Is Marvin X the Father of Muslim American Literature?

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com · at June 26, 2015

Dr. Mohja Kahf and Marvin X. She invited him to read at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Is Marvin X the Father of Muslim American Literature?

Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field
by Dr. Mohja Kahf

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965-75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature. Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, "Third World" women's writing, diasporic Muslim literature in English, and so forth. While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether. My first grouping, the "Prophets of Dissent," suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its "outsider" status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone. In contrast, the writers of what I call "the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes" tend to enjoy "insider" status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the "New American Transcendentalists," appears to cohere, in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern American poetry. Finally, the "New Pilgrims" is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers. Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:

Prophets of Dissent

From the Black Arts Movement:
• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English by a Muslim American author.

• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of her Muslim period.
• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam's Yacoub genesis theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.
Later Prophets of Dissent include:
• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young "Generation M" Muslim American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of the BAM.
• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO), whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on her work.
• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes

• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.
• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a "crossover" poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.
• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time as Marvin X.
• Nahid Rachlin's fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.
• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).
• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.
• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).
• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.
• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.

New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights, 1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the "Muslim/American" simultaneity of Muslim American art.
• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again, why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes "Islamic
romance." This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however.
Dasham Brookins writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak (2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college. Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.

Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they will not eventually do so. My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors: Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America). It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A "lapsed Muslim" author, as one poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the "Multi-Ethnic Multitudes," but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages.

I have looked at the twentieth century onward, and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from "literature" to "Muslim American culture," one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other genres.There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges, that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.

Cover design by Emory

Love And War
poems
by Marvin X
preface by Lorenzo Thomas
1995

Review
by Mohja Kahf

Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance.

This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.

Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him.

Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

My interest is contemporary literature, and by literature I am more interested in poetry and fiction than memoir and non-fiction, although that is a flexible thing. I argue that it is time to call Muslim American literature a field, even though many of these writings can be and have been classified in other ways-studied under African American literature or to take the writings of immigrant Muslims, studied under South Asian ethnic literature or Arab American literature.

With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors?

Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work. He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large.

By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate.

"For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:
for the men who honor wives
and the men who abuse them
for the men who win
and the men who sin
for the men who love God
and the men who hate
for the men who are brothers
and the men who are beasts
"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads:
there is no escape for the men of this world
or the men of the next

He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people."

If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."

A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with:

peace Mu
it's on you
yo world
sister-girl

Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.)

Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!--

Mohja Kahf Associate Professor / Dept. of English, Middle East & Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Two Poems for the People of Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf

Oh, Mohja
how much water can run from rivers to sea
how much blood can soak the earth
the guns of tyrants know no end
a people awakened are bigger than bullets
there is no sleep in their eyes
no more stunted backs and fear of broken limbs
even men, women and children are humble with sacrifice
the old the young play their roles
with smiles they endure torture chambers
with laughs they submit to rape and mutilations
there is no victory for oppressors
whose days are numbered
as the clock ticks as the sun rises
let the people continue til victory
surely they smell it on their hands
taste it on lips
believe it in their hearts
know it in their minds
no more backwardness no fear
let there be resistance til victory.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir

Syrian poet/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf

Oh Marvin, how much blood can soak the earth?

The angels asked, “will you create a species who will shed blood

and overrun the earth with evil?”

And it turns out “rivers of blood” is no metaphor:

see the stones of narrow alleys in Duma

shiny with blood hissing from humans? Dark

and dazzling, it keeps pouring and pumping

from the inexhaustible soft flesh of Syrians,

and neither regime cluster bombs from the air,

nor rebel car bombs on the ground,

ask them their names before they die.

They are mowed down like wheat harvested by machine,

and every stalk has seven ears, and every ear a hundred grains.

They bleed like irrigation canals into the earth.

Even one little girl in Idlib with a carotid artery cut

becomes a river of blood. Who knew she could be a river

running all the way over the ocean, to you,

draining me of my heart? And God said to the angels,

“I know what you know not.” But right now,

the angels seem right. Cut the coyness, God;

learn the names of all the Syrians.

See what your species has done.

