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Books by Floyd W.
Hayes, III
A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African
American Studies /
Forty
Acres and a Mule: The Rape of Colored Americans
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Age of the
Terminator
Beyond Resistance and Salvation
Letter to Seneca Turner on the New
Way
By Floyd W. Hayes, III
May 21,
2010
Dear
Brother Seneca,
Re: The
New Way: Blackness in the Age of the Terminator—Beyond
Resistance and Salvation
As a
kid in 1940s, I used to watch Buster Crabbe play in the
science-fiction
Flash Gordon serials on TV, and I was fascinated
by the futuristic portrayal of space ships and winged
villains. Noticing how captivated I was, my father
would tell me repeatedly that there would come a time
when science fiction would become scientific reality.
Even as my dad announced the coming age, we already were
living in a new techno-scientific historical moment of
nuclear/atomic development that was enunciated when the
USA attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
I want
to use this kind of perspective (i.e., futuristic
techno-scientific development) in responding to your
most recent open letter (spring 2010). For decades,
now, some scholars have argued that we live in what they
characterize as the managerial age of advanced
knowledge, science, and technology, in which managerial
elites and their knowledge organizations increasingly
manage people and wield power based upon expert
knowledge. But this is a characterization of new
politics and policymaking dynamics. Underlying this
development is a complex techno-knowledge revolution
that is chiefly seen in the explosion of computers and
other electronic advancements.
However, what has received less attention is the
biotechnological revolution that may very well transform
what it means to be human. I use the science-fiction
Terminator series as a metaphor for this
development (for discussions of the Terminator
series, see Richard Brown and Kevin Decker, eds.,
Terminator and Philosophy), for it can serve as
a guide in the interrogation of what it may mean to be
Black in the new age of advanced knowledge, science, and
technology. An early step in this transition is the
Black woman, who was the world’s first human to be
fitted with a commercially available bionic hand last
year (see “Bionic
Hand ‘has changed Everything’”,
Jet Magazine, May 4, 2009, pp. 20-21).
Regardless of the ethical issues involved, it appears
that we cannot be far from other forms of
biotechnological developments—e.g., artificial
intelligence, robotics, cloning, genetic engineering,
nanotechnology, androids, and cyborgs—that may change
what it means to be human (see James Hughes,
Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies must respond to
the Redesigned Human of the Future).
Within
the next two or three decades, and whether Blacks like
it or not, the distinction between human and machine may
become increasingly blurred. As MIT Professor of
Computer Science and Engineering and Director of the
Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
Rodney Brooks, claims: “Our machines will become much
more like us, and we will become much more like our
machines” (Flesh
and Machine: How Robots will Change Us, p. 11).
What is the significance of the growing discourse of
trans-human or post-human futures (see Francis Fukuyama,
Our Posthuman Future), and what are the
possible consequences for Black people? How do we think
about Black Nationalism in the Age of the
Terminator?
In your
correspondence, which is dedicated to the memory of
Brother William C. Griffin (1935-2010), you issue a
thought-provoking challenge to us to think through the
crisis of Black Nationalism in a changing global
situation. You mention seeing an interview of Ossie
Davis, Gordon Parks, and Melvin Van Peebles, entitled
Unstoppable,
a Conversation with Ossie Davis, Gordon Parks, and
Melvin Van Peebles, in which Davis stated that
Blacks needed to develop a new way of existence in the
future. You then ask, “What is that ‘new way’”? What
does it mean to engage issues of this type? Do we
engage in the kind of discourse about the "New
Negro" that
Alain Locke and others did during the “Harlem
Renaissance”? Significantly, were they actually
“new negroes”? Or were they faking an illusionary
identity and existence, as
Richard Wright and
Harold Cruse
argued? Hence, we have to be careful when we speak of
constructing a new way of being Black. Hence, my
initial question: is there a new way of being Black in
the 21st century? And then I ask: what is
this new way? Indeed, what is this new way in the Age
of the
Terminator?
When
trying to analyze our situation, Black folks often, too
often, stand in the present and look back to the past.
We live the past in the present. However, what I want
to suggest is that we stand in the present, reflect on
the past, so that we can look to the future. That is to
say, we might benefit from paying attention to trends,
developments, and future challenges related to the
subject of our discussion. We also need to engage
contradictions, dilemmas, and alternatives then follow.
