untouchability (those deemed unclean, polluted, evil) can be of many shades, facial features and hair texture – indeed, it exists across almost the full spectrum of characteristics within India. It is not simply class for there are individuals as poor or poorer than untouchables that are treated better (e.g., tribals). Untouchability is inflexible in that once you are born into a caste (social, economic and political designation) you cannot get out of it and there is no passing. The list of abuses that the untouchables or as they prefer – Dalit (those who are oppressed) are subject to is long. They are not allowed to enter temples, drink tea out of the same cups as upper-castes, walk on certain roads, touch a non-Dalit or their food, they sit in the back of classrooms, remove human excrement and dead bodies, they are forced to perform in various social functions – all of this is done without financial compensation (they are given the right the beg) and this is done for life (you do what your parents have done and their parents before them).
While the definition of untouchability did not ring a chord – immediately, the abuses did. Indeed, it was like stepping into a time warp. Walking the villages, one saw the restrictions clearly. Upper-castes would not drink with the Dalit, the Dalit lived in places removed from the rest of the village – frequently near or at the garbage dump. It was like slavery but more like Jim Crow period – on crack. Most are familiar with the legally authorized or required state laws of the 1930s-1950s: separate schools, separate textbooks, separate libraries, washrooms, chain-gangs, busses, telephone booths, housing, army battalions, voting places and circuses. Indian society takes this to the next level but with documentation, institutionalization and internalization but with varying levels of success. The outcome: there is tremendous variation across sites in India. Thus in one place you find that individuals have separate wells but upper-castes use the Dalit area for washing clothes, animals and children. In addition to this there will be prohibitions against the Dalit sitting in a seat on a bus desired by an upper-caste or upper-castes will sprinkle water over themselves to ritualistically be cleansed from the pollution. In another locale, Dalit might just be allowed to touch the feet of a new bridge (a particular practice commonly employed throughout rural India to show respect and good wishes). What is important about the differences here is that each place requires different solutions. In short, Navsarjan and Martin would have to engage in different activities in different places to resolve the situation. Such programming however requires that the organization know what is taking place on the ground. This is where the Untouchability Census came in.
African American relevance to this case was not simply embodied in my presence, but this should not be discounted – who better than an African American to understand what was taking place. Larger than this, Martin, Navsarjan and the broader movement looked to the African American Civil Rights Movement as the solution to their problem. The Dalit engage in civil disobedience to convey their dissatisfaction with discrimination (marches, petitions and sit/teach-ins) and they also follow electoral as well as legal strategies. In all activities, they eschew violence (even in the face of violence that is frequently directed against them). I must admit that I had some of the most sophisticated and detailed conversations about what African Americans were subject to in the United States and what they were doing about while having conversations in rural India.
The impact of this on the movement was profound. For them, there was a group of individuals out in the world, who had faced a similar situation and who (at some level) had won. To oppressed people this is extremely valuable. The impact on me was and is equally as profound. While there, I was seen as a social movement rock and roll star of sorts – part of the African American Civil Rights legacy, come to assist them with their struggle against inequality and discrimination. Additionally, each time that I came back I returned renewed, interested in activism, the applicability of social science to rectifying injustice and human rights in general but also in the importance of documentation and investigation into the abuses of African Americans – especially in rural environments. Why, I thought, could Martin and Navsarjan do what they could in Gujarat but blacks could not in rural Mississippi and Alabama? Had this been done and I did not know about it like the Pigford vs. Veneman case (i.e., the black farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture)? Why did I not know about any efforts like this?
A New Direction
In this context, I was led (via India) to begin what will likely become a long-term/life-long project – one shortened by my generating as many participants as possible. One thing that history has shown is that human rights conditions are improved, and I advise each and every one of you to become familiar with them (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html), only after there has been a thorough accounting of what has transpired. Such efforts preceded the truth, reconciliation and redevelopment efforts in South Africa, Guatemala, El Salvador and other places around the world. Such efforts help establish historical records/truths for those in the affected country and, as I have come to realize, the world’s population. Such efforts are also important for completing the mission of human rights activists dating back to the founding of slavery, correcting past injustices of omission, successfully prosecuting crimes by domestic, regional and international law as well as for the mental health of a nation that is unaware or confused about exactly how it got to where it is.
This type of accounting has been partially undertaken. We have information of varying quality on whippings/beatings, lynching and execution of African Americans, the violence of racial pogroms/riots like that evidenced in Rosewood, the curfews in “Sunset Towns,” the systematic over-policing of blacks in cities, the removal of enfranchisement from blacks after reconstruction and up to present felons and cases of gerrymandering throughout the United States. What does not exist is a complete listing of events (or as close to one as we can get). What does not exist is a large-scale effort to identify and understand what has taken place – hopefully delivered in installments every black history month. What does not exist is an effort to train youth in a systematic, focused and coordinated fashion across disciplines (forensics, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, history, biology, psychology). What does not exist is the archive of injustice and violation that provides part of the African American reality of being in the U.S. where all interested parties can receive the information they need.
For this to come to pass, however, we need to begin at the beginning and end at the end. For this to come to pass, my email is on the net.
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