Profiles in Humanism: A. Philip Randolph

Profiles in Humanism: A. Philip Randolph by Bill Daehler, for the Humanist Network News.

Randolph, a black freethinker as well as a major figure in the history of labor organizing and the civil rights movement, is here honored. Randolph was selected 1970 Humanist of the Year.

The sleeping car porters that Randolph unionized played a key role in black history, in leveraging access to education and the middle class. See Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye.

Anthony B. Pinn: Remembering African American Humanism

From the Humanist Network News:

Remembering African American Humanism

A noteworthy statement by Anthony B. Pinn. I am puzzled though by his final statement, whose meaning I find unclear:

"That is to say, rather than simply acknowledging the diversity of our movement, we might take the next step and make diversity—difference—the hallmark of our movement . . . "

I think the words "diversity" and "difference" miss the mark, that they actually reinforce what Pinn apparently seeks to transcend, i.e. mere diversity. There's actually a stronger argument to be made.

I can't read Pinn's mind, but my reasoning goes like this: if there is an argument to be made about what goes beyond the mere acknowledgment of difference, it's the centrality of the black experience to the understanding of American history, but even this is too bloodless a way of stating it. Various black thinkers and writers have stated that the black experience crystallizes all the tendencies and social forces of the modern world. The implication is that no one's historical experience can be understood without the black experience being addressed. In one way or another, this has been stated by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, and C.L.R. James. This way of looking at things, which may have dropped out of popular consciousness for a few decades, was resuscitated in Paul Gilroy's 1993 book The Black Atlantic.

Playwright & Labor Organizer Manny Fried dies at 97

Playwright Manny Fried dies at age 97: wivb.com

There are countless people who could be counted in the ranks of secular humanism, but one must recognize that while most of them were or are simply unorganized, and among those many who have not explicitly taken on such an identity, there was, especially in the first half of the 20th century, a large contingent who functioned not within a secularist, humanist, or freethought movement, but within the labor movement. Radical labor organizer, actor, and playwright Emanuel ("Manny") Fried (March 1, 1913 - February 25, 2011) was the son of Jewish immigrants, but like so many, Manny abandoned religious belief. This is not his claim to fame, but it is a fact. To be Jewish in the old days was to be subject to discrimination, harassment, and violence. And to be Jewish means more to be a member of an ethnic group than it does necessarily to be religious. Manny recounted in one of our talks the horrible antisemitism that prevailed in American society and which was part of his experience, also documented here and there in his work. He told me that he grew up in an area of Buffalo populated by Jews and blacks. In addition to his devotion to the cause of labor, he also opposed an attempt to segregate Hutchinson high school in Buffalo, and there are other comparable anecdotes to be related which I don't think can be found in his autobiography.

As Manny died yesterday, just a few days short of his 98th birthday, I am still collecting my thoughts. When I volunteered to create a web presence for him in 2003, there was practically nothing to be found on the Internet. He was a local hero, but largely unknown outside of Western New York. You are invited to familiarize yourself with Manny's life and work:

The Emanuel Fried Center

. . . and on the links page, here are the obituaries.

Religion & Hate (2)

Regarding the group discussion of Feb. 22 mentioned in the previous post: To the extent that there were different schools of thought or aspects of the question represented in this discussion, here is how the various opinions expressed cluster:

(1) Whatever there is to be said about ‘human nature’ or tendencies with or without religion towards hostility and dominance, religion specifically exacerbates this tendency or adds ingredients all its own.

• All religions make competing truth-claims.
  
• Religious truth claims are exclusive.
  
• Other belief systems are not only wrong, but constitute a threat.
  
• All orthodox (specifically Abrahamic) religions foster hatred of outgroups: there is a demonstrable correlation.
  
• In the distant past, there were local deities. Modern theism makes matters worse.
  
• Religion does not permit for testability of truth claims.
  
• Religion lends an absolute authority to prejudices.
  
• Religion is a map that bends reality to fit the map.

(2) Defense of religion or specific religions, and disputes over same occurred.

• Hate is only felt by individuals, not religions.
  
• Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are counter-examples of religion’s hatefulness.
  
• Buddhism is nonviolent. Various claims & counter-claims:
• Buddhism is philosophy not religion.
  
• Japanese Buddhism fed into Japanese nationalism.
  
• There is definitive documentation of Buddhist atrocities.
  
• Tibetan Buddhism is not what the fans of the Dalai Lama make it out to be.
  
