the moral anthropology of marcus garvey: in the fullness of

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The Moral Anthropology of Marcus Garvey: In the Fullness of Ourselves Author(s): Maulana Karenga Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2, Marcus Garvey and the UNIA: New Perspectives on Philosophy, Religion, Micro-Studies, Unity, and Practice (Nov., 2008), pp. 166- 193 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40282557 . Accessed: 28/11/2013 16:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Black Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 164.15.128.33 on Thu, 28 Nov 2013 16:26:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The Moral Anthropology of Marcus Garvey: In the Fullness of

The Moral Anthropology of Marcus Garvey: In the Fullness of OurselvesAuthor(s): Maulana KarengaSource: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2, Marcus Garvey and the UNIA: NewPerspectives on Philosophy, Religion, Micro-Studies, Unity, and Practice (Nov., 2008), pp. 166-193Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40282557 .

Accessed: 28/11/2013 16:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of BlackStudies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 164.15.128.33 on Thu, 28 Nov 2013 16:26:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The Moral Anthropology of Marcus Garvey: In the Fullness of

The Moral Anthropology of Marcus Garvey In the Fullness of Ourselves Maulana Karenga California State University, Long Beach

Journal of Black Studies Volume 39 Number 2

November 2008 166-193 © 2008 Sage Publications

10.1 177/0021934708317360 http://jbs.sagepub.com

hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

This article retrieves and articulates key elements in Marcus Garvey's philosophy that point toward a moral anthropology. The author discusses these in the context of ancient and modern concerns for issues of human dignity and human rights and the right and responsibility of the struggle for freedom as a particular African and universal human project. This article is also part of the author's

ongoing effort to expand ethical discourse and discussion in Africana studies by critically engaging new subjects and sources of ethical thought beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the classical African ethics of ancient

Egypt (the Maatian tradition) and ancient Yorubaland (the Ifa tradition). Finally, the article is conceived as a way of putting the author's Kawaida philosophy in renewed conversation with Garvey's philosophy, from which it borrows and on which it builds, in search of new links and lessons to expand and enrich the Kawaida philosophical and practical initiative.

Keywords: moral anthropology; redemption; Kawaida; Afrocentric; ethics; philosophy; liberation

I. Introduction

This is part of an ongoing Kawaida project of recovering and exploring historical and current African texts as a way of dialoging with African cul- ture, asking it questions, and seeking answers from it to the fundamental issues of humankind. Moreover, its thrust is to discover and develop con- ceptual resources that aid in expanding and deepening the Afrocentric ini- tiative to understand self, society, and the world, in particular African ways, and similarly and effectively address modern moral and social issues (Asante, 1998; Karenga, 1997). My intention is to retrieve and articulate key elements in the philosophy of Marcus Garvey that point toward a moral anthropology, that is, concepts of human beings that include assumptions about their nature, purpose, obligations, and destiny. In the process, I discuss

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these in the context of ancient and modern concerns for issues of human dignity and human rights and the right and responsibility of the struggle for freedom as a particular African and universal human project.

Moreover, this article is also a part of my ongoing effort to expand eth- ical discourse and discussion in the discipline of Africana Studies by criti- cally engaging new subjects and sources of ethical thought beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the classical African ethics of ancient Egypt, that is, the Maatian tradition (Karenga, 2006a) and of ancient Yorubaland, that is, the Ifa tradition (Karenga, 1999). Also in this article, I continue initiatives to understand and engage varied forms of Black social thought and various Black social thinkers, such as Marcus Garvey, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune, and others, as important sources of ethical insight and to employ these insights to address moral and social issues (Karenga, 2008). In addition, this article is conceived as a way of putting my philosophy Kawaida in a renewed conversation with Garvey's philosophy, from which it borrows and on which it builds, in search of new links and lessons in a continuous effort to expand and enrich the Kawaida philosophical and practical initiative. Finally, my aim is also to bring Garvey's anthropology and ethics in conversation with both classi- cal and modern African ethical thought, Continental and Diasporan. For Kawaida, as it defines itself, is "an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world" (Karenga, 1997, p. 21). And it is these ethical texts in which Kawaida is self-consciously grounded and out of which it grows and continues to develop.

To pursue this project, I focus on Garvey's (1967) early two- volume work, Philosophy and Opinions, as edited by his coworker and wife Amy Jacques Garvey, although I also recognize his subsequently published works as important resources, most notably his More Philosophy and Opinions (1977) by Amy Jacques Garvey and E. U. Essien-Udom and the multivolume work on Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNI A), edited by Robert Hill (1983-2006, 7 vols.). Moreover, although these works clearly add to variations and devel- opment in Garvey's thinking according to time and context, the core of his conceptual initiatives is found in this original volume, which is varied and wide ranging and the foundation on which his philosophy as a whole is based and developed.

It is important to note here that when we talk of Marcus Garvey's phi- losophy, we are not talking about a critically constructed and coherent sys- tem of thought. Rather, we refer here to his worldview that is not always critical or coherent or even always African centered but is unapologetically

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and unalterably African focused and African committed. This is the mean- ing of his assertion that he cannot be convinced or converted away from his beliefs that are founded in the racial experience of being criminalized as a people and that he is unalterably committed to reversing that process and making being African a virtue or excellence in the world. Thus, he says,

No man can convince me contrary to my belief, because my belief is founded upon a hard and horrible experience, not a personal experience, but a racial experience. The world has made being Black a crime, and I have felt it in common with men who suffer like me and instead of making it a crime, I hope to make it a virtue, (quoted in Martin, 1976, p. 23)

Again, then, there can be no doubt that he is African focused and African com- mitted and that his life's work is, as he defined it, dedicated to the redemption of Africa and African people in the most expansive sense of the word.

In addition to his clear and high-level commitment to African redemp- tion, Garvey is the father of modern Black Nationalism, a productive writer, and a constant lecturer who focuses intensively on the well-being and flour- ishing of African people and humankind and who led the largest movement of African peoples in history. Thus, his writings contain a wealth of essays, observations, remarks, and lectures produced over time that provide a rich resource of ideas from which to extract and articulate his moral anthropol- ogy. Given the nature of his work, he of necessity engages in an ongoing historical conversation as old as philosophy or deep thinking itself, reach- ing from ancient Egypt to modern times (Asante, 2000; Gordon & Gordon, 2006; Harris, 2000; Karenga, 2006a, 2006b).

Garvey, like the early nationalist activist intellectuals before him, is con- cerned with issues of human nature, purpose, destiny, obligations, and dig- nity and the ethical and spiritual measure and meaning of the human person in the world. And like them, his philosophy and opinions contain important insights as well as similar contradictory contentions. This situation rises as a general intellectual vulnerability to error and contradiction in both philo- sophical and ordinary human reasoning. But it is also derived from the eclectic nature of unsystematic philosophy that borrows from various sources without integrating the borrowed concepts into a coherent system of thought. Garvey's philosophy, like many other philosophies created in the midst of activism rather than a focused and sustained philosophical pur- suit, is highly eclectic and thus runs the constant risk of contradictory assumptions and assertions. But this does not negate the insightfulness and enduring relevance of his thought on essential points or as a whole.

