Deconstructing Frameworks of Truth

7/28/2019 Deconstructing Frameworks of Truth

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Deconstructing Frameworks of Truth: From Black Bodies Belonging

To a Nation

I. INTRODUCTION

According to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, nothing is without

examination of spatial and temporal relevance: time and place. To think in

the bifurcation of truth versus fallacy as universal is a simplification, a

flattening of history, abstracted from context of language, time, and place.

There is no pure truth, however the price to construct such notions as

truthful bare costly tolls and have been visible in the historical calculation of

Black bodies: stolen, raped, beaten, murdered, incarcerated, detained,

subjugated, and assimilated. It is to say that through a genealogical

excavation of the human sciences and its dominant truths, being attentive

to temporal contingencies, Black bodies as linkages to America (The United

States of America) are objectified, therefore systemically and socially

silenced, in part by their histories, and by the castingof their existences

and future possibilities.

Prior to the banning of January 1808 White European colonizers

imported massive numbers of Black bodies from the continent of Africa to be

colonized slave-laborers, part of chattel slavery. The black skin of Africans

was the marker of difference, used systematically and scientifically to

distinguish and segregate bodies. Distinctions existed between the bodies in

tribes, languages and social rankings, but these distinctions were


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strategically resolved as slave drivers made sure to break up bands of

Africans who communicated together for they posed a threat to the

European colonizers; as successful communication could render retaliation.

Such rape of linguistic and cultural history results in a degradation of self for

the Black body in America. The essence, the soul, the core African identity

was ripped from enslaved Black bodies. The Black colonized body had

become the objectified being: a slave, viable to White colonialist supremacy

lawfully, scientifically, politically and economically.

II. Pathologizations of Black Bodies: Niggers and Knowledge

Production

Through a compilation of history, events, narratives, and successes it

seems that the pathologization of Black bodies in the United States has

emerged from fragmented, yet dominant truths. To stereotype that all

Blacks eat Soul Food, undoubtedly rejects the historical emergence of Soul

Food, and the cultural and political sustenance of Soul Food. It is not safe to

minimize what constitutes a large degree of importance by simplifying the

various contexts in which have cultivated evolution and adaptation.

However, the Human Sciences in their dominant capacities have done just

that.

The Black body as an enslaved object, through diligent intellectual

collaboration proves to be also a subject, bound to servitude. The


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interweaving of the political and legal systems of America (The United States

of America) validated inhumane categorization of Black bodies through

various forms of division. It was through a type of quarantining that White

colonizers, and other authority figures could pathologize people whom

happened to share similar skin colors and political subjugation. For example

the denial to educate Black bodies resulted in uneducated Black bodies. This

political and legalized limitation became a pathologization that Black bodies

were uneducated and incapable of learning. They were niggers, not fully

human, still lacking, yet not racialized as man. The dominant scientific

belief within the Human Sciences that Knowledge is universal is the same

truth that concealed and rationally justified Blacks social and political

existence as inhuman, material, property, and objects. The instances in

which a Black body had been formally educated and cultured, according to

European standards, was utterly rejected, questionable, and similarly

mystical/mystified. For other Black bodies, a sense of pride could be taken

upon witnessing an intelligent, knowledgeable, and cultured Black. It is for

this reason that such a sophisticated Black body would be silenced, and

deemed threatening to the larger White society. It is for this reason that

educating Blacks was outlawed.

A. Division of labor


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The applicable social scientific practices that were normalized on the

American plantations have immense ramifications in the American psyches,

counter-memories, and histories. Through practices of division, Black bodies

were subjugated to variant treatment and/or select advantages and

disadvantages. I must reiterate the analysis within historical context that

these bodies were not human. They were objects to be owned and used. Any

psychological difference that one may have had was consequence in fact an

impact or effect of the internalized oppression undergone to the social and

environmental inequities a slave was subject to. Some slaves were favored

for their docility, some for their musical talents. In the case of the Black

woman, she could have been favored for many reasons, for they were defiled

sexually, structurally, and politically with no remorse from their oppressors.

W.E.B. Dubois quotes from Double Consciousness and the Veil:

The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal

defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the

loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of

corruption from White adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the

Negro home.

