On Symbolic “Blackness” and Existence as Resistance…

"Cone’s problems are matters of internal contradiction.

First, Black theology as Cone formulated it, risks self-referential inconsistency when it sees itself as radically oppositional to white racism and white theology. Because Cone collapses metaphysics into ontology, blackness is reified into a totality or a unity of black experience. At the same time, blackness is regarded as symbolic so that anyone can participate in its meaning of symbolic blackness in terms of black oppression and suffering." (Anderson, 2000)

• At what point does one begin to consider existence in relation to the myths they have been told about themselves? In the dynamism of theory and ontological conceptualization, the non-being sees themselves outside of the concept of its negative self-image. The symbology of the black being on the American plantation is a negative, caricaturized image of teleological denigration. Said differently, the black image is a negative image in the eyes of a racist society; the categories that are created on the American plantation or matrix, that articulates the black beings existence, are dehumanizing and therefore are unable to produce a positive narrative for the black being. 

• Self-acceptance is a nostalgic myth, given the years of domestic terrorism and propagandistic wars waged against the helpless form of the Black being. It has fought to ingratiate into the hegemonic order of society by accepting an ideology and language that is demoralizing and devaluing of its self concept. The  symbology is given to the Black being to glorify as its body is dehumanized, mutilated, and neglected. Oppression and suffering are characteristics of this glorified symbol. It is also the characteristic of the corpse it is forced to cosplay as in American society. 

“The difficulty arises here…

1. Blackness is a signification of ontology and corresponds to black experience
2. Black experience is defined as the experience of suffering and rebellion against whiteness 
3. Both black suffering and rebellion are ontologically created and provoked by whiteness 
4. Whiteness appears to be the ground of black experience, and hence black theology and its new black being. 

Black theology, more specifically, referring secondarily to organized religion and primarily to black peoples collective acknowledgement of the spirit of liberation in their midst, a spirit who empowers them to struggle for freedom even though odds are against them. This is the historical matrix out of which my hermeneutical perspective has been formed.” (Anderson, 2000) 

• What, then, of resistance and a push toward liberation through true self-acceptance beyond the ontological and epistemological projections and conceptualizations of a racist society? The intellectual uprooting of a self concept and ideology. The cultural explication and reconstruction of a negative ideology and language. 

“According to Gottlieb’s account, if a person genuinely believes that he or she wants to reduce oppression and acts on that belief, then resistance is a correct description of that action, even though it is impossible for that action to reduce oppression” (McGary & Lawson, 1993, p. 41)

“How then can an enslaved beings act of resistance reduce oppression? On Gottlieb’s account, we cannot disqualify an act of resistance because it is non-aggressive or non-militant” (McGary & Lawson, 1993). 

• Here, we can posit that the Black being working toward its own worthy and progressive ideal on the American plantation or matrix is an act of resistance. The very nature of its existence is an act of resistance. Its actions in congress with other Black beings to work toward that worthy and progressive ideal are acts of resistance. Speaking, thinking, and breathing are acts of resistance. 
• The Black beings existence is, in many ways, antithetical to the values and morals of the American ideology. The characteristics of oppression and suffering that is symbolic projection of their existence demonstrates this in full detail. These characteristics of the myth are attached to the narrative of the black being from a Eurocentric way of conception and articulation.
• The unconscious resistance (the existence of the Black being) is met with the intense onslaught of conscious resistance from the hostile society of which it is a part. The Black being is forced into an unawareness of the nature of this resistance of its existence; the act of living, being an unconscious and unintended form of moral and political resistance to the hegemonic order they are mentally and physically enslaved by. Beat down and lulled into a complacent sleep of negritudal compliance. 

-Yogabrofessor

McGary, H., & Lawson, B. E. (1993). Between slavery and freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery. Indiana University Press.

Montmarquet, J. A., & Hardy, W. H. (2000). Reflections An Anthology of African American Philosophy. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA65356223