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Moreover, in spite of the varied and sometimes contradictory sources and assertions of Garvey' s thought, I try to reread and refigure his con- tentions, extracting liberational and Afrocentric elements in order to syn- thesize and bring forth his best thought. And I try to do this without violating the integrity of his vision or missing or misinterpreting his most useful and insightful ethical ideas. My intention is to develop a critical con- versation around his ethical thought on moral anthropology and demon- strate its continuing relevance in addressing critical enduring and current issues of our time. In doing this, I extensively quote from his texts, not only to establish a basis and boundaries for presenting a faithful rendering of his thought but also to provide others with an opportunity to offer alternative interpretations of his texts, if they are so inclined.

II. Context

The moral anthropology of Marcus Garvey, a central element in his gen- eral philosophy, is rooted in and rises out of four main sources. First, it has roots in the liberational form of Black Christianity reflected in the writings of 19th-century nationalists who advocated a socially conscious religion and sustained action to uplift, liberate, and "vindicate the race," that is, African people. These activist-intellectuals include David Walker (1830), Maria Stewart (1835), Martin Delaney (1852/1968), Bishop Henry McNeil Turner (1971), and others (Bracey, Meier, & Rudwick, 1970; Brotz, 1966). The modalities of struggle for these leaders and thinkers were varied and wide ranging, but at the heart of their project was the concept of the judi- cious joining of the concepts and practices of spiritual salvation, moral grounding, and political liberation. This was expressed as either redemption in its socioreligious form or vindication in the form of political liberation and cultural achievement in defense and development of the race. Garvey enters, then, into a nationalist and race-conscious conversation already established. He embraces the concept and project of redemption as epito- mized in the ultimate goal of a free, redeemed, and powerful Africa in its respected and proper place among the nations of the world. His battle cry is "wake up Ethiopia. Wake up Africa. Let us work towards one glorious end of a free and redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellations of nations" (Garvey, 1967, Vol. 1, p. 4).

Garvey's anthropology, then, evolves in a context of his overarching pro- ject of the redemption of Africa. For him, to redeem Africa is to redeem both the continent and the world African community. The concept of redemption here is polysémie, but means essentially to reclaim, recover, set free, restore,

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and justify. And he places great emphasis on the agency of all Africans and on their obligation to free themselves, recover and reclaim their Divine iden- tity and ancient heritage, realize their inherent potential as world makers, and vindicate and liberate Africa among the nations of the world.

Second, Garvey's philosophy and anthropology are shaped by the dom- inant thought in the context in which he asserts himself, that is, a European- dominated world. His philosophy and anthropology are on the whole in opposition to European domination, but he is influenced by the power they wield and the social Darwinist justifications they use to explain and justify it. Although he does not accept its most racist assertions and argues human equality, some of his criticism of African people's status as oppressed people reflects and uses language and concepts of social Darwinism, that is, concepts of survival of the fittest and related amoral interpretations of the roots and reasons of conquest and domination (Garvey, 1967, Vol. 1, pp. 11, 29; Garvey, 1967, Vol. 2, p. 13).

Perhaps the foremost authority on Garvey, Tony Martin (1976), reasons that it is Garvey's stress on self-reliance that "led him to occasionally speak in the language of Social Darwinism" (p. 32). But there is a species of rea- soning in Garvey's thought that reflects his integration of some of social Darwinism's basic contentions in his philosophy. Although Garvey quali- fies and gives his own interpretation to each of these, it is clear that he lives in an age of colonialism and imperialism and he necessarily seeks a place of power and respect for Africans, Black people, in this process in the inter- est of defense and development as other peoples of the world. He also ques- tions the reasons for the Europeans' hegemony in the world, attributes it to power, organization, knowledge, and propaganda, and decides Africans must deal with each of these in turn to liberate and raise themselves up in the world. And it is in his discussions of the reasons for European domi- nance that he makes his most problematic and contradictory statements.

Garvey's anthropology and indeed his entire thought are also shaped by his own particular experience and reading of the concrete conditions and pan- African possibilities within the framework of these conditions. He had, he notes, traveled extensively and found Black people routinely exploited and oppressed, and yet he had seen in them the possibility of not only lib- erating themselves but also making a significant contribution to the trans- formation of the world for human good. Thus, his anthropology informs and inspires such practice. It is in the context of his critique of the self- deceptive, self-destructive, hegemonic, and unjust character of European civilization that he asserts that Africans are called up to pose an alternative model in the interest of human freedom and flourishing.

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In this regard, he says Africans are "called upon to evolve a new national ideal, based on freedom, human liberty and true democracy" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 25). This, of course, follows the constant challenge of Black nationalist thinkers and thought from Stewart and Delaney to Kawaida and Us (Karenga, 1997) and other Black nationalist thinkers of the 1960s as well as Frantz Fanon (1968) and Malcolm X (1965a, 1965b), from whom they borrowed heavily along with Garvey. The essential contention that is con- sistently within Black progressive thought, nationalist and otherwise, and which appears even in Martin Luther King Jr.'s (1958, p. 63) thought is that given the history of struggle, achievement, suffering, profound spirituality, and ethical sensitivity of African people, they have a special message and model for the world, a new paradigm of how humans ought to relate and assert themselves in the world.

Finally, Garvey's moral anthropology is informed and shaped by his active struggle to pursue and realize the possibilities inherent in an awakened, orga- nized, and self-determining people. His conception of African possibilities is expansive and rooted in the concept of Divine endowment of humans, human equality, and the assumption that "there is nothing in the world common to man that man cannot do" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 1). Thus, in discussing the ques- tion of the liberation of Africa from White domination, he asks "How dare anyone tell us Africa cannot be redeemed" when there are so many African "men and women with blood coursing through their veins?" Furthermore, he defiantly asserts that no one should view Whites as invincible or deities of some kind. Indeed, he says, "The power that holds Africa is not Divine. The power that holds Africa is human and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 6). Clearly, his optimistic assessment is based not only on his theoretical reasoning but also on his initial success and the world-embracing reach of his message. Indeed, his stress on human agency, human equality, and the responsibility of all Africans to aid in the lib- eration and uplift of Africa made for a powerful message to his followers around the world and found a friendly ear even sometimes among his oppo- nents (Lewis, 1988; Martin, 1976).

III. The Moral Anthropology

To talk of the moral anthropology of Marcus Garvey, then, is not to raise the question of what is the human person as an ontological issue in the pro- fessional philosophical sense, for that would be an abstract and unfruitful question for him. Garvey's essential interest in not simply in humans as

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humans but in humans as beings embedded in the world, especially Africans. He is interested in the reality and determinants of their existence as world- embedded beings, oppressed, inadequately aware of their Divine identity and thus their internal potential and political possibilities and, in a Kawaida sense, in urgent need of a process and practice to make themselves self-con- scious and willing agents of their own life and liberation. In a word, Garvey is interested in their redemption in a holistic sense of human well-being, wholeness, and flourishing in a context of freedom and self-determination which grounds, favors, and fosters this. Thus, his anthropological con- tentions privilege the ethical over the ontological, the concrete over the abstract, being in action over simply being, and actual life on earth over focus on the afterlife. And it is this recognition of the embeddedness of humans in the world that defines and drives his moral anthropology and his political project of liberation or redemption.

