Problems of American Blackness 2/2

In the same sense, the political development of the black American southeast, would tend towards a form of socialism; which, weakened by corporate aggressiveness in economy, will be unsustainable like the African empires to which it appeals. These formations will thus be progressively impoverished, due to the typical unproductiveness of the political model; aggravated by the elephantiasis —also typical— of government structures, as guarantors of economic order.

Although for different reasons, this foreseeable development would be that of cases such as Haiti and Cuba; which respond to the structural weakness of sub-Saharan petty imperialism, due to its dependence on a strong personalities. That would be inevitable, due to its origin on the margins of the West culture, rather than in an effective African centrality; as emporiums of political power, in the growing weakness of the Western structure, with its progressive decadence.

This precariousness is what resembles American blackness, to that Germanic expansion in the Roman decadence; but as a process extended in time, which in Europe was only consolidated in the ninth century, with Charlemagne. In the United States, as the modern culmination of medieval chaos, the nature of the conflict is not warlike but economic; making development more imperceptible, in a political expression that transcends the ideological; but for the same reason it has more effective possibilities —than in Haiti and Cuba, for example—, in its religious nature.

What marks the violent evolution of the European Middle Ages would be the claim of universality of Christianity; which, interfering with secular power, exceeds the infrastructural capacity of local cultures. In the United States that is not the problem, but the weakness of this pretension of its political structure, as liberal; which is therefore resolved in the infrastructural function of the local churches, which is parochial and not transnational.

In the same sense, the conflict seems confessional in principle, like that of the early Lutheran Reformation; but it differs in that it is interdenominational —between Baptists and Methodists— and non-jurisdictional, by its political practices. This conflict would develop surreptitiously, due to the political commitment of the so-called African Methodism; as an instrument of ideological liberalism, in a functionally conservative community, such as the black one. This would be solved with the slow migration —hence the surreptitiousness— from the Methodist to the Baptist church; by the latter's appeal to family culture —rather than to the protection of the state— in its functional conservatism; different from the liberal, as practical and not ideological, in the appeal to its existential resources, given its political precariousness.

However, that will only condition the development, which is favorable to the ideological projection of Methodism; because of its conjunction with government protection, reminiscent of the populist absolutism of Louis XIV in France; respect to which it is more efficient, materializing in a state of well-being, paid for with the public debt. Nevertheless, this will make it possible for alternative structures to emerge, in the face of the problem of unproductivity; that will end up undermining the effective scope of that state of well-being, thus surpassed as infrastructure.

To solve this, Americans would have to turn to their own history, but factual and not ancestral; that is, to find their references in their own historical singularity, which transcends African origin. An example would be the ambiguity of the indigenous wars, which in the Seminole case are also known as black; because of that North American ethnogamous peculiarity, by which blacks share with Indians the path of tears.

However, this approach —as existential rather than political— would be pragmatic and not transcendentalist; hermeneutically detaching itself from the liberal tradition, which sponsors it with its own historical reference, as ideology. Hence those contradictions that prevent the consolidation of a local black culture, in transcendentalism; with the conditioning of the past, which they will partially deny, based on their own founding myth.

An example of this denial would be the historic participation of African political structures in the slave trade; as a contradiction that would separates them from the origin they claim, making it inconsistent as a political expression. Another example would be that of the same appeal to the exceptions, and in general to the Mediterranean area; by which they cannot access the resources of the original tribal organization, such as that of geronto democracy and matrilineality.

Problems of American Blackness 1/2

The problem of blackness in the United States is identity —or lack thereof—, supplemented with its references to Africa; which provides the bases but not the structure of that identity, and much less can it resolve its determinations. It is not that this projection takes place in a vacuum, since it has a basis in the very culture of the American Southeast; whose segregationism is not only political but also due to the swampy geography of the eastern islands; resulting in a kind of New Africa, due to the isolation of the plantations, which made syncretism difficult. However, this will still be insufficient, since it still depends on the negativity of segregation, whatever its cause; not allowing the practical consistency —as positivity— of some economy, even primary, as in the Seminole case.

This is why its expression, as a culture, consists of a political projection instead of an existential one, as an ideology; with the positivist and romantic rational nature of the idealist tradition, which it shares with the liberalism that sponsors it. The problem with this is the artificiality of that liberalism, which actually acts a functional conservatism; since it consists of a vigilance over the individual, to whom it subordinates the community, in that historical transcendentalism.

In the opposite direction, cultures tend towards the same transcendentalism, but they are adequate by their tribal infrastructure; which limits that political determinism with its own cultural consistency, in the power of the family as a private space. Elements such as matrilineality, in the very infrastructural function of the clan, are limits to this transcendentalism; that ignores them in the political conventions proper to the West, such as the community or the common good.

These are values attributed to African primitivism, but never superimposed to its basic tribal infrastructure; but they do constitute in the West its very structure, with its natural reduction of culture to that political determinism. That, for example, was the case with Christianity, when it over imposed itself to tribalism, with the crown of Carlo Magno; as the moment the West culture lost its existential object, in crisis since the imperial efforts of Julio Cesar. It's for a reason that these values reach their conceptual excellence in the West, with figures such as Kant and Descartes; but in a development that starts from the very basis of that transcendentalism, from Platonic to Neoplatonic uranism; which then organized in Christianity, prepares the war debacle with which the West arrives at Modernity to end.

In African tribal primitivism, on the other hand, culture cannot lose its existential function, not even in this determinism; which, lacking sufficient infrastructure, collapses the phenomenon in its very formation, before its apotheosis. This is the case of all the empires in the sub-Saharan area, with the exceptions of Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, for example; which are explained in their contamination by the influence of Mediterranean culture, including the religious element (Mali). In Congo, on the other hand, like Oyó in Nigeria and Dahomey, this structure cannot survive its own contradictions; because its inability to go beyond tribal organization —as domestic—, resolved in matrilineality.

The references of North American blackness to a primitive African communism would try to make up for this lack; already in that historical and transcendentalist projection of political determinism, but in a conceptual ambiguity. In this sense, they come to legitimize themselves in the exceptionality of the great imperialism, not in the tribal regularity; to which they nevertheless appeal in their ideological function, despite its direct contradiction of exceptional imperialism.

The contradiction is logical, due to the special nature of this political projection, as an ideology rather than culture; by not being on behalf of the popular class, but of an intellectual elite, formed in that patronage by political liberalism. The best example of this case would perhaps be that of W.E.B. Du Bois, probably the most outstanding personality in that segment; but because of its contradiction with black leadership in its popular origin, with figures such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas.

To be continued