NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association

Philosophy and the Black Experience

SPRING 2021 VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2

FROM THE EDITOR Dwayne Tunstall

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION

FOOTNOTES TO HISTORY Hubert Harrison (1883–1927)

ARTICLE John H. McClendon III COVID-19, Capitalism, and Death: How and Why Black Lives Matter

BOOK REVIEWS A Welcome Leftward Turn to Marxism: Ferguson on the Philosophy of African American Studies

Reviewed by John H. McClendon III

The Disposable Man—Grotesque White Fantasies of Black Male Death in George Yancy’s Backlash

Reviewed by Adebayo Oluwayomi

AUTHOR BIOS

VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2 SPRING 2021

© 2021 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 APA NEWSLETTER ON Philosophy and the Black Experience

DWAYNE TUNSTALL, EDITOR VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2 | SPRING 2021

experience broadly construed. The editors welcome FROM THE EDITOR submissions written from any philosophical tradition, as long as they make a contribution to philosophy and the Dwayne Tunstall black experience broadly construed. The editors especially GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY welcome submissions dealing with philosophical issues and problems in African American and Africana philosophy.

INTRODUCTION All article submissions should be between ten and twenty This issue begins with our “Footnotes to History” section. pages (double spaced) in length, and book reviews should Stephen Ferguson and I shine our spotlight on the Black be between fve and seven pages (double spaced) in “proletarian intellectual” Hubert Harrison. Harrison was length. All submissions must follow the APA guidelines for a brilliant and infuential writer, orator, educator, critic, gender-neutral language and The Chicago Manual of Style philosophical materialist, and political activist in Harlem formatting. All submissions should be accompanied by a during the early decades of the twentieth century. short biography of the author. Please send submissions Unfortunately, Harrison’s materialist philosophy has not electronically to [email protected]. been the subject of any studies by African American philosophers. DEADLINES Fall issues: May 1 Stephen Ferguson and I are proud to present an unpublished Spring issues: December 1 talk, “COVID-19, Capitalism, and Death: How and Why Black Lives Matter,” by John H. McClendon III. McClendon was EDITOR one of the keynote speakers at the Fourteenth African Dwayne Tunstall, [email protected] American Intellectual Thought Symposium at Fresno State University. We would like to thank Professor Thomas Ellis, FORMATTING GUIDELINES the coordinator of the Africana Studies Program, and Ms. • The APA Newsletters adhere to The Chicago Manual of Chelsea Beeson for her hard work behind the scenes in Style. organizing the symposium. A special appreciation goes to Dr. Malik Simba, the visionary founder and creator of • Use as little formatting as possible. Details like page this long-standing and vital thought-provoking series of numbers, headers, footers, and columns will be added conversations. later. Use tabs instead of multiple spaces for indenting. Use italics instead of underlining. Use an “em dash” In “A Welcome Leftward Turn to Marxism: Ferguson on (—) instead of a double hyphen (--). the Philosophy of African American Studies,” John H. McClendon III provides us with a review-essay of Stephen • Use endnotes instead of footnotes. Examples of proper C. Ferguson II’s 2015 book Philosophy of African American endnote style: Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard Lastly, we have a review of George Yancy’s Backlash: What University Press, 1971), 90. Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America by Adebayo Oluwayomi. See Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?” Nos 34 (2000): 31–55.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION FOOTNOTES TO HISTORY Hubert Harrison (1883–1927) The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience is published by the committee on the status of Black Born April 27, 1883, in Concordia, Danish West Indies (now philosophers. Authors are encouraged to submit original St. Croix, Virgin Islands), Hubert H. Harrison was a brilliant articles and book reviews on any topic in philosophy and infuential writer, orator, educator, critic, philosophical that makes a contribution to philosophy and the black materialist, and political activist in Harlem during the early APA NEWSLETTER | PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE

decades of the twentieth century. He played unique, signal REFERENCES roles in what were the largest class radical movement “Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893–1927: Finding Aid,” Rare (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. https:// New Negro/Garvey movement) of his era. Labor and civil dlc.library.columbia.edu/hubert_h_harrison (Last accessed rights activist A. Philip Randolph described him as “the February 8, 2021). father of Harlem radicalism,” and historian Joel A. Rogers considered him “the foremost Afro-American intellect of Harrison, Hubert H. The Negro and the Nation. New York: his time” and “one of America’s greatest minds.” Following Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Company, 1917. his death on December 17, 1927, due to complications of an appendectomy, Harrison’s important contributions to Harrison, Hubert H. “Lincoln and Liberty: Fact Versus intellectual and radical thought have been neglected. Fiction – A Lecture,” 1911–1914.

Born to parents of Afro-Caribbean descent, Harrison Harrison, Hubert H. A Hubert Harrison Reader. Edited by emigrated to the United States in 1900 as a seventeen-year- Jefrey Babcock Perry. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan old orphan and lived in New York City. He completed his University Press, 2001. secondary training at DeWitt High School, graduating with honors as the top student in Latin and history. Financially Harrison, Hubert H. When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” unable to attend college, he passed the Civil Service of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western examination and worked in the postal service. World (New York: Porro Press, 1920), New Expanded Edition, edited with notes and a new introduction by Jefrey B. Perry While working at the post ofce, he continued his studies (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2015). independently and extensively read sociology, literature, history, economics, and philosophy. His philosophical Horne, Gerald. “Black Thinkers at Sea: Ferdinand Smith and study comprised reading Herbert Spencer, Henry Thomas the Decline of African American Proletarian Intellectuals.” Buckle, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Souls 4, no. 2 (2002): 38–50. Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Karl Marx, and V. I. Lenin. But it was his studies of Marx and Lenin that inspired him to join Jackson, John G. Hubert Henry Harrison: The Black Socrates. the Socialist Party where he worked closely with Elizabeth Cranford, New Jersey: American Atheist Press, 1987. Gurley Flynn, Bill Haywood, and Morris Hilquitt. Harrison’s articles in the International Socialist Review, The Call, The Moore, Richard B. “Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927).” In Modern Quarterly, and The Truth Seeker represented some Dictionary of American Negro Biography. Edited by Rayford of the earliest eforts at a materialist analysis of the African W. Logan and Michael R. Winston (New York: W. W. Norton, American experience. [See, for example, his brilliant 1982), 292-93. critique of the mythology surrounding Abraham Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator.”] Perry, Jefrey Babcock. Hubert Harrison The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883–1918. New York: Columbia University The racist character of the Socialist Party led Harrison to the Press 2011. “Race First” doctrine. He founded his own Black Nationalist organization, Liberty League, and was editor of its journal, Perry, Jefrey Babcock. Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for The Voice of the Negro. He later became editor of The Equality, 1918–1927. New York: Columbia University Press, Negro World, the organ of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro 2021. Improvement Association. Rogers, Joel A. “Hubert Harrison: Intellectual Giant and Harrison was most known not for his publishing and Free-Lance Educator.” In Joel A. Rogers, World’s Great Men writing, though he was extensively engaged in that arena, of Color, Vol. 2. Edited by John Henrik Clarke (New York: but for his tremendous oratory. Harrison’s major infuence Collier Books, 1972), 432–42. stemmed from his street orations during lunch hour at Wall Street, in Madison Square, and especially evenings, frst at West 96th Street of Broadway and later on Lenox Avenue. A pioneer of the soapbox tradition in Harlem, crowds would ARTICLE listen for long periods to the broad range of lecture topics he would present and his penetrating analysis. His ability to COVID-19, Capitalism, and Death: How make complex subjects clear and simple, and the power of his logic and presentation mark him as the quintessential and Why Black Lives Matter proletarian intellectual of his day. John H. McClendon III Despite his lack of formal degrees and training, The Truth MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Seeker compared his intellectual ability with such thinkers as Mark Twain, Luther Burbank, Thomas Huxley, Moncure P. Conway, and Ernest Haeckel. INTRODUCTION Our topic, “The Coronavirus and the Virus of Racism: Race, Class, and Gender,” is not only the subject matter of our discourse.1 More importantly, it essentially frames

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the very format for our discussion at this juncture. Rather Today, we all had to link into Zoom for this symposium— than the conventional symposium comprising face-to-face an instantaneous example of our present dependence encounters, we have no other choice than to meet under on online technology—as a protective measure against the circumstances of online technology, in the manner of disease and death. Simultaneously, it really enhances a virtual exchange. For not to do so, essentially becomes very proftable venture for Zoom. COVID-19 has greatly a matter of life or death. Here a paradox arises wherein benefted Zoom as a corporate-capitalist interest. In an matters in the most pedestrian fashion (communication article, “Zoom Turns Record Proft Thanks to Coronavirus at an academic symposium) become crucially adjoined to Shutdowns,” NPR reporter Shannon Bond informs us concerns about life and death. Zoom reported higher sales and proft in the three Undeniably, this concern is a stark imperative but also an months from May through July [2020] than it did all objective (material) reality that all living beings must face of 2019. . . . In the second quarter, sales more than in the challenge for survival. As human beings, we uncover quadrupled from a year ago to $663.5 million, well that this “challenge for survival” transpires in a unique above $500 million that Wall Street analysts were way. It is invested with values, social meaning, political- expecting. Proft ballooned to $185.7 million from economic foundations, with ancillary social institutions, just 5.5 million in the same quarter last year. . . . relations, and practices. It is particularly noteworthy that all The company has seen a big surge in use of its free of the above facets—concerning our unique human (social) service and has been pushing to convert many of confguration—ultimately emerge from the prevailing those users to paying customers.3 concrete mode of production. In the present instance, it is the capitalist mode of production. In the midst of increased economic instability for workers, adjoined with drastic upsurges in coronavirus infections In the essay, “Capitalism, Coronavirus, and the Road and deaths, the prosperity that Zoom now experiences is to Extinction,” Eren Duzgun writes about the destructive typical in the domain of the largest corporations. In just impulses of the capitalist mode of production in connection the frst six months of the pandemic, Warren Bufett’s with COVID-19. Berkshire Hathaway gained $56 billion in profts and still managed to lay of more than 13,000 of its employees. The Billions of people who could be fed and housed coronavirus pandemic proved quite fruitful for the Walton are subjected to immense doses of insecurity, family of Walmart and its shareholders. Despite doling living their lives under the constant threat of out over $10 billion to its investors, 12,000 workers at joblessness, homelessness, loss of status and Walmart were laid of. As reported in the Washington Post, starvation. In a similar fashion, the environment “America’s Biggest Companies are Flourishing during the which could be protected is systematically Pandemic and Putting Thousands of People Out of Work.”4 destroyed for proft, and killer viruses which could be contained are unleashed. Undoubtedly, This article reports that Jensen Huang, Chief Executive of Covid19 has become the archetypal example that Nvidia (a company producing graphic chips), remarks, “With lays bare ‘the destructive impulses of a system all that’s happening around the world, it’s really unfortunate. in which the very fundamentals of existence are But it’s made gaming the largest entertainment medium subjected to the requirements of proft’.2 in the world.” Data for Nvidia sales revenue from 2019 to October 2020 show a marked increase of +46 percent.5 Still, The fact the coronavirus is a pandemic simply means the picture presented by Nvidia’s growing sales revenue is that it is global in character. Correspondingly, we must not simply an indicator of how the capitalist economic world acknowledge the capitalist mode of production is a world- is all fun and games. It is estimated that at the minimum, system. Thus, this involves global labor migration and 100,000 small businesses closed in just the frst two months international commodity exchange markets under the of the pandemic. In April, the unemployment rate reached control and power of the largest corporations in the world. 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression of the A signifcant dimension to corporate capitalist operations 1930s. On December 10, 2020, the Economic Policy Institute concerns the management of the international labor recounted, “Unemployment Claims Hit the Highest Level force and commodity exchange by means of efective in Months.” Although capitalists were raking in immense communication channels. profts, we should not ignore the grim circumstances confronting the working-class. Nearly 26.1 million workers Subsequently, the required telecommunications apparatus were either facing unemployment or experiencing a drop of the international capitalist system mandates reliance in hours and pay because of the pandemic.6 on the most advanced tech companies. We unearth that these tech giants are nonetheless capitalist corporations Moreover, latest fndings indicate that “COVID-19 has killed with tremendous power over communication and their 1 out of every 800 African Americans. . . . One study using position of power successively leads to immense wealth. data through July of 2020 found that Black people ages 35 Likewise, it follows that issues of everyday recourse are to 44 were dying at nine times the rate of white people the also concretely linked to questions about power and same age. . . .”7 Citing another recent study, Liz Theoharis wealth—the primary context for meaningful deliberation on states, “Indeed, the myth of scarcity, like other neoliberal race, class, and gender—which occur within the capitalist fantasies, is regularly ignored when politically expedient political-economic social order. and conjured up when the rich and powerful need help. The pandemic has been no exception. Over the last nine months,