The sexual subjugation of Black women during colonialism was acquitting of

White colonizers as well as fellow slaves from criminalization. This process

further divided the Black woman, objectifying her as a sexual entity, as

well as subjecting her to open sexual arrangements for breeding purposes. It

was biologically and politically enforced through government regulation to


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adhere towards rigid reproductive policy, for the common good of the

political economy. In 1808 the United States government banned

involvement with the Transoceanic Slave trade, which called for White

colonizers to breed Black bodies for economic gain; this layering of

reproductive exploitation further complexified the structural practices in

which Black slaves had already been pathologized: rights lacking,

uneducated, and furthermore they were pathologized as promiscuous

niggers. The Black bodies of those times were purposefully targeted

to propagate as a means to maintain the economic power of White

society in the United States of America.

The breeding of Black bodies took place on plantations, and sometimes

a lighterskinned child would be born only to reveal a once mystified series

of rapings inflicted upon the Black slave woman by her White owner(s). Most

commonly, it was the lighter skinned slaves that held advantageous

positionality on the plantation. These were the slaves that lived in the house.

They were privileged socially, compared to their darker counterparts. The

complicity of the mixed slave translated into an internalized oppression

and/or division. They were not free, yet had White fathers, with whom they

may or may not have even known. Bastard children they were known as,

adding to the pre-existing pathologization of Black bodies. How could a

Black slave escape the dominant truths that evidenced him or her as

inhuman and therefore unworthy of freedom? Perhaps through

intellectualism Blacks could distinguish themselves from their inherited


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oppressions. As the standardization of knowledge flooded universities, it was

pathologizations based on dominant truths that were studied. And the

knowledge circulating on the Black was just as standardized.

It could not be assumed that every Black body had an owner, nor could

it be assumed that every Black body was unintelligent and lacking of skills or

education. Those whom were free had documentation to prove their

freedom, and most whom were free were also literate. Dominant beliefs

about Blacks capabilities overshadowed subaltern realities, to the point that

Blacks that had special skill sets and/or abilities remained silent, in fear that

they would be whipped, hung, or sold off away from their families as

repercussion. W.E.B. Dubois has written on the double consciousness that

develops within the Black as a result of heavy social liabilities that Black life

in America constitutes. In Double Consciousness and the Veil, Dubois

writes:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always

looking at ones self-through the eyes of others, of measuring ones soul by

the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

The hurdles that a Black must endure during 18th and 19th century America

flowed like mountains into valleys, changing form and shape just as policy

changed over the years. Rationality was the root of the cause. Because the

American political economy depended on the free labor of Black bodies to


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work in agriculture on southern and Midwestern plantations, it was only

rational to dismiss Blacks as intellectuals.

B.The Negro Intellectual and Knowledge Production

Knowledge, deemed by the Black, consists of culture, but also takes

into consideration external issues that have astronomical effects on cultural

traditions and practices. To the contrary, earlier pathologizations grounded in

universal truths and rationality circulated knowledge on Negro society that

constantly affected National assumptions. According to Franz Fanon in

Decolonizing, National Culture and the Negro Intellectual:

Culture is becoming more and more cut off from the events of today. It finds

its refuge beside a hearth that glows with passionate emotion, and from

there makes its way by realistic paths which are the only means by which it

may be made fruitful, homogenous, and consistent.

The Negro Black could learn; although not fully human according to

Americas three fifths compromise, nevertheless the common ideology was

changing. Out of strategic thinking Blacks were able to form alliances with

White abolitionists, activists, and politicians alike. Black life imploded music,

religion, and scholarship, contesting dominant truths that had arisen about

the meaning of life, culture, knowledge, and inevitably freedom. It would be

through musical and religious platforms, as the most supported and

embracive institutions for Blacks in America, that intellectual, social,


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economic, and political breakthroughs would be grounded. And through

those platforms the search for freedom as emancipation, and humanity

would be trialed.

The emancipation of Black bodies in America rested on many factors.

Perhaps the greatest possibility for slaves to ever escape chattel slavery

depended on support from northerners; by the mid 19th century most

northern states opposed slavery. Northern economies relied on

industrialization, which caused for a different type of labor; a more rational

progressive labor. Industrialization would challenge colonialism and the low-

tech agricultural practices of the South, successively resulting in grand

schisms between the Northern and Southern regions of the United States. A

run-away slave by the name of Frederick Douglass came to expand upon

reasons for abolishing slavery. 1Born into slavery in 1818 on the Holmes Hill

farm in Eastern Maryland, Douglass would become one of the most

prominent leaders of the Anti-Slavery Abolition Movement of the United

States.