In other words, we need to deal with new concepts,
theories, even new thinking about thinking itself. We
need to focus on the future; all of us must become
futurists!
It is
the Black existential situation—of enslavement, Jim Crow
segregation, lynching, and anti-Black racism—that
historically has shaped the condition of being Black in
the United States of America. And it has been an
historical situation characterized by disaster,
atrocity, and evil that has been the source of Black
anger, outrage, resentment, and struggle. Yet, in the
contemporary period of expanding right-wing
conservatism, along with the real possibility of
neo-fascism (see Chris Hedges,
American Fascist; Allan Lichtman,
White Protestant Nation; Ronald Walters,
White Nationalism, Black Interests) younger
generations of Black people seem to have lost the will
to struggle against the forces of white supremacy and
anti-Black racism. Hip-hop culture, the most recent
form of Black expressive culture, seems to be aware of
the vicious nature of postmodern racist and capitalist
culture, but appears to be indifferent to radical or
progressive political struggle (see Bakari Kitwana,
The Hip Hop Generation; Imani Perry,
Prophets of the Hood; Tricia Rose,
The Hip Hop Wars). So far, hip-hop cultural
adherents—they do not appear to be warriors—do not look
like the progenitors of a new way of being Black in the
21st century.
But
there is a larger set of issues with which Black people
will have to contend. What if the United States of
America is in decline? In
Dark Ages America, Morris Berman argues that
it is not a question of if the America Empire will fall,
but when it will fall. For some years, America has
launched itself onto a path of self-destruction,
punctuated particularly by the former Bush regime’s
so-called wars on terrorism in the Iraq and Afghanistan
(see Anonymous,
Imperial Hubris; Walden Bello,
Dilemmas of Domination; Boggs,
Imperial Delusions; Lewis Lapham,
Pretensions of Empire; Cullen Murphy,
Are We Rome?). These wars, along with
increasing hostilities with Iran and Pakistan, have
every possibility of deepening, especially with the ever
expanding deployment of the robotics of war (see P. W.
Singer,
Wired for War: the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in
the 21st Century). The U.S. defends
its aggression using the cover of promoting a democracy
that has never existed in America! Yet, mounting
American militarism and imperialism contain their own
contradictions and dilemmas, clearly evident in the
breakdown within U.S. military forces
overseas—e.g., fatigue, suicide, rape, murder, psychotic
disorders, and much more. Off and on for some time, I
have been reading Edward Gibbon’s study,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
trying to discover if the Romans were conscious of their
empire’s degeneration and decline. This is because I
like so many other Americans, sense that the U.S. Empire
is crumbling. A post-American world is emerging as
China and India are becoming bigger actors on the global
political and economic scene (see Fareed Zakaria,
The Post-American World).
Nowhere
is America’s deterioration more evident than in the
field of education (see Claudia Goldin and Lawrence
Katz,
The Race between Education and Technology). In
the years to come, the U.S. may find it increasingly
difficult to compete with educationally advanced
nations, as international universities gain more
prominence on the world scene (see Ben Wildavsky,
The Great Brain Race). With quality education in
decline, such crises as programmed retardation,
functional illiteracy, “cultural wars” ignited by
right-wing conservatives, the resurgence of intellectual
bankruptcy, athletes as the new gladiators and cultural
heroes, are becoming the order of the day. In a world
that is becoming increasingly knowledge-dependent,
America’s glaring educational degeneration indicates a
major turning point in the Empire.
At
Johns Hopkins University, where I teach courses in
Africana Studies and political science, too many
students fail to read sufficiently; too many scarcely
exhibit any intellectual curiosity; and too many write
so poorly that I wonder how they were admitted to the
University. Today, I just finished reading a revision
of a senior student’s honor’s thesis. The original
paper was terribly researched, organized, and written!
And the revision was not substantially improved. I
could not recommend that the student graduate with
honors later this month! Parenthetically, I want to
note that the student is a USA-born Nigerian (Igbo)
whose research topic focused on an analysis of the
Biafran (Igbo)-Nigerian War of the late 1960s.
Significantly, many Black students view me as an “old
school” professor as I still demand considerable
reading, serious class discussion, and quality
scholarship. Importantly, my class lectures are filled
with examples and analyses of the Black Power struggle
of the late 1960s and 1970s. Disappointed, I am
thinking about retiring in the next few years.
