by Melvin L. Rogers
Could the African American political tradition save American democracy? African Americans have had every reason to reject America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition-a tradition that is urgently needed today.
The book reexamines how figures as diverse as David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billie Holiday, and James Baldwin thought about the politics, people, character, and culture of a society that so often dominated them. Sharing a light of faith darkened but not extinguished by the tragic legacy of slavery, they resisted the conclusion that America would always be committed to white supremacy. They believed that democracy is always in the process of becoming and that they could use it to reimagine society. But they also saw that achieving racial justice wouldn’t absolve us of the darkest features of our shared past, and that democracy must be measured by how skillfully we confront a history that will forever remain with us.
An ambitious account of the profound ways African Americans have reimagined democracy, The Darkened Light of Faith offers invaluable lessons about how to grapple with racial injustice and make democracy work.
Is democracy beyond repair in the United States? As Melvin L. Rogers writes in the opening pages of The Darkened Light of Faith: "Given how frequently the police kill African Americans, the ongoing structural inequality they experience, and housing and food insecurity suffered by so many. . . it may seem more appropriate to interpret the United States as working according to plan." The reality of institutional racism is undeniable, and it "often undercuts moments of hope."
In this urgent account of the African American political tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries, Rogers draws on the life and work of Black abolitionists (David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Maria Stewart) political activists (W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells), and artists (Billie Holiday, James Baldwin) who put their faith in the elements of democracy that work: a capacity for improvement; an openness to the future. Even though the terrible legacy of slavery challenged their resolve, this cohort of Black intellectuals dared to imagine ways in which America could live up to its democratic ideals.
From the abolitionist David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World that called upon enslaved men and women to resist subjugation and claim their right to American citizenship to James Baldwin's insistence on a full reckoning with the lingering trauma of slavery, Rogers skillfully illustrates a strand of African American political thought: one that turns towards the horrors of the past instead of shrinking away from it.
Though the path to racial justice is long and winding, it is, in The Darkened Light of Faith, a cause well worth fighting for, even if all we can hope for is an uneasy peace with the past and ourselves.
Melvin L. Rogers is professor of political science and associate director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Brown University. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy, coeditor of African American Political Thought: A Collected History, and editor of John Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems.
Princeton University Press
ISBN-13 978-0691219134
No comments:
Post a Comment