"According to one tradition, which claims to derive from Aristotle...
... the state is an associated and harmonized life lifted to its highest potency; the state is at once the keystone of the social arch and the arch in its wholeness.
A modern theory idealizes the state and its activities by borrowing the conception of reason and will, magnifying them until the state appears as the objectified manifestation of a will and reason which far transcend the desires and purposes that can be found among individuals and assemblies of individuals."
The concept of the state as a function of society introduces an opportunity to examine its utility in relation to the good. The state, as a utilitarian rendering, plays a functional role in promoting the good, and is therefore a necessary component in supporting the realization of a worthy and progressive ideal for its inhabitants. The corruption of the state's ability to fulfill this function deprives its people of the structural and moral support necessary to pursue such ideals. This corruption has been a fundamental aspect of the existence of the descendants of the institution of American slavery.
This failure has created a negative conceptualization of the Black American form and function. The pathology of the Black American has been rooted in a negative concept of self, formed through a forced identification as “the other”—an identity constituted through negation and legitimized as the inferiorized creation of the very state in which it was born. As Howard Thurman states in A Strange Freedom:
“Up to and including the present time, no creative way has been found to accomplish the specific ends of identity and healthy self-estimate that is devoid of the negativisms that seem to be inherent in the present struggle.”
This insight reveals how deep the psychic and political scars run. When the state negates a group’s being, it does more than marginalize—it structurally imposes a distorted selfhood upon them.
“Bodies of men are constantly engaging in attacking and trying to change some political habit, while other bodies of men are actively supporting and justifying them. It is mere pretense, then, to suppose we can stick by the de facto, and not raise at some points the question of de jure: the question by what right, the question of legitimacy. And such questions as to the nature of the state itself.” (Dewey, 1960)
The markers of the current morphology of racist ideology became pathological components during the nurturing of America's infancy. The American chattel slave was denied the protections and provisions of the state, even though their labor and oppression were essential to the state's formation and continued existence.
The creation of the American state—life imitating art, via Aristotle’s conception of a “city of speech”—reveals that the very foundations of American society, from conception to enactment, have been experimental. This experiment explored how to build a society from the ground up with the American chattel slave cast as the monster that laws, theories, and policies were designed to suppress or defend against.
“The alternatives before us are not factually limited sciences on one hand and controlled speculation on the other… The choice is between the blind, unreasoned attack and defense on the one hand, and discriminating criticism employing intelligent method and conscious criterion on the other.” (Dewey, 1960)
In order to deny the American chattel slave the protections of the very state they helped create, American society demonized and dehumanized them into an ontological oblivion—accompanied by centuries of domestic terrorism and violent oppression. This undertaking, designed to suppress the character development of the enslaved, ultimately suppressed the moral and political character of the nation itself.
Thurman, H. (2014). A strange freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Beacon Press.
Dewey, J. (1960). The public and its problems.
Add comment
Comments