"What's up at the Schomburg?" Howard Dodson, Skip Gates, and Sacred Black Things

Below is a message from the outgoing director of the Schomburg, Howard Dodson. Of particular concern for many of us of the Black Radical Tradition is the influence of Skip Gates on whatever direction the Schomburg takes after Howard Dodson's retirement. Though Dodson does not explicitly mention it, I am certain that one aim of the message is to address the critics of Professor Gates. Among other things, the letter includes a vote of confidence for Gates and explains his current role Schomburg affairs. What are your thoughts? Is the concern of Gates's influence legitimate?Is Gates getting a bad rap? GI

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The Schomburg and its Collections are Safe and Secure in Harlem:

A Message from Howard Dodson

July 15, 2010

The recent announcement of my plan to retire in February 2011 has sparked a variety of reactions. Numerous individuals have written, called or spoken to me in person telling me that I simply cannot retire. The principle reason they give is that my leaving will result in the demise of the Center. While I appreciate these acknowledgments of my role in the development of the Center over the last 25 years, I have not done it alone. And while many say they won't be able to find someone like me as a successor, I'm not convinced that someone exactly like me is what the Center needs.

My successor will have to have an uncompromising commitment to preserving the legacies of our ancestors that are documented in the Center's collections and those that still need to be documented, preserved, interpreted and celebrated. But he or she will also need to be someone who is ready to grab a hold of the new technologies that are emerging everyday and use them to extend access to our rich and varied heritage nationally and globally. He or she will need to be entrepreneurial enough to find or make the money needed to support such effort. And he or she will need to be capable of establishing, maintaining and exploiting (in the best sense of the term) relationships with a vast array of economic, political, civic and social leaders (locally as well as nationally and internationally) and ordinary black people (if there is such a thing) domestically as well as internationally Most importantly, the Schomburg has always been and must continue to be a forum for the free and unfettered exchange of ideas, a cardinal principle that my successor must be dedicated to defending.. Such persons do exist. And a person will be found. A competent, committed, truth-seeking director of the Schomburg Center can and will be found to succeed me. The search for the next director is being led capably by Library trustees Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Gordon Davis. The Center will not die so long as black people are committed to keeping it alive, growing and serving. Ultimately, the future of the Schomburg Center is (as it has always been) in our collective hands, not just mine or my successor's.

What has moved me the most about the flurry of emails, blogs, and news stories that have appeared in print and electronic media has been the deep, passionate concerns that so many have expressed about the future of the Schomburg Center. This has, indeed, been heartening because it is clear evidence that so many of you care deeply about the Center's future and are prepared to support, defend and protect it. What has troubled me is that unfortunately, some of the concerns that motivated these expressions of commitment are simply not true, not based on fact. The most disturbing of the false rumors that are circulating and creating so much anxiety is the notion that The New York Public Library is planning to break up the Schomburg Center's collection and disburse them throughout its branch libraries. No proposal to do such a mindless and egregious thing has ever been proposed during my 25-plus year history here that I am aware of. A series of consulting firms working for the Library did recommend strategies for consolidating the research library operations that included centralizing research library functions and collections in the 42nd Street Building.

The New York Public Library is on record as saying that the Schomburg Center's collections will remain intact and its programs and services will be housed in its Harlem headquarters at 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. The President of the Library, Dr. Paul LeClerc, and several board members have assured me that the Schomburg Center will continue to thrive in its current location. Gordon Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., took the lead on the Board of Trustees in assuring that neither the Center nor its collections would be moved from Harlem. Both of them have been incredibly responsive to my requests for help with fundraising and other support. Councilwoman Inez Dickens and Congressman Charles Rangel have also been actively involved with the Library in assuring that neither the Center's programs nor its collections would be moved from its Harlem-based headquarters.