A. Image of the Divine

Garveyian moral anthropology takes as its fundamental point of depar- ture the Christian biblical narrative of creation and the Divine endowment given humans in this narrative. For Garvey, humans are Divinely endowed with two basic characteristics that define not only who they are but also their purpose and possibilities in the world. These two basic endowments are the creation of humans in the image of God and the appointment of humans as the lords of creation.

In Garvey's ethical understanding, God is the ground of all reality and thus the transcendent anchorage for his moral anthropology. It is his con- tention, then, that humans are created in the image of God, that there is no inferior person or race, and that all humans are equal. Thus, he says, "That God we love, that God we worship and adore has created man in his own image, equal in every respect, wheresoever he may be" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 68) and regardless of whether he is Black, Red, Yellow, or White. As a good and merciful God, Garvey argues, "He would not in his Great love create a superior race or an inferior one." This ethical commitment to human equal- ity is not only racial equality but also intraracial equality and by extension class equality. Thus, Garvey, speaking to the question of an African aris- tocracy, says, "Africa shall develop an aristocracy of its own, but it shall be based on service and loyalty to the race" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 53).

Furthermore, having been created in the image of God, humans are not only equal but also "have the same common rights." And with these equal rights and equal status and potential, Garvey contends, there is an ethical

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obligation to defend and exercise these rights and act equally in the world. In fact, he maintains that there is a Divine expectation that humans of all races will act equally and "be the equal of other(s)." For Garvey, to act and be equal is to be free and productive, to be "masters of your own destiny, to function as man, as He (God) created you" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 69). Garvey contends that "the highest compliment we can pay to our Creator ... is that of feeling that He has created us as His masterpiece; His perfect instruments of His own existence, because in us is reflected the very being of God." Indeed, "When it is said that we are created in His own image we ourselves reflect His great- ness." This biblical concept of humans as containing within them a spark or aspect of the Divine leads to the development of the concepts of dignity, inherent worthiness, and Christian moral theology and anthropology. And though Garvey does not use the term dignity, it is clearly conceptualized and contained in his moral portrait of the human person.

It is important to note here that Garvey' s thick conception of the Divine likeness and dignity of the human person has its earliest roots in ancient Egypt. It evolves in the context of the Sebait (moral instructions) of King Kheti for his son Merikara in the First Intermediate Period of ancient Egyptian history, c. 2140 b.c.e. In this sacred text found in the Husia, Kheti says of humans, "Well-cared for is the flock of God, they are in his image and came from his body," that is, person (Karenga, 1984, p. 52). This con- cept is further developed and stressed in the Husia in the narrative of Djedi, a sage who visits Pharaoh Khufu's court and puts forth the concept of human dignity rooted in the divinity of the human person (Karenga, 2006a, p. 318). In this encounter, Djedi defends the sacredness of life and the person of a nameless prisoner, identifying him on the level of the pharaon, that is, also a member of the "noble flock" of God and thus a human being bearing both divinity and dignity. The word shepes, which Djedi uses to describe humans as the "noble" images of God, translates as august, highly, esteemed, worthy of the highest respect. It is often used to describe the Divine and is meant to stress the Divine nature and sacredness of all human life, regardless of social status. Its noun form, shepesu, translates aptly as dignity as we use the term in modern moral discourse and as the Africans of Kemet, ancient Egypt, used it also. For it spoke then and speaks now to an inherent worthiness that is transcendent of any other value placed on humans, equal in all humans and inalienable, that is, it cannot be taken away by king, congress, courts, president, prime minister, or anyone.

This historical note reflects an irony of history on which Garvey would have lectured, that is, that the people who gave the world this concept first have had to struggle so hard and long to affirm and secure it for themselves.

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Thus, Garvey upholds a concept with its intellectual origins in Africa, even though it passes through Judaism and Christianity to reach him. And it would have been interesting to witness how he would have addressed this fact, if he had been grounded in ancient classical African culture and knew this. For Garvey made regular reference to the glories and achievement of classical civilization, noting that when the "White race had no civilization of its own, when White men lived in caves and were counted as savages, this race of ours boasted a wonderful civilization on the banks of the Nile" (1967, Vol. l,p. 17).

Closely linked to Garvey's key anthropological concept of humans as the image of God is the image of God as a reflection of the people who worship him. In a word, even as humans are in the image of God, God likewise expresses himself in the images of the people who worship Him. In his remarks on "the Image of God," he (1967, Vol. 1, p. 33-34) notes that each people has an ideal of God as seen through their own particular perspectives or their "own spectacles." Thus, he says Black people have their own ideal. And

whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one's own spectacles, and since White people have seen their God through their own spectacles, we have only now started (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles.

Noting the ethnic and racial character given to the universal God by Jews and Gentiles, that is, White Christians, Garvey states that as for "the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob let Him exist for the race that believes in [Him]." But "we [Black people] believe in the God of Ethiopia, the ever- lasting God - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages." He concludes stating that "that is the God in whom we believe but we shall worship Him through the spectacles of Ethiopia."

There is in Garvey's moral theology and anthropology a reflection of Bishop Turner's (1971) bold assertion that "God is a Negro," that is, Black, in a context where God in the form of Jesus of Nazareth was unquestion- ingly perceived, posed, and painted White. But Turner's initiative does not spread or have the impact Garvey's initiative does. Garvey's initiates a rethinking of Christianity and its meaning for Blacks on a different level and with a wider reach and impact (Burkett, 1978). Garvey insists on not only a Black God but also a liberation theology and ethics and a politics of redemption for a whole people. Thus, he anticipates and contributes to the emergence of the liberation theology and ethics of Messenger Elijah Muhammad (1965, 1973, 1992) and Min. Malcolm X (1965a, 1965b, 1968).

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Also, Garvey's position and discourse influenced the development of Black nationalist Christianity from the Shrine of the Black Madonna (Cleage, 1968, 1972) to the Rastafarians (Barrett, 1988; Morrison, 1992) and the general stress on the Blackness of Jesus and God in the progressive Black Christian community. This concept also finds its way in Black liber- ation theology in the early works of James Cone (1969), who quotes the Kawaida contention of Blackness as Africans' ultimate reality and argues, as in Kawaida, the importance of the color and liberational role of God in Black people's lives and history (Karenga, 1967, pp. 10, 34). This general push toward a God in one's own image and interests and humans in the image of God has been a central aspect of progressive Black religious and ethical thought in various forms and degrees since Africans began to embrace Christianity. However, Marcus Garvey took it to a new level, expanded the arc of African theological and ethical concern, and estab- lished a foundation others after him would follow and build on in their own particular ways. And it is Muhammad and Malcolm X who built on this legacy and laid the basis for the evolution and emergence of Black libera- tion theology, which sought in its early history to be an Afrocentric approach to Christianity. For, although the Black power movement set the ultimate social and political context for the evolution of Black liberation theology and ethics, it was the Nation of Islam, Messenger Muhammad, and Min. Malcolm X that for the first time problematized Black Christianity and compelled it to justify not only its particular conception of Christianity but also the conception and embrace of Christianity as a whole from a Black perspective (Karenga, 2002, pp. 267-269).