--Mohja Kahf

PALESTINE by Marvin X (Imam Maalik El Muhajir)

I am not an Arab, I am not a Jew
Abraham is not my father, Palestine is not my home
But I would fight any man
Who kicked me out of my house
To dwell in a tent
I would fight
To the ends of the earth
Someone who said to me
I want your house
Because my father lived here
Two thousand years ago
I want your land

Because my father lived here
Two thousand years ago.
Jets would not stop me
From returning to my home
Uncle toms would not stop me
Cluster bombs would not stop me
Bullets I would defy.
No man can take the house of another
And expect to live in peace
There is no peace for thieves
There is no peace for those who murder
For myths and ancient rituals
Wail at the wall

Settle in "Judea" and "Samaria"
But fate awaits you
You will never sleep with peace

You will never walk without listening.
I shall cross the River Jordan
With Justice in my hand
I shall return to Jerusalem
And establish my house of peace,
Thus said the Lord.
© 2000 by Marvin X (Imam Maalik El Muhajir)

Marvin X has been invited to New York

to address the Zulu Nation (ASAP)

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com · at June 26, 2015

Parable of Nature and Spirituality

By Marvin X

Morning sun, Ra ascending, beam of light, truth. Air still. Ancient trees, rolling hills. Bird symphony. Cry of wild turkeys. Cows graze. Lizard inside my funky shoes outside door. Now he's a funky lizard. Lizard inside my house. I put him out but he finds his way inside each day as if he lives there. Snake slithers into tall grass. Geese head north following leader.

If you turn off the music you might hear the birds. Let the birds sing bye bye black bird. Turn off the music. Listen to the bird god.

When Negroes come to the country they bring the beat from the city. boom boom boom. boom boom boom. the urban jungle beat. boom boom boom. Negro say kill the lizard, kill the bee kill the fly kill the bird kill the mosquito kill the turtle. boom boom boom. boom boom boom. Negro can't be still enjoy nature, nature's God as Sun Ra used to say. Cannot connect with trees, mountains, creek, rivers. Negro not at peace. Cannot appreciate stars in the night, moon, Jupiter. Negro must have beat, jungle beat, boom boom boom, boom boom boom. Too quiet he moans. Let there be noise. Boom boom boom. Kill the cow, kill turkey, kill deer. Boom boom boom. One cow says to another, "Why don't they return to their city where they kill each other?" Boom boom boom.

Go down to the creek, talk to the water, listen to the water, be still. Listen to water crossing stones, water crossing weeds, listen. Let water fill your ears, water moves forward gushing forth, pure water.

Look up at the Hawk gliding smooth, no wings moving, still, gliding high low, stops still in sky. Move like a hawk. I am hawk, searching for prey. Chief bird of the air, controlling ground traffic, bird of grandeur, king of sky.

Look at God everyday. The tall pines, silent, still for a thousand years. God speaks loud and clear, except to deaf dumb and blind, crazy with saviors and messiahs whose message they will not heed in a thousand years. Can they fool God? The fool fools himself.

Pious pronouncements, wicked actions. Cannot be still, cannot stand tall like pine. Cannot bend in the wind.

Something is strange today. There are no birds, strange silence. No birds, no Hawk gliding. Can life be without birds, their constant song. How can one get up without birds. Is morning to be no more. What world is this, the world money bought. The world for the material boy and girl. Where are the birds?

I am in the garden. The garden is in me. Here comes the butterfly. What happened to the butterfly this year. Did man kill the butterfly. Why kill Bill. Don't you see all of nature gathers around you in the name of love. The flowers come to you in the name of love. Even the weeds are golden, full of beauty, full of love.

Look, all is still like the first morning of the world. I write naked on a bench. Squirrels watch me watching them.
=====

For more parables and fables by Marvin X, see his The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Black Bird Press, $19.95.

Marvin X will receive a community service award at Oakland's Juneteenth, Saturday, June 27, 2015, 32nd and Market, North Oakland.

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com · at June 26, 2015

Killer of Malcolm X’s grandson hit with 27 years

Malcolm Shabazz, the late grandson of the late Malcolm X Photo by Bill Moore

As news spread several months ago about the severe sentencing of Manuel Alejandro Perez de Jesus, 26, for the murder of Malcolm Latif Shabazz, 28, many questions remained unanswered. Details about the killing of the grandson of Black Nationalist icon Malcolm X and wife Dr. Betty Shabazz remain sketchy.

“The circumstances surrounding his death are still not clear, and it is now February 2015,” said Sabrina Green, a human rights activist with the Baltimore-based Free the Move 9.

