I knew I would enjoy this book when near the very beginning the author writes “theory not rooted in practice is elitist.” It is a belief that has guided my work and kept me grounded in my most appropriate roles throughout my career in community development. It also reminded me of other authors who share the same or similar view.
John Dewey (Quest for Certainty): “What is the cause and import of the sharp division between theory and practice? Why should the latter be disesteemed along with matter and the body? …What would be the effect if the divorce was annulled, and knowing and doing were brought into intrinsic connection with one another?”
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography): “Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.”
Of course, this begs the question of what theories we use to guide our practices. Are those theories elitist, racist, ignorant, short-sighted, convenient, or excuses for expediency? The only way to know is to have an open mind, encourage and appreciate feedback, learn from mistakes, remain exposed to those closest to the ground, and work for exposure to the most inclusive and comprehensive information and perspectives available. In this life-long endeavor, I am most appreciative of opportunities to learn from those with perspectives I do not and could not have. As such, I appreciate this book by Joy James.
My life’s work has revolved around building community. I always believed community was the answer to alienation and insecurity. Community provides a basis for accessible political participation. Community gives meaning to our lives and supports self-actualization and collective identity – the ability to be one with ourselves and one with the world. Communities interacting within a broader framework of functioning communities provide the basis for productive engagement and pluralistic progress. All of this is embodied in James’ succinct view that “the individual’s salvation, or sanity, comes through relationship in community.”
In terms of activism, she writes about the means employed to achieve desired ends. Quoting from a 1970 LIFE Magazine interview of Angela Davis, “Che made the very important point that the society you’re going to build is already reflected in the nature of the struggle that you’re carrying out… [one of the most important things] … building of a collective spirt, getting away from the individualistic orientation towards personal salvation, personal involvement…” Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom) also writes about individualism and collectivity and how to reconcile the actualized self with the world. This only happens through “active solidarity with all…and…spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite…with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.”
This Davis quote also reminded me of the approach to activism advocated by Cooperative Democracy pioneer, James Peter Warbasse. He admonished those seeking revolution to be wary of the ends justifying the means. To help ensure that one form of oppression is not replaced with another, the “means” employed must complement the “ends” sought.
Then there is Camus’ distinction between rebellion and revolution. He writes about revolution as complete negation, of totality, and activity void of any transcendent value or morality. Rebellion, in contrast, is about transcendent values, about morality, about establishing a unity. “…solidarity is founded upon rebellion and rebellion, in its turn, can only find its justification in this solidarity.”
Regarding generalizations she writes there is no abstract ‘blackness.’ “Abstractions create limbos in which the specificity of liberation struggles is supplanted by the ‘representative’ or generic woman or black or worker – who tends not to reflect the lives of black women but benefits from the subordinated and exploited roles black women have in political economies and economies of value and desire.” Regarding subordination and exploitation, this view complements Ibram X. Kendi’s view that generalizations (abstractions) based upon a person’s background blind us to understanding and productively interacting with people of different backgrounds. He states these generalizations are also racist.
James writes about undermining liberation struggles through corporate-supported not-for-profits. Her position is that capitalism is in part sustained by the work of the non-profit sector. Instead of being the voice of those without a voice, charitable “CEOs are encouraged to destroy links to non-elite communities and according to Teresa Ebert, ‘ludic feminism’ substitutes a politics of representation for radical social transformation.”
In other work, James makes a different point from the bottom up, instead of the top down. She does this in her characterization of the “captured maternal” who unwittingly supports the very system that is draining the life out of this non-gendered community advocate and healer. With this argument, it would seem many of those who use community work as a platform to personally advance, sell out. Many of those who remain an integral part of the community served, burn out.
Many years ago I experienced the transformation of the tenants rights movement in New York City into a professionalized community development sector. In that transformation, the focus of work shifted from tenants’ rights to production of “affordable” housing, the characterization of which remained steady while the reality of affordability expanded over time to include those making three to four times the median incomes of area residents. In an article in City Limits Magazine I wrote that our sector had become glorified managers of poor people – managing their expectations, managing their aspirations, managing their fabricated dependencies, managing their lives.
There is so much more that recommends James’ book. To name just a few – her analysis of “market activism,” as a focus on production as opposed to change; the ability of hegemonic institutions to “commodify” (and thereby appropriate) radical ideas; her characterization of the “disposable dispossessed,” a concept also found in Yuval Harari’s description (in Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow) of the burgeoning “useless class” of people who will become unnecessary due to technological advantages, particularly AI. His point is worth considering for anyone interested in liberation activism given his reasonable position (Lessons for the 21st Century) that “It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.” This is especially true in a system that thrives on personal isolation, worker alienation and the manipulation it facilitates.
