Submitted by philosophybreak t3_zkr99s in philosophy
Reply to comment by buddhabillybob in Existence is infinitely richer than our descriptions of it. So, rather than cling to reductive explanations that only ‘close’ life’s possibilities, we should ‘open’ reality by seeing ourselves as perpetual students | Interview with Black Existentialist Lewis Gordon by philosophybreak
>I did think the distinction between “black” consciousness and “Black” consciousness was pretty interesting.
This has always annoyed me. Why do thinkers in critical theoretic circles feel the need to change the meanings of words - in ways that are supposedly extremely crucial to their points - via nothing more than capitalization differences? I still don't understand why that of all things would be the go-to algorithm for these types of academics.
I'm generally not a fan of existentialism and I don't exactly "get" this guy, so I can't perfectly represent his viewpoints. But the capitalization makes perfect sense to me. "Black" with a capital B refers to Black people as a distinct ethnic group, while "black" originally framed Black people in terms of darkness, impurity, and arbitrary racial norms and standards, the inverse of "white." The capitalization puts "Black" alongside "Asian" or "Cherokee" as a thing in and of itself.
I found his explanation of this needlessly opaque, but it's a pretty simple construct. Capitalization is just a way of framing Black identity in terms other than isolated attributes or social norms, like where someone falls on the "paper bag test."
I should mention that calling someone "black" without capitalization does not carry the racist connotations it originally did. With or without capitalization it's the preferred term. This is not to imply that "black" is a racial slur.
No as I'm reading it, I think the author would generalize both Black consciousness and black consciousness across many different racial groups. The distinction seems to be that black consciousness is the IMPOSED concsiousness that these groups experience (inferiority, enslavement) while Black consciousness is an act of self-realization that your own lived racial identity can serve as the basis for interacting with and analyzing reality
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but that doesn't make sense to me because simply having dark skin does not, in general, determine one's ethnicity. There are multiple ethnic groups (e.g., Arabic, Brazilian, the plethora of distinct African nations) that can exhibit such a phenotype of dark skin color.
So, what theoretically are they claiming is unifying all these distinct ethnicities? It sounds to me like the distinction is solely based on optimism versus pessimism towards these groups and peoples, i.e., something to be celebrated, rather than to be viewed through the lens of lazy stereotypes and prejudices.
Again, I'm probably misunderstanding your explanation though.
>Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but that doesn't make sense to me because simply having dark skin does not, in general, determine one's ethnicity. There are multiple ethnic groups (e.g., Arabic, Brazilian, the plethora of distinct African nations) that can exhibit such a phenotype of dark skin color.
This is largely true, and Gordon might actually disagree with the explanation I'm about to give. But Black people in the U.S., at least those whose ancestry goes back to slavery, have some common experiences. Slaves in particular had their their identities and genealogy erased, and in a sense are more a distinct ethnicity than European Americans since we can trace our ancestry more easily. So there's a commonality between most Black Americans that goes beyond skin color. They have a culture that is distinct from both Africans and other Americans.
It gets complicated when you consider that many Black Americans are immigrants from Africa. Gordon may be including them, or he may not. They share some commonalities, but not others. I'm not including people in all countries because this is, to my knowledge, a largely American construct. Other countries have different experiences with racial stratification.
Not every Black person agrees with this. But there is a rationale for it that goes beyond academic obsurantism. It is controversial and, again, I'm not agreeing with Gordon on everything. But I think the shift towards capitalization is both respectful and logically sound.
That's quite different than what I was assuming it meant. In reality, it practically has nothing even to do with ethnicity, which in a sense makes it a kind of misnomer. I'd certainly not include modern immigrants or even other dark skinned ethnicities under this specific meaning, as I suspect that doing so introduces quite a lot of obfuscation into the discourse on this subject.
Like I said, it's controversial. It is much harder to define "black" and "white" than it is to define "Asian" or "Mexican." Yet these constructs won't go away and the more they impact society and the individual, the more they become things in themselves. I don't think there's a perfect solution.
Gordon definitely seems to be operating from a less practical, tangible vantage point, which makes him harder to engage with than most people who draw this distinction.
>Yet these constructs won't go away and the more they impact society and the individual, the more they become things in themselves.
I mean, they're here because we create them and allow them to influence us.
With the advent of true equality under the law, families with mixed ethnicities, and the natural progression of human consciousness beyond simplistic constructs, I'd like to think that we can hopefully come to cast aside such limitations, rather than further ingrain them into our collective psyche.
Academics have to publish articles. And if they're the "black consciousness" academic that's what you are going to get ad infinitum.
Academics nowadays are living in silos separate from each other and the real world as they pursue their "area" slapping their highly focused cookie cutter research onto various topics.
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