Subject: Re: On interracial relationships, or anything
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 14:32:36 GMT
Wayne Johnson (ciacon@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: Thomas) wrote:
: >Roger Brown (brownro@erols.com) wrote:
: >: Ergo, the women doesn't get to speak.
: >
: >How about Hatshepsut, Nzinga, Yaa Asantewaa?
: >Not only did they get to speak, they ruled.
: Were they elected?
See my remarks in a related post in reply to McDuffee.
The Africans never had a system based on "universal"
suffrage, rather based on eldership system in which
the family was the fundamental societal unit, not
the individual.
: This kind of notion is amazing, considering that even in supposedly
: democratic nations that have elected women as leaders, it is
: invariably a monarchic/dynastic connection that gets them in power.
: It has no reflection on the actual status of women in everyday life.
: It only points up the hypocrisy of monarchies as modes of leadership.
It has relevance when you reflect that there has been no
woman president in the entire (admittedly brief) history
of the United States. Constitutional scholars may
clarify the question whether there was ever a constitutional
bar to a woman filling the office of president. They
certainly didn't always have the vote. It also has relevance
when you reflect that the Sheiks of Araby were constitutionally
not allowed to be female. The African kingship was not
necessarily inherited father to first-born son as it came to be
in Europe. In all the three cases cited, the women in
question acceded to kingship (sic) through the regency, not per
se through rules of inheritance in the European fashion
(eg. Queen Elizabeth). The African system called for a king,
not for a monarch (who could either be king or queen depending
on a rule of succession which exhausted male heirs before
moving on to female). The constitution did however provide
for a female role in governance, in the person of the
queen-mother. So you had. side by side, the king (a male function) a
queen-mother (female function), and an eldership council,
or council of state. When the king was unable to serve,
the queen-mother often, if not usually, served as regent.
Hatshepsut served as regent, before she somehow was able to become king
(pharaoh), in which capacity she outfitted herself with
beard and other manly accotrements. So, to be clear, the
kingship is a male function, even if a woman serves in the
position. The real issue though, also to be clear, is whether,
if kingship is a male function, that means that women are
necessarily oppressed. Some answer could be gleaned from
the fact that the female also had a constitutional role, unlike
in the European monarchy, in which females became monarchs
only if there were no males around who could inherit.
The European monarchy is therefore based on royalty-first,
and within that, male-first rules of inheritance. Hence,
except as gene-carriers, women served no constitutional
function, unless they ran out of men in the royal line.
The African set-up is different: there was *always* a
queen-mother, who very much had a voice in council, and
there was always a king. Women deputized (served as regent)
whenever the king was incapable, and such regents often
became kings (sic) in their own right, either by acclamation
or by the raw exercise of power, or both.
: >: Classic sexism. And, might I add, the old model for families the world
: >: over. Nothing unique to Africa.
: >
: >The African order is/was different from the European and
: >Arabic in significant ways. I mentioned (1) matrilineal
: >rules of inheritance in Africa, in contrast to Europe and
: >Arabia, where patrilineal succession and inheritance
: >obtained;
: Modes of wealth transmission have NOTHING to do with control of the
: wealth. You know this.
I do not know this.
: >(2) the *constitutional* role of the Queen Mother
: >in the selection of the king; and
: Which "constitution"?
The governing set-up, followed by hallowed tradition, custom,
and grand design, which in certain core elements may be
found all over the African continent.
: >(3) the fact that
: >female priests outnumber male priests by a large margin,
: >in contrast to European and Islamic practice where the
: >"leader of the flock" is a position (still) reserved for males.
: If this somehow confers status, authority, and self-determination on
: common women, I don't see how. It is possible that nuns outnumber
: priests in the Catholic Church; saying that this means that
: Catholicism isn't sexist isn't valid.
There is a difference in function between priest and nun,
as you know. THere is no difference in function between
male and female traditional African priests.
: >Ghana at which I attended a durbar presided over by the
: >Akwamuhene, the (male) chief of the Akwamu region, the
: >Queen Mother had a prominent role, and did in fact speak.
: >She was no shrinking violet, either.
: Being a queen makes that possible. Not all women are born hereditary
: rulers. See Queen Victoria, and the British view of women in
: politics, for a practical example.