Douglass earlier years of life seem to align profusely with the

dominant truths of American society. He was born to a Black mother and a

White, unknown father. During his time of being favored by master his tasks

were more domestic, watching over the masters younger son, whom was

1 Douglass was born in February 1818 as part of the estate of Aaron Anthony, who managed

other Maryland plantations that belonged to the wealthy Edward Lloyd V. As cited in A

biography of the life of Frederick Douglass by Sandra Thomas.

http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part1.html


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most likely to be Douglass half brother. Along with that task he ran errands

for the members of the house. It was not until Douglass witnessed the harsh

treatment of his family members on the plantation that he internalized the

institution of slavery. Blacks were prone to random whippings for

disobedience and/or defiance. Consequently, the young Douglass' eagerness

to escape the hells of slavery began to emerge, and thoughts and plans of

the attempt pre-dominated his psyche. After forging a runaway attempt, he

was separated from his family and sent to Baltimore to assist his owner

extended family. The daughter-in-law Anthony began teaching the eager and

articulate Frederick how to read. Upon learning of her tutorial sessions, her

husband, Anthonys son, was strictly advised on the reasons why to not

educate slaves: it would interfere with the slaves tasks, make the slave

disobedient, and would eventually allude to realizations of freedom as

liberation. By prohibiting Douglass from an education, his owners were

subjugating him to ignorance, pathologizing him. Their control and dominant

reasons for such actions were consistent amongst the majority of Southern

slave-owners.

There was a correlation between the dominant notions of freedom that

esteemed northern Whites in the United States, nonetheless; they were

based on influences from the French revolution. Economic gaps and

disparities divided American ideology and National goals, but also posited

the permeable, much necessary niches for Black intellectuals like Douglass

to use to persuade the Abolition Movement to the masses. Although the idea


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of freedom as emancipation was morally grounded, it was financially

benefitting for a capitalist economy as well. The more mobile bodies within

the capitalist America equated more National wealth. Each man should be

free to compete and free from authority. In statements written by Frederick

Douglass in the periodical the Liberator, he explains how for him and other

Blacks, freedom meant freedom from White ownership and slavery. He later

expanded that freedom included freedom from racist oppression. However

the latter ideology was not so widely accepted by dominant society, as all

Blacks were not understood to be worthy of freedom, let alone able to evade

racism in its totality. The emerging and dominant understanding of slavery

was that the evils of slavery held the soul back, limiting man from his full

potential.

B. The other Other: Negro and Gendered

Not only did dominant notions of freedom hold the soul back, dominant

ideologies held women back profusely. Alongside the Anti-Slavery movement

was the emerging and awareness of Womens rights. Frederick Douglass

partner William Garrison, a White man, avidly promoted the Anti-Slavery

Movement as well as Womens rights. In regards to womens rights during

the mid to late 19th century the dominant truth held by rights-having male

citizens of America, was that women were not separate beings, but were

supplements to her husband, father, brother(s), and/or son(s). Of course,

such a gender-biased ideology favored men: legally and socially, as such


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inheritances, riches, and entitlements would be deemed the belongings of

the man of the family. The ideology that women were completely

subordinate to men began to slowly digress within the political arena.

Examining the layers of such a historical discourse, it is important to bring in

Black subaltern voices, as Mae Gwendolyn Henderson remarks, It is not that

black women, in the past, have not had nothing to say, but rather that they

have had no say. So, how did dominant discourses on womens rights of

that particular era effect and/or encompass free and enslaved Black women?