B. Lords of Creation

A second defining characteristic of the human person in Garvey's moral anthropology is the God-given status as "lords of creation." This designa- tion is, for Garvey, an expanded emphasis on ethical agency, that is, the will, capacity, and even Divine authority to act and with it the obligation to act in creative, productive, and redemptive ways in the world. In his essay "Dissertation on Man," Garvey defined the human person in terms of his or her capacity for self-formation and self-determination. He states, "Man is the individual who is able to shape his own character, master his own will, direct his own life and shape his own ends" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 20). This strong sense of agency is reflected in ancient African texts and modern nationalist thought such as Molefi Asante's (1998) Afrocentricity, with its stress on agency, victorious self-assertion, and initiative in the world. In his

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seminal work introducing his theory of Afrocentricity, Asante (1988) praises Garvey as an intellectual inspiration for his own work and describes his phi- losophy as a "brilliant ideology of liberation in the first half of the 20th century" (p. 12). In fact, he says, "In no nation in the world was there a philo- sophical treatment of oppressed people any more creative than Garveyism." He concludes his analysis of Garvey's thought by posing it as a contribution and precursor to his own, saying, "His vision foreshadowed the Afrocentric road to self-respect and dignity" (p. 12). Thus, Asante recognizes and respects Garvey as a philosophical forerunner to his Afrocentric initiative.

Again, the metaphysical ground of this agency is in his interpretation of the Christian creation narrative. "When God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, made him a soul, and bestowed on him the authority of 'Lord of Creation,'" he says, "He never intended that the individual should descend to the level of a peon, a serf, or a slave, but that he should always be man in the fullest possession of his senses, and with the truest knowledge of himself (1967, Vol. 1, p. 20). He argues that humans have wrongfully evolved into a series of classes of inequality, that is, servant and master, a sit- uation not of Divine intention. For "God didn't create classes, He created MAN," that is, humans as humans, with equal dignity, rights, and potential.

Following again Christian theology, he offers a standard anthropocentric conception of human relations with nature, arguing that "after the creation, and after man was given possession of the world, the Creator relinquished all authority to his lord except that which was spiritual" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 20). By "his lord," Garvey is speaking of humans, as indicated above, as lord of creation. In his remarks on "The Function of Man" (1967, Vol. 1, pp. 22-23), Garvey reaffirmed this interpretation of man as the lord of creation, saying, "God placed man on earth as the lord of creation. The elements - all nature are at his command - it is for him to harness them, subdue them and use them" as he sees fit. This, of course, is taken from the Judeo-Christian cre- ation narrative and is articulated in the Bible, in Genesis 1:26-28, in which humans are told to "fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the water and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on earth." He concludes that the major scientific achievements of his day, the harnessing of electricity, the steam engine, and "wireless telegraphy," all

reveals to us that man is the supreme lord of creation, that in man lies the power of mastery, a mastery of self, a mastery of all things created, bowing only to the Almighty Architect in those things that are spiritual, in those things that are Divine. (1967, Vol. 1, p. 23)

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Garvey gives further articulation of this conceptualization in remarks titled "Divine Appointment of Earth" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 25). He makes three points here. First, he argues the equality of all humans and the equal poten- tial of all people to achieve similar goals and that for any race to admit that it cannot do what others have done "is to hurl an insult at the Almighty who created all races equal in the beginning." The second point he makes is that "no race has an exclusive right to the earth," that "all of us were created lords of creation and whether we be white, yellow, brown or black, nature intended a place for each and everyone." Finally, in his constant concern with his central and overarching project of liberation and redemption, Garvey argues that even as other peoples struggle for the protection and preservation of their own land, Africans will likewise struggle and "shall shed, if needs be, the last drop of their blood for the redemption of Africa and the emancipation of the race everywhere." For these he sees as a God- given place and right in the world.

Here, Garvey focuses in on the sacrifice and struggle needed not only to politically liberate the continent and African peoples but also to free them from the fear, self-doubt, and distorted images of Black people imposed on them and the world. It is at this point that Garvey also engages the ethical portrait of the human person as a self-maker, not in the sense of one having self-destructive hauteur and hubris but, as argued above, as one having a rightful sense of status as a reflection of the Creator, capable of working out our righteous will in the world. It is in this sense that Garvey defines us humans as "master of our own destiny," "a masterpiece" of the Divine, and "perfect instruments of His own existence, because in us is reflected the very being of God" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 69). And that being is creative, right- eous, and rightfully reflective of and reverential toward "our Creator who made us in the fullness of ourselves [italics added]."

As I've argued elsewhere, the Judeo-Christian biblical injunction in Genesis 1:26-28 is an extremely anthropocentric approach to the world and conflicts with an African-centered approach. In the Kemetic sacred text, the Husia in the Book of Kheti, "humans are given the bountifulness of earth and heaven for sustenance [also]. But unlike in the Hebrew text, they are not told to have dominion [rada - tread on, tramp down] or subdue [kabas - stomp down] nature" (Karenga, 2006a, p. 392). In Maatian theol- ogy and ethics, humans are the guardians of the earth as dutiful sons and daughters. Pharaoh Hatshepsut captures this concept of filial ethical oblig- ation in caring for the earth and all in it, saying that she is an

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effective image of the Lord of the Universe . . . whom he chose as guardian of Egypt, as protector of [both] the nobles and the masses . . . whom Ra begot so as to have a beneficial offspring on earth for the benefit of humankind, (quoted in Karenga, 2006a, p. 393)

As I have argued, this beneficialness, effectiveness, and serviceableness for the Lord of the Universe "is explicitly, defined as insuring the well- being of humankind, but implicitly, the well-being of Egypt and humankind involves and requires the well-being of nature, i.e., the whole world." For in Maatian and other African ethics and ontology, "humans stand in the midst of a world in which they are a part of and in which they share an ori- gin and common substance with all modalities of beings" (Karenga, 2006a, p. 392). This African concept of the unity and continuity of being finds a similar understanding in the Confucian conception of nature which con- tains, according to neo-Confucian philosopher Wei Ming Tu (1985, p. 45), the fundamental "idea of forming one body with the universe." In this con- ception, heaven and earth are mother and father and "the image of the human that emerges here, far from being the lord of creation, is the filial son and daughter of the universe." Thus, Tu suggests the concept of an "anthropocosmic" human identity in which humans have a special place, but within a humble understanding and due attention to their interrelated- ness with and obligations to the world. As I have argued also, this position does not suggest or support "an animal or nature rights argument which equates human rights with animal interests or nature's claim on our respect" (Karenga, 2006, p. 395; also see Menkiti, 1984). However, it does necessi- tate "an ethics which sees a vital relationship between nature and humans that requires the respect for both and rejects thoughtless, uncaring and irre- sponsible behavior which threatens both life and the environment."