According to prosecutor Rodolfo Fernando Rios Garza, Shabazz arrived in Mexico City at the behest of Miguel Suarez, a Mexican labor activist with the organization Revolutionary United Mexicans in Combat, or RUMEC, whom he had befriended in the United States and had been recently deported to Mexico.

On the night of May 9, 2013, while at the Palace Club, a downtown bar, prosecutors contend that Shabazz consumed several drinks, saying he had a blood alcohol level of more than three times the legal limit for driving in the U.S. Allegedly, he and Suarez ran up a $1,200 bar tab, which included the companionship of women, after being bamboozled by local hustlers, who routinely prey on tourists.

As the pair tried to leave the bar at around 3 a.m., a confrontation occurred with two waiters, David Hernandez Cruz, 26, and Perez de Jesus. Shabazz and Suarez were supposedly separated by bar employees at gunpoint, but, for unknown reasons, only Shabazz was assaulted, while Suarez supposedly slipped away unharmed to get help.

Upon his return a short while later, Suarez found Shabazz’s badly damaged body lying in the street in Plaza Girabaldi, a busy tourist spot. A blunt object was used, causing fatal skull, jaw and rib fractures. Two other bar employees also participated in the beating, reports read.

Authorities suggest the bill was excessive and was probably used as an excuse to rob Shabazz and his companion. Police said they interviewed Suarez, who could not be reached for comment.

Two days after the attack, the security cameras on the premises were turned toward the walls and the video recording equipment was mysteriously missing.

Shortly after Shabazz’s murder, protesters demanded that authorities escalate their efforts in investigating his death. Some demonstrated at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Shabazz was murdered a little more than two months after he was allegedly arrested by the FBI and harassed by law enforcement in an upstate New York town. In February 2013, Iranian state-controlled Press TV erroneously reported that the FBI had arrested Shabazz while he was en route to Iran. The story was widely reported, but two days later, Shabazz’s family announced that the report was false, and although he had been arrested, it had nothing to do with the FBI or Iran.

During a Feb. 24 interview on “Democracy Now,” Shabazz’s aunt, Ilyashah Shabazz, said that he had gone to Mexico “invited under the premise that the African-Mexicans were being discriminated and treated unfairly and that they needed him to talk to them. And so, he went thinking that he was going to speak to these people, and they ended up killing him.”

Rios Garza said he saw no evidence that Shabazz’s attackers knew his background, adding that he found no evidence that race or any motive other than robbery was in play.

In February, Perez de Jesus was sentenced to 27 years and six months. It’s not clear whether Cruz was charged.

Dr. Wilner Metelus, president of the Committee on Citizens of the Defense of the Naturalized and AfroMexicans, does not consider the sentencing “a victory” because, allegedly, five people participated in the murder. “It is a step, nothing more,” he said.

Zayid Muhammad, press officer for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, stated, “There are some real serious questions about what happened to him, and who he was with that still need to be answered.”
Shabazz is the son of Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz’s second daughter. He is survived by his mother, two daughters and five aunts. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y., near the graves of his grandparents.

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com · at June 26, 2015

JUSTICE INITIATIVE

Part II: Human, Cultural and Religious Evolution

The Roots of White Supremacy

By Heather Gray

Introduction

This is Part II of what I began a few months ago on religion, namely "Part I: History and Violence of Christianity" (click here for the PDF). Given the tragedy of nine members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston being ruthlessly killed on July 17, 2015, I am expanding upon this. The reason is because I've also realized that there is so much history that invariably gets left out of mix in our understanding of western culture and the advent of white supremacy.

Hunter-Gatherers (Peter Gray)

In this series I will summarize thousands of years of human evolution and culture, which I realize is a formidable and treacherous task. It's a look at our early formative history - and to repeat, it is a "summary". I don't think it is practical or possible to understand western religion and subsequent arrogance vis-a-vis the world's vast cultural and religious diversity as well as western white supremacy without some understanding of how we evolved - particularly from being hunter-gatherers to agricultural based societies. I am not exploring the nuances of religion and messages that I know many find inspiring and important. Rather, I am looking at the evolutionary/political/cultural and societal facets of it all.

