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The purpose of the show is to provide a critical examination of society and culture through the intersectional lens of race, gender, and class, more specifically it seeks to provide a COUNTER-NARRATIVE. The Show encourages a reflective assessment and critique of unique standpoints and their potential contribution to popular discourse.
I need to know everything. Who in the what in the where? I need everything. Trust me, I hear what you're saying, but alleges know what you're telling me. I'm curious. George. I hop in the Porsche five and a horse. I'm ready for war. I'm coming for throws to turn it with ghosts. I need to know everything.
Hello and welcome to the counter narrative show. Today's episode will be discussing black pathology and the nonprofit sector. We will be discussing this topic with Devon love. Dayvon Love is the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle in 2010 dayvon co founded Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, like other members of lbs Avon believes that all groups and campaigns that endeavor to fix policies that harm predominantly African American communities must be led by African Americans. Today. We're going to be talking largely from when Baltimore awakens. Let me make sure I got that title right. Yep, when Baltimore awakens, and analysis of the human and social services sector in Baltimore City. And if you are interested in checking that out, you can go to Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle website. And if you look under publications, and you go down, I think on that particular page, it's two things. There's the 2018 report card for Baltimore, the legislative report card, and this particular report called when Baltimore awakens, an analysis of the human social services sector in Baltimore City. Thank you so much for being here with us. Davon, I appreciate you. You are easily one of my favorite people to interview. Easily. Appreciate that. Um, I really want to talk to you a bit about first. I want to start with just you. You guys. Are you writing that? So when I went, when I went back to the page, and I look, I saw there was this the legislative report card of 2018 of 2018 which makes perfect sense for me, for you to write, because you focus on public policy. You do a lot of work around legislation, legislation. Why was it important to write this particular analysis or critique of the human social service sector in Baltimore? Why was that necessary?
So a few things. So one, you know, one of the things that at lbs, we have been working on for a while is our criticism of the nonprofit industrial complex. And we have written things kind of here and there, about what that looks like in Baltimore, but we felt that it made sense to try to put down on paper the most comprehensive form that critique, so that folks had a place to go, because we were recognizing that there were a greater number of people interested in kind of addressing this issue, and we're interested in our perspective. And so, like I said, you know, there are pieces of what we thought, here and there, but we thought it would make sense to put a comprehensive write up somewhere where people could kind of refer to our general perspective. The other thing is, is that what was also happening is, you know, we were, we felt like we're getting to a place where the conversation about the role of white progressives and also the role of black folks that are in white progressive institutional formations was something that needed attention. And in fact, the where the title comes from is Hubert Henry Harrison in his book, when Africa awakes in 1920 he he wrote that text as a signal to a lot of black organizers during that period of time, and his major point was essentially laying out the mechanics of how black organizers and activists were capitulating to a white progressive political class and institutional formations. And he basically was laying out the way in which the CO optation of black people's work, and the Co optation of the importance of black autonomy was something that was a particular importance. So that's kind of where the end. So the title, it made me think, like, you know, we need a similar call here in Baltimore, as it relates to, you know, black folks that are working with folks in our community who have to capitulate to the nonprofit sector. So I just saw the parallel between what Huber Harry Harrison was saying in 1920 and what it was that we wanted to say to folks in Baltimore and really around the country about the nonprofit sector and the mechanics of how it undermine you know. Black independence in a way, through its own, through the benevolence, you know, through the benevolence that oftentimes white progressive showed. Really want to lay out how that produces white supremacy in ways that oftentimes weren't talked about as much.
Last week on our show, we talked about grassroots community organizing, and it was a lot of talk about coalition building. How does one engage with the nonprofit sector and also do this work of coalition building and kind of avoid falling into this trap of this is the source of where revenue comes from, or for whatever reason, capitulate into some of those same concepts.
So I think, and so the question of coalitions is a really important one, because I think a part of the what has been difficult, and one of the problems in the nonprofit sector is that black people and folks of color have been have been subject to coalitions on the basis of the benevolence of others, and not from a perspective of strength. And so what oftentimes happens is, I think it's become so normalized the coalitions that we're a part of are rooted in a kind of missionary, charitable benevolence frame, as opposed to one based on, you know, strength and position. And so I think within the nonprofit sector, I think as black people, we need to have relationships to the sector and to these institutions from from the perspective of building strength and from the perspective of being building autonomy as the basis for how we participate in these coalitions. I think a lot of people who are subject to many of these coalitions, if they're honest, tell you that they are part of the coalitions because they think it's the only way that they'll be able to get things done. It's the only way that they'll be able to have a voice, the only way to be able to actually have a platform. And you know, as black people, you know we shouldn't feel like we need to be a part of coalitions if they are based on the kind of missionary, benevolence, charity frame. And I think that that's a conversation that I think it's hard to have, because I think a lot of folks who are in the nonprofit sector are their livelihoods are dependent on being subject to that frame, and then unfortunately that there aren't very many alternatives to that formation.
I wonder about, I remember last time, when you were on, we talked a bit about some of the similarities, but really mostly the differences between NAACP and Unia, right, and UN NAACP is something that is still living and thriving today and have their hand in a lot of different things. One might say that one of the reasons that they have been able to survive is because of their capitulation. What do you say to that? Because I think that is probably connected to the some of the same standpoint of people who say, this is the only way, or this is the only way I can get this funding, or this is the only way, in general, that the that this organization or that this movement could have any longevity is if I, you know, join a specific coalition.