Still, there is in Garvey's ethics and anthropology a strong and rightful attentiveness to acting righteously in the world that, if extended to our actions toward the environment, would take the rough ideational edges off his concepts of humans' relationship to nature. Although the selected con- tentions that follow are mainly in reference to the morality of persons and peoples toward each other, they can and should be applied to nature as well. And if Garvey lived today, it is difficult to believe he would not show ethi- cal concern about the pollution, plunder, and depletion of the environment of Africa and the world. In this regard for rightful and righteous assertion in the world, he establishes the framework by defining life as purpose dri- ven and a context for satisfaction and pleasure, that is, happiness. But he sets limits on our action by requiring remembrance of the Divine, spiritual obedience, and observance of moral law. Therefore, he says,

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Life is that existence that is given to man to live for a purpose, to live to his own satisfaction and pleasure, providing he forgets not the God who created him, and who expects a spiritual obedience and observation of the moral laws that He has inspired. (1967, Vol. 1, p. 1)

Moreover, leaving interpretative space for a rich reading of how we "pro- tect" humanity, Garvey offers us an opportunity to argue that protecting the environment is a form of protecting humans. For surely the destruction of the basis of the sustenance and sustainment of humans and human life is destruc- tive of humans and an offense to the Divine. Thus, we can read into the fol- lowing statement such a position for our times. Garvey says,

If humanity is regarded as made up of the children of God and God loves all humanity (we all know that), then God will be more pleased with that race that protects all humanity than with the race that outrages the children of God. (1967, Vol. l,p.61)

Garvey offers us another interpretive possibility of bringing the best of his thought forward as a contribution to our expanded self-conception in his ethical insistence that we stress the spiritual and thus the Divine character of our being without forgetting our physical nature also. He says to us, "Let us live that true life, that perfect life in ourselves as spiritual beings, not for- getting that we are physical also" (1967, Vol. 2, p. 32). Indeed, "Man must not fail to understand his dual personality." He calls here for a balanced understanding and appreciation of who we are and where we are. He puts stress on our root self-reference as images of the Divine, but he wants us to be consciously and rightfully appreciative of our physical embeddedness in the world. And it is in this recognition and respect of the dual aspects of our human identity as both spiritual and physical, Divine and natural, that lie our obligations to both as well as to other human beings and ourselves. And these obligations to each are not separate or isolated but interrelated and intertwined and posit the way to ground ourselves and grow in the fullness of ourselves. Indeed, they point us toward self-realization in our quest for immortality. For as Garvey says, "He who lives not uprightly, dies com- pletely in the crumbling of the physical body, but he who lives well, trans- forms himself from that which is mortal, to immortal" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 3).

C. Self-Knowledge Now Garvey wants to free Africa and Africans not only in the political

sense but also in the mental sense. He wants Africans to think in different,

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expansive, and dignity-affirming ways about themselves. This, he asserts, is not only to honor their Divine nature and historical identity of greatness but also to create a preventive remedy and intellectual antidote against the toxic content and context of the European-dominated world. As he states, "If the (Black person) is not careful, he will drink in all the poison of modern civi- lization and die from the effects of it" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 12). Also, Garvey speaks to the destructive power of what we term today cultural hegemony rooted in a relentless, "scientifically arranged" system of propaganda used to control and undermine the values, will, and efforts of Africans and the world. He notes that one of the key "methods used to control the world is the thing known [as] and called propaganda" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 14). Indeed, "pro- paganda has done more to defeat the good intentions of races and nations than open warfare." It is used "to convert others against their will" and "to destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in self." Thus, there is an urgent and ongoing need to truly know oneself in the most essential and expansive ways. Again, Garvey' s concept of self-knowledge, like that of Muhammad and Malcolm after him, is both of a spiritual and historical nature, and he and they stress both as necessary to deal with our Divine nature and the history of our own self-formation in work and struggle.

Self-knowledge for Garvey is, first of all, know oneself as Divinely and naturally free, that is, recognition by humans that they are without an earthly master or superior, in a word, free and equal. Thus, he says, "For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 30). In other words, "a man has no master but God" and "man in his authority is a sovereign lord" on and over the earth. Garvey also advances here a concept he does not develop fully in which self-knowledge means recognition of the fact that in addition to human's status as spiritually and naturally free and equal, they also have within them unlimited potential. Thus, he says self-knowledge for Africans requires them "to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an authority that is absolute" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 31). Garvey uses power here in the sense of potential and possibility. And his use of "authority" can be translated as a God-given right and power of humans to control the earth (1967, Vol. 1, pp. 22-23). For he says, as noted above, that after creation, God gave humans lordship over the earth (1967, Vol. 1, p. 20).

Garvey reasons, however, that regardless of the free and equal status, inher- ent potential and Divine authority humans have, without the will to act, these Divine endowments are of little or no value. Thus, Garvey argues that self- knowledge entails grasping that human will determines whether a person will be slave to others or sovereign of himself. "If he wills to be ... a serf or a

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slave, that he shall be. If he wills to be a real man in possession of things common to man, then he shall be his own sovereign" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 30). He contends that if Africans recognized their status and potential and sought to realize the awesome power within them, then within a brief period, an African people and nation would come into being "resurrected not from the will of others to see us rise, but from our own determination to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 31).

For Garvey, then, self-knowledge, as is argued in Kawaida, must ulti- mately become active self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that not only understands self but seeks to realize its inner-directed and socially pur- poseful goals. For Garvey and Kawaida, our identity and sense of self- worth are shaped in the process of purposeful action, action that is both self-liberating and self-formative. To simultaneously free and form oneself is at the heart of Garvey 's anthropology. Like all nationalist thought, knowl- edge, especially self-knowledge, is at the center of this process. For, as Kawaida contends, the process of self-realization is both a cognitive and practical enterprise, a coming to consciousness and an active initiative that reflects and advances that consciousness in concrete practice. As I have maintained elsewhere, "self-realization here has a double meaning, that is, to know and to produce oneself (Karenga, 2000, p. 237). Thus, a person or a people must know themselves to produce themselves, that is, bring them- selves into being, in this case as a free, proud, and productive people. But they cannot really know themselves abstracted from the efforts they make to reclaim themselves, reconstruct themselves, restore themselves, and free themselves in and through struggle.

This is, of necessity, a holistic project that Kawaida calls a cultural pro- ject, an all-embracing practice on at least seven levels: religion (spirituality and ethics), history, social organization, political organization, economic organization, creative production (art, music, literature), and ethos, the col- lective psychology of self-conception shaped by activity on the other six levels. In its comprehensive and holistic character, Garvey's project is also a cultural project or, more precisely, a cultural nationalist project dedicated to liberation. Martin (1976) says, his philosophy "found excellent expres- sion in his active awareness of culture as a tool of liberation" (p. 24). This is reflected in his own literary works, his encouragement of the arts and advocacy of a Black aesthetics, his critique of European propaganda, dom- ination, and attempts at cultural conversion and degradation of Africans, and his influence on the Harlem Renaissance in the interest of African and social consciousness.

