Training Black Spirit. William L. Conwill, Ph.D.
everyday personal and interpersonal dynamics. At moments, the personal is political, ramifying into a more far-ranging field of public interest, power, and social change. To the extent that this happens, ethics and politics converge, becoming complementary dimensions of social action where personal responsibility and collective interests intersect and interplay.
In this book, Dr. Conwill interprets and shows the enduring relevance of ancient principles and values for present-day readers who should encompass adolescents as well as the adults who care about and mentor them. Toward this goal, he elaborates on the spiritual meanings and ethical implications of the key concepts and precepts associated with Ghanaian, specifically Akan, Adinkra symbols.
In his brief and easily digestible explanations, which are coupled with recommended activities, Dr. Conwill encourages youthful readers to become actively involved in thoughtful and thought-provoking exercises that take insights from the text into personal practice and lived experience.
Through this behaviorally or practice-oriented approach, which draws on his expertise in the philosophy and art of self-defense, Dr. Conwill demonstrates the enduring relevance of a West African tradition of wisdom to our lives and those of our children today. He shows how Adinkra concepts can influence the ways young people defend themselves against and move forward in their life journey in spite of the prevalence of destructive influences in the world.
Black youth can benefit from ethical and spiritual training to prepare themselves for the complexities and contradictions that characterize today’s society and world. Our society gives higher priority to building prisons than schools. A 2008 Pew Center report predicted that if current trends in racial profiling and institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system continue, we can expect to see as much as a third of the black male population incarcerated in the future. Moreover, the incarceration rate for black women is also rising, so the problem is not only one that targets males.
On the more positive side, there are trends that promote the reintegration and revitalization of black community life, assigning youth to constructive roles rather than assuming their inevitable descent into delinquency and troublemaking. Besides the successful school programs that receive very little attention in the media, there are extracurricular and community-based projects employing hip-hop-inflected pedagogies for mobilizing youth toward community- building outcomes.
Dr. Conwill seeks to achieve the objective of communal revitalization through a different means. He translates and encodes Adinkra precepts into black youth’s everyday practical consciousness. His project situates ethics for black youth within a historical context in which the relevance of African cultural heritage persists in African American identity and well-being.
Training Black Spirit deserves to be widely read and discussed in homes, schools, community centers, churches, and other community venues, such as barbershops and other settings where grassroots philosophers assemble to reason and rap. I recommend the book as well as its author, who is available for speaking engagements, group encounters, and training sessions related to rites of passage and leadership development among youth. His extensive expertise, knowledge, and wisdom make him an exemplary role model and educator.
—Faye V. Harrison, Ph.D.
President
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences
Ethics is a system of moral conduct, that is, a set of principles by which we live. These principles are accepted rules about how people should carry themselves. Over time, different cultures, depending on what they consider to be the nature of the human person, produce different sets of moral philosophies—ethics—for guidance. For example, during those eras when men and women were considered sinners primarily, penitential living and the search for forgiveness and salvation were their major preoccupations.
In the twentieth century, however, after the Freudian revolution, the prevailing notion within educated circles was that neurotic men and women were characterized by their struggle to keep their sexual desires under control through repression. As a result, many sought economic prosperity and to practice sexuality free from guilt.
Many young people are confused about what they should or should not be doing and how they should act toward each other. They are searching. “Is it okay to call people certain names referring to race?” “I like to keep it real. Why should I talk all proper?” “Should I follow my family’s expectations or do what I want with my life?” “Why should I care whether my parents don’t like my style of clothes?” “What’s so wrong about using drugs if everybody does it?”
Hip-hop offers direction to some. Mega-church televangelists offer guidance to others. Icons like Bill Cosby and Russell Simmons also like to give advice. Who is right?
Globalization and Ethical Confusion
Much of the uncertainty and confusion we see today is related to globalization. In globalization, the business practices of very large and powerful multinational corporations increasingly break down local processes of communication, trade, and ownership, and they direct the flow of money to themselves instead of those who help produce their wealth. The world at large is their marketplace.
Globalization makes you feel like what’s going on around on the other side of the world is just as important as what’s going on in your own neighborhood. Increasingly, in response to the confusion that comes from the feeling that everything everywhere is important, we are told we must accept a “diversity” of viewpoints about what is wrong or right, with questions like “Can’t we all just get along?”
Sometimes we can, and sometimes we won’t. Bombings, wars, and mass shootings are signals that we don’t. When an individual or a group decides to “take it to the streets,” it’s a sign that some people no longer feel like arguing whether or not their point of view is the most valid or important. Where and when do we take a stand?
People stand on principles all the time. Many are willing to die for their principles. They feel it’s important to live out their ethics, to live out what they believe in. It’s important, therefore, to be aware and selective about the principles by which we are willing to live or die.
Ethics for African American Teens
The particular set of ethical principles that we practice reflects those values that we have decided to follow, in order to preserve our way of life. Cultures take their time in laying out their values clearly. People outside a given culture can’t always relate to what goes on inside it.
When we sometimes say to people who have not grown up in a particular culture, “You wouldn’t understand,” we really mean it. We don’t expect them to understand. For example, when Alice Walker campaigned against female genital mutilation in some African cultures, a lot of African women told her that she should go back to her own country and talk to people in her own American community about their own sexuality, and that she didn’t understand that of African women. Those cultures had their own values regarding sexuality, and they wanted to be given their proper respect. Practices that we might consider cruel or barbaric or archaic at the beginning of the third millennium might well be central to their ways of life. Cultures take care of a people’s sense of identity, and they preserve a community’s viability or prospects of continuity. Break the rules—break the culture.
African American cultural communities are no different. Black cultural traditions stress our essence as embodied, intelligent spiritual beings who express ourselves in the spiritual, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral spheres of human experience. Ethics for black teens should promote the healthy development of the black person as a member of the family, the community, and the world.
The rules of behavior that governed black people traditionally when local area processes such as enslavement and unemployment tested our humanity preserved our culture and made our survival possible. These rules have come under assault increasingly from macro-processes like urbanization and globalization. During our transitions from plantations to tenant farms to housing projects to suburbs, we have also moved from one room school-houses to segregated city