Black Culture in the United States

FrameworkRace is not an inherent descriptor of homo sapiens sapiens. To understand, we need to define racial naturalism, James 2011 [1],"Racial naturalism signifies the old, biological conception of race, which depicts races as bearing “biobehavioral essences: underlying natural (and perhaps genetic) properties that (1) are heritable, biological features, (2) are shared by all and only the members of a race, and (3) explain behavioral, characterological, and cultural predispositions of individual persons and racial groups” (2006, 528–529)."Racial Naturalism is based upon uncertain premises, Hochman 2006 [2],Racial naturalism depends not only on the validity of human subspecies classification, but also more generally on the taxonomic validity of the ‘subspecies’ category itself. It is important to note that the subspecies concept has been the focus of considerable debate over the last century. In 1953 Edward Wilson and William Brown argued that “the subspecies concept is the most critical and disorderly area of modern systematic theory.” This view is still commonly held. Robert Zink, for instance, found that, “Mitochondrial DNA sequence data reveal that 97% of continentally distributed avian subspecies lack the population genetic structure indicative of a distinct evolutionary unit.” Phenetics, in particular, has attracted strong criticism. Daniel Mulcahy describes a recent trend in eliminating subspecies altogether: “Discrete, diagnosable lineages are elevated to specific [species] status, while those that show clinal [gradual] variation and/or appear to represent ecological pattern classes are placed in synonymy with the parent species and the subspecific epithets are disregarded.” The debate surrounding racial naturalism does not take place against anything like a stable scientific backdrop.For race to be an inherent feature of our nature, there would need to be fundamental genetic difference between different racial subspecies, and more importantly, the taxonomical nature of subspecies would need to be a valid nomological tool for definining nature in identity. Skin color alone doesn't serve as a foundation for race, as it blurs the lines of being: If a person is born of a white parent and a black parent, are they black because they have black skin, or white because they belong to, as Black Culture would put it, the 'priviledged class'. To truly determine race through naturalism, the child would have to exhibit characteristics unique to being 'black' or being 'white' as a subspecies of homo sapiens sapiens. Characteristics do not inherently tie themselves to skin color and therefore skin color does not necessitate racial existence.A modern conception of race does exist as a social construct, James 3 furthers [1],[I]nstitutional constructivism emphasizes race as a social institution, whose character is specific to the society in which it is embedded and thus cannot be applied across cultures or historical epochs (Mallon 2006, 536). Michael Root (2000, 632) notes that a person ascribed as black in the United States would likely not be considered black in Brazil, since each country has very different social institutions regarding the division of humanity into distinct races. Similarly, Paul Taylor (2000) responds to Appiah’s racial skepticism by holding that races, even if biologically unreal, remain real social objects (Mallon 2006, 536–537). Indeed, in a later work Taylor (2004) argues that the term “race” has a perfectly clear referent, that being those people socially ascribed to certain racial categories within the United States, regardless of the widespread social rejection of biological racial naturalism.Therefore, race does not objectively exist but is rather race in terms of American Society is a social concept projected from individuals into the American Social Sphere. As a result, any existing racism is founded on the same racial thinking that supports the social construction of race.Black Culture further entrenches the flaws of the Western Social Sphere rather than methodologically reconsidering its natureThe Western Social Sphere currently exists in a system of adversarial power relations. Black Culture sustains a negative-sum relationship between American Culture and Black Culture as inherently distinctive. Game theory explains that positive-sum relationships are relationships in which the outcome of interactions is mutually beneficial, zero-sum relationships result in no net positive or net negative outcome, and negative-sum relationships result in an outcome of interaction that is overall detrimental.A. Black Culture as Not-AmericanThe dichotomy between American Culture and Black-American cultural linguistically presupposes that 'Black' is a differentiating factor in the fundamental nature of the two. Thefore the word Black has signifying value in the interpretation of the proponents of Black-American culture. Hall 1997 [3],The emphasis on cultural