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Garvey also prefigures Diop's (1991) arguments about the falsification of African history, especially with regard to the process, as Kawaida describes it, of removing Africans from Egypt, Egypt from Africa, and Africa from human history (Karenga, 2002, p. 64). Like Diop, Garvey wants Africans not only to recover the excellence and achievement in the fields of human knowledge in their history but also to use these as para- digms for current and future practice. The thrust, then, is not simply to recover historical memory but to revive that history of excellence and achievement to initiate "a return to it in the rebuilding of Africa" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 19). Indeed, it was his hope and prediction that

a new civilization, a new culture, shall spring up from among our people, and the Nile shall once more flow through the land of science, art, and of litera- ture, wherein will live Black men of the highest learning and the highest accomplishments.

Garvey 's anthropology is attentive to the development of the masses, reflecting a moral sensitivity to the condition of the masses as a moral and social measure for a nation or race. "The masses make the nation and the race" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 5), he says. By this he means not only that are they the heart and soul of the nation but also that the level of their development will reflect the level of the nation and either inhibit or enable persons and the people as a whole from realizing their own God-given potential and higher aspirations. Here, he stressed education as the path to self and social devel- opment of inherent possibilities. "Education," he says, "is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their own particular civiliza- tion and the advancement and glory of their own race" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 5)

IV. The Ethical Project of Liberation

Garvey's project is self-consciously an ethical one, posing human free- dom, more specifically African freedom, as a rightful and righteous strug- gle, important not only for African self-formation and redemption but also to human freedom. Therefore, he says that those of the UNIA "have decided that we shall go forward, upward and onward toward the great goal of human liberty" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 54). He is concerned that African self- affirmation and struggle or freedom not be mistakenly or intentionally con- strued as an exercise in hatred or oppression of others, but as it is a liberational project for Africans. Thus, he says, "We are organized not to hate other men, but to lift ourselves and to demand respect of all humanity."

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Moreover, Garvey further defines the moral character of his project, saying,

We have a program that we believe to be righteous; we believe it to be just, and we have made up our minds to lay down ourselves on the altar of sacri- fice for the realization of this great hope of ours based upon the foundation of righteousness. (1967, Vol. 1, p. 54)

Continuing, Garvey reaffirms the moral necessity of the UNI A project. He says, "We declare to the world Africa must be free, that the entire [Black] race must be emancipated from industrial bondage, peonage and serfdom." Furthermore, "We make no compromise, we make no apology in this our declaration." Likewise, "We do not desire to create offense on the part of other races, but we are determined that we shall be heard, that we shall be given the rights to which we are entitled."

Garvey (1967, Vol. 1, p. 17) sees his project as a radical one, given the nature of the project as one of moving from oppression and subjugation to freedom. He notes that "'radical' is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom." In fact, he says, "All men who call themselves reformers are perforce radicals. They cannot be anything else because they are revolting against the conditions that exist." Garvey here loosely uses the word reform as a synonym for radical change, but he returns to further define the reform he is talking about as "revolt" against the established order. He continues along this line, arguing that "conditions as they exist reveal a conservative state, and if you desire to change these conditions, you must be a radical. I am therefore satisfied to be the same kind of radical, if through radicalism I can free Africa."

Garvey reminds us of the urgency and concreteness of his project as dis- tinct from the religious approach to liberation others might take. "There is many a leader of our race who tells us that everything is well, and that all things will work out themselves and that a better day is coming" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 56), he tells the people. Moreover, he continues saying,

Yes, all of us know that a better day is coming; we all know that one day we will go home to paradise, but whilst we are hoping by our Christian virtues to have an entry into Paradise, we also realize that we are living on earth and that the things that are practiced in Paradise are not practiced here.

On the contrary, "We are living in a temporal material age, an age of activity, an age of racial, national selfishness." Thus, Africans must engage the world as it is rather than as they would hope it to be. And they must engage the world in its concreteness, in action, and as a self-conscious, self-asserting,

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self-determining people. Garvey's project is not offered as one of "national selfishness." On the contrary, as suggested by his repeated references to lightness and justice of his redemptive project, he is conscious of the ethi- cal need and imperative to avoid such a position. Indeed, he said, "I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we shall use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 1).

Moreover, Garvey argues that in planning and building the future of African people, Africans must have as their foundation principles and qual- ities that are life affirming and life enhancing. Thus, he says,

Let us in shaping our own Destiny set before us the qualities of human JUS- TICE, LOVE, CHARITY, MERCY AND EQUITY Upon such foundation let us build a race and I feel that the God who is Divine, the Almighty Creator of the world, shall forever bless this race of ours. (1967, Vol. 1, p. 13)

If Africans do this, he suggests, they will pose a paradigm of how humans ought to relate to each other and act in the world. And through this posing and actual practicing of ethical principles, he asks, "Who to tell that we shall not teach men the way to life, liberty and true happiness?"

In fact, he reaffirms that "Africa has still its lessons to teach the world. We will teach man the way to life and peace, not by ignoring the rights of our brother, but by giving to everyone his due" (1967, Vol. 2, p. 54). Indeed, "The hand of justice, freedom and liberty shall be extended to all mankind." Moreover, he states, "Present day statesmen are making the biggest blunder of the age, if they believe that there can be any peace without equity and jus- tice to all mankind" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 26). For Garvey, these goods are essen- tial to humans not only to exercise their God-given rights and potential but also to realize themselves in and through their work in the world. Again, Garvey's anthropological conception here is similar to the Kawaida and clas- sical African understanding of ancient Egypt of agency and self-formation in the process of personal, social, and world-encompassing practice.

Garvey's stress on the role and reality of race in the world is unavoid- ably central to his moral anthropology. Race is used as a synonym for people, nation, and international community. He also sees it as what Amy Garvey (1967, Vol. 1, p. vii) calls "a grave world problem" and what W. E. B. Du Bois (1903, p. 1) calls "the problem of the 20th century" (Hayduk, Nuruddin, & Wallis, 2003; Karenga, 2003). In a word, it is a signifier and system of domination by Whites over Africans and other peoples of color. Thus, he sees race consciousness and commitment to African persons and

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people and their redemption and liberation as a moral obligation for Africans everywhere. He argues that "nationhood" or "independence of nationality" is a "means of protecting not only the individual but [also] the group" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 5). Moreover, it is both a context for the emanci- patory project and a condition of gaining respect which proceeds from lib- eration and the progress that is made as a result and reflection of this liberation. Therefore, he says, "No [Black person], let him be American, European, West Indian or [Continental] African shall truly be respected until the race as a whole has emancipated itself through self achievement and progress" (1967, Vol. 2, p. 24).