Yeah. I mean, so that I think a part of the problem we're faced with is that many of the iterations of autonomous black institutions or organizations often are subject to the greatest level of disruption and attack, because there's an acute awareness on the part of, you know, white liberals and the institutions that they govern and control. There's a lot of awareness of what autonomous black institutions would be to their power, right, and to their resources. And when I talk to black people who have, you know, been in the nonprofit sector in Baltimore and either have been pushed out or who decided to walk away, a big part of why is because, as they were trying to build something that was authentically, you know, owned by the community, they experienced folks essentially trying to, you know, push them out of the way and demonize them. And so, I think so to the point about the NAACP, I think that's in a correct analysis, that their ability to last as long as they have has much to do with the fact that they are very proximate to, you know, philanthropic in the corporate sector and in. Any respect to the overall institution has functioned as essentially a place where corporations go to put their resources when they want to appear to be doing something good for black people now that now that is to say that the NAACP hasn't done any good work since then, and in fact, many of the local branches, where I think a lot of the power is, is a lot of the local branches, and the ones that are really rooted and based locally, you know, I think they have the potential in certain contexts to be very helpful in particular advocacy efforts, but there's a limit to where they can Go, right? And I think that limit is rooted in the fact that their institutions are proximate to the corporate sector in such a way that it limits the kinds of things that So, for instance, the ability to critique the nonprofit sector as lbs has done in the piece and when Baltimore wakes they're not really in a position to push that hard, because they would be, you know, criticizing many of the institutions for whom are a part of the engine of the human social service sector. So the NAACP is not in a position to make the argument that that I'm making right because of those because of those limitations, and I would argue that there are lots of folks who agree with us in the sector, but again, because of where they work, right, because of how, you know, they want to continue to get work that, that it's not, it doesn't make sense for them, or they would be risking their livelihood to be making some of the arguments. So that's, that's another big piece of why we wrote. It is to put to paper something that people want to be able to say, and are able to say, we're saying it, as opposed to having to step out on them on their own.
I think that says something in and of itself, that that people are in situations where they can't say it. And I think it says something about just the sector itself, but definitely about the individual places where folks work. So we started off, and we're talking about, you know, the title is black pathology. Can you say a bit about exactly what is that term mean, and what do we mean when we say black pathology?
Okay, so a big part of what happens in the kind of civil rights post Civil Rights Era is that as black people become as a people. One way to put it is like a ward of the state right black people become a population from which now the state sees itself as responsible for managing and as a result of this, what we have are renderings, particularly in the what would it would become, what emergence as a human social service sector. What we have is a narrative about black people that frames us from the perspective of a people needing to be fixed and so and so. A part of So, part of what that means is that, you know, black people are rendered so. So someone asked the question, why black people? You know, poor, then white folks. Well, the notion where people are thinking about that through the lens of black pathology, they say, well, they're lazy and they don't work hard enough, and, you know, they don't know enough, and they have bad habits, right? And you know, they're innately criminal. So we need to temper their inherent proclivities to criminality like so. So that becomes the line of thinking, not just of like, you know, conservative, you know, right wing, you know, racist politicians and public officials. That becomes the logic of the institutions that run the poverty programs, you know, they run the Great Society programs of the 1960s like this becomes the logic of the institutions. And so this is why, for instance, in the paper, you know, I mentioned the morning hand report, you know, Dan Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who at that point is the Secretary of Labor, is making an argument from the position of a person who, you know, wants to help black people and describes black people as a tangle of pathology. And the report is written from the perspective of our communities being backward and wanting to figure out how to address the backwardness of our community. So, so, so that because, and that logic, I would argue, has become ubiquitous, right? And it has its roots, you know, the colonialism and we talked about, you know, a couple of talks ago, the kind of anti African notions that are embedded in Western society as a part. The project of European domination of the world. And so that manifests itself today in the fact that there are a lot of folks who describe black people as being inherently pathological, as the way they this is. And for some people, the only way that they understand black people as a people. And in fact, the black people who are not that are understood to be exceptional, right? And you'll get a lot of that where it's like, oh, you're not like the rest of them, right? And that be that that is then based on the notion that notions of black people is inherently pathological, is the base of how people have come to understand black people as a people. And so that's where the notion of black pathology.
There's so much there. I mean, I think there's this other work that black pathology does. I think that it definitely does that work of rendering or continuing this conversation around black inferiority. I feel like it also does this work to elevate white savior ism, that's right. And it like legitimizes it and provides access to be able to have funds with it, to have funds contribute to organizations through, through this notion of these are the people who are the problem, and here, here's how I'm going to fix it. And there's this focus on the people, rather than the conditions that created certain environments that folks are in. Structure. Structural racism is never attacked. White supremacy is never attacked, or just just the people themselves. And this definitely shows up quite a bit in social work. I would argue that it's like a cornerstone of Social Work, of fixing of doing this work of fixing black people. You mentioned something earlier that I thought was really interesting in connection to this conversation around black pathology. And that is, there is a knowledge that organizations have about black centered or black LED, the power of black LED and black centered thinking and approach that threatens some of the nonprofits. So could you speak to a bit about how that duality exists, of feeling like these folks are inferior, but also simultaneously, this is a threat to my institution. That's right,
that's right. So there are a few things with that that I think are particularly important. The first is that the I forget who it was, it might be, it might be Nathan hair, who was a sociologist and scholar who spent a lot of time at San Francisco State University and then went to Howard as a professor, who described people as Negro ologists, right? So people for whom the basis of their professional accolades is their study of black people and the kind of sociology of black people's oppression and stuff, right? And so that kind of emerges as a field of social science that cuts through different disciplines, sociology, social work, other kind of proxy, you know, anthropology and so. So the emergence of the of what Dr hare, I believe, calls, you know, Negro ology, you have people for whom, then their professional status in the world is predicated on the correctness of their approach. So many of the traditional approaches to human service is predicated off of the notion that this field of study that primarily renders black people is pathological, becomes the basis of their field of intellectual inquiry and the basis of their practice. So a part of what happens is, that. And one of the things that white supremacy does to the consciousness of folks who are deemed experts is that the universe is that from which they see and experience and being legitimate, which means everything outside of that for them, they have to characterize as less rigorous, not scientific, whatever. And so what happens is, is that many of them never even experience bodies of work that challenge the fundamentals of theirs, because the place where they feel threatened is that black folks for whom that they that they confront, that develop theories and approaches to practice in these particular fields that don't rely on their foundation. What tends to happen is they've never even thought about many of these issues, right? And so them these different bodies of work being legitimate. It. It's a threat because it's bodies of work that they don't know, right? It's a place where they actually, intellectually don't have any real grounding, right? And as black people, having to challenge these institutions, we end up having to read their stuff, right? But the arrogance of white supremacy means our stuff doesn't even exist, right? So if I'm, if I'm criticizing, you know, Eurocentric psychoanalysis, right? I've had to read Freud and look on and Erickson and Piaget and the like. But these folks have not read Akbar or Linda, Jane Myers or Wade nobles, you know, they haven't read any of that stuff, right? So it becomes a threat because they've never even considered the things that the bodies of work that we produce. This is, in fact, a big part of like my success on policy debate came from the fact that many of the people we were debating against had not even considered the bodies of work we were pulling from. So one of the ways we were able to win debates and in white dominant academic activity is that we just had evidence that was responsive to their stuff in ways that this stuff was not responsive to ours, because a lot of their stuff never even considered the bias of work that we were pulling from. So that's where the threat comes in. And we actually can see, you know, this confrontation taking shape in the context of the emergence of like African centered scholarship in the in the field of education, like you see that battle happening in the 80s and 90s, when there is many attempts to characterize like Afrocentric or African centered curriculum that's less rigorous, and you see the clash where there was kind of a fight from the institutional mainstream to keep that stuff from being, you know, legitimate, because if that stuff was legitimate, then all these other folks who are the gatekeepers of the profession of education, social work, etc, are obsolete. And there's, there's, there's a political economy to that. You know, if they are obsolete, then they can't be the deans of these schools of social work or the deans of these educational training programs, if our approach, which inherently demonstrates their approach, to be impotent, if that is established, these folks don't have any legitimacy, which means they don't have as a profession, they've lost, they've lost their footing. And for a lot of people, that is a part of their identity. Being an authority in these areas, taking that away from them, you know that it would be, it would be fatal to their professional accolades and to some respects, their ability to live the kind of lifestyle that they live.
