Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze

Abstract

Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle begins with a clear and concise establishment of its aim: to analyze and expand upon those figures mentioned when discussing the academic project of studying black people. Neal broadens the account of black scholars examining racialized existence by centering his work on the modern era and its initiator W. E. B Du Bois. Neal develops an ethnic reflective canon that documents the long history of black thinkers attempting to define their blackness and advance the conception of freedom. This book does an excellent job of capturing the genealogical structure of the struggle for freedom. Within the work, Neal denotes that all relevant figures in this tradition are freedom gazers. These gazers are spectators of a radically imagined future liberated from the oppressive systems that encumber the persecuted. Du Bois's approach to freedom gazing uses academic training to examine his blackness and inevitably to solve the “race problem.” What Neal provides the reader is a road map of the intellectual work of black scholars. This road map details the common themes among black thinkers and how these themes relate to Du Bois. Neal's intricate network of philosophers uses their experience and their expertise to write about what is necessary for black people to obtain freedom. Neal composes a complex and remarkable catalog of black scholars that demonstrates the interconnectedness and progression of black thought on oppression and liberation.In the second chapter, Neal elucidates why Du Bois is chosen as the inaugurator of the modern era. As a formally educated black man, Du Bois questions his experience and what tethers him to oppression. Neal uses Du Bois as a focal point, not because Du Bois is the first black person to document their struggle with their racialized existence, but because he believes that Du Bois is the first scholar to analyze the black experience completely. The holistic nature of Du Bois's study of the existential conflict that race can manifest within its subjects allows Du Bois's analysis to be used as a tool to unify other works that discuss race and the struggle for freedom. Neal expresses how other scholars such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Anna Julia Cooper all had work that takes up a similar task as Du Bois's but lacks the fullness of Du Bois's study. Here, Neal does not articulate clearly how these figures are inadequate with respect to their work. It could be argued that each scholar named could be said to have accomplished a task similar to that of Du Bois. However, how these figures are studied throughout different disciplines gives the impression that their examination of race and freedom is much more focused on one specific field. This point speaks to how we interpret the work of these scholars and not to these scholars’ work itself. Neal proceeds to describe Du Bois as a freedom gazer and explains how Du Bois's imagining of black persons as freed would allot a perceptual framework that motivates them to proclaim their right to mental and physical freedom. Further, Neal establishes that Du Bois's position as a freedom gazer allows him to expand the ethnic reflective canon. This canon includes Ida B. Wells, whose journalism on the lynching of black people during the Reconstruction era made headway on what social sciences could contribute to the struggle against injustice. Anna Julia Cooper is included in this canon; her radically imagined future was thought to be achieved through education. Wells and Cooper proceeded and directly influenced the work of Du Bois, creating a lineage of radical social thought. Neal maps his transition through the intellectual work of black scholars by using conceptions of peace, rebellion, revolution, and freedom as relational markers. The reader can identify the relationships among the varied work of freedom gazers despite the vast range of their spatiotemporal placement.In the third chapter, Neal examines the subjects Hubert Harrison, William H. Ferris, and Alain Locke. Similar to his discussion of Wells, Cooper, and Du Bois, Neal establishes here that this collective of scholars is a social network whose relation is dependent upon their approach to racial identity and resistance. Specifically, the common theme of this chapter is the value of personhood. Harrison, Ferris, and Locke emphasize how critical it is to the freedom prerogative that black people be seen as full persons. Locke dissects the relationship between social race and culture. He presumes that race is essential to culture. If we take this presumption for granted, we can observe cultural differences resulting from racial differences and identify the value of each culture. For Locke, racism against the black community starts with a failure to identify the value of black culture. Harrison was not concerned with establishing or educating others on reasons to respect the value of the black community. Rather, his interest was the oppressor's compliance with laws. The black person's value is readily apparent, and applying the law to defend their rights should be a natural consequence. However, the devaluation of the humanity of black people allows their political and social rights to be shirked. For Harrison, the social truth of black existence and its value should be upheld, and it is the duty of each person to respect this value accordingly. Neal describes Locke and Harrison as two polar ends of a spectrum of how to understand the value of blackness.Further, Neal claims that Ferris is a median between these two poles. Ferris holds an