• The American version of Buddhism is not the same as Buddhism in Asia.
• The Axial Age saw the birth of more humane belief systems.
  
• St. Paul instituted a major shift to cosmopolitanism.
  
• Stalinism was a secular religion.
  
• There is a universal attraction to religion: religion tells people how to live.

(3) Claims about human nature were rampant, and questions over the uniqueness of religion as a causal factor.

• The fundamental question is one of in-groups vs. out-groups.
  
• Religion is not more hate-inducing than other things.
  
• There are various pretexts & rationalizations. (In the case of religion, there’s an appeal to an absolute authority—an argument used by some against religion.)
  
• Religion is mixed in with cultural & other rivalries.
• Group conflict may be a perennial phenomenon, preceding religion.
  
• Experiments show that any differentiating factor can serve as a catalyst for the delineation of in and out groups.
  
• There are other ideologies of contention, especially nationalism.
  
• Someone asserted that gender is primary.
  
• Someone introduced the observation that “America” is a god.
  
• Do all groups inspire hate? Are aggression and violence universals?
  
• Several factors were put forward as stimulating aggressive tendencies:
• Population density.
  
• Pecking order: leaders start wars.
  
• Testosterone: young males are the main culprits.
  
• Males & females engage in difference types of conflict.
  
• Unattached males are most likely to be prone to warfare.

(4) What is the basis of morality? Is or can there be a science of morality?

• Religion is not necessary to morality.
  
• Relativism should be opposed.
  
• There is a difference between subjective & objective reasoning.
  
• There is the issue of the testability of claims.
  
• There is a scientific basis to morality.
  
• Morality is not a science yet, but there is progress. More study is needed to render morality scientific.

(5) Miscellaneous points:

• The inconsistencies in religion are exploited to different ends.
  
• An example of twisted reasoning is gratitude toward God for ‘sparing’ selected individuals from disasters in which many others perish.
  
• Missionaries have by and large been awful people.
  
• How does one weigh the good and bad aspects associated with religion?
  
• Something was said about Freud or psychoanalysis, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

(6) Definitional & methodological questions:

• What is meant by hatred? Does hatred = violence = war?
  
• Is preference hatred?
  
• Who gets to define what a religion is?
  
• Can one factor out religion from everything else?
  
• Someone oriented toward social science is not satisfied with exclusively biological explanations for socially/historically determinant phenomena.

Religion & Hate (1)

In preparation for a discussion this evening (22 Feb) on religion and hate, I sketched the following bulletin points. In a subsequent post I will list the bullet points of what was actually discussed.


(1) I always have a problem with the question of religion & causality, since religion itself is an expression of social (& psychological) forces.

(2) I think we have to go behind religion & begin with its origins in magical thinking, and thus the connection with dependency, fear & violence, beginning with the experience of violence in nature.

(3) As much as I dislike René Girard as a Christian apologist, his views adumbrated in  Violence and the Sacred should be examined, particularly the notion of ritual sacrifice as a substitute for unregulated violence.

(4) I think religion has to be historically divided at least into 3 stages: (1) primitive magic & tribal religion; (5) religion in pre-modern class societies, wherein all the "great" religions took shape; (6) religion in the modern world, & the inability to digest modernity, in which magical thinking proliferates in both religious & secular ideologies.

(5) Without understanding the cultural reinforcements of hate, violence, oppression & paranoia, I don't see how we could understand religion's connection to hate, or in some cases, religion's rebellion against hate. There is even one religion or two which is mostly benign, the Bahai's, for example.

(6) And then there's the question of self-hate. Why do the victimized think they have done something wrong?  Richard Wright addressed this question symbolically in his brilliant 1942 story, "The Man Who Lived Underground."

(7) References given here address different historical stages of superstitious / magical / paranoiac thinking. Girard addresses primitive religion. Edmund D. Cohen's The Mind of the Bible-Believer addresses the genesis and psychological mechanisms of thought control behind Christianity.  Consult the LABELS on this blog for more on both of these authors. For an example of modern paranoiac thinking, consult reviews of Stephen Eric Bronner's A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion.

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion (6): Race & Biblical Metaphor?

Terrance Macmullan, University of Oregon
Treasure Hidden in the Field: The Significance of Biblical Metaphor within W.E.B. Du Bois's Conception of Race 
(March 8, 2002, session on "Du Bois and Dewey")
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 29th Annual Meeting, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, March 7-9, 2002.