Unfortunately, many of the changes we have made in our human experiences have not always been advancements - in fact, in many or perhaps most instances the reverse has been the case. But we do have the opportunity to learn about our past so that perhaps we can explore ways to improve and advance toward a more humane and just world.

And in subsequent articles in this series, I will share my personal experiences in witnessing or having knowledge of international violence being supported by or in partnership with right-wing fundamentalist Christians and what I would call quasi-government terrorist groups in southern Africa and southeast Asia.

I define "West", in this instance, primarily as Europe (East and West) and Britain, in particular, along with its former white settler colonies, as in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Having lived in Canada, the United States, Australia, Singapore and for a brief while in the Philippines; and also working/observing in the field of agriculture in the U.S. and internationally and/or witnessing its impact; and coupled with studying anthropology, as a student, a lot of what I write below comes from some 40 years of my personal experience, study and observation.

Out of Africa and Its Impact

We humans (homo sapiens) evolved in Africa some 200,000 ago and then, according to geneticist Samuel Wells, some of us began to leave the continent to travel throughout the world 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, largely due to changing weather patterns and lack of food. Australian aborigines, according to Wells, were of that first group of humans leaving Africa. There were ultimately various waves of us leaving the continent (Wells). In fact, there were 2 major flows of humans going north into Europe and Central Asia from Africa starting about 45,000 years ago and it took some 15,000 to 20,000 years to "colonize" it (Wikipedia). See below the map of our movement out of from Africa. The wave of humans into central Asia is critical for understanding later European development.

Following different routes out of Africa, successive waves of early humans migrated into new territories, eventually populating the entire globe save Antarctica. This map shows this complex web of migrations in their broadest strokes. Maps by Joyce Pendola. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/07/genographic200707

I know this is likely old hat to some, and is a repeat from a footnote in my recent article "The Massacre in Charleston", but I think it valuable to yet again refer to how we changed while migrating around the world. As humans left Africa and then further away from the equator our skin color changed and became more varied over time. Our black or white skin or variations of color have largely to do with our adaptation to heat - the closer we are to the equator the darker our skin, as the "melanin is an effective absorber of light; the (darker) pigment is able to dissipate over 99.9% of absorbed UV (ultraviolet) radiation" (Wikipedia) and in this way we can better survive in an exceptionally warm climate; consequently the further away from the equator, the lighter our skin because we need to absorb more heat and vitamin D (Smithsonian) in order to survive (see the world map of skin color below). There is also a third factor that effects our skin color and it has to do with diet combined with UV rays:

....coastal peoples who eat diets rich in seafood enjoy this alternate source of vitamin D. That means that some Arctic peoples, such as native peoples of Alaska and Canada, can afford to remain dark-skinned even in low UV areas. In the summer they get high levels of UV rays reflected from the surface of snow and ice, and their dark skin protects them from this reflected light (Smithsonian).

Our different skin colors mean an environmental adaptation, with the exception of diet plus environment for Arctic peoples. That's it! But this also demonstrates how important nature and the environment is to us humans. We are not separate from it, but part of it!

Race differentiation? There is no such thing. It's a myth. We are all of the same species with a variety of different colors (Robert Wald Sussman).

World Map of Skin Colors - GRID

Color is not the only factor that the West has used as a way to distinguish Africans and other people of color as different. Another difference that the West has tried to use is "racial essentialism", as in biological intellectual capacity or other characteristics such as industry and character. This is yet another fallacy by the western propagandists and colonists as a way to control the masses for their own intent.

Yet, as Professor William Richman has stated: "There simply are no genetically-based pan-"racial" differences in character, intelligence, or any other set of traits crucial to individual or societal success or position; racial essentialism is intellectually bankrupt" (Richman).

I invite you to read Richman's excellent detailed article about genetics and the dispersal of us human from Africa " Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" (2006).

I also need to add here from the profound 1988 book by George Fredrickson, "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History" that every step of the way Europeans attempted to rationalize their oppression of Africans.

Hunter-Gatherers

In the quest to explain human culture, anthropologists have paid a great deal of attention to recent hunter-gatherer, or forager, societies. A major reason for this focus has been the widely held belief that knowledge of hunter-gatherer societies could open a window into understanding early human cultures (Yale).