In the
future, what will become of young and not so young Black
men? In Baltimore, MD, 76% of Black males do not
complete high school! Black females do not come close
to this figure. I suspect that the numbers are similar
in other big cities. This percentage of high-school
drop/push outs would be calamitous under any
circumstance. In a knowledge-intensive society in the
Age of the Terminator, this educational reality
is beyond catastrophic! Young Black men will not have a
chance at life without a quality education. They face
now and will continue to face lives of violence, trauma,
prison, or death (see Michelle Alexander,
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Coloblindness; John Rich,
Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the
Lives of Young Black Men).
What
troubles me even more is that criminologists of the
future will more than likely be Black. In recent years,
I have been astounded by the growing numbers of Black
undergraduate and graduate sociology majors who, looking
for employment immediately upon graduation, are studying
to become criminologists. Significantly, they may be
the future professionals who will use their expertise to
define young Black men (and women) as criminal.
Moreover, they may very well be aided by various
bio-technological means. Here I am reminded of the
movie,
Minority Report, in which Tom Cruse starred as a
criminologist who was aided by a technological apparatus
that could define a person as a criminal before the
person actually committed a crime. Of course, the
contradiction was that Cruse became the target of the
same technology. Is this the fate of uneducated young
Black males in the new age of advanced knowledge,
science, and technology? Will they be the victims of an
expanding prison-technological-complex?
Against
the above background, how can we answer Ossie Davis’
penetrating question? Will there be, can there be, a
new way of being Black in the 21st century?
What will it mean to be a Black human in the Age of the
Terminator? As of yet, we cannot know for
certain. What we know is that the future is in the
present and that we live in a moment that is becoming
more and more complex and uncertain. With mounting
social complexity, we might suspect the disappearance of
a singular Black community or people. Black
Nationalists of all stripes seem to take for granted a
singular Black collectivity. Even though I know
differently, I always speak of Black people as if there
is a unified, but not necessarily uniform, Black people
or “nation.” Perhaps Blacks never have been a singular
people or community with one aim, one destiny, as Marcus
Garvey claimed. The more we study the slave trade and
chattel slavery, the more we learn that captured African
slaves came from various West African nations from
Morocco to the Old Congo Kingdom. Forced to become
single people in North America as a result of the slave
experience, numerous captured African nationalities had
to forge a common identity as Black Americans.
Yet,
there always were differences in social outlook among
captured African slaves and their American descendants
because of the complicated relationship between slave
owners and slaves, between the exploiters and the
exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed.
Moreover, house slaves and field slaves experienced
different existential situations, which often produced
competing worldviews. Being Black, then, always has
been a complicated and complex existential experience.
This reality continues to be true today and may very
well remain so in the decades to come. (The complexity
continues to expand as our continental African cousins
are relocating to the USA in massive numbers each
year.) Moreover, living as a slave or living in the old
Jim Crow south meant living with a great amount of
uncertainty. One found it difficult to know when one
would live or die. Now, living with such uncertainty
gave rise to an improvisational style of living. One
had to learn to expect the unexpected, which was/is
difficult because the unexpected always was/is
unexpected. This kind of improvisational life style—a
means of existing that faced complexity and uncertainty
head on—has allowed Blacks to survive. But will this be
sufficient in the Age of the Terminator?
We now
are left to speculate about blackness in the 21st
century of advanced knowledge, science, and technology.
How will the process human-machine integration be
accomplished? Are humans already techno-sapiens
sapiens? How will resultant conflicts be handled? What
role and significance will ethics play in the politics
of bio-technological development? We cannot say that
only whites will make future bio-technological
decisions. Black scientists, engineers, ethicists also
will be involved. Within less than twenty years, the
world will be well onto the path of post-humanism or
trans-humanism. For example, bio-medical engineers have
created the defibulator—a bio-technological enhancement
that is inserted in the body to manage heart beats.
Another example is the blue tooth that is worn on the
outer ear; it augments the cell phone. Will that
technology eventually be implanted somewhere in the
human body? Have you noticed how apparently easy it is
now to have one’s sexual identity transformed through
the arrival of new surgical performances?
