MDDM Gershom's Intervention (was ...

[Doug Millison]

At 9:27 PM -0400 7/13/02, MalignD at aol.com:
>her opinion attracts no particular weight or authority.


"This book is based on an international conference on the African Diaspora
and the Modern World that I organized as director of the Center for African
and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in
February 1996.  [...] The conference was made possible by the support of
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization. [...] At the University of Texas the conference benefited
from the encouragement and support of then dean of the College of Liberal
Arts and now executive vice president and provost, Dr. Sheldon
Ekland-Olson, as well as that of the Office of the President and the
Institute of Latin American Studies.  [...]  Cosponsored by UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), the conference
was the principal event held in the United States under the aegis of the
United Nations International Year for Tolerance. [...]

-Sheila Walker
_African Roots:American Cultures:  Africa in the Creation of the Americas_





[...] "We wish to plead our case. Too long have others spoken for us. Too
long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which
concern us dearly."

This statement is from the first page of the first issue of the first
African American newspaper, from March 16, 1827. Freedom's Journal was
founded by John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish in response to New York
City newspapers' negative portrayals of, and overt attacks on, the free
African American community. Some white editors, for example, used their
publications to encourage the (re)enslavement of New York's free African
American population.

For Africans and African Diasporans to tell our own stories, to see
ourselves through our own eyes, without others as either models or
authorities for defining either reality or significance, offers a
corrective to the problem DuBois identified as our "looking at [our]
self[selves] through the eyes of others," and our understanding ourselves
through the prism of "the revelation of the other world" that "yields [us]
no true self-consciousness," of, as Jesús García (chapter 17) says a
century later, "seeing ourselves through borrowed eyes."

Actually, given the intellectual tradition of the Americas, this seeing
might be better characterized as being through not so much "borrowed eyes"
as through the "imposed eyes of others," since borrowing implies volition.
Being hip to the jive involves having one's own eyes wide open to perceive
the truth through the veil of others' mystifying and mythifying
reality-negating revelations. In spite of the massive societal changes that
have taken place since these words were written almost two centuries ago,
contributors to this volume are still saying, "We wish to plead our case.
Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived
by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly."

We are also insisting upon seeing and portraying ourselves through the
revelations of our own experiences and interpretations, as opposed to
through the revelations of others based on their experiences and
interpretations that are usually different from and sometimes antithetical
to our own. And we are claiming the authority to be "voices of our own
authority" speaking of and for the cultures that our communities have
authored. On the basis of our dually or multiply conscious authority as
both members of the communities and as scholars of these communities, we
are challenging misrepresentations of them by both omission and commission.
[...]

-Sheila Walker
_African Roots:American Cultures:  Africa in the Creation of the Americas_


This kind of talk makes a lot of people nervous, I guess.