Yeah, I feel like that's so on point, especially in terms of people who are gatekeepers of certain bodies of knowledge, and also the need to take things through a particular type of European validation machine before we can say like it's legitimate. It is something that has come up in my own thinking and questioning around do I want to continue to publish work in journals that people who I want to read them probably are interested in reading and then transform it, do I also want to transform it into language that they don't speak? You know, like, do I want my information to be consumable to a larger body of knowledge? And what does it say if, if a person is seeking those methods of like validation in terms of like, you're a legitimate scholar if you're published here, this, this scholarship has this many points and that many points. So I think those are great points. Um, one of the things that that that tends to come up when you come on is people feel like they need a bibliography, which I think is fantastic. So I was like, okay, there are some books that I think are going to come up. And so I went to my bookshelf. And so I'm just going to take a few. There's a few that you mentioned in yours. Like you mentioned SBA, the reawakening of the African mind. I don't know if you mentioned Naeem Akbar, but the papers in Africa, okay, that I think will be really good. I was raising a black boy, so I have all three volumes of counter into conspiracy to destroy black boys, as well as developing positive self image and discipline. That's jawanza Kunju Fu. And then there's others that I just like recommend for folks who are watching, if you want to look at and have like more a reference point. Point for when, when we say black centered, or ways approaches that do not pathologize black people, particularly for those dealing with like youth development. So I'm just gonna mention two more visions for black men, because, again, I'm not a black man, but I was raising one. This one is just a good one. In general, I feel like the psychopathic racial personality, yeah, and then awakening the natural genius of black children and I had, and largely because those for me, anyway, because a lot of my work in nonprofit and also being a parent, focus on youth development and like so if a person is sitting in their mind and they're thinking, if I don't reference Skinner, if I don't reference for Freud, where do I go? I just want, you know, give folks a frame of reference. There's there's folks out there for you to go to Andrew Billings. I mean, there's plenty. Of folks for folks to go to, so put that out there. I want to ask you, I want to go back to the morning hand report again, because I feel like it. It has so it continues to reverberate throughout history. What are some of the policies that you yourself can directly trace back to that report, to that to that mindset of black pathology. Are there some policies that have come up that you're like, this is connected to something that was written way back when?
I mean, so I would say, you know, examples of policies that you could trace back to that. I mean, you could say, you know, a lot of the what emerges during the Clinton administration, of the work requirements for welfare, for instance, because when you look at the Moynihan Report and you see, you know, again, that kind of quote of the tangle of fan black families entangled with pathology. You also see, you know black men rendered in that report, as you know, not having the appropriate instincts of a patriarch of a family and and so a part of what it a part of what the report then, kind of says, is that without that inherent patriarchal instinct, then you don't have like, the discipline and the like that the family's supposed to have, that it's pivotal for survival, you know, in the world. And so when you get, you know, Clinton, when he's trying to essentially move the Democratic Party to the right, in order to get the folks who were resentful of the progress of the civil rights movement, this whole piece of in order for folks to and using that same trope of like, you know, black folks are lazy, particularly the welfare queen stereotype, right? This notion of, you know, black women, you know, just being, you know, manipulative and lazy and working the system and wanting the state to take care of them, as opposed to going out and working Clinton's. You know, work as a requirement for welfare. I think you can tie directly into the logics that come out of the morning hand report. And I think, and I think that's and I think that's important, because unfortunately, I don't know that there was as robust a critique of the morning hand report in the sense of the policies that it produced, I think there were certainly academic critiques of the morning hand report that were that were pretty scathing, but in terms on the policy level, many of the policies that eventually the Democrats took up, like the work requirements for welfare, are an example that on a policy level, that core logic of the Moynihan Report remained.
No, I, I definitely, I definitely did not see critique in general on like the mainstream, and I had to go to very specific policy. I might even have it Oh, the color of social policy, probably a book that really, really helped to identify and make like, distinct connections between the Moynihan Report and like specific policies. But it should, but I just see there are times where, where things, ideas or concepts will come up and it's like, Oh, wow. This, you know, morning hand report coming back up, um, and the way in which, not even just the way it acts out in policies, but just even in just like popular culture. Or or books and writers that are celebrated, and especially folks who decide that they're going to take an anthro, be an anthropologist and like, take this voyeuristic approach to being in the hood for a few months to see what it's like. It's like they're studying some exotic animal.
That's right with that.