For Garvey, then, the individual person or self is called into being and flour- ishes only in a definite community, whether national or international. Thus, self-formation and social construction in the struggle for freedom, indepen- dence, or self-determination evolve as a rightful self-understanding and self- assertion in the world. In such a context, Garvey evolves a moral anthropology that aids in the redemptive or liberational project. It is an anthropology that has a thick conception of human agency, responsibility, and possibility, and it speaks to an expansive concept of what it means to be African and human in the world. In an age of imperialism, colonialism, and conquest, Africans must prepare themselves to meet the demands of history, defense, and development. This means, political, cultural, economic, and military prepa- ration (1967, Vol. l,p. 7).

A. Power and Justice

Garvey sees the world organizing and reorganizing itself in a kind of Nietzschean "will to power" in an age of empire, colonialism, and imperial- ism, and he asks where Africans stand in this and how Africans maintain their sense of identity and dignity and demand respect for their lives and lands. And he concludes that only a self-conscious, self-determining, and self- empowering people can achieve the capacity for ongoing defense and devel- opment. His thrust was one to organize and awaken the people, to empower African people to end their oppressive circumstances, achieve liberation, and build a secure base that satisfies their spiritual, cultural, and political mater- ial needs. Garvey devotes a lot of thought and writing about power as a nec- essary possession of a people. It is for him tied to an ethical interest in self-defense and self-development as well as respect. It is a position that "a race without authority and power is a race without respect" (1967, Vol. 2, p. 2). Moreover, responding to what he reads as the Darwinist and Hobbesean racial record of the colonial and imperial powers of his day, Garvey argues that the powerful and unjust will only react to a counter power. Thus, he says,

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Don't be deceived; there is no justice but strength. In other words, might is right, and if you must be heard and respected you have to accumulate nation- ally, in Africa, those resources that will compel unjust man to think twice before he acts. (1967, Vol. 2, p. 13)

Garvey's assessment that "the unjust man" recognizes might as right and will not respect or listen to the pleas or petitions or prayers of the weak dri- ves him to stress emancipatory and defensive power and organization as a counter to this immoral and amoral use of power. "The only protection against injustice in man is power - physical, financial and scientific" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 5), he argues. And justice cannot be achieved in the realpolitik world of imperialism except through power and liberation struggle. For Garvey, as I read him from a Kawaida standpoint, moral relations between persons and especially between people cannot be fully established in a con- text of inequality, where one person or groups is composed of masters and the other of serfs or slaves. Likewise, dependency on others tends to degrade, cultivate contempt, and foster an explicit or hidden disdain. It is within this framework that power, in the Kawaida sense, as a capacity to realize one's will and defend and develop oneself is so crucial to one's self- concept and sense of dignity.

In addressing these issues, Garvey (1967, Vol. 1, p. 15) prefigures and helps lay the foundation for our discussions of armed struggle in the '60s (Karenga, 1997, p. 78; Malcolm X, 1965a, 1965b, 1970; Williams, 1962). But given his status in the country and the tenor of the times, he could not without grave consequences openly argue for armed struggle. In fact, in places, he seems to disavow it. But in other statements, he brings it in with concepts and categories that contain support for armed struggle if the people wish to pursue it. First, he addresses the issue of armed struggle by making it an issue of African people's willingness to give their lives or die for the liberation of Africa. This position appears on its face to be morally less problematic than the ethics of armed struggle that involves a willing- ness to not only give one's life but also take another life in defense of one's own life and the securing of one's freedom. It is also more comforting and less threatening to the oppressor. For it allows him to think, as Robert Williams and Malcolm X argued, that he is immune from a comparable response and therefore has the advantage. Martin Luther King Jr. (1958), however, argued the moral force of nonviolence, which he felt gave the oppressed a moral advantage if not a physical or military one.

Garvey (1967, Vol. 1, p. 15) also addresses the question of armed struggle by using the category "force." He says that "the powers opposed to [Black]

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progress will not be influenced in the slightest by mere verbal protests on our part." This is so because of two reasons. First, "They realize only too well that protests of this kind contains nothing but the breath expended in making them." Second, he says the anti-Black powers "also realize that their success in enslaving and dominating the darker portion of humanity was due solely to the element of FORCE employed [in the majority of cases this was accom- plished by force of arms]." Garvey allows that "pressure of course may assert itself in other forms." However, he continues,

In the last analysis whatever influence is brought to bear against the powers opposed to [Black] progress must contain the element of FORCE in order to accomplish its purpose, since it is apparent that this is the only element they recognize.

B. Social Solidarity

Garvey 's stress on "know thyself is always a knowing oneself in the context of community and through community. In a word, self-understanding requires and reflects an understanding of oneself as a member of a com- munity. And here it is important to distinguish between simply being with others in community and being for others. The first is a historical accident and often a coerced condition for those who wish to escape but cannot. But being for each other is a self-conscious choice. Garvey's stress here is on will and self-conscious choice and action. Thus, he says, "The hour has now struck for the individual [Black] as well as the entire race to decide the course that will be pursued in the interest of our own liberty" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 54). Indeed, he states, "We must realize that upon ourselves depend our destiny, our future and we must carve out that future, that destiny" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 55) and that destiny must be conceived of as both personal and collective, interrelated and interdependent. For Garvey argues that as it is for persons, so it is with peoples. Thus, he says, "As for the individual man, so the individual race" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 30).

For Garvey, as Kawaida contends, one's identity is worked out and shared with others. It is forged in the struggle for power over one's destiny and daily life and due respect from others, both within the community and without it. Much of Garvey's thought and that of other nationalists speak to the need of due recognition among the other peoples of the world (Malcolm X, 1965a, 1965b). It is a concern with both nonrecognition and misrecog- nition, thus with the absence of due recognition by an oppressor or society or a false and distorted image of themselves that denies them a sense of dignity and humanity. Here, human dignity and human rights are intertwined,

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for the struggle to affirm one's dignity is at the same time a struggle to secure one's rights. It involves recognition of both a similar human status and a cultural difference that defines that particular form of human.

From a Kawaida perspective, Garvey holds that the participation in the political struggle for African redemption is a moral duty in three senses. First, it is a contribution to the moral imperative of a fully human person to choose, pursue, and embrace freedom. Second, the struggle for freedom becomes a way not only to free and build the nation but also to build one- self, one's character, in a word to develop an ethical self-portrait. In addi- tion, participation in the struggle yields an expanded knowledge of self and the world and opens the way to self-realization of our inner potential, in a word, our coming into the fullness of ourselves. Garvey's conception of the human person mixes questions of personal identity with moral worthiness within community. He is concerned with self-constitution as a communal act, rooted in a thick concept of relations and the will to act in service to others. He says, "The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no fur- ther than yourself, but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you even into eternity" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 2).