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the wealth of American billionaires has actually increased under review. Subsequently, race, class, and gender are by a third to nearly $4 trillion. . . .” Theoharis continues, not autonomous factors having equivalent value on the “more than 400,000 Covid-19 cases are associated with spectrum of theoretical signifcance as well as practical the lifting of eviction moratoriums, forcing people out the outcomes afxed to empirical indicators. Philosophically safety of their homes.” She aptly summarizes this situation, this means our examination is built on the standpoint of “As COVID Rages, We are Experiencing Mass Abandonment dialectical materialism, which necessitates the employment Amid Abundance.”8 of a political economic critique of capitalism in its relevant implications. ON THEORY AND METHOD: EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION GUIDED BY PHILOSOPHICAL ON THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR AFRICAN ANALYSIS AMERICAN DEATHS AND THE CORONAVIRUS From the onset, one can plainly see that our discussion PANDEMIC: WHY CAPITALISM AND RACISM ARE has been fortifed with statistical indicators. It is mandatory MORE THAN RISK FACTORS FOR DYING OF we bring into our examination empirical data in order to COVID-19 facilitate the description of the actual state of afairs and confrm generalizations that serve as frst approximations. For a great number of Black people, racism is a relentless But at the crux of our deliberation are broader philosophical material condition of life. This creates multiple stressors considerations, which require our undivided attention. And that have an immediate efect on the quality of health, only in that way, we will avoid the risk of falling into vulgar especially in poor Black working-class communities. empiricism. Wherein, we are caught in merely describing The multidimensional nature of stress caused by racism what is most apparent and neglect what remains as inevitably impacts the quality of both physical and mental most essential to the topic under review. Throughout the hygiene in the African American community.9 In her book discussion, the following questions form the conceptual Good Health for African Americans, Barbara Dixon provides background directing the course of our investigation. an account of how day-to-day life for African Americans is a continual matter of coping with racism. We must ask: Is racism a system within itself? Does it operate as an autonomous system? If not, what is the As racism persists, Black rage seethes and grows. systemic structure that grounds and anchors racism? Is Studies have shown that people who have the most the same course of analysis applicable regarding such control over their lives experience the least stress. categories as class and gender? Can one make sense of Thus, the president of a car company sufers less the contemporary idea of “class” or “class contradictions” stress then the assembly-line worker, and not just as a tangible reality, standing apart from present-day for obvious fnancial reasons. The more control capitalism? Or are we confronting ideological phenomena you have over your life and its circumstances, the such as “classism” and “gender bias”—wherein the solution less stress you feel. And racism deprives people resides in training initiatives that bring the perpetrators of of control. . . . classism and gender bias to another level of consciousness? Must we conclude that the capitalist system—the dominant Dixon continues, (material) force infuencing the lives of white and male segments of the working-class—essentially orbits around [The] low-end job where you receive less respect misconceptions pertaining to race, class, and gender? In than coworkers, the salesperson who waits on a contrast, does capitalist exploitation—with its attendant white person when you were in the store frst, the ruling class interests—foster misconceptions about waiter who is rude or ignores your presence-all race, class, and gender? Successively, how can we best make you feel powerless. A burning anger slowly characterize and sequentially defne the notion of false grows in you. Every Black person has experienced consciousness? Finally, what can best serve as our method this, and you and I all know what it means. of investigation? Scientists have always intuitively felt that anger is linked to the unusually high rates of hypertension For the investigation on race, class, and gender, our and other diseases in blacks.10 methodological approach starts from the analytical framework that the given aforementioned factors are not It is widely known that certain underlying health conditions merely correlated in terms of some kind of subjective are indicators for the greater risk of coronavirus infection. notion about intersectionality. Instead, it is argued that the These preexisting conditions include an assortment of systemic foundations grounding racism in its connection ailments and illnesses such as cancer, hypertension, to gender oppression in reality emerges from the material heart disease, kidney and respiratory ailments, along with conditions attendant with capitalist exploitation and its diabetes. In the penetrating “How COVID-19 Hollowed Out subsidiary bourgeois culture and ideology. It follows that a Generation of Young Black Men,” Elliot Robbins notes, class is not just as a single factor residing within the triad of race, class, and gender. Black people have much higher rates of hypertension, obesity, diabetes and strokes than Rather, class is conceptually subsumed via the elaboration white people do, and they develop those chronic of how class relations are in accord with capitalism and its conditions up to 10 years earlier. The gap persisted structural function as the defnitive mode of production this year [2020] when the Brookings Institution

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examined COVID-19 deaths by race; in each age Now I will begin by outlining what are the pivotal issues category, Black people were dying at roughly the surrounding the analysis of “The Coronavirus and the same rate as white people more than a decade Virus of Racism.” It is immediately transparent that the older.11 presupposition concerning “The Virus of Racism” is an analogy based on the natural elements afxed to the Due to its institutional nature, the process of declining coronavirus as a pathological agent. It follows that the health conditions emerges as intergenerational and latter (racism) is truly a social designation, which by way begins early in life. For illustration, there is a probability of analogy, correspondingly assumes the form of natural that children birthed by women with diabetes will develop attribution. Consequently, this signifes that racism is an a greater propensity for the disease. Born into such impending danger to a healthy social life. conditions is just the frst step. If one lives in a poor Black family with inadequate health insurance, it follows that the African American philosopher William R. Jones was cost of medicine and frequent visits to the doctor become among the frst to advance that racism—as a form of hurdles that ultimately accelerate diabetes into the more oppression—analogically constitutes a virus.15 With the dangerous condition of kidney disease. The allocation suitable methodology or grid of oppression, Jones argues of medical service for kidney disease respecting racial that one can frame a theoretical structure, which outlines demographics additionally complicates the situation.12 As the necessary liberation strategies centering on economic, Lizzie Presser explains, social, and political conditions. Accordingly, despite being a pernicious virus of oppression, racism is predictable Even clinical care can work against them [Black and hence subject to the requisite antidote or vaccine. Dr. patients]; doctors estimate kidney function using a Jones further elaborates, controversial formula that infates the scores of Black patients to make them look healthier, which can Methodologically, the virus-vaccine design delay referrals to specialists or transplant centers. . . . comprises two phases: Phase one gives Black Americans are 3 to 4 times more likely than dedicated attention to the infectious agent— white Americans to reach kidney failure. Even at the the “virus of oppression”—acquiring as much fnal stages of this disease, they are less likely to knowledge as possible about its composition get a transplant. When patients get to dialysis, they and vital processes—in other words, an accurate enter a system in which the corporations that stand phenomenology (grid) of oppression. Phase to proft from keeping them on their machines are two develops a specifc vaccine or antitoxin that also the gatekeepers to getting a transplant. DaVita neutralizes or destroys the noxious agent. It is and Fresenius, its main competitor, control about important to note that phase one controls the 70% of the dialysis market.13 entire enterprise in that the products of phase two are customized to ft antithetically the constitution Clearly, the systemic manner of exploitative capitalist social of the virus that phase one uncovers. Obviously, relations, combined with contiguous racist institutions, the efcacy of the vaccine (the therapy) depends collectively inhibit healthy life opportunities for Black upon how accurately we map the virus’s survival people. The shadow of death remains as a tenacious mechanism. If the fndings in phase one are stranglehold on Black lives. The critical problems of inaccurate, phase two will be hit or miss.16 unemployment, homelessness, disease, and death are not only the results of how capitalism (in the perverse Jones contends that our critique of oppression must be context of COVID-19) maintains its conventional cycle of explicitly substantive in detailed and comprehensive in reproduction, accumulation, and expansion. But it also scope. Issue-oriented reactions are insufcient means entails multiple forms of ruthless repression. This includes for developing systemic analysis. While the virus of relentless assaults on Black workers that fght back about oppression assumes multiple forms, they remain integrally hazardous work conditions due to coronavirus. The National linked together. It is a constant fact, when we start our Employment Law Project conducted a survey in June 2020, inspection with police violence via state terrorism and which reveals, proceed to racist medical malpractices, which are attached with the lack of insured health-care, we unearth that in all The COVID-19 epidemic has shined a light of these cases—death looms large on the landscape of on the unsafe and abusive conditions many Black lives.17 workers endure. Many workers—especially Black workers—go to work even though they believe We readily understand how recent movements such as they are seriously risking their health or their Black Lives Matter can possibly facilitate radical social families’ health. Workers do so because their transformation, specifcally respecting African American employer has not adequately responded to their survival and the impending dangers attached to both health and safety concerns or, even worse, they State Terrorism and COVID-19. Relating to State Terrorism, fear that their employer will retaliate against them let us review a 2018 article published in the Journal of the for raising these concerns. For Black workers National Medical Association. In this detailed study, “The in particular, these beliefs are grounded in the Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White reality that structural racism has made them Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level,” the especially vulnerable to contracting the virus and authors initially state, sufering serious complications or dying.14

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Of all frearm homicides in the world, 82% occur Therefore, we must ask why and how is racism a danger to in the United States. Of these frearm homicides, healthy living? Does racism have a defnitive relationship to 59% of the victims are Black, even though Black actual (natural) viruses in any concrete material sense? If it is people comprise just 14% of the population. the case, how can we describe and defne this connection? Nationally, Black people are eight times more Can racism penetrate into standard medical practices likely to be killed by a frearm than White people. and research procedures?23 Can we plausibly claim that This Black-White disparity in frearm homicide in racism is a deadly agent functioning in a comparable the U.S. has been widely recognized and has manner to COVID-19? Or more precisely, does racism in its recently gained public attention in the context social function have derivative health outcomes that are of fatal police shootings. Although the striking pathological? Is it solely racism that poses as the danger? disparity in frearm death between Blacks and Or is it how capitalist relations of production confgure Whites has been documented for decades and a the precise social position of Black people within its class similarly striking racial disparity in the shooting structure that ultimately results in greater exposure to by police of unarmed people has been reported infectious diseases and higher mortality rates? the underlying cause of these disparities is still unknown.18 Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, public health specialist and Black physician, insightfully conveys the following analysis. After conducting research that chiefy examines social When “once infected we [Black people] are more likely to aspects including residential segregation, gaps in die because we carry a greater burden of chronic diseases incarceration rates, educational attainment, economic from living in divested communities with poor food options indicators, and employment status, the authors concluded: [and] poisoned air and because we have less access to “These fndings suggest that structural racism is an health care.”24 important predictor of the Black/White disparity rates of police shootings of unarmed victims across states.”19 The What should not be neglected is that capitalist real conjunction of these social aspects, along with the merging estate interests proft from such “divested” communities. of the twin coercions—State Terrorism and COVID-19— Likewise, supermarket food chains proft from these crystalized in the tragic murder of Breonna Taylor. distribution procedures, and polluted air derives from industrial concerns in pursuit of profts, which originate We must not overlook that Taylor was a frontline worker, at the expense of maintaining sustainable environments. employed as a technician in emergency care. Facing the Concomitantly, health care is frst and foremost a for- direct and immediate threat of the coronavirus, Taylor risked proft undertaking, which is integrally tied to corporate her life each day as an essential worker. Nevertheless, pharmaceutical interests. her death resulted from a fatal shooting at the hands of vicious cops. On September 24, 2020, the National Medical In response to questions about selling remdesivir for Association issued the following statement: fghting coronavirus, the CEO of Gilead, Daniel O’Day, declared, “we could have charged $48,000 per dose.” The National Medical Association proudly stands with Then he followed with “we have decided to price most Americans in afrming that Breonna Taylor’s remdesivir well below this value” to “ensure broad and life mattered. . . . Her life came to a premature end equitable access at a time of urgent global need.” He after an unnecessary and unprovoked encounter quoted a price of $3,120 for each treatment.25 Rolling with police in her home. The unfortunate reality Stone writer Matt Taibbi states, is that Breonna Taylor is dead most likely because she lived in a community where the families of the Gilead even undercut the prediction of the Institute judges who issue No-Knock Warrants and the police for Clinical and Economic Review. . . . A watchdog who execute them do not live. To disregard the set that calculated a fair price for remdesivir at $4,500 of discriminatory circumstances that make Breonna per course of treatment. When Gilead announced Taylor’s death a reality is to ignore the structural a price below that level, it caused a tremor on racism that results in the death of so many African Wall Street, as its share price fell. The company Americans on a daily basis.20 had already ofended the Gods of Capitalism by donating hundreds of thousands of existing The NMA continued, “It is this systemic racism, deeply doses of remdesivir to the government. What embedded both in our legal and law enforcement systems, self-respecting American corporation voluntarily in which African-Americans are too often excluded from undermines its own market?” well-established police protocols and judicial precedents while often being subjected to arbitrary and capricious Then, Taibbi explains, behavior.”21 In responding to the Breonna Taylor killing and the other myriad of murders by the police, the Not Gilead, as it turns out, and really, not any Black Lives Matter Movement (BLMM) conducted mass pharmaceutical company. What Americans need demonstrations. Successively, BLMM faced the conundrum to understand about the race to fnd vaccines of violent police repression on the ground as well as the and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., increased risk of COVID-19 infection. Thus, the very fght even when companies appear to downshift from against racist oppression is a life and death struggle maximum greed levels and it’s not at all clear immediately connected to health.22 they’ve done this with coronavirus treatments the