I One of the quotes that you pull. You pulled a quote from Douglas Davidson that he made in 1970 his 1970 article, The Furious passage of the black graduate student. And the quote says, social scientists continue to write many volumes discussing the Social Pathology of the black community. Many of these liberal academic colonizers have felt that they were making a contribution to the black community by informing white American, white America, of the plight of Black people. These white liberal colonizers do gooders. Do gooder volumes have the actual effect of reinforcing the negative beliefs, attitudes and practices held by the dominant racist white society? Can you talk more about the connection between social scientists, their research and the nonprofit sector?
Absolutely so. So much. So one of the things that I think, you know, America is generally an anti intellectual society, and one of the products of that is, there's there. There is not enough attention paid to the way that the intellectual architecture of a industry or an institution play a pivotal role in how it operates. So there are a bunch of things that we just kind of think are natural that are really a part of the intellectual architecture. So for example, using kind of a different field as an example, when you think about the law, for instance, right, the law is based very much on, you know Greek and Roman notions of justice, right? And so you know the jury trial and innocent until proven guilty, you know, like these. And then, if you think about, like a lot of the Latin and Greek terms that he used to describe certain functions within the law, the intellectual architecture of that is fundamentally Greek and Roman, right? And so there's certain things that we just think are natural, things, like democracy is just a natural thing when, in fact it comes from a particular body of work. The reason that's important is because a lot of the intellectual architecture of many of the institutions in our society go unchallenged. And they go unchallenged because in an anti intellectual society, many people don't think to question that. They don't even have, in many, in many respects, the wherewithal to even know that that's a thing. So in the nonprofit sector, much of the intellectual architecture of institutions in the nonprofit sector operate on an intellectual architecture that is based in the social sciences, science, sciences and the orthodoxies produce from these fields of social science. And so when we think about, for instance, the way in which the nonprofit sector traffics in the notion of black pathology. Well, you trace it to its intellectual architecture, and it makes perfect sense as to why they traffic in that when you think about the approaches to human service, right? And you think about the methods that they use, well, you all you got to do is look at the intellectual architecture, and you can get a sense of the universe, of the kinds of things that they would put forward, right? And so the white supremacy that's endemic in the traditional social sciences, and a lot of people probably don't remember, I mean, there was a period of time where there were certain arguments in the intellectual mainstream that were arguments that were seen as legitimate. So whether it's, you know, and I'm sure you lifted up Akbar's papers in African psychology, where he talks about William Shockley, right, and his perspective that black people were inherently intellectually inferior, right? And so that that those that was a position that in certain realms, in the intellectual community, were seen as legitimate positions to take, right? And so even though that may not be the case right now, much of the architecture, the intellectual architecture of these institutions, are based off of an academic environment from which there was a legitimate perspective the whole or whether we look at the bell curve right the 1990s and you see how that was a, you know, scientific study and text that concluded in this notion of the intellectual inferiority of black people. So, so I think it's important that connection between the social scientists and. Sciences and the nonprofit sector, because once you start peeling back some of the deficiencies in the nonprofit sector and how it perpetuates white supremacy, you can point back to the social sciences and the literature that was mainstream in the social sciences, and you get many of the problems that we're discussing today about how, and particularly with black pathology is written. It's written throughout the social sciences since they emerged as legitimate institutions. And you know, so we see black pathology as a notion makes sense, just given what it's what it's all based on,
no that absolutely makes sense. And it also makes me think of, when you talk about the intellectual architecture, if we would be able to just reverse engineer some of the policies, and even if you didn't know if you had, if a person had a general concept of some of these different thought, thought pockets, right? If we reverse engineered, I wonder some of the policies, then go back to the programs, or the programs, and then go back to the policy, policies connected to it, we could see what they're thinking is like by the design, by how this is designed, I can kind of see how what they're thinking. I know in social work, one of the things that that I try to connect things to frequently, because my training is in social work, is connecting it to value systems, like American like, whether it's American exceptional, exceptionalism or Protestant work ethic. Like, what is it that we are saying, that we are like valuing in this process? And I think that what you said is so on point. I think my struggle, even with that, though sometimes is the lack of rigor. When I go back to some of the white canon, if you will, of social scientists behind how they come up with their theories that are then perpetuated, taught and taught as law, and not enough done to disprove them. And that part, I don't understand that as a social sciences, it could be that that that small bit of rigor in something that has the word science connected to it, and it still perpetuates and is taught, but I'm wondering if it's just connected to that's just part of the intellectual architecture that we don't really have to prove this, because everybody knows that this is true. Yeah,
I think it's a part of the arrogance that white supremacy breeds and white folks in their institutions, and what I mean, like I was talking about earlier, you know, when you think about the fact that Western society is predicated off of all these anti African notions that are embedded in the kind of collective consciousness of the West, and then you and then these institutions emerge with that kind of baked in. A part of it is, you know, there are ways in which and so science is political in many respects, right? Because science, those from whom can be characterized as the most scientific are those that will the most power institutionally and and so what you see is, you know, white folks who are able to politically control the the realm of thinking in ways that benefit themselves politically. And I think there and so the politics of inquiry and science, I think, is something that, once you dig into that. So for instance, like Martin Burnell, his book Black Athena, right? So he was a white man who, in the late, late 80s, wrote a book essentially saying a lot of what African scholars had said for decades, right? But it was kind of a mainstream writing of a white person who was and one of the things that he writes in there, he talks about the sociology of knowledge. And I argue, and I think Asa Hilliard, not in the in the book that you just had, but this the other book, The maroon and within us, you have the maroon within us. That's right. And that book he taught, he mentions this, and a part of what he says is that he doesn't think that the biggest place of animosity from the white mainstream was necessarily the argument about Africans having science and knowledge. It was like the biggest piece was this critique of the sociology of knowledge, where his point was. So if we establish that the folks who are leading the institutions that are producing science are producing it from a perspective of white supremacy, then that becomes a way to invalidate the sciences as they currently exist, which is, which is, again, kind of a threat to many of the institutions that exist currently that that kind of are in the realm of social science that you that you describe, and so I think the reason that is such a low amount of rigor is because they're not used to ever having to actually justify the legitimacy of their perspective, and in A forum where they're actually subject to real, genuine criticism, right? And I think this was aces asa hilliards point in the maroon with Venice, where he was saying that Bernal was actually in the mainstream, questioning them in ways that they you, that they usually don't allow people to question, right? And so that's why this stuff is so it lacks rigor in many regards, because they just never put themselves in a situation where legitimate criticism is levied at them in ways that they actually have to respond to.