existential idealist position about the value of black life. Neal explains how Ferris's audience, like Harrison's, was the black community. However, unlike Harrison, Ferris believed that the key to freedom from the remnants of physical and mental enslavement lay within the black mind. Ferris supports the theory that black people must recognize their value and not be raptured by the dehumanizing propaganda of white supremacy, and that refuting this propaganda is necessarily a mental task. Neal identifies Locke, Harrison, and Ferris as the “New Negro” triad. As freedom gazers, they instigated conversations of radical social change that led to inspiring artists and other scholars.In the fourth chapter, Neal investigates questions regarding the effects of blackness. Blackness is denoted as otherness or alterity. Neal emphasizes that blackness is a dichotomous construct that is established when white society centers itself and, consequently, marginalizes others of African descent. The triad that Neal introduces in this chapter is Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Howard Thurman. This coterie of academics answers the question of how blackness affects its subjects. Neal contributes to the catalog of scholars who compose the ethnic reflective canon by placing the work of Oliver Cromwell Cox and Frantz Fanon in contextual alignment with the theme of alterity. Cox and Fanon detail their experience of living as black students in a predominantly white space (France) and elucidate how their racial identity led to psychosocial and cultural estrangement. Neal conveys to the audience how this kind of estrangement affects both parties in race relations. The theme of estrangement is continued as Neal presents the scholarship of Kwame Nkrumah. For Nkrumah, Othering black people in a normative manner causes individuals to be compelled to eliminate blackness as a property of existence. The oblivious black person not cognizant of the insidious nature of racist polarity may fall prey to the parasitic nature of an oppressive ideology. Nkrumah believes this results in the oppressed becoming the mouthpiece of a dehumanizing system. Next, Neal invokes Howard Thurman, who claims that the alterity of race has metaphysically and socially bound both white and black people. Here, Neal discusses one of the consequences of alterity: segregation. While white and black people are bound to the polar nature of racial identification, white society still has the luxury of resting in the position of human. As humans, the white community receives all of the material and political benefits of personhood.On the other hand, alterity places black people firmly in the category of inhuman or subhuman. This dichotomy justifies the segregation of the black community because segregation restricts black people from attaining the material, social, and political resources reserved for humans. Finally, Neal presents Martin Luther King, Jr., and depicts how, under King's views, alterity leads to a fragmentation of the American community. King assumes that the estrangement of black people from the concept of human dooms America to stagnation.Colonialism and enslavement have resulted in the scarring of the black body and the erection of an unpiloted system of oppression. These systems are predicated and sustained by Othering the black community. For King, if we can dismantle alterity, we can begin to demolish oppressive systems. Neal ameliorates his audience's grasp of black existence and expands upon it by situating the reader in a discourse about how the social position of blackness results in various forms of dehumanization and how scholars during the modern era imagined an existence divorced from this alterity.Neal devotes the last chapter of the text to a discussion about the location of the modern era's end. Neal continues with the triad theme; however, Neal does not use individuals. Instead, Neal provides three concerns of black thinkers who indicated that the modern era was closing. The first inquiry that Neal uses this triad to address is whether there can be a notion of black freedom that does not include a notion of the black community. Second: How has the growing class divide thwarted the struggle for freedom? And finally: Does retaining the conceptualization of blackness hinder progress? Neal analyzes these questions and concludes that struggling with one's existence spirals one into despair, and committing oneself to individualism fragments the black community.Neal has assembled a niche and a broad list of black scholars who have contributed to a larger history of black people's struggle for freedom. Neal understands the complexity of black radical thought and recognizes that the beauty of the intellectual tapestry can consume the reader. So he has prioritized demonstrating how the theories, beliefs, and studies are interwoven. As a result, he has prepared an insightful map that describes the transition of philosophical thoughts regarding black existence and the yearning for liberation. While I highly recommend Neal's book for use in classes and as a reference, I would suggest that the discussion of the contribution of the scholars mentioned is too narrow. Neal's focus is on the relation between the work of scholars throughout the modern era. Each scholar relates to the other because of the common theme of blackness and the longing for freedom; however, the scholarship provided is only enough to make these connections, and more background knowledge of each would edify the readers’ experience. Nevertheless, Neal presents an excellent body of work that will undoubtedly advance the discourse on black scholars of the modern era.