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production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly in this country. If you have a poor neighborhood, riskless, subsidy-laden scam.26 then you’ll have poorly funded schools, which often results in poor education outcomes another Of special note, corporations like Johnson and Johnson generation loss. When you have poor educational “targeted Black women, and particularly overweight outcomes, you have limited employment Black women, for marketing its powder while knowing opportunities.30 it contained carcinogenic asbestos. They also hid that information from regulators and the public.”27 Herein the Capitalism performs a decisive role respecting the notion of gender specifc concerns of Black women’s fnancial structure of educational institutions. One way is health is immediately linked to corporate capital. In the transformation of public schools into private business view of the above scenario, the end-result materializes in enterprises. Viewed as small businesses, certain charter the oppressive settings attendant with life circumstances schools profted handily from the pandemic. The relief typically found among Black working-class communities. funds given to charter schools—via the federal Payback The principal lesson from these circumstances is that human Protection Program (PPP)—due to the coronavirus included misery, disease, and death is only one side of the capitalist Primavera online charter school in Chandler, Arizona. The coin. The other side is the correlative and necessarily school was the recipient of a $2.2 million forgivable loan, perverse reality that under capitalism dire conditions create in spite of the fact in Arizona public schools were not immense markets for accumulating profts. subject to reduced funding related to the coronavirus. At the same time, “The school also shipped $10 million to BLACK WORKERS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR its lone shareholder: StrongMind, an afliated company SURVIVAL: WORKING FOR A LIVING CAN MEAN owned by the Primavera’s founder and former CEO Damian Creamer.”31 DEATH In June 2020, the National Employment Law Project in Damian Creamer and others have efectively transformed their survey, “Silenced About COVID-19 in the Workplace,” public education into a private capitalist venture, receiving stated the following: large sums of tax dollars, under the veil of the coronavirus pandemic. Though workers in need of immediate relief, Our results suggest that virus transmission in confronting frontline dangers of disease and death, receive the workplace may be exacerbated by employer meager pay, while working in hazardous conditions. In view repression and that the disproportionate impact of these facts, the class question emerges as front and of COVID-19 on Black communities may be related center in deciphering the political economy of COVID-19. to greater exposure of Black workers to repressive workplace environments. These fndings are The brunt of the coronavirus on the African American especially important now, as more businesses working class has been accentuated by the fact that the reopen and the dangerous implications of countless number of Black employees in the service sector penalizing workers for raising health and safety have direct contact with customers and other workers. concerns will only grow.28 While we unearth production workers—for instance in the auto industry, warehousing jobs, and meatpacking—work The survey continues that it was discovered that some in close quarters. The great number of essential workers 38 percent of workers continued to work despite serious providing healthcare are immediately in contact with concerns about the health risks to them and their families. people infected with the coronavirus and other contagious Among Black workers, the rates are even qualitatively diseases. “More than 2,900 US healthcare workers have higher. “Three out of four Black workers (73 percent) have died in the Covid-19 pandemic since March, a far higher gone to work even though they believed they may have number than that reported by the government… People of been seriously risking their health or the health of family color have been disproportionately afected, accounting members.”29 for about 65% of deaths in cases in which there is race and ethnicity data.”32 Dr. Camara Jones goes on to emphasize how the precise class position of Black workers (within the US capitalist In addition to African American workers employed in system) is specifcally menacing and destructive in terms of nursing homes, a considerable sum of Black people are sustainable health conditions. Therefore, when assessing patients in these facilities. Employment with the federal the coronavirus impact on Black women and men, it is government as airline screeners has resulted in more Black the precise capitalist class relations in play that actively workers infected—with some even dying. Scores of Black grounds race and gender outcomes. Jones notes, workers fnd employment with penal institutions. And dare we mention the disproportionate number of incarcerated We are more exposed because of the kinds of African Americans. This array of private and public sector jobs that we have: the frontline jobs of home jobs continues to be “hot spots” at this moment of upsurge health aides, postal workers, warehouse workers, in coronavirus infections and deaths. meatpackers, hospital orderlies. And those frontline jobs—which, for a long time, have been The astute examination of the dominant material interests invisible lives and undervalued in terms of the that control the operation of these institutions must become pay—are now being realized as essential work. . . . the centerpiece of our critical analysis. By dominant material It is tied to residential and educational segregation interests we mean the objective class concerns afxed to

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political economic decisions and actions. Thus, dominant With the scale of the crisis growing, Black Hawk material interests dictate that paying higher wages reduces County Sherif Tony Thompson, who heads the proft margins. Likewise, expenditures on the maintenance county’s emergency management commission, of the workplace environment that concern health and joined with other local ofcials to urge Tyson safety are costs that ultimately negatively impact profts. to close the plant. But they were rebufed, not only by Tyson whose CEO would publicly blame A graphic illustration of this principle is the meatpacking communities like Waterloo for bringing the virus industry in Waterloo, Iowa. With their penetrating article, into its plants but by Gov. Kim Reynolds, who Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung describe “The Battle resisted virus restrictions and blocked local for Waterloo: As COVID-19 Ravaged this Iowa City, Ofcials ofcials from shutting businesses themselves.36 Discovered Meatpacking Executives were the Ones in Charge.” The impact of the world capitalist system on labor Such unrelenting realities bring to the fore the pressing migration becomes evident in the instance of Waterloo and need for the philosophical critique of the conceptual meatpacking, where the corporate power of Tyson Foods terminology that frames our discussion on COVID-19 vis- has hegemony.33 à-vis race, class, and gender. For illustration, what does it mean that Black women employed in nursing homes—for This multinational workforce also includes Black workers meager wages and long hours—are suddenly designated that migrated to Waterloo, from Mississippi, over a century “Essential Workers”? So far, they continue to receive the ago. The historical formation of the present confguration of same low pay, while facing the greater risk for COVID-19. workers in Waterloo ofers important insight into the power relations surrounding race and class, i.e., the material Philosophically, we know the idea of “essential” denotes (class) interests that control the operation of meatpacking the fundamentally defning feature of a given entity, and the attendant problems about COVID-19 facing Black subsequently that connotes a certain importance on a scale workers. Grabell and Yeung remark: of value. If one loses a pancreas, kidney, or lung, they are more essential to necessary physiological functions than Some [African Americans] who settled in town losing our hair. Since hair is more apparent, we can readily found work in the most unsavory parts of a family- observe the process of balding.37 However, more generally owned packinghouse. Then . . . meatpacking and as a matter of principle, “appearance” does not have became a path to the middle class for thousands the same value as “essence.” Likewise, the manner in of Black workers from the South, and an avenue which things appear can in fact occlude the essence of the toward empowerment as their union led a historic reality behind the appearance. fght for civil rights in Waterloo. But many of those hard-won gains disappeared as the meatpacking The designation of “Essential Workers” unequivocally industry evolved. signifes they are fundamentally important to the operation of capitalism. But the logic that governs the capitalist Grabell and Yeung continue: system stands on antithetical grounds. Hence, we have the additional low wages of Black women working in nursing A new company, which would become Tyson, facilities. For the capitalist, a cardinal material interest reconfgured the work, slashing wages and comes into play, viz. the essential need for labor to exploit. demanding faster labor in tighter quarters. When In the coronavirus context if a worker is “Essential,” then workers across the Midwest balked, the industry such labor becomes compulsory. Compulsory labor means turned to immigrants and refugees from some of you have no choice; one must work. Hereafter, the risk the most vulnerable parts of the world. . . . Few of coronavirus is efectively discounted, if not dismissed. realized how the power dynamic had shifted until This material interest sequentially assumes an ideological the Tyson Waterloo plant became the epicenter of form, where “Essential Workers” gain a measure of public contagion this spring, pitting a corporation with acknowledgment and even praise, while continually access to the White House against a weakened receiving low wages for hazardous work. This philosophical workforce and a community facing deep racial critique leads to a political economic question. disparities.34 Why has the present debate over $900 billion stimulus deal As COVID-19 ransacked Waterloo, the Peoples Community not included at least $1,200 stimulus check for low-paid Health Clinic faced a food of coronavirus infected patients workers and only $600 was the compromise number? Rep. of various nationalities speaking a multitude of languages. Rashida Tlaib patently recognizes the contradiction: “I’m The source of this massive outbreak of sickness and hearing as we try to debate this COVID relief package that contagion was none other than Tyson Foods. Grabell and we can’t aford to give the people another $1,200 stimulus Yeung note, “99% of the patients either worked at the local check. . . . Well, guess what, I know exactly where we can Tyson Foods meatpacking plant or lived with someone who get the money to pay for it. And I believe Jef Bezos knows did. Some patients said they’d come from a town two hours exactly where as well.” In fact, Tlaib proposed that the away where an outbreak had shut down another Tyson US fund another round of checks by reversing President plant.”35 In Waterloo, Tyson’s reaction was steadfast against Trump’s 1.5 trillion tax cuts passed in 2017. Trump’s tax closing, despite the continuing spread of the disease cuts served the billionaire, CEO of Amazon, Jef Bezos’s among the families in this working-class community. class interests quite well. Amazon did not pay federal taxes for both 2017 and 2018, although it earned $3.03

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billion and $10.07 billion in those successive years. In facilitated worker demonstrations and strikes. From Staten 2019 Amazon earned $11.59 billion and paid federal taxes Island to Italy, Amazon workers have fought for safeguards at approximately 1.2% percent.38 Even former US secretary against the coronavirus. of labor Robert Reich comments, “Bezos and Amazon, as well as every major employer in America, can easily protect In March 2020, Chris Smalls was fred (in retaliation) for their workers. And the richest nation in the world can easily leading a strike at the Staten Island facility over demands provide every American adequate income support during for better protection of workers against COVID-19. Smalls this national emergency. But under Scrooge capitalism, and others wanted Amazon to close and clean the site after they will not do so unless forced.”39 a worker tested positive with the virus.42 Also, “it took an 11- day strike for workers at one fulfllment center in Italy to win Yet, despite what seems as a bold declaration, the question increased daily breaks, a detailed agreement on cleaning as to why it did not happen, Reich fails to ask. The question and sanitizing practices at the facility, and staggered break escapes Reich. He frames the fundamental contradiction times and working distances.”43 in subjective terms, that is, the individual selfshness of capitalists. The issue continues as more foundational and Given Amazon’s refusal to document the number of fundamental than Bezos and others embracing the Scrooge coronavirus infections, the workers in turn countered ethos. In contrast, it is the capitalist system—in its monopoly by compiling “a crowdsourced database based on fnance stage—align with bourgeois state intervention notifcations at facilities across the U.S.”44 Only on October on behalf of corporate interests. We uncover corporate 1, 2020 did Amazon report that 19,816 frontline workers capital’s wealth and power dictates the very course of how had been infected with COVID (including Whole Foods the entire system functions via the exploitation of workers. Market) which transpired between March 1 and September 19, 2020. Signifcantly, this accounting did not include “its This last claim is empirically supported by Congresswoman network of third-party drivers, which handle a portion of Tliab’s assessment on the debate over the $900 billion last-mile deliveries.”45 At this time, California is conducting stimulus deal. The argument that insufcient funds limits court proceedings due to Amazon’s failure in responding to allocations to workers is not fundamentally an ethical issue outstanding subpoenas about not reporting on COVID-19 about selfshness. Many Amazon workers, nonetheless, cases in the state.46 understand why the argument about insufciency serves as an ideological ploy. At the onset of the coronavirus When we move from a singular focus on Amazon as pandemic, Amazon warehouse workers demanded better paradigmatic of corporate capitalist’s interests to the safeguards for protection against infections related to general results of the over $900 billion stimulus deal, the working conditions. This included the needed shutdown at outcome is the brazen and shameless display of capitalist facilities where workers sufered from the virus. power and wealth. While millions of workers face diminished incomes, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, disease, The executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource and death, the COVID-19 relief bill ofers Center, Sheheryar Kaaoosji, notes, “Amazon has a consistent pattern of trying to block and hide information. This is not $200 billion in tax breaks. An estimated $120 billion the kind of response the second biggest employer in the of those tax breaks will go to the richest 1 percent.” country should be making.”40 Unfortunately, Kaoosji does . . . Included in this package are: “A $2.5 billion not understand capitalist class contradictions and confict. break for racecar tracks; 6.3 billion for business Amazon’s response is quite consistent with preserving its meals, i.e. the ‘three-martini lunch’ deduction; huge profts, which are based on the callous exploitation a new provision under the Paycheck Protection of its workers. Program that allows forgiven loans to also be tax deductible, giving businesses the ability to Robert Reich adds, “Jef Bezos is worth $180bn, making him ‘double dip; into the program; The bill also creates the richest person in the world. . . . Bezos has accumulated an independent commission to oversee horse so much wealth over the last nine months that he could racing, at the behest of Mitch McConnell.47 give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. So you’d think he’d be able It is from this capitalist political economic context where to aford safer workplaces. Yet, 20,000 US-based Amazon we can better grasp racism and national oppression in employees had been infected by the coronavirus.”41 Alas, its material implications. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Reich comments on Jef Bezos and Amazon sufer from the Policy Institute perceptively declares, “Black and Latinx same defect as we found with Kaaoosji. Bezos and Amazon communities have seen more job loss in this recession are not concerned with the workers’ welfare; the bottom and have less wealth to fall back on. The lack of stimulus line, from the standpoint of capitalists, can be stated in the hits these workers the hardest. Further, workers in this following question: At what cost does one reduce the proft pandemic are not just losing their jobs-millions of workers margin? and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to losing their jobs in the downturn.”48 Bezos is directly involved in class confict with Amazon workers across the globe. Although Amazon workers If we comprehend that racism is not only attitudes and have battled to form a union, they remain unorganized. beliefs about the existence of superior and inferior races, Nevertheless, outside union support from the Retail, but more importantly behavior and social institutions that Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has provide material support for such attitudes and beliefs,