What
about the issue of artificial intelligence and the
enhancement of the human brain and its powers of
knowledge (see the books by Ray Kurzweil,
The Age of the Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed
Human Intelligence; and
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology)?
How will the bio-technological revolution transform
human “nature”? How will humans interact with robots
that have been programmed with artificial intelligence?
How will biogenetic engineering or manipulation affect
human or post-human decision-making? Will we still be
able to talk about “autonomous” judgment and
decision-making? In the face of mass mediated
management (e.g., commercialization of choice), can we
be said to make independent political and economic
choices today? Too, how will the robotics of war affect
human soldiers who may no longer be fighting on the
ground but in a computer laboratory? Can/will human
irrationality be inserted into the artificial
intelligence of machines?
Seneca,
many years ago, you said to me that there always were
benefits and burdens with respect to legal decisions. I
never have forgotten that insight. Although I am
uncomfortable about future challenges associated with
the bio-technological revolution, I am reminded of your
perspective and now apply it to regarding the burdens
and benefits of new bio-technological decisions and
developments. Surely there may be benefits associated
with human biological and mental enhancements in the
post-human or trans-human world. Yet, the possible
burdens of increased uncertainty, complexity, and
conflict, which the Terminator series make quite
plain, are obvious. How will racism or capitalism
interact with the bio-technological revolution? Who
will be making crucial decisions? How will
technologically-enhanced decision-making affect the
world? Will the gap between humans and machines
increasingly be blurred, and what will be the
significance of this development? Is the world as we
know it coming to an end as the fundamentalist religious
adherents call the predetermined apocalypse (see Slavoj
Zizek,
Living in the End of Times)? Or is the future
still in the hands of humans or post-humans? Perhaps it
is in some kind of post-human or trans-human future that
a new way of being Black and humanist may have to be
forged—beyond resistance and salvation.
Sincerely,
Floyd
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It Aint
My Fault by Mos Def & Lenny Kravitz
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|
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men
By John Rich
The statistics startle: homicide death rates are more than 17
times higher for young black men than their white counterparts.
Rich, chair of the department of health management and policy at
the Drexel University School of Public Health, considers the
impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on the survivors. His
account is professional, as he finds analogies between his
subjects and combat veterans and victims of sexual assault, and
personal, as he reports how spending hours and days with these
young men transformed him. Two particularly detailed moments
stand out: one follows a young man through emergency room
protocols, another follows Rich through prison visit procedures.
Although Rich's research spans two decades, he focuses most
sharply upon four young men he encountered at Boston City
Hospital. |
 |
The high
level of violence in their communities makes young men feel physically,
psychologically, and socially unsafe, Rich observes; thus, ironically, these
violent young men seem to be looking for safety in a violent world. Rich
joins the ranks of Rachel Carson, Michael Harrington and Ralph Nader for
bringing attention to a pervasive social problem with a fresh perspective
and warranted urgency.
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 |
The Hip Hop Generation
Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture
By Bakari Kitwana
Kitwana turns from "rap
music [and] the hip-hop industry's insiders" to "Black youth
culture." He designates African Americans born 1965-84--the
first "post-civil rights" generation of black Americans--the
hip-hop generation. "Although individuals [in that cohort] may
point to different defining events, all share a crystal clear
understanding of coming of age in an era of post-segregation and
global economics." In the face of "great disparities" in
education and financial matters (jobs, wages, mortgage
opportunities) that persisted beyond the civil rights era, the
hip-hop generation has used newfound pop-cultural access and
influence to "strengthen associations between Blackness and
poverty, while celebrating anti-intellectualism, ignorance,
irresponsible parenthood, and criminal lifestyles" and enjoying
"a free pass from Black leaders" and "non-Black critics who . .
. fear being attacked as racist."
Mike Tribby, Booklist |
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Capitalism and the Ideal State:
Marcus Garvey / Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism
(Du Bois) /
Economic Emancipation of Africa
Liberty and Empire
/
Money is Speech
/
On Capitalism: Noam Chomsky
Bill Moyers and James Cone (Interview) /
A Conversation with James Cone
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John
Coltrane, "Alabama" /
Kalamu ya Salaam, "Alabama"
/
A Love Supreme
A Blues for the Birmingham Four
/ Eulogy for the Young Victims
/ Six Dead After Church
Bombing
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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posted 22 May 2010 |