According to Sojourner Truth in her speech Aint I a Woman, He

talks about this thing in the head. Whats that they call it? A nearby woman

whispers Intellect. Truth concludes, Whats intellect got to do with

womens rights or black folks rights? What does intellect have to do with

the rights of women or Blacks? During the late 18th century the dominant

belief in science and philosophy was that intellect reflected a higher self of

personal development, and those without certain knowledges were lesser

developed. This included women and of course, Blacks. Analyzing the

Romantic Tradition of Western Thought, the other is necessary only as a

reflection of the dominant, a reflection that mirrors an earlier more primitive

stage of development. Within her speech, Aint I a Woman, Truth makes

comparative references to her strength; her ability to endure strenuous work

plowing and planting on the plantation to the work that men perform. She

can eat just as much as man can, when the food is available. She was able to

watch the children she bore, her own flesh and blood be sold off like objects


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in the capitalist marketplaces. Her strength was powerful. Therefore, I must

remark, what does intellect have to do with the rights of Black women?

Early Involvement in Political Movements

Like Frederick Douglass worked alongside William Garrison on Anti-

Slavery campaigns, Sojourner Truth built alliances with White women, and

helped strengthen the Womens Rights Movement. Truths positionality

challenged dominant truths: the truth that Blacks lacked intellect and the

truth that women were weak and subordinate had all been pathologizations

based on the social places allocated for and by gender due to dynamics of

power. Hierarchically White womens struggle was not the struggle that

Black women faced. Foremost, Blacks were fighting for legal emancipation

from White owners. Their ability to be free was contingent upon either being

born into freedom, buying ones freedom, or escaping to the North where

most states had already abolished slavery.

Here talk about Christianity and the Church and how Black women

and men of the south grabbed a hold of it for survival. Spirituals,

connected to the church as slave music

The influence of Protestantism and dominant Christian ideologies

surrounding freedom alluded to what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel predicts,

2Freedom is action with accordance of necessity. The realization of spirit,

2 As quoted in Critical History of the Human Sciences on October 8, 2010.


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freedom propels spirit towards realization. Whether it was an idea or a

realization, the American populace was in an uproar about all the possibilities

of freedom that seemed possible to achieve. And Black bodies will fought

for freedom.

Tension between the Northern and Southern states intensified; one of the

contributing factors was the increasing number of run-away slaves from the

South that escaped to the North. Attributing financial, structural, and moral

pressures valued and enforced by the federal union led to the final snap; the

radical move by the South to organize themselves into independent and

separate states known as The Confederate States. The intraregional scrutiny

eventually led to the Civil War, and Blacks were felt the effects of such war.

Many Southern slave-owners promised their slaves their freedom if they

fought in the war. Northern States wanted to abolish slavery altogether.

Black slaves forced to fight were caught in a dilemma: either fight for

Southern Whites with the promise of freedom, or fight for Whites and

Northerners in hopes that the Federal Union abolish slavery.

III. Emancipated, but not Liberated

3As a consequence, ending the American Civil War which lasted from

1861 to 1865 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed, although

not ratified until 1868, emancipating the Black bodies whom were infringed

3 As cited from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation.html (the 14th amendment

ratified).
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation.htmlhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation.html


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within the slave system. Suddenly a legalized benefit begot over Blacks in

the North and South regions. But how did life improve for Blacks in the

South after the Civil War? Because the Confederate States were defeated by

the Northern Union, much of the Southern land plots owned by radical

Whites were confiscated by the government. Some of the land was allocated

to a small number of freed Blacks. For the majority of freed individuals, their

freedom meant new worries for livelihood. The period known as the

Reconstruction Era in the United States of America was a pivotal time where

Black identity was questionable. Were they really free?

Many Whites resented the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation

granted freedom to Blacks; physical attacks and lynchings increased as

racial brutality became a way to counteract Blacks progression in America.

Black freedom was inevitable and legally evident. This new found freedom,

the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation, economically and socially

positioned southern Blacks to work in sharecropping on the cotton and

tobacco plantations, and in wage labor positions on sugar plantations; this

work mirrored that of the slave era. How could Blacks be freed, yet still be

subjugated to a slave standard of life? Facing racial tensions and economic

hardships, something had to change for the better.

The way in which the term freedom was understood in its negative

dimension meant freedom from slavery. Black men in the South, debating

over the actuality of freedom, inspired to see freedom in its positive


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dimension, as freedom to. Whether they remained in the Southern states

or migrated North, Blacks utilized their freedom to built communities

consisting of churches, schools, shops, and other businesses.

4The Freedmens Bureau established by Congress in 1865 assisted

newly freed Blacks and poor Whites after the Civil War/ Abolition era.