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then our investigation must start with a critical examination In the New York Times article “Black Doctor Dies After of the conditions surrounding concrete and objective Complaining of Racist Treatment,” John Eligon reports, social relations, institutions, and practices that engulf the “Susan Moore . . . said the white doctor at the hospital in collective lives of Black communities. Dr. Evelynn Hammond suburban Indianapolis where she was being treated for astutely observes, Covid-19 had downplayed her complaints of pain. He told her that he felt uncomfortable giving her more narcotics… It’s the social conditions that continue to produce and suggested that she would be discharged.” Moore these vulnerabilities in certain populations, and not responded, “‘I was crushed,’ she said in a video posted the people somehow are inherently biologically to Facebook. ‘He made me feel like I was a drug addict.’” diferent. But, again, if you think about this in terms Eligon continues, of those vulnerabilities that people have based on the social conditions that they live in, they may live In her post . . . she showed a command of in communities with high density, they may live complicated medical terminology and an intricate in houses where there are lots of people living in knowledge of treatment protocols as she detailed small spaces, they may do work where their more the ways in which she had advocated for herself exposed to something like a coronavirus. Those with the medical staf. She knew what to ask are the conditions that make them vulnerable.49 because she, too, was a medical doctor. But that was not enough to get her treatment and respect The concept of pre-existing medical conditions among she said she deserved. “I put forth and I maintain if African Americans cannot be reduced to the notion of I was white . . . I wouldn’t have gone through that.”53 “racial traits” or “race characteristics.” Nor can Black cultural patterns and African American lifestyles remain the solitary What we can take from this tragic experience is that racist point of departure for uncovering the causes for the high medical malpractice has to be confronted on a united and rate of coronavirus infections in the Black community. widely organized scale. The pernicious legacy of racism Those of us seeking to defend Black lives must remain on within professional medicine is deeply ingrained and the guard against the ideological prop of “blaming the victims,” most efective means of fghting it requires our collective which in turns justifes relentless capitalist exploitation and resources frmly presented in an organized fashion. its accompanying racist/national oppression. Anything less permits the continuation of tragic deaths on the doorsteps of our African American communities. THE INTELLECTUAL BATTLE TO DEFEND BLACK LIVES IN THE AGE OF COVID-19: Indeed, from the start, the American Medical Association’s Jim Crow policies excluded Black physicians as members. CONCERN ABOUT INSTITUTIONAL HEALTH Subsequently, the National Medical Association was PRACTICES TRANSPIRES AS AN IDEOLOGICAL organized in 1895, one year prior to the infamous Homer BATTLEGROUND Plessy decision by the Supreme Court. Racist practices and policies were institutionalized into the very foundations Black intellectuals, medical professionals, and public of the medical feld and this has resulted in apartheid- health experts must remain diligent in upholding a like disparities.54 In no uncertain terms, Elliot Robbins high standard of scholarly responsibility, i.e., providing pronounces, critical and precise interpretation of the legacy of racism in medicine, health care, and scientifc research.50 We For generations, public health experts mostly cannot blindly follow the dominant institutions regarding ignored the disparities. When they did pay their conventional medical practices with respect to Black attention, they invariably blamed the victims—their patients, scientifc research fndings, and corresponding [that is African Americans] “unhealthy” behaviors modes of collecting and interpretating the data. Given its and diets, their genes, the under-resourced racist moorings and legacy, historically Black people have neighborhoods they “chose” to live in and the been legitimately skeptical and fearful of the professional low-paying jobs they “chose” to work. Their medical practitioners and institutions and more generally chronic illnesses were seen as failures of personal the health care system in the United States.51 responsibility. Their shorter life expectancy was written of to addiction and the myth of “black-on- The urgent need for the organized response of Black black” violence. Many of those arguments were intellectuals, medical professionals, and public health legacies of the slave and Jim Crow eras, when experts is imperative. The individual eforts of members of the white medical and science establishment this cohort remain insufcient in light of the institutionalized promoted the idea of innate Black inferiority and nature of the health care system and professional criminality to rationalize systems built on servitude medicine. For example, as recent as December 20, 2020, and segregation.55 Black physician Dr. Susan Moore died of the coronavirus. She documented her racist treatment before her eventual What should not be overlooked is the historic African demise. Moore had to literally beg for the specifc American resistance to slavery and the collective drive medication of remdesivir—the COVID-19 medication that post-slavery for human liberation. The notion of Radical was previously mentioned in our discussion—and was left Reconstruction denotes the decade after slavery ended in a state of severe pain for hours before receiving the with the Thirteenth Amendment. In alliance with African necessary narcotics.52 Americans, white Republican politicians—representing

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industrial capitalist interests—sought to consolidate with his larger death-rate which threatens is power over the Southerners who lost the Civil War. On the extinction. This death-rate, which is largest for Reconstruction period and Northern “white allies,” Dr. Malik constitutional and respiratory diseases, is traced Simba aptly states, “The freedpeople were doomed by the by the author to the infuences of certain “race moderate Republicans and the Radicals, a true historical traits and tendencies” rather than to the conditions misnomer and false moniker, who were not radical enough of life. . . . [Hofman] believes that along with a and who could not move away from a conservative progressive improvement in the physique of Constitutionalism.”56 the white American has gone a deterioration in that of the black… The author fnally concludes In the aftermath of Reconstruction, the violent assault on that the cause of the failure so many people’s Black lives worked hand and glove with dismantling the and the struggle of life is the lack of those race nominal legal gains obtained during the previous historical characteristics for which the Aryan is pre-imminent; period. Dr. Rayford W. Logan aptly characterized this and the Negro shows evidence of the same fatal action “The Betrayal of the Negro.”57 From 1894 to 1900, shortcomings.60 approximately 1,045 Black people were lynched. In the middle of this “social pandemic” emerged two important Du Bois concludes, “To sum up briefy, the value of Mr. yet infamous declarations: the Supreme Court decision Hofman’s work lies in the collection and emphasis on a Plessy v. Ferguson, alongside the Frederick Hofman book number of interesting and valuable data in regard to the on Race Traits and the Tendencies of the American Negro. American Negro. Most of the conclusions drawn from the The former afrmed the legality of white supremacy and facts are, however, of doubtful value, on account of the the latter was an ideological rationalization for the former.58 character of the material, the extent of the feld, and the unscientifc use of the statistical method.”61 Hofman’s work ignored lynching and racist social conditions. He claimed the high mortality rate among African Nevertheless, given Hofman’s professional status as an Americans was due to a dominant racial characteristic of employee of Prudential Life Insurance Company, the book weak physical constitution among Black people. In turn, had an immediate impact on how insurance policies were Hofman argued that slavery had protected Black people rendered regarding African Americans. The most immediate from early death and it was a benevolent institution that outcome was the conclusion that African Americans were a essentially improved Black longevity. Three decades after high risk when it came to insurance policies. According to slavery, he claimed, Black people were not only falling Hofman, since African Americans were naturally disposed behind white people regarding social progress, but African toward poor health and shorter lifespans, ofering insurance Americans were also rapidly dying and facing extinction. involved greater risks for capitalist investment. It was all a Clearly, Hofman’s justifcation for this ideological matter of natural traits rooted in supposed forms of racial rationale was frmly located in the pseudoscience on racial makeup. Therefore, Hofman’s research—on behalf of the characteristics as natural dispositions. He was frmly in step American Economic Association—served as a powerful with the rise of Social Darwinism. ideological weapon in the defense of the exploitation and oppression of Black people. African American intellectuals such as Professor Kelly Miller and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois critically examined and challenged What are the lessons gained from this confuence of Hofman’s book. From a methodological viewpoint, Miller actions issuing forth from violent attacks, legalization of and Du Bois rejected the notion of intrinsic racial traits as an white supremacy, and pseudoscientifc claims on race for explanatory framework and surrogate for what were indeed us today? How can this historical legacy account for the oppressive social institutions and conditions. present plight of African Americans, especially in face of this current pandemic? From the onset in his text, Hofman claimed that he was speaking strictly in a non-biased fashion on behalf of For one, capitalist institutionalization of insurance policies— science. An immigrant from Germany, Hofman noted he particularly health insurance coverage—remains a primary did not have any particular interest in perpetrating racism. source for why African American working people rank Nevertheless, African American sociologist Kelly Miller higher among the uninsured than whites. Regarding health ofers a sharp critique of Hofman’s claim of racially neutral coverage, for 2017, while non-Latino whites were at 5.9 treatment. Kelly states, “freedom from conscious personal percent regarding the uninsured rate, African Americans bias does not relieve the author from the imputation of were at 10.5 percent, nearly twice as many. Additionally, partiality to his own opinions beyond the warrant of the for African Americans under the age of 65, approximately facts which he has presented. Indeed, it was seen that his 12 percent were without health insurance. Sofa Carratala conclusion was reach from an a priori considerations and and Connor Maxwell continue to report, “The United States that facts have been collected in order to justify it.”59 As for is home to stark and persistent racial disparities in health Hofman’s thesis, Du Bois notes, coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and mortality. These disparities are not a result of individual or The work begins with a consideration of the group behavior but decades of systemic inequality in the numerical development of the race, and the author American economic, housing, and health care systems.”62 points out that here the Negro has lost ground in comparison with the white race, both north and What Carratala and Maxwell ignore in their analysis is that south. His smaller rate of increase is connected what they describe as “systemic inequality in the American

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economic system” is more accurately the exploitative class American survival, we can disclose the very import of “Black structure of the US capitalist system with its attendant forms Lives Matter” in all of its manifold and complex dimensions. of racial and national oppression. It is this capitalist system that frames how housing and health care really functions. In the month of December, the BLMM emerged in Columbus, But there are two main points of signifcance concerning Ohio, to protest the killing of Casey Goodson Jr., shot by a their analysis. One, the examination of disparities uncovers county sherif deputy. On Tuesday, December 22, another the efects of systemic causes. Two, the causal factors Black man was murdered by Columbus police. It is reported are systemic capitalist class exploitation along with racial that the 47-year-old Andre Hill had a cell phone in his hand, and national oppression and not something endemically which police claimed was a gun. In the prior Goodson associated with African American behavior such as case, though he was a licensed gun owner, the sherif’s designated “race traits.” Already, current research has ofce reported he was a dangerous threat to public safety. publicly disclosed the real danger resides in the design Nonetheless, the evidence from this shooting indicates he and application of requisite technology, which identifes was shot in the back while entering his home.66 The Black how medical services must be allocated on the basis of Lives Matter Movement now must gear up again and take designated racial demographics. Erin Brodwin discloses, to the streets.

