“Racial Reasoning”

White supremacy over time generated the 3 A’s
1-Annihilation
2-Apartheid
3-Assimilation

Neither approach successfully addresses or calls to my mind the uplift of humankind. The concept of “racial reasoning” (C. West) is nurtured and ultimately finds fundamental justification and underpinning here. Reading Dr. West I learned “racial reasoning” to be the process by which the MISCONCEPTION that “all Black people speak with one voice” comes to flourish in society. The word misconception hides the insideous and profound harm included and concluded from such a thought.

Issues and dialogues arise as to “authenticity”. If there is a standard of Blackness, called into being by this misconception, what constitutes Black? Dr. West uses B. Obama and C. Thomas as examples here. “Hence any claim to Black authenticity-beyond that of being a potential object of racist abuse and as an heir to a grand tradition of Black struggle is contingent on one’s political definition of Black interest and one’s ethical understanding of how this interest relates to individuals and communities in and outside Black American. In short, Blackness is a political and ethical construct.” (C. West)

Dr. West advances “moral reasoning” as wise leftist politics. “Racial reasoning discourages moral reasoning. Every claim to racial authenticity presupposes elaborate conceptions of political and ethical relations of interests, individuals, and communities. Racial reasoning conceals these presuppositions behind a deceptive cloak of racial CONCENSUS. This is why Bush’s claims to Thomas’s Black authenticity, Thomas’s claims about his own authenticity, and Black Nationalist claims about Black authenticity all highlight histories of Black abuse and Black struggle.” (C. West)

Dr. West posits “racial reasoning” allows and necessitates a “closed rank mentality.” To my mind this is in direct opposition to the ultimate goal of Black Americans. I find Black people to be the most loving and accepting people alive, the thought of exclusion is repugnant to an overwhelming number of Black Americans…”Racial reasoning” causes for “increased Nationalist sentiment”. Dr. West highlights the Nation of Islam and the KKK both as examples of what may come from “racial reasoning”. These end products, authenticity debates, closed ranks, rising Nationalist sentiments do NO ONE any good!

The White population assumes adversarial posture and the Black population to my mind have only adopted, co-opted, incorporated the nature, structure, and conceptions of the oppressor. “Racial reasoning” serves to separate and exclude, a polarization which decimates already suffering and struggling Black communities.