No That definitely makes sense for those who are wondering about that book. It's his first and last name is spelled this way, and this is the title, because some people email me later. Could you send me a bibliography? I'm not gonna type of bibliography. You can rewind, you can rewatch it, but I'm not gonna type up one. Um, so in in that paper that you wrote, you identify that there's three major dynamics that are prevalent in the human social service sector in Baltimore that perpetuate notions of white supremacy and black inferiority. Would you name those three major dynamics.
So you talking about, in the beginning, where I talk about the sector, are you talking about the practices that make something like methodology
sector?
So the three are the notion of inherent black pathology, right? So many of the programs in the sector are structured from the position of black pathology. Two is the marginalization of bodies of thought that are produced by folks of color, particularly people of African descent, autonomous bodies of knowledge that aren't relied on the mainstream. And so there's a marginalization of those methodologies that aren't fundamentally based on the mainstream. And then third is that many of the institutions that are tasked with with serving our community are not led by folks who are representative of the communities that they serve. So those are the kind of three aspects that we that we say, you know, are the cornerstones of what makes the even social service sector white supremacists in Baltimore, and I imagine that be the case around the country.
I think those are so, so key and so critical. And there could be enough time like I feel like spent on any one of those. And I think one of the ones that I particularly get very interested in, I get very interested in methodologies that are used, and particularly because I'm seeing what folks are doing, and it's like, why are you still doing this? It's not working. I think that's part of my frustration. Why is there this continual investment in methods that are not working? And not only is there a continued investment in methods that are not working, I feel like there is back in work that is done around program evaluation and monitoring to work to could you support? What can you support? This, this concept, this idea, this program that I've already designed, I've already put money in it, and then after it doesn't work, I need you to monitor it and tell me how it did work. Why is there investment in something that is not working.
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's two things. One, it's, it is the inability. And like, I like, I've been saying the inability just based on the arrogance that white supremacy breeds for a person for whom is taught that their methods are supreme and that only methods within the worldview that they're based in are legitimate. I think that they're legitimately some people that just have no concept of their methodologies not working, that it's that it's got to be something you're doing wrong, as opposed to the method the worldview is problematic and. And it makes sense for someone to think that, because if all the people who run the institutions that are in charge are people that share a general intellectual worldview, then it makes sense for someone to think like, yeah, it can't be that the worldview is problematic, because all these people that are leaders are the ones that hold the same worldview. So that's one. And then I think secondly, it's a matter of resources like these. These institutions make money off of the notion that they are legitimate, so any semblance of a credible threat to their legitimacy is matched within lack a diminishing in their ability to access resources that the basis of how a lot of these folks make a living, and how they kind of build institutions to replicate themselves. So I think those are the two things why it keeps happening over and over and over again. And I would argue it's a big reason why there aren't very many publications that have been produced that are making this line of argumentation because there's so much control, right? They don't want anybody to question their legitimacy, because there are lots of people, and, you know, Baltimore, saturated with with philanthropy and nonprofits, there's so many people who, and I've actually had people talk to me, people within the sector, mostly black folks, but even some white people within the sector who have talked to me and said that a big part of what they get, in reaction to what we say is from white people, is that they what they get is, Well, what about my job, right, right. What about, what about, what about my position, like this, like, what do I do? Does this mean I don't exist? And answer that question is yes or no. You know, yes or no. Well,
isn't that supposed to be the goal? Like, I'm not if I am here to serve the community, community is not here to serve me. In that regard, they're not here to hold up my keep my salary in place. Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not super surprised. Honestly, I'm not super surprised. I'm gonna go over to the chat. I always get behind in the chat. Someone said, exactly, I'm not sure what point that came up to keep us oppressed. Someone said millions. Another one said, right, another comment say, you're cracking the code. And then one that just passed by said something about class, like, how this shows up? Um, I guess within or cross class, you mentioned something just now, and I think that you're kind of answering the question, but I want to provide space for you to answer it more directly. In reading, when Baltimore awakens, I noticed that you didn't have many references from 2000 and beyond. And my question around that is, is that because you just wanted to go to the source of the canon of knowledge, or are people not writing about this contemporarily anymore?
So this is why I like doing one of the reasons why I like doing these interviews, because you notice stuff that I think are important, that people miss, I think are really important. So the so, so I was very intentional with that. And a part of the intention was this, the people who are currently in the mainstream writing, because there are folks who have emerged on some of these questions in the mainstream, a part of what is happening is, is that people sometimes miss the connection between ideas and the institutions that produce them. I see ideas as extensions of enterprises, extensions of people who produce them. I don't see them as separate things, right? Even though they can be separate in terms of how they're discussed, the ideas that are produced are extensions of institutions in the enterprises that produce them. So a lot of the bodies of work that I cite in the piece come from institutions that today, in today's realm, are not considered legitimate institutions. And so for me, as a person who has been trained and socialized into that, into the tradition, for me, it's very important to kind of stake a line in the ground to say that we have to use the bodies of work that come from these formations that today are not considered mainstream. So whether, for instance, it is like, you know, we talked about Akbar and the, you know, the we talked about the Association of Black Psychologists talk about a lot of the work, much of the stuff that's. Happening now on terms of like racial equity, are basically watered down versions of what folks had come up with years ago, right? And part of what I'm seeing happen is there are popular scholars that are essentially taking some of what they said, right, but fitting it in an institutional framework that is palatable to mainstream white institutions. You know what I mean? And I think, I think the solution to our problems rest in building up and building on top of the institutions that current, that existed before they were making these arguments, and creating an ecosystem of institutions that are ours, that we control. And unfortunately, a lot of the scholarship that is produced currently on these questions, many of them are folks who've been absorbed into the mainstream with very few exceptions, right? There are a few, and I, you know, I quote some of them in the text. There's a brother named Tommy curry, who's somebody who, you know, he's very critical of black feminism and mainstream liberal liberal scholarship, but he's somebody who you know is really, in many respects, you know, swimming upstream, you know, any academic universe, and that's just and so. So yes, they're very few exceptions that I think exists today of scholars who are going to rest their intellectual tradition in bias of work that we produced. And I think we have to do the work of encouraging our scholars and thought leaders to be rooted in institutions that are not relying on the mainstream. And that doesn't mean we don't engage them. You know, if you want to go give talks to, you know, the Aspen Institute or go to Harvard and give talk, that's fine, right? But I think we have to demand that our scholars root their into their methodologies and the institutions that belong to us, because we have to make sure that this stuff doesn't get absorbed into the mainstream. And again, as I mentioned, I just think that there are very few scholars today that do that. I think many of them try to fit their stuff into the mainstream. And I just think, you know, so that's why most of the stuff is old stuff that I'm that I'm quoting, because there just isn't a whole lot of that today that exists.