In the case of the hospital algorithm, for example, ON CAPITALISM AND DEATH: WHY THE BLACK the system used cost to prioritize patients’ medical WORKING-CLASS STRUGGLE MATTERS needs—which proved to be problematic, because health spending for Black patients was less than When we transition directly to the political economic matter for white patients. [Tech’s] shortcomings on of proftability contra mortality—under capitalism—the addressing racial disparities in health is also the fundamental contradiction becomes most apparent. Şahan product of disparities within tech companies Savaş Karataşli argues, themselves. The staf and leadership of many major tech companies remains overwhelmingly The real problem is that under capitalism any white—potentially impacting everything from strategy or form of action that could potentially product design to decisions about what types of save millions of lives is immediately rejected if it health research are worth investment.63 has the side efect of temporarily halting or slowing the pace of capital accumulation. It is crystal clear As recent as November 30, 2020, the CDC had to revise that the class character of capitalist relations is previously undercounted data on African American death deeply at odds with the state’s manifest aim of rates from COVID-19. The CDC initially reported that the protecting citizens’ lives. Government responses death rate for African Americans was twice the rate for to the Covid-19 pandemic reveal once again that whites. Yet, Ishena Robinson reports, when rulers around the world realize that they need to make a choice between risking either capital An adjusted data report published by the agency accumulation or human lives, most opt for risking/ this week now shows that Black people are sacrifcing the latter without much hesitation.67 actually dying from the coronavirus at almost 3 times the rate of their white counterparts. The current empirical data consistently supports the The change came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren political economic analysis of capitalism presented by (D-Mass.) requested that the agency account for Karataşli. “When Apple announced its quarterly earnings the disproportionate age breakdown in Covid-19 in the spring, chief executive Tim Cook eagerly shared all deaths experienced by people of color for diferent the company was doing to combat the coronavirus, from racial demographics. . . .64 manufacturing and distributing face shields to donating $15 million to relief eforts in the earliest days of the As Black physician Dr. Adewole Adamson warns, “If your pandemic. But those investments stood in stark contrast decision-makers all look the same, you’re going to come to the $50 billion Apple said it planned to spend on stock up with some biased tools.” He also remarks, “It’s just like repurchases-an amount so closely watched by Wall Street with Covid-19: We didn’t know there was an issue until Journal that one analyst asked why it appeared slightly we started collecting data on race and ethnicity.”65 The lower than previous years.”68 imminent dangers adjoined to health and mortality become saliently an issue of how social institutions, relations, and Karataşli further demonstrates how the contraposition practices are organized and governed. In sum, who owns, between capital accumulation and state regulations controls, and manages hospitals, clinics, and medical fostering rational policies come into confict and are not research facilities, sequentially determine how they make just apparently issues concerning ineptitude in public the key decisions about policies relating to medical care health policy: and research which vitally impact Black people’s lives. Interestingly, what appears at the frst sight as In the same respect, administration over how policing is ‘inefective government responses’ to the Covid-19 conducted remains with those vested with police power, pandemic—turn out to be more benefcial than its which is sanctioned by the state and not by the African alternatives. Proposed strategies such as fattening Americans that are victims of state terrorism. In view of the epidemic curve by means of ‘social distancing’ the kind of hegemonic power that circumscribes African and ‘slowing down’ [business activity] are indeed

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counter-productive for capital accumulation for The lesson learned, the stark battle between socialism most sectors. . . . This is why, as far as capital and capitalism is essentially about the choice between life accumulation is concerned, it is more rational to and death. Our present crisis with the twin evils of State let the disease spread and wait for it to disappear Terrorism and COVID-19 are clearly death sentences. We on its own then to prolong social distancing and are disproportionately situated amid those killed by police slowing down, which would eventually exacerbate and also among the over 300,000 coronavirus fatalities. the existing economic stagnation and crisis in the Compromise with capitalism on the grounds it is the only capitalist world economy.69 game in town is not only a failure of vision, respecting the future, signifcantly, it is the utter disregard for the historic This last point is most instructive. Karataşli efectively struggle that encapsulates “How and Why Black Lives dismantles the ideological justifcation for the specious Matter.” idea of “herd immunity.” When re-examining this statement, “as far as capital accumulation is concerned, it is more NOTES rational to let the disease spread and wait for it to disappear 1. I want to extend my gratitude to Professor Thomas Ellis for the on its own,” we clearly uncover why the idea of “herd invitation to participate in the 14th African American Intellectual immunity” continued as a frequent reframe of the Trump Thought Symposium at Fresno State University. Ellis is the current Coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at Fresno. administration. The rationale for ‘herd immunity” is not about In addition, I would like to thank Ms. Chelsea Beeson for her medical science, rather it is a blatant efort at preserving hard work behind the scenes in organizing the symposium. And, capital accumulation. Given that Dr. Anthony Fauci is an lastly but defnitely not least, my special appreciation to Dr. Malik Simba the visionary founder and creator of this long-standing apolitical health care bureaucrat, he has remained rather and vital thought-provoking series of conversations. While I have frustrated on the grounds of his commitment to medical been fortunate to participate in all the previous sessions, our science. Although working on behalf of the bourgeois state meeting today is particularly unique. apparatus, Fauci cannot comprehend the full ramifcations In addition to Professor Thomas Ellis, Ms. Chelsea Beeson, aligned with the political economy of capitalism vis-à-vis and Dr. Malik Simba, I must thank my MSU Undergraduate Research Assistant, Ms. Fatima Konare, and Fourteenth AAIT co- COVID-19. panelist, Dr. Clarence Spigner. Special gratitude to Dr. Stephen C. Ferguson II for the invitation to publish this paper in the American Dr. Clarence Spigner insightfully remarks, Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience. The United States’ market-oriented healthcare 2. Eren Duzgun, “Capitalism, Coronavirus and the Road to system has proved to be a breeding ground for Extinction,” The Bullet, April 5, 2020, https://socialistproject. ca/2020/04/capitalism-coronavirus-and-road-to-extinction/. COVID-19, especially among poor people who could not aford healthcare. . . . African Americans 3. Shannon Bond, “Zoom Turns Record Proft Thanks to Coronavirus Shutdowns,” NPR.org, August, 31, 2020, https://www.npr.org/ and others with underlying or pre-existing sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/31/908089517/ conditions exacerbated by social inequalities sufer zoom-turns-record-proft-thanks-to-coronavirus-shutdowns. and die at disproportionately higher rates under 4. Peter Whoriskey, Douglas Macmillan, Jonathan O’Connell, and our present healthcare system. That reason, rather Joel Jacobs, “America’s Biggest Companies Are Flourishing than race, underlies the explosion of COVID-19 in During the Pandemic and Putting Thousands of People Out of 70 Work,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ African American communities across the nation. graphics/2020/business/50-biggest-companies-coronavirus- layofs/. Spigner makes transparent that the “market-oriented 5. Ibid. healthcare system,” which is no more than health care for 6. Heidi Shierholz, “Unemployment Claims Hit Highest Level in capitalist profts disregards the needs of poor Black and Months,” Economic Policy Institute Working Economics Blog, other working-class families. Despite lacking comparable December 10, 2020. resources and technology available in the US, Cuba not 7. Elliot Robbins, “How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of only provides free health care for all of its citizens, but has Young Black Men,” ProPublica, December 22, 2020. implemented comprehensive and systematic coordination 8. Liz Theoharis, “As COVID Rages, We are Experiencing Mass measures for addressing COVID-19. Not to mention, Cuba Abandonment Amid Abundance,” Truthout, December 14, 2020. per capita outcomes far surpasses the dismal policies of the 9. Harold W. Neighbors, James S. Jackson, Phillip J. Bowman, Trump administration. Additionally, Cuba also trains African and Gerald Gurin, “Stress, Coping and Black Mental Health: American students (and others from around the world) to Preliminary Findings from a National Study,” Prevent in Human become physicians. As for the African Americans at Cuba’s Services 2, no. 3 (1983): 5–29. Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), the main goal 10. Barbara M. Dixon, Good Health for African Americans (New York: in mind rest on serving Black people under threat of the Crown Publishers, Inc.), 39–40. coronavirus due to preexisting conditions.71 11. Elliot Robbins, “How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men.” In conclusion, when I visited Cuba, I heard the slogan, 12. Lizzie Presser, “Tethered to the Machine” ProPublica, December “Socialism or Death.” The Cuban people know very well the 15, 2020. history of capitalism in Cuba. How it harshly repressed and 13. Ibid. indeed attempted to brutally destroyed the very existence 14. National Employment Law Project, “Silenced About COVID-19 in of Cuban social and cultural life. Embarking on the road of the Workplace,” Data Brief, June 2020. socialism, toward a new social order, is not only possible 15. For a similar analogy using cancer as a trope, Amilcar Cabral in but an imperative for the Cuban people. his eulogy of Kwame Nkrumah states, “The African peoples and particularly the freedom fghters cannot be fooled. Let no one,

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and tell us that Nkrumah died from cancer of the throat or any 30. Wallis, “Why Racism, Not Race, Is a Risk Factor for Dying of other sickness, No, Nkrumah was killed by the Cancer of betrayal, COVID-19.” which we must tear out by the roots in Africa, if we really want to liquidate imperialist domination defnitively on this continent.” 31. Craig Harris, “Arizona Charter School Got a PPP Loan, Gave $10 Amilcar Cabral, “Amilcar Cabral Speech at the Funeral of Kwame Million to Shareholder,” Arizona Republic, December, 21, 2020. Nkrumah,” http://libya360.word-press.com/2014/10/03/amilcar- 32. Christina Jewett, Robert Lewis, and Melissa Bailey, “Report: cabral-the-african-liberation-struggle/. (Conakry, Guinea.) Nearly 3,000 US Health Workers Died of COVID-19,” Reader 16. William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Supported News, December 25, 2020. Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 206. 33. Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung, “The Battle for Waterloo: 17. Aldina Mesic, Lydia Franklin, Alev Cansever, Fiona Potter, Anika As COVID-19 Ravaged this Iowa City, Ofcials Discovered Sharma, Anita Knopov, and Michael Siegel, “The Relationship Meatpacking Executives were the Ones in Charge,” ProPublica, Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal December, 21, 2020. Police Shootings at the State Level,” Journal of the National 34. Ibid. Medical Association 110, no. 2 (April 2018), http:doi.org/10.1016/j. nma.2017.12.002. For a view on medical malpractice that 35. Ibid. develops from the application of racially skewed research, see Sharon Begley, “Racial Bias Skews Algorithms Widely Used in 36. Ibid. Guide Care from Heart Surgery to Birth,” STAT News (Boston 37. Our illustration about hair has a unique twist linked to capitalism Globe Media Partners), June 17, 2020, https://www.statnews. and hair care. Although facial hair is biologically useless, Clark com/2020/06/17/racial-bias-skews-algorithms-widely-used- and Bryant cite a New York Post article about men paying up to to-guide-patient-care/. Regarding health coverage, for 2017, $8,500 in acquiring facial hair transplants. Josh Clark and Chuck while non-Latino whites were at 5.9% regarding the uninsured Bryant, “Facial Hair is Biologically Useless: So Why do Humans rate, African Americans were at 10.5%, nearly twice as many. Have It?” Wired, December 20, 2020. Additionally, for African Americans under the age of 65, 12.1% were without health insurance. See Sofa Carratala and Connor 38. Sibile Marcellus, “Corona Stimulus: I know exactly where we Maxwell, Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity, Center for can get the money to pay for stimulus checks, says Rep. Tlaib,” American Progress, May 7, 2020, https://www.americanprogress. Yahoo/Finance, December, 16, 2020, https://www.yahoo. org/issues/race/reports/2020/05/07/484742/health-disparities- com/now/coronavirus-stimulus-i-know-exactly-where-we-can- race-ethnicity/. get-the-money-to-pay-for-1200-stimulus-checks-says-rep- tlaib-181711844.html. 18. Mesic et al., “The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State 39. Robert Reich, “Jef Bezos Became Even Richer Thanks to Covid-19. Level.” But He still won’t Protect Amazon Workers,” The Guardian, Sunday, December 13, 2020. 19. Ibid. 40. Kaoosji is quoted in Patrick McGreevy and Suhauna Hussain, 20. “NMA Statement on the Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Decision,” “California Demands that Amazon Comply with COVID-19 National Medical Association Press Release, September 25, Investigation,” Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes. 2020. com/california/story/2020-12-14/california-lawsuit-amazon- 21. Ibid. workplace-conditions-covid-19. 22. Chelsey Carter and Ezelle Sanford, “The Myth of Black 41. Reich, “Jef Bezos Became Even Richer Thanks to Covid-19. But Community: Racialized Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” He still won’t Protect Amazon Workers.” Black Perspectives, April 3, 2020. A number of youth inspired 42. Tamar Lapin, “Amazon Fires Worker Who Organized Strike over by the Black Lives Matter Movement have adopted the virus Coronavirus Response,” New York Post, March 30, 2020, https:// analogy. See Motinoluwa Adeniji, as told to Ivy Scott, “Racism nypost.com/2020/03/30/amazon-fires-worker-who-organized- Is Like a Virus,” Boston Globe, July 11, 2020, https://www. strike-over-coronavirus-response/. bostonglobe.com/2020/07/11/opinion/racism-is-like-virus/, and Jenna-Lee Ewers, “Racism—the Greatest Virus of Our Time,” 43. Evie Fordam, “Amazon Employee Fired After Coronavirus Walkout Mail & Guardian Thought Leader, December 12, 2020, https:// Says Company Is Lying about Cases,” FOXBusiness, April 6, 2020, thoughtleader.co.za/racism-the-greatest-virus-of-our-time/. Of https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/amazon-coronavirus- course, the virus of racism vis-à-vis the corona virus is not limited chris-smalls-staten-island. to attacks on Black people (see Suyin Hayes, “As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Xenophobia and Anti-Asian Racism,” Time, 44. Annie Foster, “Amazon Says More than 19,000 Workers March 6, 2020, https://time.com/5797836/coronavirus-racism- Got Covid-19,” CNBC, Ovtober 1, 2020, https://www.cnbc. stereotypes-attacks/. com/2020/10/01/amazon-says-more-than-19000-workers-got- covid-19.html. 23. Casey Ross, “Study Finds Racial Bias in the Government’s Formula for Distributing Covid-19 Aid to Hospitals,” STAT News 45. Ibid. (Boston Globe Media Partners), August, 7, 2020, https://www. 46. Patrick McGreevy and Suhauna Hussain, “California Demands statnews.com/2020/08/07/racial-bias-in-government-covid19- that Amazon Comply with COVID-19 Investigation,” Los Angeles hospital-aid-formula/. Times, December 14, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/ 24. Claudia Wallis, “Why Racism, Not Race, Is a Risk Factor for Dying story/2020-12-14/california-lawsuit-amazon-workplace- of COVID-19,” Scientifc American, June 12, 2020. In this article, conditions-covid-19. Claudia Wallis interviews Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones. 47. Robert Reich, “How the Richest 1 Percent Came Out Big Winners 25. Matt Taibbi, “Big Pharma’s Covid-19 Profteers,” RollingStone, in the Covid Relief Bill,” Reader Supported News, December 24, August, 13, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ 2020. politics-features/big-pharma-covid-19-profts-1041185/. 48. Heidi Shierholz, “Unemployment Claims Hit Highest Level in 26. Ibid. Months,” Economic Policy Institute Working Economics Blog, December 10, 2020, https://www.epi.org/blog/unemployment- 27. Kimberly Seals Allers, “The Black Maternal Mortality Crisis is Not claims-hit-highest-level-in-months-millions-more-jobs-will-be- for Sale, Refnery29, November 19, 2020, https://www.refnery29. lost-if-congress-doesnt-act/. com/en-us/2020/11/10179076/black-women-maternal-mortality- racism-business-interest. 49. See Isaac Chotiner, “How Racism Is Shaping the Coronavirus Pandemic,” The New Yorker, May 7, 2020, https://www.newyorker. 28. National Employment Law Project, “Silenced About COVID-19 in com/news/q-and-a/how-racism-is-shaping-the-coronavirus- the Workplace,” Data Brief, June, 2020. pandemic. 29. Ibid. 50. For an excellent example of the kind of research that efectively challenges racist scholarship in public health policy and medicine, see Clarence Spigner, “COVID-19: The Myth and

