Overcoming Tribal Loyalties and Superficial Race Allegiances
Overcoming Tribal Loyalties and Superficial Race Allegiances
Challenging the Illusory Nature of Collective Identity
- By Sean Corby
“That’s the white side of you talking!” was the reply to a Facebook post by a friend of mine who asked, “Am I the only one who thinks drill music is crap and glorifies violence?”
My friend has a Bajan dad and an English mum. The person who posted the reply is also of mixed English/Caribbean heritage.
I felt the urge to reply but decided to tread carefully. My area is ridden with gang activity, and having lived away for 30 years, things have changed beyond recognition. I didn't want to get embroiled in any “beef” with anyone.
However, I did post that I find it very sad that we have reached a point where embracing gang life, promoting violence, and producing mind-numbingly dull and belligerent music is somehow associated with being “black.”
Just this weekend, another friend, this time a black female who is intelligent and creative, posted a video on Facebook showing numerous London drill rappers now in prison, serving lengthy sentences for murder, attempted murder, and firearms charges. The post attracted lots of comments, with most condemning their reprehensible actions, but predictably, some referred to it all as the fault of “the system.”
I sat and reflected on this, and I recalled a book by Dr. James Davison called Sweet Release that highlighted the issue of race solidarity in the United States.
According to the psychologist, “the last step to freedom for black Americans has arrived. But that last step must be taken as individuals - not as a collective.”
In his assessment of the opportunities and challenges facing black Americans, Dr Davison argued that individuals must free themselves of the shackles of belonging, of a collective allegiance to the so-called “black community.”
At the heart of the book is the idea that the last step to freedom is now psychological and must be taken by the individual without being impeded by feelings of guilt for being successful, shame in reaction to the misbehaviours of race peers, demands to give back to the community, and accusations of trying to be white.
I was recently punished by my employer for posting a quote by Ayishat Akanbi that read, “truth and belonging are incompatible.” Could it also be that freedom and belonging are conflicting?
I also remembered how during a team meeting at work a day or so after the George Floyd murder, a manager commented that she “felt ashamed to be white.”
It really jarred me. Why would the actions of a police officer in another country thousands of miles away have any impact on how she felt about her ethnicity?
I am sure that if a Muslim colleague expressed shame about the bombing of the Manchester Arena, my manager would be very keen to offer reassurance that in no way was this anything to do with that individual.
Should an old lady mugged in the 80’s by a black youth be excused for using that as justification for claiming all black people are criminals?
I can understand that at times we might fear that the actions of others reflect badly on us for a variety of reasons.
If I go on holiday and a load of drunken brits have made a nuisance of themselves all along the Costa, I may well be tempted to try and distance myself from being associated with them, although football shirts, tattoos, and downing tankards of San Miguel are not at all my thing so hopefully even the least discerning of onlookers will recognise a difference.
I think it may have been Douglas Murray who talked about how it stands to reason that with collective pride must come collective shame and vice versa.
How much longer must we be confined to the notion of “belonging” to specific groups based solely on shared skin colour, even when we may have little else in common with those we are grouped with?
You can read more from Sean Corby on Medium and find out more about him and his remarkable story below.
I think that Sean Corby has an impressive CV as a musician. He'll know about iconic black musicians like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, they were black musicians who aspired to a universal vision.
The darker side to this is that black American Jazz musicians and singers like Billy Holiday could play with mixed bands and for white audiences but then had to find separate hotels or eating places to the rest of the band. There's a story about Miles Davis being beaten up by police while having a cigarette outside the theatre where he was the star turn. So, race is always a relationship, Davis may have seen himself as a visionary artist, but the cop didn't.
Popular music has been an important field where black people have expressed their individuality but that's not what I want to talk about today.
The question of 'racelessness' seems to be the coming subject. Recently in response to Glen Loury's question 'why does race inequality continue?', I pointed out that the definition of 'race' has an in- built inequality. Recently Loury addressed this subject directly, I think I share his view that 'blackness' is a thing, but it doesn't have to be a significant thing or the most important thing.
I get the sense that Loury and the black philosopher Cornel West do not always see eye to eye, I don't know if that's right. West published a book back in 1993 called 'Race Matters', the title was no doubt a reply to those who may have been suggesting otherwise.
I think it was in the late eighties or early nineties when Cornel West came to the UK, I went to see him speak in London it may have been the Festival Hall. I'm usually sceptical about the whole role-model thing, but as a young black man with an interest in philosophy I guess I was looking for role-models (black or white). West was sleek in his black tie and black suit, like the rest of us he's greyer up top and wider around the middle these days. But 'blackness' is a thing, I did not necessarily have anything in common with the American philosopher, but he made an impression on me. West is deeply knowledgeable about race and black people but works within the Western Philosophical tradition.
America once gave black leadership to the world. These days that leadership is in crisis. I remember my West Indian grandfather telling me about Jesse Owens the great black American athlete who put Hitler's nose out of joint in the Berlin Olympics of 1936. But even here I'm being selective, my grandfather loved sport, another hero of his was the American golfer Jack Nicklaus (the white Tiger Woods?). Figures like Muhammad Ali inspired black people around the world. So, blackness is a thing but it's an ever-changing thing and it's not everything.