“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!                                    who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, or death itself                                   in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all                                    those motives whose power supported him … [through] his trial, and                                inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with                              more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”

--Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson would go on to ruminate, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever ….”  Deep inside, at the core of my being, I am still that same boy my maternal grandmother saw when she exclaimed, “I always knew you would be different.”  When I earned that F in my 10^th grade English class because I refused to participate in a poetry writing exercise, I had no way of knowing it would prove to be a pivotal moment in my development.  I just remember being embarrassed when my teacher remarked, “You will never amount to anything.” 

No one could have convinced me then, that I would earn a B. A. in English and African Studies, an M. A. in Creative Writing or that I would become a respected published poet. Now, I am retiring after a 50-year career as a Performance Poet/Griot disguised as a college professor—the last 33 years at Kent State University.  I had the honor and privilege to have been the only Institute for African American Affairs (IAAA) student to serve as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, a Faculty Member and finally as the Chair of KSU’s Department of Africana (formerly Pan-African) Studies.

I began this piece with the quotes from Thomas Jefferson because he knew the specter of race would always be the proverbial elephant in the room.  At KSU, for me, there was Oscar Ritchie Hall—home to the Department of Africana Studies, the Center of Pan-African Culture, the African Community Theatre and the Uumbaji Gallery, and there was the university-at-large.  I was content to function in, and to operate out of the Ritchie Hall village.  BUS and the original IAAA staff created an oasis in the center of a predominantly white institutional desert.

Although I managed to carve out an extraordinary career, I spent most of it trying to teach mostly Caucasian administrators and professors how to grasp Black life realities they had no genuine interest in learning.  I remember once attempting to explain to former KSU President Beverly Warren why, “I spent most of my career trying not to get too close” to people like her.   Most white people have not devoted much time to considering what it must be like to be a black person living in this predominantly white society.  Her facial expression did not reveal if she understood or not.  Becoming Chair of the Department forced me out of my comfort zone and into those spaces where the Department’s very existence was generally misunderstood and always under threat.

I have spent the last 50 years teaching the academic discipline of Black Studies.  Most of my students—black, white and otherwise—responded well. Even skeptical students rarely withdrew from my classes.  It was several of my white students that first introduced me to the idea of “white privilege.”  It let me know that given the truth, they can overcome feelings of guilt and shame; they will acknowledge and reject the evils and the consequences of white supremacy they have been forced to inherit.

I overstand clearly why the MAGA/SB1 forces have declared war on Black Studies, on Women’s Studies, on Latin American Studies, on Native American Studies, on LGBTQ+ Studies, and on what they absolutely fear—those dreaded DEI program initiatives.  The popularity of what they call “Area Studies” Programs allowed me to see and to know the assault on higher education was never really about white students feeling guilty.  

The culture war is about preventing young people from developing critical thinking skills, from rejecting white privilege and from embracing not only this nation’s true diversity but accepting the true human diversity of the world.  In racial terms, so-called white people have always been the true minority on the planet and the MAGA world is terrified that this reality is becoming the reality of the United States.

I will never forget how a former white colleague pointed out that white people were deathly afraid of each other; something I witnessed growing up and watching what my Aunt Ludella called “shoot’em up” Wild West movies on TV.  “Let’s get a rope!” was a recurring refrain.  White men lynching other white men in the name of “law and order” was a common practice.  It is evident the MAGA culture war has been built on and is sustained by that very real  sense of fear.  The Donald is not responsible for creating it, but his diabolical genius is grounded in his ability to tap into it.

The history of African people in the United States is rife with stories of betrayal, being brutalized, denied and dismissed by the true Native Americans—the European settlers and their descendants.  In Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, Andrew Hacker argues, “Since Europeans first embarked on explorations, they have been bemused by the ‘savages’ they encountered in new lands.  In almost all cases, these ‘primitive peoples’ were seen as inferior to those who ‘discovered’ them…. the presumption was that these natives could never attain to a stage where they might emulate European achievements”

He goes on to offer this revealing observation, “Indeed, there is reason to believe that most white Americans still share Thomas Jefferson’s belief that in terms of evolution and genetics theirs is the most developed race.”  For the most part, this attitude is assumed and unspoken, yet it defines America’s perceptions of its collective self.  Donald Trump’s political ascendancy has made it fashionable to once again proudly proclaim racist, misogynistic, homophobic and white Christian nationalist beliefs out loud.