African kingship and queen-mothership is not necessarily
inherited. See my earlier discussion. It might be why
in some sense African-Americans could claim with validity
to be the descendants of kings and queens.
: >The *fact* is that
: >Africans sought in their social arrangements to have a
: >harmonious balance between the sexes. Wherever there is
: >a hene (male chief) there is a corresponding hema (female).
: >Where there is God-the-Father, there is also God-the-Mother.
: >Quite unlike European Christianity and Islam.
: I don't need to start in with who has the best religion, or culture,
: by their religious customs. The problem is that in these cultures,
: the place of the woman is three steps behind, and we all know it.
My point was only that in the traditional African society,
women and their role in society were not denied, as we
see in the very concept of God in the European view. The
African saw God as being both male and female, and the role
of women in the society reflected that shared divinity
between male and female principles.
: Trying to characterize it as some superior method to the European
: design is moot. This is little satisfaction to women who don't live
: in Europe, but in Africa, and need to see basic changes in the systems
: in place.
Like what? And why?
: >Having said
: >all that, I do not deny that the role of the chief, also
: >that of head of household, is traditionally male. When
: >a woman assumes that position, she becomes (constitutionally)
: >a male, as with the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, and with
: >Queen Nzinga of the Congo. Yaa Asantewaa, as Queen Mother
: >of the Asante, was the one who spoke up in Council and
: >shamed the men into fighting the British. She also
: >served as Regent when the king was kidnapped and exiled
: >by the British. The role of the woman in African
: >society is *not* "classic sexism".
: The need to constantly rectify terms seems to haunt this thread.
As will happen when you take Euro-asilic concepts and seek
to apply them in Afri-asilic context.
: Sexism in its worst forms involves the lack of ability of women to
: determine their own roles and place in society, based on their own
: abilities, talents, and intelligence.
There is a fundamental Euro-asilic assumption hiding behind
this, namely that men and women should be "no different",
because all difference may be linealy ordered into superior/
inferior, dominant/submissive. The African asili allows for
difference without implied superiority/inferiority.
If I say that the African asili is superior to the European
asili, it is because the European asili gave us one barbarism
after another in its social arrangements, namely feudalism,
imperialism, slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and
sexism, all based on the notion that the stronger has a
right of might to steal the land and labor of the weaker.
That is barbaric, and for that reason, inferior to a system
in which the fundamental values, for example the "right to
land", would make all these things constitutionally unacceptable.
That is a different, also well-defined. notion of superiority.
: Anything that men do, in the name of gender, to limit this is sexism.
Is it also sexism that women cannot father their own
children? That women have to bear the pain of childbirth?
: I don't know if it needs a modifier like "classic", but it goes back
: millennia, all over the world. Very few cultures escape it. Africa
: is no exception; the people there are quite human, and suffer from the
: normal human foibles of anyone else. No better, or worse.
You are trapped in Euro-asili. You see Africa through the
eyes and books and thought processes of the European who
has taught you. I urge every African of the diaspora to
become acquainted with the authentic African voice
describing the African reality. The European asili is *not*
a universal.
: >The constitutional
: >order, and the habit and custom of the traditional African
: >is far different from the European and Islamic order.
: >I am aware that it has become faddish in modern Western
: >society to insist that there should be "no difference"
: >between male and female roles in society, hence we see
: >women in combat, women on the police beat, women firefighters,
: >etc. Traditional African society would never make such
: >an elementary mistake. WHat they sought was not sameness
: >between the sexes, which is contrary to nature, but balance
: >and complementarity. The latter cannot be construed as
: >sexism in the sense of which the European and Arab are
: >clearly guilty.
: As long as this complementary relationship is marked by refusing to
: allow women to speak in public meetings, the whole dream world you
: create is shattered by very simple facts.
I have already rebutted this contention. That one divorcee
was not permitted to speak at a meeting of a council of
elders is no more probative of sex-based oppression of women,
than the denial of my attempt to speak at a sitting of
Congress would be probative of black-male oppression in
the United States. Again, if you want to make a case for
the oppression of women under the traditional African
constitution, you need to look at the totality.
