Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots A Bridge for Identities and Social Justice Ornette D. Clennon Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots [email protected] Ornette D. Clennon Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots A Bridge for Identities and Social Justice [email protected] Ornette D. Clennon Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster, Community Wellbeing Research Centre Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK ISBN 978-3-030-00836-9 ISBN 978-3-030-00837-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00837-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018955459 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2018 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com Tis Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland [email protected] I would like to dedicate this book to my Mum, Grandma and Michael for their unending support. [email protected] Preface What an era we are living through! Both at home (in the UK) and abroad (especially in the US and the Global South but increasingly in Europe), we seem to be experiencing the chaos of an unravelling of sys- temic global white supremacy. In fact, this very unravelling is creating the rise of a populist white supremacy in many of the Anglophone (and European) countries, globally and appears to be fuelled by the equally dangerous and catastrophic rise in (extremist) Islamism and its mate- rial efects seen in mass migration. Now that the historically invisible ‘whiteness’ of (post/neo)colonial expansion and dominance is being questioned and made visible, and furthermore, its progeny, advanced capitalism is beginning to fold into itself and self-cannibalise, as activists on the cold front of the historical fght for social justice, we had better be prepared for a deepening of the chaos that we are already struggling with! Tis book was written as a provocation to my fellow activists on the ground to urgently continue to debate what our ideological alterna- tives need to be, as the present system has never worked for the margin- alised and dispossessed and is now increasingly failing the privileged. vii [email protected] viii Preface We need to hold the line and fght the good fght but with knowl- edge and wisdom. So let’s keep thinking, let’s keep sharing ideas and let’s keep striving to apply our shared knowledge to the material challenges at hand! Manchester, UK Ornette D. Clennon [email protected] Acknowledgements I would like to thank God without whom none of this would be pos- sible. I would like to thank Shaun Connell, Faye Bruce and Henry Ngawoofah for the stimulating conversations that made large parts of the book possible. I would like to thank Esther Oludipe, Louise Dunn, Luke Kelly and Amber Abisai (Making Education a Priority, MEaP), Yvonne Field and Yvonne Witter (Te Ubele Initiative) and Jan Bradburn (Manchester City Council). I would also like to thank Professors Rebecca Lawthom and Carolyn Kagan (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Professor John Diamond (Edge Hill University), Professora, Dr. Claudia Sampaio (Federal University of the Amazon, Brazil) and Dr. Deborah Gabriel (Bournemouth University, UK and Black British Academics) for their unstinting academic support and solidarity. ix [email protected] Contents 1 Introduction: Whiteness, Social Justice and Greek Mythology? 1 2 Whiteness and My Twelve Labours…. 21 3 Whiteness: Te Relationship Between the Market and Blackness 51 4 What Is Education For? Is It for Learning Whiteness? 71 5 Can Modern Pan-Africanism Help Us to Visualise a Future Without Whiteness? 99 6 Resisting Post-truth Whiteness: Te Grassroots as Sites of Black Radical Activism 131 Index 151 xi [email protected] About the Author Dr. Ornette D. Clennon is a Visiting Research Fellow and a critical race scholar in Te Research Centre for Social Change: Community Wellbeing, Manchester Metropolitan University, where he leads the Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster. Ornette is also a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of the Amazonas. Ornette writes for Media Diversifed and Open Democracy and is a Public Engagement Ambassador for the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE). He is a community activist at local, national and international levels and works with Te Ubele Initiative, Locality, Alci Matos Community (Manaus, Brazil), MACC, Making Education a Priority (MEaP), Black British Academics and the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education. Ornette’s enterprise and activ- ism work has been recognised with the 2011 NCCPE Beacons New Partnerships Award. Ornette is widely published and his previous books include Alternative Education and Community Engagement: Making Education a Priority (2014), Urban Dialectics, Te Market and Youth Engagement: xiii [email protected] xiv About the Author Te Black Face of Eurocentrism? (2015), International Perspectives of Multiculturalism: Te Ethical Challenges (2016) and Te Polemics of CLR James and Contemporary Black Activism (2017). [email protected] 1 Introduction: Whiteness, Social Justice and Greek Mythology? Abstract Using Peisander’s Heracles and his twelve labours as a metaphor for achieving social justice, Ornette D. Clennon sets out the terrain for the social battle against an invisible Lernaean ‘whiteness’. Clennon also intro- duces us to the material efects of ‘whiteness’ and its origins in structural (institutional) racism by using the Windrush debacle as a case example. Keywords Social justice · Whiteness · Windrush · Racism Introduction As described by the Ancient Greek epic poet, Peisander, Heracles’1 twelve labours included the battle with the Lernaean Hydra whose many heads regenerated each time they were cut of. Tis fable resonates with me in many ways not least in the way that it refects the fght for social justice; as soon as you win one battle for justice another battle for the same justice springs up around the corner albeit appearing in a diferent guise (head). © Te Author(s) 2018 1 O. D. Clennon, Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00837-6_1 [email protected] 2 O. D. Clennon Whether it is the disproportionate numbers of black youths that are stopped and searched2 in the UK or the disproportionate number of black men being killed by the police3 in the United States or the shameful silence on the surprising number of black female fatalities4 at the hands of US law enforcement, one of the biggest challenges in resisting social inequality is actually defning what it is that we are resisting. If we are faced with the symptoms of inequality, which can result in the uneven application of the law that can leave young black men and women fatally vulnerable, we really have to examine what it is that we are trying to resist. When we peer into the looking glass, we are greeted by dim and barely recognisable shadows that pretend to simulate our refection.5 Here, I mean Power and the way it tries to convince us that “we the people” have legitimised it and it refects/represents us. Power that wields invisible con- trol and privileges those who can best serve its cause. Tis is a real chal- lenge for activists of all causes but for those who labour to challenge the injustices caused by race and gender (and other modes of oppression, of course!), the challenge becomes truly Heraclean (Herculean). What Is Whiteness? So, what is this Power that requires such a Herculean efort to over- come? Without further ado, it is whiteness. Whiteness as a concept goes beyond (but starts with) racism, whereas Stokely Carmichael said, “If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power”.6 Tis question of power is about a system that confers privilege on whom it chooses to recognise. With such privilege, which could be regarded as resulting from the benefts of Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’,7 the system can arbitrarily make up the rules as it goes along in order to maintain the status quo of privilege (its sur- vival) at any costs. However, whiteness, as ‘Power’ becomes trickier to pin