Freedmens Bureau is known as Americas first institution of social welfare;

helped Blacks reach economic, civil, educational, and political rights in

America. The fact that Blacks started their own institutions, I believe helped

them in America to become more independent, also differentiated them from

the mainstream. Why did Blacks form their own institutions in America?

The Social Construction of Race

Knowledge production of the late 19th

century influenced much of the

national assumption and constitution of Blackness in America. Grounded in

truths surrounding biological interpretations of development as evolution,

Charles Darwins influences affected Anthropologists like Louis H. Morgan,

Herbert Spencer, and Edward Burnett Tylor; they have commented

anthropologically on the discourse of such a social evolvements known as

race. Tylor quotes:

4 As cited from Freedmens Bureau on Brittanica Online Encyclopedia

-http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/218498/Freedmens-Bureau.


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5The inquirer who seeksthe beginnings of mans civilization must deduce

general principles by reasoning downwards from the cilivised European to the

savage, and then descend to still lower levels of human existence.

Constant social and political needs adapted through science had proven that

some groups of people were in fact lesser human, in some cases, some

beings were not even considered to be human. It was socially evident by

observing particular groups in their ethnographic environment, observing

practices and/or abilities, that consequently science had proven a lesser

human species could exist. Blacks, now the freed people were objectified,

lesser human beings, and therefore socially excluded from Whites social

areas including shops, restaurants, schools, neighborhoods, and more. They

were even excluded from sharing public amenities and services such as

water fountains, park benches, buses, and taxis. Blacks had designated

times and days in which facilities welcomed their patronage. Society was

controlled demographically as Black bodies were surveillanced limited by

their inevitable Black skin from infesting mainstream society. As Blacks

were controlled systematically, Local, State, and Federal laws, known as Jim

Crow Laws, accepted segregation among society as a legitimate political

division of races. Racial segregation as political and social practice, grounded

in science will later be contested and found contradictory when Blacks gain

economic advancement and seek to enter spaces where Whites formally had

dominated. As a result to this type of social exclusion, Blacks went on to

5 As cited in Why did evolutionism become discredited in Anthropology by about 1920?

( Year Published, unknown ). D. Ayling.


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built their own worlds, becoming entrepreneurs, owners; they became

professionals in their own carved out space in American society.

It must be understood that these Black communities were not built

overnight, but took decades to establish. 6An important person to remember

is Mary McLeod-Bethune, who would prosper and become one of Americas

most influential women; she overcame economic impoverishment and fought

head on against the racial discriminating society of her day. Born just after

the emancipation era, she was one of seventeen children, born on a farm in

South Carolina; McLeod-Bethune received her primary education at the

Presbyterian Church built for Blacks some four miles down from her familys

farm. A very diligent and bright student, she was sponsored by a woman in

Detroit to further her education in North Carolina at Scotia Seminary. One

success seemed to follow another, until the time when upon her preparing

for a mission trip to Africa, she would later learn that her acceptance was

denied for there not being any open positions available to Blacks (at that

specific time she applied).

As apparent the lives affected by racism in America during the turn of

the century, approximately the 1900s, it is notable to examine systemic

opportunities versus systemic limitations. How is it possible that an

administrative body, consisting of various coordinating members, could

reject an applicant who meets all the necessary requirements for a position?

6 As cited in Mary McLeod-Bethune. http://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htm. Carol Sears

Botsch
http://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htmhttp://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htm


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The reason is due to the scientifically proven social construct of race, Blacks

were first rejected as capable human beings who could think, act, and be

part of White, dominate, mainstream society. However there were

exceptions to this science, although, overall the exposure to opportunities for

social and/or upward mobility would either be limited or abundant,

depending on ones race.

In the case of Mary McLeod-Bethune, her application for the mission

trip to Africa was rejected because she was Black. However, racism, as much

as individuals try to reduce its validity and influence over Nations,

systemically, it was not illegal, immoral, nor intolerant to inform a denied

applicant that his or her application or acceptance had been denied solely on

the prcis of his or her racial categorization. Powerfully manipulative and

discriminative dynamics and practices grounded in racial science inflict lives

were tolerated. The power and rationality of science discourses attributed to

how dominant practices and attitudes structured the social order of America.

