Art, Science, Technology and the Advancement of Society
No society can advance without great minds working on that advancement in the scientific arena. North American Africans suffer a brain drain of their best minds co-opted and literally stolen from our community by the dominant culture. Rather than our genius students in math, engineering, technology, medicine and other areas working on our upliftment, they are lost and turned out by corporate capitalist America to be captives of the White Supremacy culture that siphons their genius talents for, among other things, the US military's world hegemony.
Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, perhaps thegreatest scientific mind produced
by North American Africans
On one level, we know segregation was a blessing simply because our best minds were restricted to our community. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, mathematicians, physicists all were forced to give their talents to us, rather than "them." Of course when "they" discovered the very best of us with genius talent, even under segregation they swooped us away, sometimes kidnapped us to serve white supremacy culture.
We think of the great mathematician Blackwell who remains largely unknown to our people even to this day because he was forced to serve "them." Science thus becomes a political phenomena, often for the benefit of an oppressive society. American scientists were made to work on the atomic bomb and later deeply regretted doing so. And you know one of us worked on that bomb as well.
It is the same in the arts. We need only think of Elizabeth Cattlett Mora, one of our very greatest painters and sculptors, who is only now at 90 years old, being discovered by her people, largely due to her revolutionary political views that were offensive and considered dangerous to the American government. A more recent example would be Gil Scott Herron, a tortured genius whose words were anathema to America.
Need we recall W.E.B.
DuBois, perhaps our greatest mind ever produced in the hells of North America, a social scientist who eventually fled America to Africa, simply because with all his knowledge he felt like a
nigguh, as he told Chairman Mao in China when Mao introduced him to speak before a million people at
Tiananmen Square. Or think of the great mind and voice of Paul Robeson, another genius of the first order who was also hounded and treated like a dog because he
refused to bow down to American racism and imperialism.
Paul Robeson, geat singer, actor,
revolutionary, activist, in his role as the
Moor in Shakespeare's Othello.
We wonder why so many of our problems go unsolved, yet it is simply because many of our best scientific and creative minds are captive of the dominant culture and prevented from addressing our critical issues, especially from a scientific perspective. When we consider revolution from a scientific perspective, we shall advance expeditiously. We must move beyond "any means necessary."
But how can we address this problem of the brain drain? Dr. Ben talked about the African brain drain in the destruction of Nile Valley Civilization. Of course the original mission of "Black Studies" was to obtain knowledge and return to the community, just as foreign students come to America, gain scientific skills, then return home to China, India, Africa, then proceed to nation build.
Black Studies morphed into creating a classical colonial elite group of scholars and scientists whose main focus became tenure rather than community. As a result, social problems, issues in health and welfare were neglected to the abject detriment of community. Their warped thinking allowed Europeans, Asians and others to address many critical issues, including history, sociology and philosophy. After 40 years, many of the historians on North American Africans are European. A Middle Eastern professor had to make the connection between the Black Arts Movement and Muslim American literature. A recent anthology of Black California literature is by a South Asian. Is this by design or simply slothful, niggardly thinking on the part of our scholars and social scientists? The most critical comment made against Manning Marable's biography of Malcolm X is about his myopia in connecting Malcolm with community. No, it was his own connection or disconnection from community that prevented him from a proper analysis of Malcolm! Because of his training and alienation, it is often an awsome if not impossible task for the academic to make that connection to community.
The academic often suffers a degree of schizophrenia. Howard University's great young scholar, Dr. Greg Carr, asked me how was I able to make that transition from academia to the street, although I am more street than academic.
For me it is a matter of focus and concern. For sure, I am more comfortable at Academy of da Corner than academia. But it is a choice I made long ago. I was shocked during a lecture at Morehouse when a student asked how does one talk to the street brothers? He had obviously lost his mind and a "street" brother had to break it down for him.
But imagine the pervasiveness of the problem in academia, as revealed in Manning's biography. For example, his lack of understanding the powerful role of the Nation of Islam on the community in general and Malcolm in particular. The Nation of Islam was, in fact, the community black studies program. The philsosphy, mythology and ritual of the NOI was a fundamental factor in the transformation of radical consciousness in the North American African community during the 60s.
We see the result of the "Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" in the prison population, the economic devastation of our community with no real solution from our thinkers and scientists, the pervasive sexual or gender identity crisis due to lack of manhood and womanhood training.
Joseph Campbell would say we see the result in the headlines of the daily newspapers, the pervasive crime, partner violence, drug abuse and pandemic health issues. And yet within the very population usurped, surely lie answers to the many conundrums facing our people. Within the population of the socalled wretched of the earth are those genius minds who have the dedication but lack the opportunity to train for the scientific advancement of our nation.
Scholars who are captives in the colonial elite slave system lack the commitment to service our community. They are thus unable to give the needed inspiration so many of our children must have to seek advancement in the sciences so they can bring about the society for today and tomorrow.
As I have traveled across country to speak at colleges and universities, I've met very few students who are science majors, most are in the humanities, social sciences and business. But we need only observe the subjects foreign students major in to get a clue what areas we must stress to our students as members of an underdeveloped nation.
It is because we are philosophically off base that we cannot see our condition as communal rather than individual, something the foreign students are crystal clear about. They know for sure they are not in America to gain skills for their individual self, but rather for their people.
Somehow, perhaps a post-black studies philosophy can alter the mental blindness our children suffer. Black Studies has been an intentional failure because the dominant society had no interest in seriously uplifting our community.
At this present moment, America is clearly demonstrating she has no interest in us other than containment. She has use for our very best minds, the rest are disposable. Their labor is not needed, therefore there is no reason to properly educate them for the future. They are more valuable incarcerated, which only furthers the brain drain, for surely within those jails and prison cells are minds that are wasting away, but have the potential to save us from a myriad ills and afflictions, social, psychological, economic, political, scientific and spiritual.
Our poor children are convinced by wretched, evil, jealous and envious school teachers (white and black teachers) that they cannot learn foreign languages, physics, math and other sciences. Yet they are descendants of men and women who invented language, math, geometry, chemistry, biology and literature. Our culture is as scientific as it is musical, after all, music is science and math. We have thus been hoodwinked and bamboozled, lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house (Whispers, Olivia).
Concerned community members must demand excellence only from our students. Anything less than excellence is an insult to our ancestors and elders. All this posing cool on the corner must go, except posing cool at Academy of da Corner, engaging in conversation that will propel us forward into the new millennium.
Students at Academy of da Corner,
14th and Broadway, Oakland CA
Imagine, some students used to "rap" on the steps of Oakland's Merritt College when it was on Grove Street or Martin Luther King, Jr. These students were self motivated to learn all they could about themselves and their people. These students went on to organize themselves for the liberation of their people. They shook up Oakland, America and the World. These students included Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Kenny Freeman, Carol Freeman, Richard Thorne, Ann Williams, Maurice Dawson, Isaac Moore, myself and others. Out of these students standing on the steps of Merritt College rapping developed the Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement.
The time calls for scientific revolution that will advance us into first class members of the world, equals with China, Brazil, India. As we did at Merritt College, students of today must discipline themselves to advance, not survive but thrive. Amiri Baraka asked students at San Francisco State University, "Is it difficult for you?" You must answer him, "No, sir!"
Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones),our greatest living revolutinary
writer/activist.
--Marvin X
6/11/11
Marvin X is chancellor of Academy of
da Corner, a peripatetic school in Oakland CA
at 14th and Broadway, downtown. He is the
author of 30 books.