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Reality for Black America,” retrieved from http://www.blackpast. historical.org/pandemics-lesson-global-capitalism-is-uneven- org/African-american-history/covid-19-the-myth-and-the-reality- and-dangerously-particularistic/. for-black-america/. 68. Whoriskey et al., “America’s Biggest Companies Are Flourishing 51. Diedre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the During the Pandemic and Putting Thousands of People Out of Origins of American Gynecology (Athens: The Georgia Press, Work.” 2017). 69. Karataşli, “Pandemic’s Lesson: Global Capitalism is Uneven and 52. John Eligon, “Black Doctor Dies After Complaining of Racist Dangerously Particularistic.” Treatment,” New York Times, December 25, 2020. 70. Spigner, “COVID-19: The Myth and Reality for Black America.” 53. Ibid. 71. For an excellence account on African American physicians trained 54. Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) and their Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times assessments on COVID-19 health care policy, see the YouTube to the Present (New York: Harlem Moon, 2006). presentation, “Cuban Trained Doctors—Confronting COVID-19” Published on September 13, 2020. Produced by Ed Mays, Private 55. Robbins, “How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Television. Black Men.” 56. Malik Simba, Black Marxism and American Constitutionalism (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2016), 74. For the classic treatment by an African American scholar of Reconstruction BOOK REVIEWS and the aftermath of overturning the limited strides made, see W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) (frst published in 1935). A Welcome Leftward Turn to Marxism: 57. Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford Ferguson on the Philosophy of African B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970). First published as The Negro in American Life and Thought: The American Studies Nadir: 1877–1901. 58. On the Supreme Court decision Plessy V. Ferguson, see Bernard Stephen C. Ferguson II (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, R. Boxill, “Washington, Du Bois, and Plessy V. Ferguson” in Racism 2015). 290 pp. $100, hardcover. ISBN: 978-1-137-54996-9; and the Law: The Lessons and Legacy of Plessy, ed. Gerald J. Postema, 79–110 (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). $74.99, paperback. 978-1-349-56873-4. Frederick L. Hofman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1896). 59. Kelly Miller, “A Review of Hofman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of Reviewed by John H. McClendon III the American Negro,” The American Negro Academy, Occasional MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Papers No. 1. (New York: Arno Press, 1969). 60. Hofman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. Philosopher Stephen C. Ferguson II forges an intellectual Reviewed by W. E. B. Du Bois in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science IX (January 1897-June breakthrough with his dialectical synthesis and critical 1897): 127. analysis respecting the philosophy of African American 61. Ibid., 133. Studies. To date, Ferguson’s area of inquiry—philosophy of African American Studies—has not received the same 62. See Sofa Carratala and Connor Maxwell, Health Disparities attention within the feld of African American Studies. We by Race and Ethnicity, Center for American Progress, May 7, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/ discover, for example, that history, literature, the arts, and reports/2020/05/07/484742/health-disparities-race-ethnicity/. social sciences as disciplines have received far greater 63. Erin Brodwin, “Tech Giants Are Well-Positioned to Help Close treatment than philosophy as objects of investigation. Racial Gaps in Health: They Have Little to Show for It,” STAT Concurrently, philosophers have for the most part found News (Boston Globe Media Partners), July, 7, 2020, https:// that doing the philosophy of race is a sufcient nod in the www.statnews.com/2020/07/07/facebook-apple-amazon-racial- health-gaps/. Also see Tom Simonte, “How an Algorithm Blocked direction of African American Studies. Kidney Transplants to Black Patients,” Wired, October, 10, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/how-algorithm-blocked-kidney- For those partisans in African American Studies, perhaps transplants-black-patients/. the reason for this lacuna resides in the fact that the 64. Ishena Robinson, “CDC’S New Numbers Show Black Americans philosophy of African American Studies inverts the process and Other People of Color Dying at Higher Rates from Covid-19 Than It Previously Reported,” The Root, December 5, 2020, of analysis, wherein African American Studies become of https://www.theroot.com/cdc-acknowledges-black-and-latino- the very object of inquiry. Thus, the philosophical question americans-dying-at-hi-1845816843. Elizabeth Cooney, “In of theory and method in African American Studies become Another Covid-19 Disparity, Black and Hispanic Americans the driving force in Ferguson’s treatment. Ferguson are Dying at Younger Ages Than White Americans,” STAT News (Boston Globe Media Partners), July 10, 2020, https://www. employs the dialectical and historical materialist (Marxist) statnews.com/2020/07/10/covid-19-disparity-black-hispanic- method of analysis to African American Studies. Ferguson’s americans-deaths-under-65/. Marxist philosophical analysis of the Black experience has 65. Dr. Adamson is quoted in Erin Brodwin, “Tech Giants are Well- two immediate outcomes. First, class struggle is integral to Positioned to Help Close Racial Gaps in Health: They Have Little the examination. And, secondly, the idealist metaphysical to Show for It,” STAT News (Boston Globe Media Partners), July, 7, 2020, https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/07/facebook-apple- constructions and mystical formulations on Blackness/ amazon-racial-health-gaps/. African identity are subject to critique. 66. Will Wright, “Columbus Police Kill Black Man Weeks After Protests Against Brutality,” New York Times, December 22, 2020. Unlike most philosophical inquiry, Ferguson’s book is a 67. Şahan Savaş Karataşli, “Pandemic’s Lesson: Global Capitalism philosophical work that efectively explores the historical— Is Uneven and Dangerously Particularistic,” Comparative and material—context of African American Studies. In his Historical Sociology (Section of the American Sociological introduction, Ferguson demonstrates how contending Association), April 22, 2020, http://chs.asa-comparative- conceptual frameworks and ideologies were manifested

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in the early stages of African American Studies (AAS). to the curriculum of higher education. Instead, the birth Black nationalist (Afrocentric) ideology was one of many of African American Studies was strategically part of the voices and thus not the only current in AAS. Consequently, radical movement. This movement sought to fundamentally the philosophical treatment of Blackness or the Black transform the very foundations of the Ivory Tower. experience was not limited to nationalist review. At the center of its critical materialist insights and dialectical Subsequently, the frst chapter, “Class Struggle in the approach is the crucial methodological problem of locating Ivory Towers: Revisiting the Birth of Black Studies in the meaning of Blackness or defning what is the Black ’68,” substantially comprises content that is historical experience. Ferguson is explicitly detailed about this in its character. Here the reader deciphers that AAS is issue. He steadfastly rejects any approach that relies on the direct product of struggle. More particularly, how metaphysical abstraction or mystical constructs that attempt the intensifcation of class struggle was situated in the to defne the nature of Blackness. Moreover, he eschews specifc context of fghting racism. The movement for AAS resorting to methods of analysis that presumes some kind was based on the combined forces of the Black working- of Black philosophical prespective or African worldview. class community and its young African American students From the onset, Ferguson informs us that Blackness (i.e., on white campuses, circa the late 1960s. In the wake of the Black experience) is the object of investigation/subject increased political agitation for changes in the academic matter of AAS. environment for African American students, various working-class forces emerged in the vanguard. Among Philosophy of African American Studies: Nothing Left those forces were Marxist-Leninists and leftist elements of Blackness is the product of Ferguson being an astute that gave voice to the Black proletarian character of the scholar in both felds of study. Just as biochemistry student struggle. demands expertise in biology and chemistry, the same holds true for the philosophy of African American Studies. For illustration, Ferguson informs us about the often I have observed African American philosophers that were overlooked Afro-American Institute at Antioch College. This not scholars in AAS as well as scholars in AAS that were exploration into the Marxist led program at Antioch is of no not philosophers. The fact remains there are very few small matter. This Institute faced the full weight of state that wear both hats. Ferguson remains both a scholar of censure from the federal government, while correspondingly philosophy and African American Studies. Ferguson’s Yale University received capitalist (corporate) funding to critical examination concerning the philosophy of African sustain its burgeoning African American Studies program. American Studies comprises the culmination of years of Ferguson makes clear to thereader such diferences study and research aimed toward building a framework of were rooted in the class/ideological orientation of these unitary inquiry. respective programs.

Ferguson’s unique locus enables deeply probing into The esteemed Marxist scholar Professor Robert N. African American Studies with a sharp philosophical lens. Rhodes played a decisive role in the development of Simultaneously, he writes to a broad reading audience, the Institute and the emergence of AAS more generally. inclusive of those within AAS and philosophy. Clearly, A walking encycopedia and genius of frst mark, many Ferguson appeals to a wide audience, nevertheless, he students at Antioch and later Ohio University—not to maintains a high level of erudition and penetrating insights. mention community activists throughout the country— Scholars, students, and the general reader can grasp were benefciaries of his broad wealth of knowledge. his arguments without fghting through a high degree Unfortunately, Prof. Rhodes died in December 2014. Given of technical jargon, which we often fnd with academic the paucity of works that acknowledge Rhodes’s African philosophical works. Ferguson is not caught in the jungle American Studies contributions, it follows that his legacy of academic jargon nor the never-never land of neologisms. remains virtually unknown to the general public. After Rhodes’s passing, his life summary appeared on the Ohio What is exceptional about Ferguson’s position is not only University website. It comes as no surprise that this obituary his professional training and expertise but also (more notice turned to Ferguson’s text for vital information on importantly) his political locus as Marxist philosopher. As the Rhodes legacy. Ferguson’s thoughtful deliberations on Marxist philosopher—in the intellectual tradition of C. L. Rhodes open a new window into not only Rhodes but also R. James—Ferguson takes us on the road to “Dialectical more generally the decisive impact of Marxist infuences Materialism.” Where James was concerned with “Dialectical on the development of AAS. Materialism and the Fate of Humanity,” Ferguson makes a specifcation on this general proposition. Thus, we have However, the value of Ferguson’s text is not only in the fact “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Black Humanity” that he identifes the left-wing activists of emergent AAS but as represented in the discourse on African American also he outlines the historical process, which demonstrates Studies. From the philosophical standpoint of dialectical how the left and specifcally Marxist proponents were later materialism, Ferguson grounds James’s pioneering eforts. marginalized within the feld. Ferguson documents that the demise of Marxism and the ascendancy of Afrocentrism Another point of originality comprises how Ferguson are two sides of the same coin. This was philosophically highlights the material—on the ground—student-led expressed, in AAS, with the decline of the dialectical struggle for African American Studies. With the apt phrase, materialist outlook and the corresponding emergence “Class Struggle in the Ivory Tower” Ferguson conveys that of subjective idealism. The reader should take note how African American Studies was not merely an addendum Ferguson keenly displays how this historical shift was