Where do you see folks like Cornell West, Melissa Harris, Perry Michael, Eric Dyson, Mark Lamont Hill, candy like where do you see those folks fitting into this, into this realm of producing intellectual architect, architecture
all the folks you name are folks that I think and Mark, I'm a section of Mark Lamont Hill for a second. All the folks that you because he's just a lot younger, him and kendi do them separately. All the folks that you named are people for whom I think, at times, have produced important work. But I would argue that what I was just talking about, they're exactly the problem. What I mean by that is these are folks from whom, as they have emerged as thought leaders, are squarely situated in white institutional formations, and their ability to be viable is based on their ability to cite and to reference mainstream liberal academic scholarship. And again, I don't make this point to say that we should not engage like non black authors, scholars, ideas. I think we should certainly engage ideas outside of our framework. But part of what happens is folks whose fundamental framework and their fundamental frame of reference is our bodies of work that are autonomous and independent are marginalized from an institutional perspective, such that in order to become a Dyson or a corner West, or a bell hooks, or whomever like, in order to be those people, you have to find this kind of cannon to be central. And what it does is that it weeds out, then it weeds out the people for whom, who are who are going to make Akbar Central, right? It weeds out the people who are going to make Francis cress Well, since central like, it weeds them out. And the outcome of that is that then these scholars are able to take up a lot of space in the public mainstream and then get used against, you know, Pan Africanist and black nationalist, etc, in ways that then undermine the importance of black autonomy, right? So what? And it's interesting because, you know, I've been at events with Cornell West, with Michael Eric Dyson. Would just use those two as an example, where they will in conversation, say, Black Nationalism is important, black self determination is important. Mm. But in terms of a lot of their published work, much of their published work, their hardest critiques among Black people are black nationals, and one of the places where they are they talk the least is the importance of black self determination and building independent black institutions. And they talk a lot about challenging power and resisting power, right, which is important, but a lot of times resisting power. What that means is that we must resist power in white institutional formations where we're essentially giving away power to folks for whom they mean well, but when it comes to our autonomy, these are folks that have historically shown a hostility to our own kind of autonomy. And so I think, and I've never seen them, so again, I've seen them challenged on this, and they relent, right? So, like, is it, I don't think this is a thing where they'd argue with me about the mechanics of what I'm describing. I think if they were kind of in a controlled setting, I think they would say this is the way that I knew to do this, like I wanted to get a voice, and doing it this way was the way that I could do it. I don't think that they would argue that the perspective that I'm providing is illegitimate. I sectioned Mark lemon Hill and candy because they're younger. And I think, I think Mark is a little bit less of what I'm describing than candy, and I don't know I'm saying if I don't know them, but, but I think a part of again, the limitation is that when you read their stuff again, the notion of building autonomous institutions, the importance of having black methodology as the basis of our practice. This is not stuff you're going to find in their work, probably, which is, I think, how they're able to get published,
right? I find with Candy's work, I find, in my personal opinion, it seemed like he's doing too much explaining to white people. I feel like, I feel like he's very much in his writing scenes, overly aware of the white gaze and is writing to them, and I know that there's a space of people who are kind of like the Negro whisperers, where they are explaining racism in a way that doesn't upset white people too much. And I get that as a as a revenue generating source. I totally get that. I I do want more speakers or writers to one talk about black self determination, nation building. And I also just want spacious spaces of general communication to speak outside of the white gaze, to just like I am not going to explain, like I might explain something to another black person, but I am not here to explain to anybody else outside of that space. But I think that one of the things I find I just with him in particular. I don't know why he stands out in my maybe because I just recently read something of his popular right now, right? Exactly, right. It's just like, Wow. This is, this is like, how not to be racist, one on one. This is not, this book was not written for me. You know what I mean. So I do pay attention to like writers and things who are written for me. Ooh, we're getting down to the hour. Okay. Could you you talk in your paper a bit about thread and the baraka school? Could you talk a bit about how those two particular Baltimore institutions are emblematic of this notion of black pathology.