I did, however, find her criticism of Hannah Arendt a bit brutal. In my work, I have also been critical of Arendt, particularly her narrow-minded view of culture in her essay, The Crisis of Culture. Personally, as a tenant advocate and community activist, I was disappointed that Arendt, as a resident of 130 Riverside Drive, did not join Marie Runyon and her other neighbors in their struggle to prevent displacement at the hands of Columbia University’s expansion plans. But disagreement and disappointment never rose to the level of judgment against her that James exhibits.
As background, which in fairness James shares in her book, Arendt barely escaped the holocaust. She was in a French internment camp when Germany defeated France in World War II. She narrowly escaped from Gur before the completion of armistice, after which the conditions at the camp became ever worse. One in four died in the camp due to conditions. Thousands of Jews were transported from France to Poland to their likely deaths. Two things can be said to cloud my judgment and feed my critique of James’ criticism: I cannot imagine Arendt’s trauma and the impact it had on her, which leaves me sympathetic; I have read most of Arendt’s work and found her writings transformational.
Given this, I think James’ criticism, though mostly valid, is a bit overdone. Arendt’s focus was on the evils of totalitarianism. Expecting her to be a beacon for American anti-racism may have been a bit too much to expect. James lambasts her definition of power, but she does not focus on Arendt’s distinction between power (people coming together as a community) and strength (physical capacity to overcome another). The fact that the State can destroy the path to power does not mean that power did not exist to begin with or is incapable of being re-created.
James slams Arendt’s criticism of desegregation activism while also condemning racism in general as hypocrisy. Interestingly, many liberation activists of the 1960s were also in favor of segregation and self-determination. I believe Arendt was handicapped in her ability to relate her horrors in Europe with those of African Americans. It would be like expecting engaging empathy from a traumatized rape victim on issues of racial discrimination. James saw a direct connection between racism and genocide. Arendt experienced the horrors of genocide. Of course, Arendt could have begged off from sharing her opinions as well. But she didn’t, leading to justified criticism.
James concludes that Arendt is wrong by not making “racially based exclusion the central issue in this theory of politics and power.” She states that Arendt makes acceptance into a group a precondition for power, without consideration that voluntary participation also allows for voluntary exclusion. “Plurality, like friendship, exists only between peers.” This is correct. However, does the problem lie with the prescription for power sharing within society or with the cultural make-up of society? Murray Bookchin, in his comprehensive advocacy of social ecology, wrote about the “equality of unequals.” Jane Jacobs believed people having other than equivalent circumstances are nonetheless equal to the task of citizenship (in a true and inclusive democracy). Raymond Williams (Resources of Hope) says education should be “society’s confirmation of its common meanings, and of the human skills for their amendment” and also wrote (Sociology of Culture) education is one example of cultural reproduction “which can be linked with that more general reproduction of existing social relations.” Dorothy Lee (Freedom and Culture) wrote about equality not as something aspired to or legislated but as the natural outcome of a humanistic culture. That humane culture is what is lacking and what we need to work to achieve. The culture we are constantly reproducing, defined by individualism, mass consumption, isolation, destructive competition, alienation, resentfulness and grievance must be transformed into a culture of inclusiveness, diversity, tolerance and mutuality. Inclusive common meanings must be established and diversity celebrated and embraced. Education is a big part of the solution and in this country education policy is headed in the wrong direction. That, along with our current cultural state, delays the relevance of Arendt’s conception of popular power as well as James’ desire to see racial exclusion, in an era of pervasive mass exclusivity and inequality, eliminated.
One additional minor criticism – I believe James’ point that the civil war was not fought over slavery is wrong. Yes, Lincoln fought to save the Union and if he could have done that without emancipation he would likely have (his words). But the South clearly seceded from the Union due to the issue of slavery. As an example, Carol Anderson (White Rage, The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide) cites Mississippi’s Articles of Secession – “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…” Other states conformed as well. Georgia – “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property…” Texas — She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery– the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits– a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.” Lincoln, running on a platform of stopping the expansion of slavery west and of overseeing the gradual abolition of slavery in the South was elected on November 6, 1860. The Confederate states began their secession drive on December 20, 1860. There is little doubt that slavery was the impetus for the Civil War.
To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more from James’ unique and important perspective.