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manifested as philosophical vantage points in AAS with He especially addresses Collins’s principal notion about idealism and dialectical materialism are contending the confguration of Afrocentric feminist epistemology. worldviews. Ferguson efectively demonstrates there is a concerted line of continuity from the “Utopian Worldview” to the “Death of Hence, Ferguson’s penetrating critique of the philosophical Epistemology.” This becomes most evident as we witness muddle surrounding Afrocentrism and the politics of Collins’s confation of the sociology of knowledge with African cultural identity sans a critique of capitalism. This epistemology. The content of knowledge—epistemology— is especially signifcant for those fellow students and is efectively reduced to its context—sociology of scholars that are recently introduced to African American knowledge. Wherein context transpires as a host of “lived- Studies. Ferguson ofers a strigent philosophical critique of experiences” accredited to various groups of Black women. Afrocentricity, and chapters two through fve become must Instead of articulating how a materialist epistemology is reading for the student of AAS. Especially young students relevant to assisting the liberation of Black women, Collins that aim to capture how the current philosophical state of simply posits a subjective approach to the construction afairs in AAS came into existence. Ferguson studiously of a sociology of knowledge. By the demarcation of uncovers that the present state of afairs is the product of epistemology from the sociology of knowledge, Ferguson’s intense ideological struggle. treatment of the “Death of Epistemology” in AAS transpires as a monumental contribution to the feld and undoubtedly In the contemporary intellectual milieu, where the will aid students new to AAS. Afrocentric paradigm is dominant, I think many will turn to Ferguson’s work to clarify their comprehension. He informs Although Ferguson’s book is a serious work of scholarship, us that Afrocentricity is philosophically rooted in subjective the consciencious reader is aforded the opportunity to idealism, along with its attendent pitfalls respecting actually enjoy a humorous moment or two, while working the embrace of the ”Utopian Worldview.” The bulk of his through the intricacies of philosophical inquiry, historical text—chapters two through fve—ofers the most thorough details, and social analysis of African American Studies. As going critique of Afrocentricity in AAS to date. For example, a frst-generation major in Black Studies, I was especially Chapter 3, “New Wine in an Old Bottle?: The Critique of delighted at Ferguson’s keen attention to the historical Eurocentrism in Marimba Ani’s Yurugu,” is a critique of details; particularly the theoretical and ideological what a number of Afrocentrists view as the quintessential complexities of this neoteric feld and its ancillary political philosophical text of Afrocentrism. and ideological conficts over the direction of African American Studies. With his book, African American Marxists Ferguson points out that while many credit Molef Asante and Marxism are no longer absent from the discussion with pioneering Afrocentricity, Ani provides the most of AAS and the philosophical fashion of Afrocentricity is comprehensive elaboration on the Afrocentric critique of readily exposed. Eurocentrism. Ferguson tells us that Ani’s central thesis is the reduction of Eurocentrism to Plato’s architectonic. In conclusion, this book is the most signifcant philosophical Although Ani majored in philosophy—as an undergrad— examination of Black Studies to emerge in the past forty her grasp of the history of philosophy and even the years. Ferguson provides both critical materialist insights fundamentals of Plato’s thought, Ferguson uncovers, is and creative dialectical approaches to this important rooted in basic errors of an empirical and conceptual feld of study. Ferguson’s Philosophy of African American nature. For example, Ani arguesthat Plato was a materialist Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness is a must-read for those and his materialism is foundational to Western thought and who seek to ultilize AAS as a weapon of liberation. its ancillary imperalist legacy.

Ferguson clarifes how Plato’s idealism contra materialism grew out of the particularity of his mileau and Ani’s The Disposable Man—Grotesque White reductionism misses the point about Plato’s locus in the history of philosophy. Ani’s attempt at grounding the legacy Fantasies of Black Male Death in George of Western imperialism in Plato’s “materialism,” Ferguson Yancy’s Backlash reveals, is an idealist subterfuge that distorts not only the history of philosophy but also our understanding of Western George Yancy, Backlash: What Happens When We Talk imperialism and white supremacy. Absent from Ani’s Honestly about Racism in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman refections is that the dialectical materialist philosophical & Littlefeld Publishing Group, 2018). viewpoint ofers a critical perspective of capitalism. Reviewed by Adebayo Oluwayomi In Chapter 4, “The Utopian Worldview of Afrocentricity” HOWARD UNIVERSITY Ferguson continues critically dismantling Afrocentricity, [email protected] while the ffth chapter, “What’s Epistemology Got to Do with It: The ‘Death of Epistemology’ in African American In Backlash, George Yancy examines what it means to be Studies,” invites us to reexamine how the Black critique of embodied as Black and to be the target of white racist the notion of “white ideology” in the social sciences fell into hatred, as exemplifed by the numerous racist messages the trap of subjectivist idealism. From this development— he received for daring to write a “love letter” to white circa the 1970s—Ferguson moves to tackle the more recent Americans requiring them to risk their white selves in work of Patricia Hill Collins. order to dismantle the structures of white supremacy and

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structural oppression. This work is courageous, to say the into the fabric of this society. This kind of love also makes least, especially noting that it was written at a time when a demand on them to honestly search their hearts and to white ethno-nationalist rhetoric has become mainstream refect on their status in this society, in order to recognize in national political discourse in the United States. Now, and admit how their whiteness protects or shields them white people are no longer covert in their exhibition from the many harrowing systems of discrimination that of racist attitudes or ashamed to blatantly avow racist confronts the lives of non-white peoples almost daily. thoughts against those who do not identity as members This is similar to what Martin Luther King, Jr. describes in of the dominant white racial group. The present political Strength to Love, as having that capacity “to look beneath dispensation in the United States has made it possible for the surface.”4 It has the power to dispel “the darkness of racism to be normalized so much so that torch-wielding racial injustice.”5 white nationalists are able to march openly on university campuses, evoking fear, violence, and racialized hatred In this book, Yancy introduces the reader to the underbelly akin to that of the Jim Crow era.1 College campuses are of the American imaginary as exemplifed by the numerous now being targeted as sites for the display of orchestrated responses he received from his widely read letter, “Dear racialized hatred, and college professors are punitively White America,” which was published in the New York censured for expressing their academic freedom and the Times’ opinion column, The Stone, on December 24, 2015. fundamental right to free expression—especially when This is why the book is appropriately titled—Backlash. such academic freedom is focused on grappling with the Although the responses from white readers of this problem of racism in America, or what Derrick Bell refers letter were varied in style, form, and tone, most of them to as “the Social Afiction of Racism in America.”2 Through shared a common feature: expressing the desire to cause the mobilization of white fears, economic anxieties, and death, bodily harm, or destruction to the bearer of such political worries by a coalition of white ethno-political a daring message. It was a cacophony of raw desires to platforms, right-wing media outlets, and complicit college do something harmful, violent, or hurtful to the bearer administrators, many race-scholars have either been of such an unsolicited love message that exposes the silenced or “forced” into exile.3 As the subtitle of this book grotesque white fraternization with the destruction of the shows, Yancy is one of the courageous professors who Black male body. Emotions like anger, disgust, contempt, dared to speak honestly about racism in America. He dared and indignation were readily discernible from the tone “to love” in the face of vitriolic hatred directed at him by and content of the white respondents who found Yancy’s white people. letter as evidence of a Black male professor who has forgotten his place of subordination within America’s It is tempting to regard Yancy as a hero for penning his racially hierarchized society. The white respondents were “Dear White America” letter and for building upon his especially united in their desire to harm him through thoughts about it and the backlash in this book, because violent means, including death. Their responses showed Americans love superheroes. Within the American that “the struggle against racism is not just an intellectual imaginary, especially the American fctional imaginary, struggle;” it is a struggle of life and death.6 From the there are all sorts of fantasies associated with superheroes. vantage point of the white reader, Yancy was asking for too Male superhero characters, such as Superman, Batman, much or the near impossible—asking them to interrogate Spiderman, Ironman, and Aquaman, are loved for their their whiteness and their complicity in structural racism in fantastical prowess and superhuman abilities to rupture the the United States. In White Identity Politics, Ashley Jardina normal order of things. In fact, they are mostly regarded describes what Yancy is requesting from white readers in as “incredible men.” However, these characters all share “Dear White Americans” as a tough ask because it touches something in common; they are fctional representations on the fundamental constitution of white identity and the of whiteness and the signifcation of the power white privileges that comes with whiteness. It is a missive that males wield within this society. They possess the power pushed them to come to terms with the tensions between to rupture the normal order of things without experiencing recognizing their privileges and power as a group and how life-threatening backlash. But Yancy is no hero, or, at the these advantages are systematically unfair or harmful to very least, he is not trying to be a hero. He was simply trying racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.7 Yet, Yancy to bear or ofer a message of love to white Americans. hopes that this approach would force white Americans to However, for daring to bear such a love message, he have an honest and critical conversation about race.8 became an anti-hero, and deemed to be disposable. Yancy’s Backlash reveals another kind of fantasy within the Backlash consists of an Introduction and four chapters. American racist imaginary: the Black man as the disposable This review will not summarize the Introduction since its man in the white imagination. contents are integrated throughout the four chapters. Rather, it will identify themes from the Introduction, In fact, he is the anti-hero who dared to bear the message particularly “taking risks, vulnerability, and growth,”9 as of love in a society that is not willing to entertain or give they arise in each chapter. In chapter one, “The Letter: Dear serious consideration to such an ethos of love. This idea of White America,” Yancy revisits where it all began—the “Dear love that Yancy articulates in his letter and expresses in this White America” letter. He rearticulates his true intensions book is not the romantic kind of love that overlooks human for penning this letter. He imagines this letter as a gift, failures. Neither is it the kind of love that comes with no though one that appeared to be a heavy burden for his strings attached. It is a kind of love that requires white intended recipients. Perhaps one of the most challenging Americans to recognize how they continue to beneft from and deeply penetrating aspects of the letter is where Yancy the structural inequalities that have been historically built implores his white American readers to acknowledge that

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they are “racist” while at the same time asking them to even more creative by imagining a brutal way of kill Yancy, accept this as a gift. It is important to state here that in saying that “somebody needs to put a boot up your ass the way Yancy crafts his refections in his letter, he is not and knock your fucking head of your shoulders. . . .”15 merely engaging in name calling. A more careful reading of As if this is not violent enough, someone called for Yancy it shows that he was interested in asking white Americans “to be beheaded ISIS style.”16 This fraternization between who beneft from structural racism to engage in critical racist white respondents over the destruction of the Black self-refection that would reveal how they are complicit male body is disgusting and abhorrent. It is reminiscent in a social-political system that unfairly gives privilege to of sentiments related to the tragedy of lynching of whites at the expense of people of color. Engaging in such Black bodies in America in the nineteenth and twentieth critical self-refection may lead to the possibly frightening centuries and the destruction of Black bodies in recent realization that “to be white in America is to be always times through racialized policing and mass incarceration. already implicated in structures of power.”10 He hoped that However, the racializing nature of these responses reveal such a realization could engineer a new form of conscious the contradiction of Yancy’s message to white Americans refection on the part of his white readers to get of their in the frst place. The message was aimed at helping white high horse of self-righteousness and self-absorption that Americans come to acknowledge racism as an existential prevents them from seeing how they contribute to the threat to the lives of Black people and other people of problem of racism in America. color. These responses, unfortunately, strengthen the very existential threat that Yancy hoped his white American In chapter two, “Dear Nigger Professor,” Yancy shares readers could work to forestall. some of the visceral and violent backlash he received from his white readers for his “Dear White America” letter. It is In chapter three, “Risking the White Self,” Yancy introduces the most difcult part of the book to read because of the the concept of mutual vulnerability as one of the things sheer multitude of racial slurs and profanities directed he hoped to achieve by writing his “Dear White America” at him by many of his white readers. Anyone who has letter. Risking the white self involves a process in which respect for human dignity, irrespective of racial or ethnic white people unequivocally tell the truths about themselves afliations, would struggle to read this chapter. Many of and those in their social group. It also involves both Yancy, the white responses that Yancy features in this chapter as the letter’s author, and the letter’s primary audience, were vile, gloomy, and flled with bile, anger, and violent through critical self-refection, working together to disclose threats including bodily mutilation and death. The white how white people are complicit in perpetuating systems of respondents were clearly ofended by the “audacity” of a oppression against oppressed groups in the United States. Black male professor calling members of a white community Yancy’s display of vulnerability led him to disclose his Black racists when they cannot even imagine Black people being male privilege and sexism, as well as his complicity in the in a position to chastise them about anything, much less oppression of women within a gender-based hierarchy a well-educated Black intellectual doing so. The following of society. He had hoped that, by being honest about his excerpts from the book, depicting some of these responses, own male privilege and sexism with his readers, his white are instructive. One white respondent, for instance, writes, American readers would be willing to admit that they “This belief that niggers even reason is blatant pseudo- beneft from white privilege and that they are complicit intellectualism.”11 Another white respondent writes: “calling with structural racism and racial oppression. a Nigger a professor is like calling White Black and Wet Dry.”12 These kinds of expressions, as well as many others Despite Yancy making himself vulnerable and admitting highlighted in the book, expose the true face of anti-Black his own faults, white readers did not reciprocate. Rather, racism in America—a system of unmitigated hatred that they lashed out against him even as he reached out to suddenly transforms or reduces a distinguished professor them in an honest and loving manner. He considers this of philosophy (who happens to be a Black male) to nothing backlash to be the result of white fragility, which hinders (a no-thing, an emptiness, a fctive entity). In this system, them from risking their white selves and endangering their any and every Black person is reduced to being a “N-word.” participation in a system of privilege and racial comfort The deployment of the “N-word” to designate Black dis/ that depends on the subordination of people of color. He embodiment is part of the racist ploy to make Black bodies also considers much of the backlash to the “Dear White disposable. It is in this manner that many of the white America” letter, and the white entitlement undergirding respondents called for the destruction of his Black body for that backlash, to be a defense mechanism put up by white his “racial transgression.” people who beneft from whiteness to detract from the very difcult engagement in critical thinking about their place Yancy’s racial transgression consists in his courage to in a white supremacist society. They could not bear the give an unsolicited gift of love (or love message) to white responsibility for their complicity with structural and racial Americans. The following excerpts from the notes Yancy oppression; they could not bear the burden of whiteness. received from his white readers are particularly striking in The negative responses that he highlighted in this chapter their imagination of the literal destruction of the Black body shows that his white respondents either misunderstood or and the eternal silencing of an adjudged Black “pseudo- undermined the central message of his “gift” to them—the intellectual.” Here is what one white respondent said they call for white folks to speak out against racism regardless wants to do to Yancy: “kick your black ass until you were of the risks involved. Nonetheless, Yancy emphasizes the half dead. . . .”13 Another respondent said Yancy “needs importance of having the courage to speak the truth about to have a meat hook lovingly, well, you know, time to white privilege and anti-Black racism despite receiving use your own imagination!”14 Yet another respondent was many negative responses to his call for white readers to