Who used science to validate race and racism? As Mary McLeod-

Bethune studied at Presbyterian churches and schools; were the churches in

America racist too? Perhaps it is legitimate to say that most institutions were

racist during the late 19th century. McLeod-Bethune did not cease her

endeavors, however. Later in her life, after teaching and performing social

work in several southern states she decided to open a school for (Black) girls.


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7By 1904 she had founded Daytona Educational and Industrial Training

School with five students. Within three years after much hard work of

fundraising and involving the community McLeod-Bethune expanded her

school purchasing over thirty acres of land, housing some fourteen building

and four hundred students. McLeod-Bethune eventually opened more

schools that educated Black students across the South. She quotes:

I cannot rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl lacking the chance to

prove his worth.

Mary McLeod-Bethunes strength and perseverance is commemorated; her

ability to fight during times of extreme racial tension empowered the Black

community to seek a path of resistance to oppression. The story is

remembered when McLeod-Bethune watch-guarded the school property all

night and day, as a group of Ku Klux Klan members threatened to burn the

building down. Needless to say, The Ku Klux Klan did not go through with the

arson attempt.

As the times were changing, socially and politically, Blacks found it

ever so restraining to remain in the South where racism permeated. Lacking

opportunities for work combined with a slowly progressing economy meant

fewer jobs. The new idea was to move North and Westward.

7 As cited in Mary McLeod-Bethune. http://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htm.. Carol Sears

Botsch.
http://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htmhttp://www.usca.edu/aasc/bethune.htm


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IV. The Great Migration (1890-1970)

At the turn of the 20th century Black bodies who slaved on southern

soils lived to watch the country of the proud and the free change

politically and socially. The First Wave of The Great Migration is known as

8the largest voluntary internal movement of black people ever seen.

Some two-hundred and fifty thousand Blacks migrated north to cities such

as Saint Louis, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. Approximately some

thirty-five thousand Blacks moved far westward settling in Western and

Southwestern states. From 1890 to 1910 urbanization, as the influx of

rural dwellers to urban spaces, welcomed a new migrated demographic of

Black faces. It was not so much that the economies of the North and

West provided flourishing opportunities to Blacks, because many found

themselves discontent with their new homes. 9Competing with Whites for

employment, Blacks had fewer opportunities and reluctantly found

employment doing the undesirable, working as strikebreakers and

working in the meat packing industry.

Most Black women in urban centers landed positions as domestic

workers, as maids, cooks, and care-takers; and overtime due to WWI and

its wounded soldiers the profound need for Nurses and other healthcare

8 As cited from The Migration Numbers.

http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=9&topic=1&bhcp=1. This

quotation refers respectively to the First Wave of The Great Migration which was charted

from approximately 1910-1919.

9 As cited from J. Grossman (2005). The Great Migration. The Encyclopedia of Chicago.

http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/545.html.
http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=9&topic=1&bhcp=1http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/545.htmlhttp://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=9&topic=1&bhcp=1http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/545.html


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specialists meant Black women could gradually enter the mainstream

healthcare and medical arena. Overlapping World War I, the Womens

Suffrage Movement, and the First Wave of the Great Migration,

Americans ideologies were shifting consequently.

10Out of this war will rise an American Negro with the right to vote and

the right to work and the right to live without insult.

11After 1917 when the United States passed the Selective Service Act,

White and Black bodies were drafted to fight in the war (World War I

1914-1918) leaving many job vacancies open. These northern vacancies,

usually lower skilled positions, provided Blacks opportunities: a chance to

succeed and achieve the American Dream.

The ideology behind The American Dream helped solidify the United

States as a nation and mold the people into unifying modes of thinking.

According to Jim Cullen (2003) the American Dream is the idea that you

can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. The chase

towards the American Dream rung as propaganda throughout American

society, motivating, inspiring citizens to work hard, save, and live happily

ever after.

Understanding that the upon the early 20th century, some one hundred

years after the first American school of Anthropology was founded at

10 Quoted by W.E.B. Dubois in 1917, as cited from The Great War: Overview

http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch3_overview.html.