Thanks to Councilwoman Dickens and the New York City Council, the Schomburg Center is in the midst of planning the second phase of its major renovation project. Ms. Dickens and the Council have committed $10 million toward renovating the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, upgrading the Art and Artifacts and Moving Image and Recorded Sound Divisions, renovating the Langston Hughes Auditorium, replacing the roof on the Landmark Building, upgrading the HVAC and Fire Alarm Systems and redoing the streetscape in front of the complex along Malcolm X Boulevard and 135th Street. With full funding from Ms. Dickens and the Council in hand, architects have been hired and preliminary architectural plans are being reviewed. The Schomburg Center is being readied for decades more service from its Harlem-based location.

In late 2008, I asked Dr. Gates and Dr. Johnnetta Cole to chair a committee of leaders in the arts, culture, and academic fields, to assist the Schomburg in developing a strategic vision for a renewed Schomburg Center for the 21st Century. The report of that work is now available on the Center's website (www.schomburgcenter.org). In it, you will find a vision for a bright future for the Center, both in terms of the incredible significance of its work and its ongoing leadership role in communities local, national, and worldwide.

I urge you to read the materials that are on the Center's website. I encourage you to visit the Schomburg in person and online. And I also encourage you to attend the Library's "What's Up @ the Schomburg: A Community Conversation," a forum that will be held in the Langston Hughes Auditorium on Thursday, July 29, 2010 from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Thank you for your passion and for your continued support of the Schomburg.

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Professor Gates Panders to White People

Question from FB thread: Was there more to the article that is I am not reading? I have been a "fan" of Gates for awhile and I am disheartened to see him being blasted like this. I read what was written above and it seems, TO ME, that he is simply stating some of the issues that need to be addressed as we get closer to the resolution of reparations (in other words, preparing us for the arguments of our oppressors); as opposed to saying that because some Africans played a part in the slave trade that we don't deserve reparations. I admire Gates research and his ability thus far to open doors and minds. Of course, no one is without flaws. But I think Black Folks need to stop condeming/judging each other so harshly.

Pandering to White Folks
kzs: Prof. Gates panders to white people. The article is a clear example of said pandering. And he has already condemned Afrocentric folks harshly. See hyperlink at end of post.

Prof. John Thornton, cited in the essay, is Gates's point man on this topic. He is author of Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World. The basic argument is that Africans were not victims of the slave trade, they were willing participants. This argument is misleading for many reasons. I have posted my 9 counterpoints on my blog.

The Debt. Who Owes Whom?
Besides those points we, Afrikan people, have a basic problem. White people have wealthy powerful institutions that controls information about Africans and their descendants. We need more black/Afrikan power to define and declare our truth with no apology.

Several years ago I attended a lecture by Prof. Thornton. I raised the issue of reparations and Thorton replied that Africans owe us (black people in the diaspora). We should hold African elites accountable not Europeans. I challenged Thornton on this point. We went back and forth. Gates jumped into the fray and finally says "well, he is obviously not going to convince you today."

The lecture concluded shortly thereafter. As I exited the building a white administrator thanked me for questioning Thornton. The administrator said he agreed with my position and elaborated a bit (I don't remember exactly what he said.)

Apologies in Reverse
Things get fuzzy after that, but I somehow wound up in Gates's office (I think it was the day after the lecture). I don't remember the details of the conversation, but I do remember that Gates informed me that I should write a letter of apology to Thornton for (presumably) disrupting his lecture.

I refused.

Several years later (2009?), Thornton and Linda Heywood gave a talk on their new book (Gates was out of town, I believe). I again raised the question of reparations. I can't recall Thornton's reply, but I remember thinking that his position on African complicity had shifted. He was less insistent on the strong position of Gates. (I recall also that immediately after Thornton stated his (in my view) modified position, his wife, Prof. Linda Heywood, also a scholar, was adament about Africans being equal partners.)

Gates Attacks Afrocentricism, Dr. Clarke Responds
Gates's agenda is clear. If you want further evidence, watch his series Wonders of the African World or Google it along with the word "criticism."