This is a rather pathetic, self-contradictory, and ultimately ambiguous attempt to highlight the alleged religious dimension of Du Bois. If it were simply a matter of highlighting Du Bois' use of Biblical metaphor as rhetorical strategy, and even to suggest the symbolic reference of Du Bois' rhetoric has been overlooked, there would be nothing controversial here. But Macmullan is apparently after more. In the first paragraph Macmullan claims that Du Bois' religious rhetoric is both prophetic and pragmatic, which of course brings to mind the philosophical empty suit of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism, or preaching with footnotes. While there may be some use to interpreting properly the notion that "that each race bears a gift", it is a mystical notion left over from the 19th century that is best left to the past.

For emphasizing Du Bois' secularism and downplaying the spiritual dimension, Macmullan criticizes Shamoon Zamir, Adolph Reed Jr., Anthony K. Appiah, Lucius Outlaw, and even Cornel West. All this while admitting time and time again that Du Bois was a freethinker. Had Macmullan stuck to statements like the following, there would be no need to object:

His use of religious language stemmed from a recognition of the fact that the idea of race in America emerged largely from a religious discourse, and that this same discourse must be instrumental in its reform.

However, Macmullan implies more with formulations such as the following:

Where Christians at the time succored Africans in America with the image of the Lamb (the chosen child of God that humbly bears suffering for the sake of universal salvation), Du Bois calls on his fellow African Americans to read their plight as the trial of a prophetic people who must boldly speak out against their oppression that others might learn the consequences of cruelty and the need for love.  

He further explicates the Biblical references, and continues:

If we take Du Bois’ biblical orientation to heart, we see that the race-specific ideals of life are prophetic gifts that are of unsurpassable value to those outside the race, yet are also potentially dangerous for the gift-bearing race. 

 The phrase "Du Bois’ biblical orientation" is misleading. Macmullan commences his conclusion:

When we attend to his use of religious language, we better see how and why the racial gift is a bridge across the racial divide made possible by the divide itself. 

 . . . and concludes:

Du Bois developed a perspective on race that is still a vital tool in ongoing efforts to heal the invidious racism of the last four centuries. However, in order to fully understand his idea of race, and in order to fully reach into the lived experiences of most people, we need to not only study the religious language at the heart of his concept but also engage the religious discourses that perpetuate outdated ideas of race.

This position is ideologically bankrupt.  There is no vital tool here, but an obsolete metaphorical framework that may have been justified for its time, but can serve no constructive purpose now. The only proper way to engage religious discourses now is to obliterate them. Furthermore, the spiritualistic concept of race is not an advance over the later and more invidious biological concept, but is rather a retreat to German Romanticism, an absolutely reactionary move in light of two essential considerations: (1) it is essentially anti-scientific; (2) it could not be more at variance with the contemporary reality of American society, in which the meaning of culture, let alone of race, is so radically mediated and altered from the past, that the very idea of a mission or a coherent social entity that could be the bearer of a mission, is utter nonsense.

How rotten is this marriage of multiculturalism and the academic retooling of classic American pragmatism? How high the moon?

Joel Augustus Rogers & the Universal Races Congress of 1911

Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 — March 26, 1966) carried on a tireless war of ideas against the pervasive white supremacist ideology of his time. Here's another sample from his landmark 1917 book From “Superman” to Man, to which I've given a title . . .

Race, Equality of Intellect, & the History of Civilization by J. A. Rogers

Here you find a distillation of the style and content of Rogers' argumentation, which also serves as a window into the time in which he lived. There are several facets of this extract that could be annotated at length. Aside from the marshaling of facts and figures available to Rogers, note the refined and even-tempered tone of the protagonist Dixon contrasted to the frothing hysteria of his white racist antagonist. Note Rogers' insistence on a scientific perspective, to the point of pushing religion aside, for example in Dixon's argument:

“Finot, whose findings ought to be regarded as more valuable than the expressions of chose who base their arguments on sentiment or on Hebrew mythology, says,— ‘All peoples may attain this distant frontier which the brains of the whites have reached.’”

Also of historical interest is Rogers' citation here (and elsewhere in the book) of the First Universal Races Congress of 1911. The centennial of this landmark ideological intervention has so far gone virtually unnoticed, a situation which I am now endeavoring to rectify:

First Universal Races Congress, London, July 26-29, 1911: Selected Bibliography