11 As cited from Timeline: 1917. http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/timeline/time_1917.html
http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch3_overview.htmlhttp://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch3_overview.html


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Columbia University, discourses surrounding the construct of race, had

profound influences over political/governmental practices. How did this

affect the succeeding migration of Blacks in the following decades?

The Second Wave of the Great Migration (1940-1970)

The American people endured extremely violent times the first thirty

years of the 20th century. The Klu Klux Klan, a terrorist organization founded

on White supremacist principles perpetuated to the Race wars of society.

Amid Blacks and Whites tension grew and also which inspired many to follow

the American Dream, to work hard and live peacefully and happily. The

Second Wave being influenced by subaltern Thought and discourses, Pan-

Africanist Marcus Garvey, Educator Booker T. Washington, Sociologist W.E.B.

Dubois, Religious Leader and International Human Rights Activist Malcolm X,

also known as El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all

contributed great resistances from the Black male perspective. Preaching

unity, emancipation, education, self-love and pride, each of these figures had

distinct ideologies, however their aims were all consistent and insubvertedly

aligned with the American Dream: to have peace and happiness.

With faith in their hearts Blacks, typically migrating as families, moved

Northward bound for a change. From 1916 to 1960 close to one million

Blacks had migrated from their Southern and mostly rural communities into

Northern urban centers. As the United States supplied materials to aid Great


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Britain and Russia during WWII (1940-1945) the jobs provided seemed to

counteract harsh realities the nation faced during the Great Depression.

Some men worked as construction workers, building roads, train tracks,

walls, homes, and buildings. Some joined the military. It seems that the

cohesiveness of American society was contingent upon a strong work ethic,

to be constantly improving, in aims of a goal. Black bodies entranced by

Blues which later evolved into Jazz, developed a counterculture that was

centrifugal towards the dominant Black culture, which had been more

Christian, more Southern, more traditional.

V. Where are we now? (1980-2010)

Studying the Great Migration and its affects is a feasible point where

the divisible growth amid the Black community can be excavated by

examining dominant truths and the effects of such power/knowledge and

power/dynamics implicated by the nuances of time. What brought success to

some, where murder was onto others? Jurgen Habernas (1968) writes:

The sciences have retained one characteristic of philosophy: the illusion of

pure theory Knowledge-constitutive interests From knowing not what

they do methodologically, they are that much surer of their discipline, that is

of methodical progress within an unproblematic framework.

It is my own assumption as a Black women living in 21st century America that

I presume that through observation, resistance, and communitarian efforts


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Black bodies have survived in America. The pursuit ofan American dream

through peaceful protest, violent protests, racial tensions, discrimination and

brutality, through education, and spiritual development somewhere lies

many truths that may not be inscribed scientifically. They may not heard by

the mainstream. According to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson ( ), Black women

writers have encoded oppression as a discourse dilemma, that is, their works

have consistently raised the problem of the black womans relationship to

power and discourse. Silence is an important element of this code.

The fact that I write not only calls the attention of to the world,

hundreds of years of silenced oppression, bearing witness to those fallen

women, White, men, Black, and those others. When I write ofmytruth it is

angry, for I bear witness to my own oppression, for yet I have no spoken.

Men, white, women, white, men, black, women, black have all oppressed me,

and women like me, just as thus created systems of power. There is no

monolithic experience, truth, or ability. Understand that my legacy is one

that has spoken and therefore been assassinated. They have been hung

from trees; whipped til their black skins have ripped from the bone. So when

I speak, it is not for a chance at the American Dream. I speak for those who

can no longer speak. I write for those who lost their lives, because they wrote

their truths. Mae Gwendolyn Henderson adds:

Yet the objective of these writers is not, as some critics suggest, to move

from margin to center, but to remain on the borders of discourse, speaking

from the vantage point of the insider/outsider.


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As an Anthropologist, Black, Womyn, hyper-sexed, pathologized, there

is no way dominant human scientific truths have no affected my

identity, for how others see me and how I see myself. Somewhere

along the path to the American Dream, I sit, there at the margin of an

urban intersection. Any spare change I have, I give to my Black brother

standing on the median, begging. His story, his truths remain silenced.

But they are real, and nowhere in the White House has the first Black

President Barack Obama voiced this epidemic, for silence permeates

us all. Why doesnt hespeak to us?

Documents

Deconstructing Frameworks of Truth