AFRICANA STUDIES AT STONY BROOK Black Studies After Recess

By Patrice Nganang Chair, Department of Africana Studies

against race. Doing so sidetracked the fundamental need to study and understand what it means to be Black in America today: in the belly of the Empire. It naively pushed a post-racial agenda in the name of a cosmopolitan vision at the same time as the United States, under Obama, was waging its highest number of concurrent wars since WWII, from Afghanistan to Mali and from Libya to Yemen. And yet as long as the US plays the role of the global hegemon, anti-imperialist study drawn from Malcom’s message will remain necessary, and Blackness will need to remain the world’s conscience.

The concept of “vanguard” maybe outdated, pushed in the dustbin of scholarship by promises of the post-racial, but in the pragmatics of things. The current revival of anything related to the Black Panthers is an indicator, but also the fact that, according to a New York Times recent survey, most Black people in the US still prefer to be called “Black.” Not surprisingly: The mass incarceration of Black people in the US, in the country that incarcerates the most people on the planet, is structural racism that flies un- der the radar of all traditional anti-discrimination policies. So much so that Stony Brook University can have the necessary Diversity Offices and DEI provisions in place, but at the same time rely on CORCRAFT, the NY state company that uses inmates, the majority of whom are Black, and most certainly minorities, to provide for the furniture students use. The usual accusation of hypocrisy labeled against individual racist behavior is flatfooted in front of such institutional use of the provisions of convict labor inherited from the times of chattel slavery, mainly because it talks the talk of metrics. In underfunded state institutions that saw a drastic dip in enrollment due to Covid, and Departments of Africana studies are chronically underfunded, the need for revenue supersedes ethical considerations, one is told. Here, a pedagogy rooted in a restored alliance of BIPOC becomes vital, with the goal of articulating the voice of the unheard victims of capitalism’s masquerades. In the classroom, in enrollment, and hires.

And the landscape of capitalism’s struggles has become more visible internationally, particularly in the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Taiwan, both outgrowths of a century-old competition for which Bandung was already an answer in 1955. Malcolm spoke of Bandung as an inspiration for Black coalition politics, in the struggle against Empire, in the United States, in Algeria. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the constitution of a unipolar world, the word ‘Empire’ and the critiques of imperialism had all. Still, they found their last niche in the Humanities – in English departments, the Departments of Cultural studies, and of course, in Departments of Africana studies. But today, his words suddenly resonate in the recent UN vote on Ukraine, and in the surprisingly unified African position, against NATO and the European Union. A year is probably not enough to see the ramifications of this new African disposition. Still, the study of African affairs is not immune from the New World Order unfolding in front of our very eyes. What is the location of Black cultures in a BRICS-defined world in which China and India are seen as competitors inside the capitalist arena and not as cultures and countries that align themselves with anti-capitalist ideals, as was the case after the Bandung conference? What is the consequence of such a re-composition of world dominance for the planet, our standard jewel, particularly concerning global warming? What, then, is the meaning of the Global South when Brazil and South Africa appear as contenders in a world that for far too long has been shaped at the expense of their respective Black populations? What is even the meaning of Empire in a world in which the world hegemon, the United States, is losing war after war, from Libya to Syria to Afghanistan? What indeed is ‘Empire’ in a world where, after thirty years of intermission during which the United States was battling failed states, ‘enemy combatants’, ‘networks’, and even a concept, ‘terror’, Russia is back as a world host of substance?

In the new world in formation, Black studies will have to nurture research in activism.