So Baraka school, so a part of why I used it when I when I went and when I was writing this, I made it a point to re watch the documentary because I had seen it when it first came around, when it first came out, and I hadn't seen it in years. So last July, when I was when I was writing, I made it a point to take a night to watch the documentary again. And I remember watching it again and and feeling like, wow, this is a lot worse than I remembered it when I first saw which I think said a lot even about my own evolution and consciousness. And I think a lot of people now look back and would say that it was, you know, the documentary itself was problematic in ways that they wouldn't have said before. But in terms of the barakah school, the notion that you take black kids out of East Baltimore, the notion that you would take them to Africa, that would make sense. But many of the staff, and when you look at the documentary, and it's my understanding that over time, this changed, but many of the staff, I. Um, who were the ones tasked with teaching these young boys were kind of what you would call your typical Teach for America, you know, AmeriCorps type, people from whom are not immersed in or rigorously trained in the history and culture of people of African descent, so the and so. And a part of the logic of the program was, we're going to take them out of their pathological neighborhoods, right? Because the neighborhoods are what's wrong. And in fact, in the paper, I quote, I forget the exact quote, but there's a place where the people who made the documentary are basically saying they're in drug infested, crime infested communities, and if we take them out and take them out of it, then they'll be able to overcome the, you know, essentially, the pathology of the neighborhoods, and put them in a which assumes that the problem is the people in the environment and Not the systems that produce the environment and don't see the strengths that come from folks within the environment who, in spite of the conditions, are able to hammer out some things, and people who are able to overcome so that's kind of the kind of, one of the primary logics of the barakah school, what makes it problematic, and again, the school itself, the people who are teaching them are not people that demonstrate any expertise on black kids. They're in Africa. You don't really see the infusion of the cultural technologies of African people as a part of the educational experience. So that's the barakah school. And then thread, you know, if you read their website, a lot of it is about kids building relationships with people that are not like them. And so many respects you get, like Hopkins students or, you know, people from whom don't come from, the kinds of communities that a lot of the young people they serve come from, as kind of the portal outside of their so called pathological, you know, neighborhoods, communities, and so the idea that merely just being in proximity to somebody who lives a different life is going to do something to improve the lives of these young people. That's part of the logic of the white saviorism, right? This idea that merely just them being around me, inherently, it's going to do something for these young people. And so I think so those are ways those two programs are examples of white supremacy in the sector. And again, these are both programs that I would argue many of the folks who random probably mean well like these aren't people that I think can't have any particular animus towards black people. It's just that when you are socialized in a society where notions of black pathology are ubiquitous, right, that they're kind of ever present, it may then it's rational to believe that if they just are in a different environment that isn't their own, it'll help them.
Do you feel like that? That whole concept, like, if they're if they're around me, or if they're closer to me, then there'll be better. Is that, like, a residual effect of, like integration, like the thoughts around integration, and what is the intellectual architecture behind integration? Like, where, where is the, where's the, I'm curious about the source of that. Um, there was, I was on a panel, I think it was probably two years ago now, it was women of color, in women of color and arts administrator or something, and it was talking about diversity. And I think it was a bit alarming at the time for for folks there, for me to say I am not for diversity for the sake of diversity. Sometimes I just want to be around black people. Sometimes I just specifically want to be around black women. I don't want to just be I don't want it just for the sake of it. And I think sometimes they get lost. That gets like, so lost Do you? Can you identify the connection, or what is the intellectual architecture, as you call it, to this notion of integration? And, yeah, yeah,
I think we look at the assault on African people as a part of the project of European domination of the world, a part of that assault on our sense of people was the attempt to wipe out the any semblance of traditional African culture and to deem it As savagery, to deem it as uncivilized. And so once that has successfully been marked on African people, then when you think about black folks trying to overcome enslavement and oppression, what happens is the pathway to our liberation comes through those who have civilization and. And so the closer in proximity folks can get to what is being civilized, especially if all you've been taught is that African people come from a savage culture. Then again, it's rational to say I need to go to the I need to, you know, like one of the things that I remember Dubois writing, I forget which text exactly it was, but DuBois was essentially mocking the faculty at Wilberforce, because he taught at Wilberforce for a while. He was mocking the faculty at Wilberforce because they would, in meetings, would be speaking Latin. This is a period of time where, like, if you were an educated person, if you would get a PhD, you had to speak Latin. And and so he was like, it's just a room full of black people speaking Latin to each other for the purpose of wanting to feel like, you know, we're educated, we're smart, we're, you know, I mean, and it's part of, you know, one of the reasons why he was dissatisfied and left, because he was like, This is stupid. Why we, you know, and I think, but I think, to your point, like we think about integration, it is, you know, these are people who are taught that, who were taught that, yeah, the further culturally you can create distance between yourself and Africa and black people, the more civilized you are. And I think that is something that runs through, you know, the kind of Western civilization, and why it makes sense to people, this notion of, if I just bring them around me, they'll be better, because my culture is the, as in a white person's culture is the, is the pathway to civilization, right?
No, you're absolutely right. And it makes total sense that proximity to whiteness would be, would be the way to become a better a better human being. Man, I really wanted to get into the super predator, and how that's been weaponized doesn't look like we'll have time for that, but I do want to ask you about what you're up to next. How can people stay engaged with you, follow you? And I also wanted to ask you I saw online, I think it's called Tim book two school or something, Tim Book Two Institute, tell us about that.