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engage in existential self-risking that he called for in his the process that he refers to as suturing, “whereby white letter. As he reminds us, “I understand that the letter was people engage in forms of closure, forms of protection bold, but in this time of racist toxicity, which has always from various challenges to the ways in which whiteness is been the reality in America, we can’t aford to be silent.”17 seen as the norm, its unremarkable everydayness, its value He wants his white readers to be able to sacrifce their assumptions, and the many ways in which it’s guilty about comfort and “fragility” to confront the problems of racial producing distorted knowledge about itself.”22 This process injustice in America today. is not a good thing for white people to engage in. So he asks his white readers to un-suture, that is, to attempt a candid There are at least two problems with the third chapter. assessment of the white self. In his view, “un-suturing can First, it is unclear how Yancy justifes his assertion that function, within this case, as a way of undergoing a radical there is such a thing as Black male privilege. For example, rethinking of the body as a site of profound vulnerability, he does not provide an empirically grounded account and a radical way of being-in-the-world.”23 There is some of Black male privilege, with ways of measuring how it evidence presented in Backlash showing that not all of his operates in society and detecting its existence.18 Nor does white readers are sutured or closed. Some of them were he account for how males in a subordinated racial group able to commit themselves to the act of “un-suturing” he possesses the power necessary to have male privilege. writes about in this chapter. For example, one of his white If anything, Black males “do not possess the institutional responders writes: “Thank you George Yancy. You speak for means to create it or maintain it do not actually have it.”19 me, through me, though we are diferent; I am a woman In my view, Yancy still needs to fesh out the concrete ways and white.”24 Another white respondent writes, “Thank you in which his privilege as a Black male confers structural for your words of truth and the gift that they are.”25 These power to oppress women in empirically measurable terms. words, in my view, capture the spirit and substance of His insistence that white Americans had failed to exhibit Yancy’s message to white America, both in the “Dear White mutual vulnerability in regard to their complicity in racial America” letter and Backlash. oppression is undermined by the overly positive responses he received from his white readers, which he documents There is something to be said about the plight of Black later in the book. faculty members in the United States being constantly subjected to racist attacks for calling out racism as In chapter four, “Accepting the Gift,” Yancy reiterates what a problem. This defnitely leaves lasting emotional the gift of the “Dear White America” letter was all about and and psychological wounds that goes beyond just the the criteria for its acceptance. For Yancy, the acceptance of classroom. In Backlash, Yancy describes the time when this gift requires being vulnerable, more specifcally, a kind he broke down in tears after sharing with his students vulnerability that is borne out of genuine self-assessment some of the virulently racist remarks he received upon the and a realistic view of the world. It requires piercing the publication of the “Dear White America” letter. He shared façade uncritically accepted by many Americans, which with them how continually imagining the “furious-racist” is of a democratic society that provides opportunities for on the prowl coming to destroy his already dehumanized everyone regardless of their race or ethnicity to achieve Black body became a part of his everyday life. In “Words “the American Dream.” Since white Americans have the that Wound,” Richard Delgado states how racist insults like ability to pierce this façade (even though they are prone to the ones Yancy were subjected to “remain one of the most racist habits, beliefs in racist stereotypes, and a sense of pervasive channels through which discriminatory attitudes white entitlement),20 he thinks that they can at least begin are imparted. Such language injures the dignity and self- to have a conversation with themselves on the problem of regard of the person to whom it is addressed.”26 Those racism in this society by choosing to accept this gift of love insults injured his dignity and well-being as a professor he ofered to them in his Dear White America letter in 2015. and as a human. This is something that deserves urgent In this chapter, he writes about the necessity of accepting attention in scholarship across disciplinary lines in higher the gift (i.e., love message) originally ofered in that letter. education in the United States. As he writes, “this book, which still functions as a letter to you, is an expanded version of that gift and that act of In spite of all this, Yancy maintains that he is hopeful that giving.”21 white Americans can begin to think diferently about their whiteness within a fuid and relational context. An important However, Yancy is aware that what he is asking for frst step towards achieving this goal is for white people to would require an act of courage on the part of his white acknowledge the ways in which they are racists for reaping readers. It may also be conceived of as a dangerous comfort while Black and people of color sufer.27 How request because it leaves his white readers open to the should we make sense of this “hopefulness” if white racism possibility of being wounded. It has the potential of is considered from the perspective of racial realism as bursting the bubble of white innocence and preventing structural, systemic, endemic, and permanent?28 According them from using the (il)logic of white fragility or white to Derrick Bell, a racial realist view of white racism entails victimhood to mask their complicity and acquiescence an acknowledgement that our anti-racist actions “are not to a system of racism in which their whiteness privileges likely to lead to transcendent change and, despite our best them over non-white people in the United States. In this eforts, may be of more help to the system we despise than respect, he characterizes “whiteness” as a site of closure to the victims of that system we are trying to help.” So how and control, which allows it to continue to position and do we make sense of Yancy’s hopefulness (that his white replicate itself as the summit of institutional power within readers will challenge their complicity in racial oppression) American society. Yancy describes “whiteness” as involving if it is examined through the lens of racial realism? Will it

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make any diference at all? Yancy seems to anticipate Bell’s NOTES concern that an anti-racist efort asking white people to “risk 1. David Caplan and Kevin Dolak, “Torch-wielding White Nationalists the white self” may further exacerbate rather than resolve March on University of Virginia ahead of Massive Rally,” ABC News, August 12, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/US/torch- the problem when he writes thus: “I assure the reader that I wielding-white-nationalists-march-university-virginia-ahead/ am not naïve, but I continue to be hopeful, even as my hope story?id=49172793. 29 feels as it is sometimes complicit with white supremacy.” 2. Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial The problem with Yancy’s hope that white people will have Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 181. the courage to risk their white selves is that this will not 3. Colleges are meant to be a place for free intellectual inquiry and sufce to rupture the structures of oppression and systemic dialogical debates even on the most difcult or controversial racism. Consequently, if hope does not work, is pessimism topics/ideas. But in recent times, not all professors feel that freedom. Across the United States, in the past year and a half, an option? Following James Baldwin, Yancy writes in a lot of university professors, have been targeted via right-wing Backlash that he does not consider himself a pessimist online campaigns because of their research, their teaching or because he is alive. That is, the assurance that life opens their social media posts. Some have lost their jobs, and others room for unimaginable possibilities, e.g., white America say they fear for their families’ safety. Here are a few examples: Josh Cuevas, an associate professor in the school of education changing to such an extent that white people cease to be at the University of North Georgia, was subjected to scrutiny racists. Yet he declares in the same breath, “I am not an by his congressional representative for getting involved in an optimist either because white America is far too bleak in its argument on social media about Donald Trump. Ted Thornhill, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida Gulf Coast University, ethical treatment of Black people and people of color. As came under white racist attack, championed by far-right news such, as I continue to hope, I don’t want hope to become sites and racist blogs, for daring to teach a course entitled a crutch.”30 What Yancy truly wants his readers to accept “White Racism.” See Anya Kamenetz, “Professors Are Targets in Online Culture Wars: Some Fight Back,” NPR News, April 4, here is unclear. On the one hand, he is hopeful that white 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/04/590928008/ Americans can change; on the other hand, he expresses his professor-harassment; Ted Thornhill, “Why I Teach a Course pessimism about the likelihood that white Americans will Called ‘White Racism,’” The Conversation, February 1, 2018, http://theconversation.com/why-i-teach-a-course-called-white- actually change. racism-90093. 4. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (New York: Harper & I think the positive upshot of Backlash, the hope that Brothers, 1963), 36. racists whites can be transformed to interrogate their whiteness and their complicity in structural racism in the 5. Ibid., 41. United States, does not extend to what Yancy describes as 6. Arif Dirlik, “Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism,” PMLA a third alternative to pessimism and optimism—post-hope. 123, no. 5 (October 2018): 1377. He holds that “[p]erhaps what we need is a kind of post- 7. Ashley Jardina, White Identity Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge hope.”31 This involves a painful recognition for Black people University Press, 2019), 263. that, “[t]o be Black, in this view, is to have always already 8. George Yancy, Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly been sentenced to death in virtue of being Black within a about Racism in America (New York: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2018), 12. white supremacist world, where I am just waiting to die.”32 It is similar to what Abdul R. JanMohamed describes as 9. Ibid., 15. the existential lot of the Black or “Othered” body within a 10. George Yancy, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing white supremacist society, which is to become “the death- Signifcance of Race (New York: Rowman & Littlefeld Publishers, bound subject.”33 In my view, what Yancy refers to as “post- 2008), 235. hope” is just a variant of pessimism. To imagine the Black 11. Yancy, Backlash, 28. subject as eternally death-bound is to put an existential 12. Ibid. limitation and a mark of fnality to possible outcomes for 13. Ibid., 51. such a being. It is to imagine a world where the hope for a better existential outcome for the Black subject is non- 14. Ibid., 52. existent. In other words, it is not to imagine a world where 15. Ibid., 38. Blackness could ever be humanized, transformed just as 16. Ibid., 101. the white racist could “hopefully” be transformed. Yet, 17. Ibid., 55. Yancy maintains that “[p]ost-hope is not being a pessimist or giving up in despair, rather it is a stance that we take that 18. T. Hasan Johnson, “Challenging the Myth of Black Male Privilege,” is more realistic.”34 His version of racial realism as stated Spectrum: A Journal of Black Men 6, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 21. here, is unmistakably pessimistic about the existential 19. Ibid., 35. outcome for Black lives—the certainty of death. This brings 20. Jody David Armour, Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The the following questions to mind: what becomes the value Hidden Costs of Being Black in America (New York: New York of Yancy’s hopefulness for the dismantling of structures University Press, 1997), 158. of oppression and systemic racism if the Black subject is 21. Yancy, Backlash, 95. always death-bound in his vision of a post-hope world? 22. Ibid., 105. What becomes the value of his letter and book urging 23. Ibid., 112. white people to take risks that would allow them to see themselves as problems? What is the point of all these? 24. Ibid., 120. Perhaps one should imagine Yancy as a gadfy—a temporal 25. Ibid. equivalent of Mrs. Biona MacDonald, the intriguing 26. Richard Delgado, “Words that Wound: A Tort Action for Racial character that Derrick Bell references in Faces at the Bottom Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil of the Well.35 Liberties Law Review 17 (1982): 135-36.

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27. Yancy, Backlash, 22. 28. Derrick Bell, “Racial Realism,” Connecticut Law Review 24, no. 2, (Winter 1992): 378. 29. Yancy, Backlash, 101. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Abdul R. JanMohamed, The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright’s Archaeology of Death (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 268. 34. Yancy, Backlash, 101. 35. In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Bell describes Mrs. Biona MacDonald as an intriguing Black character who risked everything to fght white racial oppression, but when asked about it, she did not say she risked everything because she hoped or expected to win against the whites who held all the economic and political power, as well as the guns. Rather, she recognized that—powerless as she was—she had used her courage and determination as weapons to “harass white people.” See Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992), xii.

AUTHOR BIOS

Dr. John H. McClendon III is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. He is the author of the following books: African American Philosophers and Philosophy: An Introduction to the History, Concepts and Contemporary Issues (Bloomsbury, 2019) with Dr. Stephen C. Ferguson II; Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal by Lexington Books, 2019); Philosophy of Religion and the African American Experience: Conversations with My Christian Friends (Brill/Rodopi, 2017), C. L. R. James’s Notes on Dialectics: Left-Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism (Lexington Books, 2005).

Dr. Adebayo Oluwayomi currently teaches courses on Philosophy and the Black Experience at Howard University, Washington, DC. His research and teaching interests contribute to the areas of African/Africana Philosophy (esp. Black Political Philosophy & Black Intellectual History), Critical Race Theory/Studies, Anticolonial Philosophy and Black Male Studies. His research on Africana Philosophy, “Unbounding the Black Imago: How the Representation of Blackness in Superhero Fiction Propagates Negative Models of Anti-Racist Practice” won the Cushing- Glasscock Humanities Graduate Research Award in 2019. His publications appear in American Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies, Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, and Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies.

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