Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism: Prof. Ula Taylor, University of California, Berkeley, In Dinis Guarda YouTube Podcast

Prof. Ula Taylor, University of California, Berkeley, explores the transformative role of Black Studies, the historical roots of the Black Panther Party, and how the Nation of Islam offered African-American women complex but meaningful choices within the promise of patriarchy in the latest episode of the Dinis Guarda Podcast. The podcast is powered by Businessabc.net, Citiesabc.com, Wisdomia.ai, and Sportsabc.org.

Prof. Ula Y. Taylor is a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She specialises in African American history, black feminist theory, and intellectual traditions of African American women. Her research covers black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and civil rights movements from 1890 to 1980.

She is the author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey, co-author of Panther: A Pictorial History of the Black Panther Party and The Story Behind the Film and co-editor of Black California Dreamin’: The Crisis of California African American Communities.

During the interview, Prof. Ula highlights the foundational aspects of the Black Panther Party:

“The Black Panther Party for Self-Defence started in Oakland, California, where I live, and began with students. 

They began to follow the police and put them under surveillance to ensure that all the ways in which they had been brutalising the community members would stop, or at least they would be put on watch.

They are about defending their communities from people who are bringing harm and destruction to them. Now that community college is a senior centre, but back then it was a school located in the community where people could walk to.”

African American Stories & Study

Prof. Ulla emphasises the importance of education that challenges comfort zones and highlights systemic issues, especially in the context of Black studies:

“What’s important is how we bring a history that can make people uncomfortable at times to a world that oftentimes when one experiences discomfort, they become instantly defensive.

How can we create a climate where one can feel uncomfortable and understand it’s from that space of discomfort that one can move forward and understand, ‘Okay, what is it that’s making me discomforted, what are the elements of it and how can I understand why this is making me feel this way, is it about me personally or is it about the systems that are created to scaffold wealth?’

Fairness does not mean discrimination against other people. Fairness is about creating a multilingual and multi-racial democracy. Fairness is about creating a space where being conscious of race is not conflated with racism.

Black studies is about creating progress for everybody. Black studies as a discipline is about exposing how students of all different backgrounds can learn about each other, can learn to respect the positives and the negatives of all of our history, so that we can push for a more just democracy.

If we can understand these systems, these systems that can bring discomfort, but also systems that can be the catalyst for joy and love and can be the catalyst for harmony within diversity.

This is the project of Black studies, we are about creating fairness, and fairness does not mean discrimination against other people.”

Patriarchy and nation of islam

Prof. Ulla discusses her book “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women in the Nation of Islam,” explaining how African-American women, during 1930-1975:

“I look at how the promise of patriarchy for African-American women between 1930 and 1975, which is the original Nation of Islam, included that they would have the choice to stay at home and raise their children.

That they would have the choice to pour into their children’s education in a way where their children were the centre and not the white gaze.

Where they had the choice of feeling safe walking down the street and not being accosted.

The promise of patriarchy, in many ways, can be understood as leaning into elite and middle-class options and choices that women have. The option not to work outside the home, the option to raise your children. These are options that the majority of black women did not have because the majority of black women are a part of the working poor.

The promise was also for men, that if you join this organisation, we’re going to help you to be a breadwinner. We’re going to help you to be a head of household. We’re going to help you take care of your children and be a good husband. So, the promise was on both sides.

The challenge around it is how you can make this promise happen, where ideas around control, violence, and silencing don’t happen.

In many ways, it’s walking a tightrope because if black women are not able to stay in their house and raise their children, more than likely their option is to work as a domestic in the home of somebody else. Clearly, there’s no guarantee that that wouldn’t be a patriarchal condition as well. 

The promise of patriarchy in the Nation of Islam was a way in which black women were doing their best to figure out how I live in this society and raise their children, and educate their children in a way where they can be their best selves.

How can I live in a society where perhaps I’ll have a little bit of time for myself to do something that’s empowering for me? It was very difficult to meet the promise given the conditions, the working conditions of black life in the United States.”