SCHOOL DAZED: EDUCATION THEORY IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS By KAYLA RODNEY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2020 © 2020 Kayla Rodney To — My parents who at one point thought I would be a medical doctor and still supported me through my change in interest. I am still a doctor though, so mission accomplished. Elias Cottrell Sr., cofounder of Mississippi Industrial College whose commitment to the education of the Black community lives on through this work. All the people who look like me who are searching for way to exist in their truth. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my parents, Brigitte Cottrell and Brett Rodney, for instilling in me the work ethic and desire to always be the greatest version of myself and encouraging me to always reach for the next achievement. I would also like to thank my stepfather, Wayne Washington, for making the first three years of my educational journey as easy as possible by creating an avenue for free education at a top HBCU. I would like to thank all the teachers and professors that have influenced me over the years, especially my undergraduate mentor Biljana Obradovic. Last but not least, I would like to thank my committee for their time and energy, especially Dr. Debra Walker King who has been nothing short of incredible, mentoring me as I have navigated the PhD. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMANIST AFROCENTRISM ...............8 The 5 Overarching Womanist Characteristics ........................................................................12 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................................27 Chapter 2: “When Uncle Tomming Goes Right: Slavery, Knowledge, and Wisdom in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada” ..........................................................................27 Chapter 3: “Upping the Ante: Afrocentricity— the Answer to Afro-Pessimism” ..........28 Chapter 4: “Here: How Afrocentricity Releases Celie from Oppression through Knowledge of Self”......................................................................................................30 2 WHEN UNCLE TOMMING GOES RIGHT: SLAVERY, KNOWLEDGE, AND WISDOM IN ISHMAEL REED’S FLIGHT TO CANADA ...................................................32 3 UPPING THE ANTE: AFROCENTRICITY—THE ANSWER TO AFRO-PESSIMISM ...52 4 HERE: HOW AFROCENTRICITY RELEASES CELIE FROM OPPRESSION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF SELF ..................................................................................81 5 CONCLUSION: TRANSATLANTIC FUTURES ..............................................................106 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................111 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................115 5 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy SCHOOL DAZED: EDUCATION THEORY IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS By Kayla Rodney August 2020 Chair: Debra Walker King Major: English School Dazed positions Black authors as theoretical authorities of liberatory education through the narratives they write. It argues that Black writers explicate and develop methodologies for navigating and attaining effective education as a means of overcoming oppression. The texts under survey articulate effective practices through characters, the lives they live, and the educational methods they use to advert danger. These practices and characters offer the dissertation case studies through which it extracts information for eventual real-world application. 6 Leeds: Now I bet you n*****s do think y'all white. College don't mean shit. Y'all n*****s, and you gonna be n*****s forever... just like us. n*****s. Dap: You're not n*****s. —Spike Lee School Daze 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMANIST AFROCENTRISM Afrocentricity, as defined in Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, written by Molefi Kete Asante, the father of Afrocentricity is: “a mode of thought and action in which the centrality of African interests, values, and perspectives predominate. Regarding theory, it is the placing of African people in the center of any analysis of African phenomena” (2). As it pertains to education, in An Afrocentric Manifesto, Asante makes clear numerous times that to be Afrocentric is to center the African in academic spheres as much as we center the European in order to have a well-rounded and meaningful education that makes the African a subject and not an object (79). Asante’s definition and grounding ideals have absolutely no mention of gender or sexuality. Without mentioning gender and/or sexual orientation, it can be assumed the definition intends to be inclusive of all people who trace their lineage back to Africa and identify as Black. Yet hotepery, as enacted by people facetiously referred to as “hoteps”, co-opting of the ideology has taken it far away from its intended use and created the belief Afrocentricity is not inclusive of all people who identify as Black. But what exactly is a hotep and how did they manage to sully something created with such good intent? The word “hotep,” according to Anpu Unnefer Amen, author of The Meaning of Hotep: A Nubian Study Guide, has many meanings in its original Egyptian context which include: “to rest, to be happy, to be content, to be at peace with, to do good to someone, joy, content, offerings, gifts, a shrine, offerings made to the deceased (ancestors), an alter” (7). One can see the original definitions and context of the word hotep are largely positive, and there is no definitive reason why Black people chose this word to define a negative quality in certain segments of the Black population. Yet and still, it started and still is at its most basic level, a term of well wish, greeting, and positivity. Now, in the 21st century, like many other words, we have seen an 8 expansion in meaning. This new meaning has not yet entered standard dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, or Oxford English dictionaries, so there is no definitive definition for the newest understanding of the word, but there is a general community consensus as to what a “hotep” is. According to Damon Young in his video titled “What Is Hotep?” from The Roots series, A Very Smart Brother Explains, he says, in short, a hotep desires to replace white male patriarchy with Black male patriarchy. These Black people (but men in particular) do not want to dismantle systems of oppression. They want Black men to be the oppressor. Young also describes hoteps as participating in “performative pro blackness,” then goes on to explain this pro blackness stops at straight Black men, seeking to effectively lock women and queer people out of the fight for equality and equity. Some prime examples of the quintessential hotep man are: • Dr. Umar Johnson, who has been accused of stealing money under the guise of building a school for Black boys • Yada, of internet fame, whose most famous claim is that the female menstrual cycle is a European concept, • The character Preach from the movie Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, who spends the entire movie dressed in African inspired attire, “preaching” hypocritically about what the Black community needs to prioritize, and ironically pursuing a purposefully unattractive white woman (his “milk of magnesia”) as a love interest the entire time. These types of men make unfounded claims about the world, oppression, and conspiracy theories, and focus their energies on the uplift of the Black man while often giving misguided information to Black women about their bodies and their supposed role in the Black community and the world. They also tend to tell Black LGBTQ+ identifying people they must prioritize their racial struggle over their struggle for freedom from sexual expression, or worse, that something is wrong with them and they are part of the “gay agenda” to “destroy” the Black man. They are not always inaccurate as there are sometimes inklings of truth in what they say, which helps to 9 maintain vestiges of credibility with those who claim to follow their teachings. Lastly, they tend to focus heavily on parts of African history that privilege men (polygamy for example) and seem to be very (mis)informed about Egypt, often tending towards monumentalism, neglecting parts of African history that do not fit a given patriarchal agenda. Though the term “hotep” in reference to Black people who desire the implementation of Black male patriarchy is relatively new, the idea is as old as the Black Power Movement and has been critiqued, while unnamed, many times over in Black centered pop culture. Much of this “performative pro blackness” is rooted in a co-opted version of Afrocentricity that became a key element of the male centered rise of the Black social and cultural movements that focused on men as the “natural” leaders of