When we left Africa we would have been hunter-gatherers, which we have been for most of our human history. It was only some 10,000 years ago that we began the mass production of agriculture and/or to grow food and store it in bulk. In fact "food production took over to such an extent that, in the past few hundred years, only an estimated 5 million people have subsisted by foraging" (Yale). Agriculture also

radically changed they way we had lived as hunter-gatherers from an egalitarian to a hierarchical society.

Hunter-gatherers generally had small bands of people of about thirty individuals who were quite independent. They were, however, usually connected to a larger tribal group or other similar small groups. In the hunter-gatherer groups, resources were equally shared.

While hunting and gathering were largely separated by the men and women with men being the hunters and women the gatherers there were times that these tasks were shared. However, women as gatherers brought in from 60% to 80% of the food eaten by the group (O'Neil).

It's true that some hunter-gatherer's brought some animals to extinction but "most groups lived thousands of years in the same area without destroying the environment" (huntergatherers.org).

I realize it is possible to romanticize the hunter-gatherer societies and they did vary but there appears to be some basic threads. Also, the research findings suggest a radically different and positive life than ours today. Here's more about the culture:

These bands will usually move from place to place in a semi-nomadic way, although some may remain in permanent settlements. Each band will have a leader, or chief, who usually is an organizer and mediator, but has little power beyond that. Remember that these groups do not possess hardly any stockpiles of material wealth, and leaders particularly avoid having any more possessions than other members of the group so that there will not be any resentment or jealousy from the group. So a chief usually will not have much power over the rest of the members of the group. All members of the band have an equal voice in decision making. A chief only organizes those voices. In fact, if one person becomes too aggravating to another person of the tribe, that person can simply move to another band (huntergatherers.org)

With respect to some of the "ideals" of hunter and gatherer societies overall, below is a description by psychologist Peter Gray which you can see is vastly different from what we have now in our western societies. It is definitely a model for us to consider or variation thereof:

We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close that of hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions (Gray).

To repeat, the definition of a "chief" in hunter-gatherer societies is not the "big man" who has considerable power but rather one who seeks consensus. In fact, Peter Gray refers to research indicating that hunter-gatherers were "fiercely egalitarian" and would not tolerate anyone putting on airs or boasting. In fact, Gray refers in his article to the concept of "reverse dominance". He writes:

Christopher Boehm proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled "reverse dominance". In a standard dominance hierarchy - as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos) - a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them (Gray).

Further, equality and the relationship between men and women in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to below from recent studies reported in The Guardian in May 2015 being that sexual equality, as some might think, is not recent. In fact, it appears to have been the norm for much of our human history. In her fascinating article, entitled "Early men and women were equal, say scientists", Hannah Devlin notes that it was with the advent of agriculture "when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged" (Devlin).

Devlin goes on to say that the egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer societies was distinct from our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzees that "live in quite aggressive, male-dominated societies with clear hierarchies" (Devlin). Unfortunately, with agriculture we devolved from egalitarianism societies to those, in most parts of the world today, that are male dominated and somewhat like our chimpanzee cousins.

Finally, there have been many false assumptions about hunter-gatherers that they must have lived short lived and grim lives, when quite the reverse appears to be the case:

Ethnographic research carried out over the last half century has largely demolished this myth that foragers in the past had to struggle for existence. In fact, they usually had a food supply that was adequate and reliable. Most of them only had to expend minimal labor to provide for their basic needs. What is particularly surprising to people in industrialized nations is that foragers often lived well into old age with few signs of anxiety and insecurity" (O'Neil).

An important aspect of hunter-gatherer societies, therefore, was their closeness to nature, which is also expressed in the description of their spiritual lives. As they foraged they also had a very diverse diet with a variety of minerals. In fact, archeologists who have compared the bones of hunter-gatherers have been rather shocked at how healthy they were (tall and strong) compared to those in early agricultural societies whose diets where severely limited. Plus, in agricultural societies the masses worked excessively long hours - as in women grinding grains. Their bones and spinal cords reflect this strain on their bodies (Manning).

Reflection of our changed diet (pinstopin)

As a testament to the limited or unhealthy diet of agricultural communities, in the 1930's my father worked as a dentist in the Northwest Territories in Canada around the Arctic Ocean. His patients were Eskimos and Native Canadians, many of whom lived in settlements, but also hunted and gathered food. He described how the teeth and health of his patients deteriorated as they were exposed to and eating the western diet - primarily sugar. As he treated them on a barge in the Arctic Ocean, he said he was probably the only dentist in the world whose patients would spit in the Arctic Ocean. He was probably right!