: Women are not climbing ladders, or arresting suspects, when they want
: to speak out in a community meeting, or avoid sexual surgery. While
^^^^^^^^^
Correction. A meeting of the council of elders. I can attend
certain sittings of congress here in Washington, DC. I do not
get to speak unless they invite me to speak ("testify"). There
are rules about these things.
: your points are not devoid of reason, they certainly avoid facts that
^^^^^^^^^
: are obvious to all of us, and the subject of discussion among the very
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: women you appear to patronize with these kinds of statements.
If the facts are obvious to all of us, I must confess that
they escape at least me, and I am waiting for them to be
pointed out.
: If a Black African woman, of any tribe, were to tell you about her
^^^^^
The Yoruba are a nation, and a proud one at that. The
Akan are a nation. The Zulu are a nation. Etc. Got that?
Clear your registers. Get this Euro-thought out of your
brain. Every African raised in the diaspora, and very
many raised on the continent in mission schools, etc.,
needs to undergo some remedial training when it comes to
perceptions of Africa and her customs.
: sexual surgery, or lack of voice in a tribal council, would you claim
: that she was violating a natural, racial, African custom? Would you
: tell her that her ideas were wrong?
Not necessarily. But I do not leap to unwarranted conclusions
about whole societies based on the complaint of one disgruntled
divorcee who was not allowed to speak at a meeting of a
council of which she was not a member. I also look askance
at complaints about female circumcision, coming from sources
that seek to prejudice the discussion by calling it "clitorectomy",
or worse, "female genital mutilation". I don't support
female circumcision as some core, transcendent value that
must be defended at all costs, but neither do I see it as
the clinching evidence of the oppressed status of women in
African society. All that sass you find in African women
all over the diaspora and the continent does not come from
an African tradition in which women have been rendered unseen
and unheard (as in traditional Araby), or pedestalized and
submissive (as in traditional Europe). Black women have a
tradition of sass and power that goes back a long way, and
has deep roots, going all the way back to Africa. That's
just the truth. If speaking truth is seen as patronizing,
I suspect that's only in your mind; there are too many
strong Black women around, eg. Frances Cress-Welsing, Marimba
Ani, from whom I have learnt too much, and not counting
such heroines as Yaa Asantewaa, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner
Truth, who again and again step forward to save and rescue
the Black man, just like the way in which God-the-mother
Auset with her feminine devotion rescued God-the-father Ausar.
Ausar does not patronize Auset, he is grateful to her for
his own rescue. It is not for nothing, btw, that Cress-Welsing
subtitled her work "The Isis Papers". No offense to
European woman-hood, but as they go about seeking to come
out from under European male domination, they already have
the example provided by our own Black women, who again
and again rescue the male, without thereby falling into
the Euro-trap of thinking that they are "no different" from the
male.
: >: I frankly think that your Diop/Williams view of Africa to be a
: >: romantic fantasy, in my humble opinon, that certainly has nothing to
: >: do with current African reality, and probably little to do with
: >: historic Africa, either.
: >
: >If this conclusion is based on your exercise in partial
: >logic quoted above, then it is hardly persuasive.
: It seems based on current events, not the content of the post.
I prefer not to read minds.
: >Just another tendentious post from one, who,
: >I frankly think, would find it impossible ever to jump out
: >of his limiting Western frame, and really *see*.
: More accusations of blindness.
I see what I see, and I say what I see.
: Wayne "I know you can see, because you haven't bumped into any facts
: yet" Johnson
: ciacon@ix.netcom.com
Actually, I make it a point to face my opponent and
his/her points squarely. I do not evade issues or
arguments. I give counter-arguments. I also try
not to over-argue my case, ie. claim more than can
be supported either by fact or argument. I try
to stand on Truth, therefore I welcome correction
and the enlightenment it can bring. You, on the
other hand, as do some of your Euro-asilic allies, have the
distressing habit of resorting to tactical obtuseness,
littering the debate with rhetorical red herrings and tactical
misconceptions. I indulge you as a community service,
because there is a wider audience out there (I know,
I get encouraging private email) with open minds,
that, unlike you, welcome the sweeping away of the
Euro-asilic cobwebs from their African brains.
Also, I think you are well-meaning, but you just
don't, won't, or can't see. Crack open an Africentric
book, my friend, you have nothing to lose but some
cobwebs.
"There is none so blind as he who *wills* not to see".
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