Also see his attack on Afrocentrism, Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars. You can view the response of John Henrik Clarke here.

tags: henry louis gates jr, john thornton, linda heywood, reparations

9 reasons why Henry Louis Gates Jr. is wrong about slavery

Gates's framing of slavery is problematic for many reasons. I will put aside the question of reparations and focus primarily on the supply side of the equation rather than the demand side. I think the number of supply side critiques has diminished as they have lost traction in recent years. kzs

For additional critiques of the Gates essay see:

• Gates lets US (whites) off hook
• Omidele
• Problemchylde
• All Guilt is not equal
• The academic hit-man

Elmina Castle/Dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana

1. complicity could, in some instances, reflect limited options against superior external forces. Elmina, the very first castle/slave dungeon constructed on the west coast of Africa, was imposed on the local Fante people by the Portuguese. Thus unequal power is evident early on. Not only that, the Portuguese set sail with edicts or papal bulls from the Pope authorizing the colonization and enslavement of the entire planet.

2. complicity and victimization were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Even those Africans who collaborated willingly could themselves become enslaved. Europeans slavers were never vulnerable to such consequences. This happened with the Asante (Ashanti) and the Akwamu people of what we now call Ghana. (sidenote: this means that Gates and the rest of us will likely have some ancestors who were active participants in the slave trade) Black elites did not have the power to enslave even the lowliest white person (caveat #1- there are one or two isolated instances of Africans enslaving individual euros during the transatlantic slave trade; caveat # 2- Euros were enslaved by Moors, some of whom were black, but thats a different story and a different slave route).The precarious position of African collaborators vis-à-vis their European and/or Euro-American counterparts makes highly suspect the arguments of Africanist scholars such as John Thornton (cited in the Gates essay) who uses the red herring, “agency,” to assert that Africans were equally accountable for the slave trade.

3. scholars have been slow to analyze African resistance to the transatlantic slave trade; unnuanced assertions of collaboration tend to reinforce the false notion that African resistance was a non-factor in this historical event.

4. in most cases African participation in the slave trade represented the particular interests of the elites and/or slave brokers of any given African society. In the instance of the transatlantic slave trade, “rulers and subjects,” the scholar John Iliffe affirms, “had sharply divergent interests.” Gates does talk about African elites but he fails to mention the divergent interests of African elites versus ordinary Africans.

Triangular Trade: Africa --> Americas --> Europe

5. the interests of Euro-westerners were represented at each of the three vertices of the triangular circuit (Europe, the New World, Africa); African interests were only represented at one vertex (Africa).  This 3:1 ratio was constant, or nearly so, for the duration of the slave trade and suggests that the slave trade was dominated by the interests of European and Euro-Americans, not Africans.

6. the destabilizing impact (see Two Thousand Seasons) of the far older trans-Saharan slave trade is, to date, woefully understudied. The massive involuntary movement of enslaved Africans across the Sahara and Indian Ocean most likely stimulated migrations of Africans escaping Islamicization and subsequent cycles of socio-political instability. This instability might have enhanced the efficacy of Euro-western divide-and-conquer tactics.

7. Gates's claim that African elites routinely traveled abroad to survey the demand side of the slave trade would be comical were the topic not so important. This is clearly his very clumsy effort to prove that African elites and European traders had a shared knowledge of slavery outcomes.

8. Gates conveniently ignores the fact that the British abolished the slave trade only to resurface as major colonizers. Slavery and colonialism are two sides of the same white supremacist coin.

9. The slave trade underdeveloped Africa, but it was the jump off for the Industrial Revolution.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

Ending the Slavery Blame-Game

By HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.

Cambridge, Mass.

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

Read more @ Op-Ed Contributor - How to End the Slavery Blame-Game - NYTimes.com

Pics: Elmina

tags: henry louis gates jr, slavery