Hunter-Gatherer Spiritual Life

Our hunter gatherer lifestyle was not the only quality of life factor we took with us as we left Africa. It was our spiritual beliefs as well. We started developing our spiritual selves (largely with many gods) from the outset long before leaving Africa, took these beliefs with us as if we traveled from Africa, and then we altered our beliefs largely based on our new and different environments. Relating to our early spiritual expressions, scholar Karen Armstrong writes:

"...my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognizably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art (Armstrong).

In my previous article, "Part I: History and Violence of Christianity", I referred to the creation story in the European Christian Bible as having its roots in the Pygmy culture of Central Africa (Murdock). This is because the Pygmy story emulates much of the same themes and it developed far earlier, of course, than the North African or European version. And while the Pygmy's religious traditions overall are very complex, the creation story is itself monotheistic. Nevertheless, as Murdock has noted, our earliest form of worship was relevant to nature that included "wind, water, trees, mountains, animals". But also in the mix were celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, stars, constellations, planets, etc. as well as goddesses and gods both male and female (Religious Tolerance).

However, virtually all of us human groups also developed creation stories in some fashion, and, as stated below, they tend to have the same basic themes and we all considered our beliefs to be true:

A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally, it does not imply falsehood. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true. In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense....

Creation myths often share a number of features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either dieties, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily (Wikipedia).

It is important to note again that as we became agricultural based societies we lost much of our honoring and respect of nature which is ultimately reflected in many of the new religions we developed in the West.

Summary

There have been assumptions that seem to stay in the American psyche - likely as a way to justify slavery and other white supremacist beliefs - that we have different human species, such as between whites and blacks. This fallacy is perpetuated in any number of ways but it is a social and cultural construct, primarily as a justification for oppression. Yet, we are all homo sapiens and of the same human family, but we have different colors because of the environment where we lived thousands of years ago. And "racial essentialism" inferring different intellectual and other capacities of us humans, as Richman and others note, is "intellectually bankrupt".

I need to add here from the profound 1982 book by George Fredrickson, "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History" that every step of the way Europeans attempted to rationalize their oppression of Africans or indigenous people wherever they were. Examples of the rationalization could be color of skin; "racial essentialism" as above; hunter-gatherer use of land for hunting rather than agriculture; a religion other than Christianity; etc. Whatever rationale it took, they used it in order to grab land, take the resources, and exploit the labor.

Regarding the hunter-gatherer culture, I was but touching the surface here. Nevertheless, what the culture offered in many instances should give us pause to reflect and, in fact, encourage us to explore ways that the egalitarianism and respect of the other could be emulated in our contemporary society. Therein lies the challenge, given the life we have in an intensely hierarchical capitalist society that prevails in the world today. But there is always hope and paradigms, including economic systems, do change! But, rarely without a struggle!

I mention the creation story above as well, of course, in that all of us humans ultimately sought a way to understand our life and world. The concept by the West and others via their religions is of stating that they have the truth, as it were, and that anyone who doesn't believe the same is a heathen (defined as someone who does not worship the God of Israel or is lacking in cultural or moral principles, etc.). Religion is not static. It did not come out of thin air. It also had its evolutionary development out of Africa. And the West, in fact, did not suddenly come up with many of these religious ideas or even the concept of monotheism. They were the beneficiaries of virtually all of the basic concepts, as in the creation story and much more of course, from their African ancestors. Mother Africa was and is the fount of our humanity both biologically and spiritually.

In Part III, I will continue with a history of the advent of agriculture and new religions.

References:

Armstrong, Karen A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, A Ballantine Book, (Random House) (1993)

Fredrickson, George White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History Oxford University Press (1982)

Manning, Richard Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, North Print Press (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) (2004)

Richman, William "Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" University of Pittsburgh Law Review, (2006).

Sussman, Robert Wald The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea Harvard University Press, 2014.

Wells, Spencer The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Penguin, UK; Princeton University Press and Random House, US (2002)

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Heather Gray is a writer and radio producer in Atlanta, Georgia. She can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.

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Correction: In my previous article entitled "The Massacre in Charleston" I mistakenly referred to the article " Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" (2006) being written by William Richmond - his name instead is "William Richman" which I have corrected in the attached PDF.