So we, you know, kind of from the conversations that emerged from the black paper. You know, we wanted to essentially try to create an institute, try to institutionalize, at least here in Baltimore, a place for people to go through rigorous training on some of the bodies of knowledge that I've described. So this summer and last summer. So last summer was our first summer doing it. It was me and the sister, Shawna Murray Brown, I did a track on Africa so that approaches to advocacy. Hers is around mental health, like racial equity and mental health and wellness and so. So this summer, we're doing it virtually. You know, same tracks. The ultimate goal is to expand it to kind of have different bodies of knowledge using the or different tracks, using the bodies of knowledge that we, you know, talked about as being marginalized from the mainstream and institutionalizing a place really for the purposes of professional development and whatever other people, anything you know, folks want to use it for, but to provide a kind of professional development opportunity for people to learn from folks who have a rigorous knowledge in that body of knowledge, and so we're going to look to expand that. So we're looking to make this like an every summer thing, where people can have that opportunity. We want to expand it beyond just Shauna and I, and we want to ensure that it's like it's rigorous knowledge, because I think that's one of the things that, just like anything else, you have bad versions of everything. Yeah, I mean, and so there's certainly, you know, less rigorous versus advising bodies of knowledge that we're talking about. So we want to ensure that we have just a place to go to institutionalize these rigorous versions of these bodies of knowledge for people to actually use in their fields of work. And so that really emerges from kind of the call we've put out in the black paper in terms of shifting thought leadership. We want to use this as a place to institutionalize the cultivation of kind of an alternative body of knowledge and how people can use it. So we're looking to do that, and that's, you know, that's going to be a several, multi year project, hopefully we can make it something that can live at a university. You know, we've been talking to folks at B Triple C, and, you know, we want to talk to folks at other universities, so that eventually it becomes something that can live at a university autonomously, as a place where people, not only just like professionals, can kind of pay to get that kind of PD, but that it can become something students. So you think about like nonprofit management programs, like, we're hoping this is something that can supplant those kinds of programs, so that this becomes. The way that professionals are trained,
no, that would be, listen, that would be phenomenal. So I know that people who watch, if they're asking about books, they definitely would want to know about that when is the next session that opens up. And how can people who want to have some, some sort of that, some of that training, sign up. So
unfortunately, we're at the fourth week. So I saw my track is 11 to one on Saturdays and so forth. So this is the fourth Saturday. So next week is the last week. So so the next round will be next summer, when we do it and so, so, yeah, we'll make sure that we promote it. I'll let you know so you can tell your listeners about it. So, yeah, we'll make that we'll make that information available. Yeah,
um, I also saw that you used to do a podcast. Is that back up? Oh,
so, okay, so we have a podcast in search of black power. Our director of research, Lawrence Graham pre heads that up. And I really encourage your listeners to check that out. Oh, what
is it called? That wasn't even the one I was talking about. In search of black power. In search
of black power, you can get it on Spotify apple in search of Black Power. He's worked really hard on that, and I think your listeners would really love the content that's been produced on there. So in search of Black Power, okay, I was doing a podcast that was an update on our legislative work streets of the State House. I think it's the one you're talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was just keeping people up to date on our work during session. Because normally what we would do is we would, I would write legislative updates, and we send them out, and some of the feedback we got is some people like, I want to read all that. I just want to be able to listen. So we just did a podcast so that people can listen to the legislative updates, kind of as they were happening.
Will you guys? Will you do another legislative report card or legislative report for 2020,
we may be one for 2022, so we want to do them on because the thing because people have access to do them for like local for like city council and mayor, yeah. The thing about City Council is city council people don't have a lot of power legislatively, okay, like Baltimore is a strong mayor system, so there isn't, there isn't a whole lot to really delve into that could be really objective analysis. That's one of the things we kind of prided ourselves in the report card, which is we hired a third person to take our criteria and then look at the records, okay, but for city council, so, so we're looking at the state level, potentially, for 2022 it costs money to do it, so we're looking at just race, so we'll know for sure, probably by the end or by the beginning of 2022 we'll know if we, you know, we have the resources to do that for the state legislature. Okay,
and how can people follow you or keep in contact with you?
So you can get us at lbs baltimore.com which is our website, and lbs Baltimore on all your relevant social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
Listen the people. Okay. Ernest came on and said, suggest some books, please. You must have just got here. Here's a book. We recently talked about, the moon maroon within us. I mentioned this briefly, but we didn't really talk about it the color of policy. I hadn't read that. I'm gonna check that out this one and there's another. I got another policy book that that I found helpful, awakening, awakening the natural genius of black children. Amos Wilson, this is just for you. Ernest, I just brought this one up because I really like this book, the psychopathic racial personality and other essays, visions for black men. Naeem Akbar,
developing positive self images and discipline in black children. It's so funny. I saw my son reading this. He's 18 now, several years ago, and I was like, why are you reading that book? He was like, I want to see what you're trying to do to me, countering the conspiracy to destroy black boys. Volume Two. Yes, Akbar papers in African psychology and SBA the reawakening of the African mind, African mind, those are some of the ones we mentioned in this talk. Thank I'm glad that you approved. Ernie said, wow, put up a whole bunch of black fists. Someone asked Michelle Stewart said, can he put his contact information of the black paper and his summer program mentioned? So the summer program, Michelle, as I understand it, it's about to wrap up, but there's another summer one. So where would Michelle go, for example, if she wanted to see when the next one comes out, like, Where will you post the next one? It'll
be posted on all our social media. So yeah, so when we start advertising for, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our website, our website, also, we'll post all of our stuff to all that, okay? And in our email list, if you go to our website, you can join our email list. And we send out periodically, we send out communications about all the stuff we're doing. Okay,
so if you go to Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle website, you'll be able to see it that see it there. Join the mailing list. Michelle, I'm putting in the when Baltimore awakens. PDF in there, if you click on that, it'll take you to the page and you can see the full document. The section that we were looking at Michelle is, I think it's chapter two, black pathology. And then chapter three is, I believe, methodology. I don't know if you call a previous show where we talked about white supremacy and nonprofit sector, but we also explored that, and that's a earlier chapter. I think that was like the first section in there. Love, you're so awesome. I feel like I know you. I feel like we're brothers and sisters.
So I want to, I really want to say, I really appreciate these interviews. I really like doing, I think part of, a part of, like we talked about a little bit off air last time, a part of why I like doing these interviews is, unfortunately, there aren't enough people that know and like the questions to ask, you know, and it'll take seriously, like our intellectual tradition and so you know, anytime, anytime you need me on, just let me know. Oh
my gosh, I'm gonna Soho you to it. This is recording. I'm gonna Soho you to it. Thank you so much. I really super do appreciate it. Um, I appreciate you also having having content out there for me to be able to, like, read and engage. Sometimes I'll have people on and I'll ask them outside of their knowledge base for articles or or information. And people don't always necessarily have that. I didn't necessarily have to ask you for that, because it was just like, already ready, ready, readily available. And that definitely helps, helps my process in terms of or people will recommend people. And it's like, okay, like, what? Why should I talk to this person help me out here? Which reminds me, there's someone who wrote a book recently that I need to hurry up and read their book, because I'm going to have them on the show next week, but I enjoy it, so thank you again. Thank you everyone for watching, for answering the questions if you are watching the replay, thank you for being there to watch the replay. This has been the counter narrative show. Today's topic was black pathology and the nonprofit sector. Have an awesome night. Hey, need
to know everything, who in the what in the where I need everything. Trust me, I hear what you're saying, but I like this. Know what you're telling me. I'm curious. George, I happen to pause for five and a horse. I'm ready for war. I'm coming for froze to turn to a ghost. I need to know everything you.