In my essay, “When Is Now!” (A Black Voice in the Wilderness, 2024), I wrote, “The election of Barack Obama did not signal a ‘post-racial’ phase in America, although my experiences performing before predominantly white audiences as a guest artist with the Cavani String Quartet did allow me to meet genuinely thoughtful and decent white Americans that do see.  My poetry provided a glimpse inside a world that was unfamiliar to them.”  Donald Trump’s emergence is forcing the “I am not a racist” Americans to “do something” to confront the MAGA vision of making America “white and right” once again.

As a student, I came to embrace the philosophy of Pan-African Cultural Nationalism.  The Marcus Garvey/Malcolm X African vision made sense to me then and continues to make sense to me now.  Pan-African Studies was literal and real.  On a very personal level, I heard Africa calling my name.  I had to go to Africa to either confirm the validity of what I was learning or to give in to the madness of becoming the figment of the white man’s sick imagination.

How mainstream Americans see black people provides a window into how they prefer to see themselves.  As both a student and a Professor of Black Studies, I have developed a critical understanding of the Psychology of Whiteness that has infected this society and the world.  Europeans and peoples of European descent have literally terrorized the planet into submission in the name of civilizing the various peoples of color they determined to be “savages.”  It is time to lay bare the true nature of the secret fears and inner desires that drive Western societies.

As a student, I remember my father saying, “Take that black shit back to Ohio boy!  You got to get your foot in the door!”  Even then, I knew he did not reject the knowledge I was discovering because it also corroborated his reality as a black man living in America. He just believed that openly embracing my blackness would make me unfit to survive in the “white man’s world.”  He genuinely thought that I had lost my “natural mind” for real when I threw away our “slave name.”

My life-journey has been guided by what I learned and by the wisdom I came to trust as an IAAA student back in the day.  I sincerely believe that history does not repeat itself.  The ever-spiraling forward movement of history can only pass by those of us left standing on the sidelines because we failed to seize our historical moment when it presented itself.  As peoples of African descent, we are struggling to know our true identity on both sides of the Atlantic.  We must understand that we cannot resolve all of our historically created issues in one life time.

Ayi Kwei Armah’s, 2000 Seasons, speaks to the prophecy that African people would descend 2000 seasons because we turned our backs on “the way” of the ancestors—1000 seasons hurtling down into and through the depths of slavery, and 1000 seasons crawling maimed from it.  His novel helped me to wrap my mind around the implications of Chief Fela Sowande posing this fundamental question, “What kind of seeds did our ancestors sow such that we reaped being scattered and enslaved?”

I truly believe we are now in those 1000 seasons crawling maimed from slavery, Jim Crow racial segregation that was always separate but never equal, and European colonial policies.  This abiding belief sustains my hope.  Each generation, then, has a role to play in this protracted struggle.  Each generation can only be responsible for taking hold of its historical moment and engaging the work of their life time.

My journey through the wilderness of academia has brought me full-circle.  I have been blessed to have walked a career path that made sense to me and to my sense of Self.  I have been blessed to have seen the fruits of my labors when I hear from former students, when I hear from people that listened during my radio years, when I meet people who have read my work, as well as the people who continue to come to my performances.

Donald Trump and his MAGA world vision is the challenge that all the “good and decent” Americans must defeat if this nation is ever to become the America it professes to be on paper.  My 50-year Rite of Passage as a creative artist and as a Professor at two predominantly white institutions has taught me the truth of W. E. B. DuBois’ clear warning, “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.” 

Donald Trump and his MAGA world vision is also the same challenge Americans of African descent have always had to meet.  It is the same vision that has always endangered our lives.  It is the same vision the “good and decent” Americans have always tolerated so long as their “American Dream” lives remained reasonably secure.  It is the same vision reminding black people that we are still “strangers in a strange but familiar land.”  It is the same vision commanding us to seize the time and to take control of our own destiny on our own terms.

From the House of the Ancestors, my father not only saw me get my “foot in the door,” but I take comfort in knowing that he also saw me enter the room and learn the value of building and being in control of our own house.