practices is important. It is participants in a culture who give meaning to people, objects and events. Things 'in themselves' rarely if ever have any one, single, fixed and unchanging menaing. Even something as obvious as a stone can be a stone, a boundary marker on a piece of sculpture, depending on what it means - that is, within a certain context of use, within what the philosophers call different 'language games' (i.e. the language boundaries, the language of sculpture, and so on). It is by our use of things, and what we say, think and feel about them - how we represent them - that we give them a meaning. In part, we give objects, people and events meaning by the frameworks of interpretation which we bring to them.Hall's argument is that in our linguistic use of 'black' to describe the following subject of culture we necessarily utilize 'black' to define what that culture represents. Black Culture therefore necessarily sustains the ideology of race that is inherent in racial thinking, and therefore racism, in its own existence.B. Black Culture as sufferingBlack Culture historically addresses a notion of suffering. Specifically in Black History Month, Black Culture resonates messages of ancestral slavery, and reinstates present-day imagery of modernized chains on the current generation of Black-American citizens. An emphasis on suffering is harmful to the Black Culture cause for two reasons:1. Suffering inherently presupposes inequal power structures. Suffering, in terms of Black Culture, is equivocatable to structural oppression. One must exert power-over another in order to cause suffering. The colonists utilized power-over Africans to enslave them. Modern colonists, the priviledged class, exploits African Americans in order to further their own ends. Black America necessarily exists as a single end of the power spectrum in order to extend the range of dominance that the cultural elite possesses.2. Suffering continues to necessitate a cultural divideBecause suffering elaborates a power-over structural relationship between Black America and non-Black America rather than a power-to relationship - one in which power is exchanged mutually rather than forcefully exterted - Black America cannot exist as America - the singular cultural totality of all that is America and within America - but instead as a distinctive entity that resists via its nature cultural communion.Because of the inherent distinctiveness present in Black Culture, intergration is impossible. This prevents cultural integration and therefore positive-sum relationships. Karlberg 2005 [4],[M]any critical functionalists have concluded that contemporary Western-liberal social systems are largely dysfunctional because they are socially unjust and/or ecologically unsustainable. In a series of Heretical Reflections on Today’s Values, Culture and Politics, systems theorist Ervin Laslo (1989) asserts that idealized norms of aggression, competitive acquisition, and unregulated competition are no longer sustainable in an increasingly interdependent global society. In place of these traditional Western-liberal norms, Laslo (1989, pp. 109-15) calls for a reorientation of basic human relationships from adversarial “negative-sum” and “zero-sum” relations toward mutualistic “positive-sum” relations.Another prominent systems theorist and peace researcher, Kenneth Boulding, has articulated a theory of power that is consistent with Laszlo’s analysis. Boulding’s (1990) integrative theory of power provides an alternative way of thinking and talking about social relations in an age of interdependence. Integrative power, he (Boulding, 1990, p. 25) explains, is “the capacity to build organizations, to create families and groups, to inspire loyalty, to bind people together, to develop legitimacy”. According to Boulding, it embodies cooperation and reciprocity, friendship and collective identity, the growth of a sense of community, the ability to create and pursue constructive images of the future together, and the belief that one’s own welfare is increased through an increase in the welfare of others. Drawing on his background in systems theory, economics, and peace research, Boulding concludes that functional social and political systems can only be constructed on the normative basis of these integrative power relations. Though he acknowledges the historical existence of adversarial power relations, and even accepts their necessity in some limited contexts, Boulding (1990) argues that contemporary world conditions demand a much wider recognition of the importance of integrative power in human affairs.The logical conclusion is then that, because a power-over structure is required to forward a dialogue of suffering, the very practice of furthering such dialogue tacitly concedes the existence of racial structures, and systemically re-entrenches racial thinking into the American Social Sphere, thereby providing a foundation for racism.Sources in comments.