Garvey's focus on will is varied, but it is heavily focused on the will to achieve, to assert oneself in the process. He calls the will to achieve "ambi- tion" and defines it in the following way:

Ambition is the desire to go forward and improve one's condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life of the individual and makes him see him- self in another state. To be ambitious is too be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worthwhile and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction. To be humanly ambitious is to take in the world which is the province of man. (1967, Vol. 1, pp. 2-3)

It is important here to note that Garvey's use of the word ambition carries a favorable connotation, that is, as the drive to succeed, especially, as he says, a strong desire for "that which is worthwhile" and the will to strive for it.

V. Conclusion

A. The Morality of Remembrance

In a speech delivered on Emancipation Day 1922 at Liberal Hall in New York, Garvey (1967, Vol. 1, p. 59-61) articulates clearly and cogently his sense of an inherited moral obligation to both past and future generations.

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Such a dual obligation is rooted in our identity first as descendants of the enslaved Africans who were "taken from the great continent of Africa" and endured "under that barbarous, that brutal institution known as slavery." Moreover, during that Holocaust of enslavement, he states, "With their suf- ferings, with their blood, which they shed in their death, they had a hope that one day their posterity would be free." And it is in this status as "the children of their hope" that their descendants have incurred a profound and ongoing obligation to free themselves as well as the sacred land from which they came. For "they hoped that we as their children would be free, but they also hoped that their country from whence they came also would be free to their children, their grand children and great-grand-children" and future genera- tions to come.

Moreover, Garvey states that although "this race of ours gave civiliza- tion, ... art, ... science [and] literature to the world," because of the vicis- situdes of history, the once "occupied-high position in the world, scientifically, artistically and commercially" of Africans has passed on to others. The moral obligation for present-day Africans, then, is to struggle to "give back to Africa that liberty" and restore her to "that ancient position we once occupied when Ethiopia was in her glory." This sense of ethical obligation and compelling purpose is enshrined in the Fifth Principle of the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles, of Kwanzaa, and of Kawaida philosophy out of which both the Nguzo Saba and Kwanzaa were created. It is the principle, Nia (Purpose), that is defined as an active commitment "to make our col- lective vocation the building and developing of our nation in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness" (Karenga, 1998, p. 59).

Garvey sums up his commitment, arguing that given the great legacy of achievement, sacrifice, and liberational struggle of the ancestors, he can offer no greater gift in honor of them than to continue the struggle for a redeemed and liberated Africa. Indeed, he states,

No better gift can I give in honor of the memory of the love of my fore- parents for me, and in gratitude of the suffering they endured that I might be free; no grander gift can I bear to the sacred memory of the generation past than a free and redeemed Africa - a monument for all eternity - for all times. (1967, Vol. l,p.6O)

Thus, he concludes,

As for me, because of the history that I know, so long as there is within me the breath of life and the spirit of God, I shall struggle on and urge others of our race to struggle on to see that justice is done to the Black peoples of the world.

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And this struggle and project ultimately require a free, redeemed, and pow- erful Africa that can demand the respect of Africans throughout the world.

B. Steadfastness

In the long, hard, and difficult struggle for African liberation and redemption, Garvey is concerned with steadfastness or, as he defines it, "faithfulness" in commitment to the redemption of Africa. Here, he teaches on the constancy and continuity of morally worthy commitments and actions that make us who we are and give us our identity, purpose, and direction, as one says in Kawaida. Thus, he defines this steadfastness or faithfulness to commitment and cause, saying,

It is a wholeness of belief overshadowing all suspicion, all doubt, admitting of no question, to serve without regret or disgust, to obligate one's self to that which is promised and expected, to keep to our word and do our duty well. (1967, Vol. l,p. 3)

It is a basic Kawaida contention that we know ourselves through practice, not by episodic engagement but by a persistent practice through which we define ourselves, develop ourselves, and confirm ourselves. This, as Garvey notes, requires a deep and constant commitment that produces not only a constancy of practice but also a constancy of identity. In a word, it aids in answering the existential question "Who am I?"

Now when Garvey talks about a "wholeness of belief without suspi- cions, doubt or question," I read it as his calling for a steadfastness that maintains the integrity of one's commitment, not as his calling for a closed mind impervious to reason, without normal apprehensions about outcomes or willingness to change in the light of new knowledge. What Garvey wants to avoid here is fickleness that undermines the integrity of the commitment to practice that provides persons with the ground of their self-identity and ultimately self-respect. For both self-identity, how we define ourselves, and self-respect, how we value ourselves, depend, as Garvey says, on consistent commitment in action to that which is worthwhile and reflective of one who is "great in mind and soul." Again, Garvey's anthropology is concerned with self-constituting, self-forming activity of moral meaning and weight in the world. Thus, he links it with being "great in mind and soul." And finally, he returns to a central theme cited above concerning the world-historical role Africans can and should play in the world through their own liberation struggle and its contribution to the overall struggle for human freedom and flourishing.

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In remarks on the "Present Day Civilization," Garvey makes several interrelated observations that help define his conception of the ethical obligation of African people in the process of their self-understanding and self-assertion in the world. Anticipating Frantz Fanon's (1968, p. 31 1) con- cept of Europe, a civilization against itself "swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration," Garvey poses a similar critique and possibility of the critical role of Africa in a massive world transformation in the interest of humankind. He says,

We are circumvented today by environments more dangerous than those which circumvented other peoples in any other age. We are face to face with environments in a civilization that is highly developed, a civilization that is competing with itself for its own destruction; a civilization that cannot last because it has no spiritual foundation, a civilization that is vicious, crafty, dishonest, immoral, irreligious and corrupt. (1967, Vol. 1, p. 25)

In a word, it will fall from its own internal contradictions, the weight of its own unworthiness, as a model of human society.

In addition, Garvey tells us, "There is a heavy dose of self, . . . illusion involved here with a sense of self-satisfaction by these global powers" and "the masses of the human race on the other hand dissatisfied and discon- tented" with the current "arrangement of human society" and "determined to destroy the systems that hold up such a society and prop up such a civiliza- tion" (1967, Vol. 1, p. 25). He predicts such a civilization will indeed fall, and in that process and the reemerging and reconstruction that follow, Africans are "called upon to play their part." Indeed, he says, they are "called upon to evolve a national ideal, based on freedom, human liberty and true democracy." In a word, as Kawaida poses it, it is a call to so construct the African liberation project that it not only redeems and raises to the high- est level African life but also contributes to the ongoing historical struggles to expand the realms of human freedom and human flourishing in the world. For, as noted above, Garvey' s anthropology is aimed toward an expansive concept of ourselves as humans, who realize themselves not in the pursuit of selfish ends that, as he says, take them no further than themselves but in service to ends toward the common good that aids us in our coming into the fullness of ourselves in rightful, creative, and expansive ways.

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Maulana Karenga is a professor of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach. An activist-scholar of national and international recognition, he has played a significant role in Black intellectual and political culture since the '60s, especially in Black Studies and social movements, and is the chair of Us and NAKO. Also, he is the creator of the pan- African cul- tural holiday Kwanzaa and author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including Introduction to Black Studies, Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, Odu Ifa: The Ethical Teachings, Maat, The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics, and Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle.

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