The following is based on chapter three of William D. Wright’s “Black Intellectuals, Black Cognition and a Black Aesthetic” (1997) with observations of my own added:
Diunital cognition is both-and thinking. Its opposite is dichotomous or either-or thinking. While most Americans are capable of both kinds, blacks favour diunital thinking while whites (and some of the black middle-class) favour dichotomous thinking.
A good example of the difference is Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans in the early 1800s. To white Catholics you cannot be a good Catholic and a voodoo queen at the same time. Either-or. Dichotomous. Yet Laveau was a believing Catholic who faithfully went to mass every day. That is diunital thinking. Both-and.
Or take the word “racist”. Whites can get extremely upset when you point out that they said something racist, no matter how gently or indirectly you try to make your point. It is like you called them a bad person. As if doing something racist means you cannot still be a good person. It is either-or. Dichotomous.
Dichotomous thinking sees the world as opposites:
- good and evil,
- right and wrong,
- straight and gay,
- white and black,
- male and female,
- civilized and savage,
- rational and irrational,
- sane and mad,
- mind and body,
- winners and losers,
- capitalist and communist,
- free and slave,
- modern and backwards
And on and on. Not only that, but one of the two opposites is always seen as something bad and different, as something to avoid, overcome, control or even destroy.
Also common among whites is vertical thinking: they measure and rank things: IQ, income, crime rates, etc. Again, the aim is not to understand but to condemn and control. “The Bell Curve” is almost a self-parody of this style.
In diunital thinking you see things in their fullness, as being independent and equal. Different does not mean unequal. Different is just different. In fact, to rank things would require looking at them in a flattened, one-dimensional way that does not tell the whole story. The world is a coat of many colours, not a coat of one colour that got screwed up. The aim is not to control or condemn but to understand as fully as possible.
Diunital thinking among Black Americans goes back at least to the 1800s – when they stopped calling themselves Africans and started to see themselves as both black and American. Both-and. Two-in-one. Diunital. Compare that to the white, dichotomous view of blacks:
- Black and therefore not truly American (either-or), or
- Americans with a brown skin which they try not to “see” (“I do not see colour”) – because their dichotomous thinking does not allow them to see different as equal.
Diunital thinking does not go back to West Africa like you might expect. The main pattern of thought there is what Wright calls monointeractive. White scientists, dichotomously, understood it as “prelogical” thinking, as part of the “savage” mind. But it is hardly that: the “civilized” Ancient Egyptians also used it as their main pattern of thought.
See also:
- Marie Laveau
- the r-word
- The Bell Curve
- Homi K. Bhabha – whose views on Western thinking is pretty much the same as above
- Is Africa backward? – a perfect example of vertical thinking. I did not understand how terrible it was till I tried, as an exercise, to write the very same post about Black Americans.
Oy vay, what a load the point ito a world view is how it helps a person navigate the world we live in both points are valid if the given view represents reality otherwise your asking idiots to juggle chainsaws
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Very interesting.
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Abagond:
There is such a thing as “Right Thinking” and “Wrong Thinking.” Human thought should always have truth as the starting point. Emotion waters down the truth. As you stated, if black people speak honestly about race and racism in relation to white people, the natural tendency on their part is to get offended and start name-calling. Instead of dealing with the fundamental point of what was said, they resort to calling any particular sista or brotha a racist, bigot, close-minded, etc. My brain is my brain, my thoughts are my thoughts, my truth is my truth…I don’t care about conventional-wisdom, status-quo, groupthink, etc. Being logical and honest is hard, because, it means that you’re not gonna be liked by everybody…Too Bad! As human beings, we need to get rid of that mindset. A lot of foul ish takes place around the world because we’re afraid to connect the dots and speak honestly and forthright about this or that issue.
Tyrone
Human Nature…Fear…Fearlessness
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Either-or thinking is foolish and limiting, as the world is filled with varying shades of grey. Narrow-minded rigidity isn’t the answer.
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-Hmmm idk about this. This doesn’t seem to reflect what I have experienced living in the US. To me, it seems as if most Americans, black and white, are dichotomous thinkers. That type of thinking is widespread in our society.
-Idk about vertical thinking. A lot of racist white ppl on the internet certainly think this way, but I don’t have any way of knowing if that reflects white America as a whole. I spend most of my time with other black ppl, so I’m kind of lost on “whiteness”. I’ve only been able to thoroughly peer into the white racist mindset through the internet and I have no idea of how much of the population they(racist white ppl) represent.
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Good piece, as always. I think the person named “The Cynic” is kind of right about most Americans being dichotomous thinkers, but I’d qualify that some– I think– and I’m totally just guessing– that a smaller percentage of black Americans than white are dichotomous as individuals. And I’d also say that if we were to try to think our way through to something that might satisfy as being a statement of the two cohorts– as those voices might speak NOW, we’d find the white voice fairly dichotomous and the black voice more diunital.
I’m listening to highlights of the republican debate last night, and am hearing the Romney/Perry exchange about illegal immigration. (Now mind you, I’m glad to see the two of them making assholes of themselves and each other; where I remember a different mindset among many of the GOP, back when it had a moderate wing, now, I just find myself disliking practically everything I hear from these people and even when one of them does say a particular thing I’d like to feel good about, I find now that I am little more than suspicious. If the thing doesn’t seem to have an obvious ulterior motive, and it usually does, then I just wonder what I’m not seeing. I hope that will change some day, but I don’t expect it to happen soon.) And the thing is, there are things in Romney’s defense of his having had illegal immigrants working on his property that I don’t mind saying are, in themselves, reasonable– I live in L.A. and I can tell you for sure that most of the men– at least most of the men I see– who work for landscapers are Latinos who were clearly not born in the U.S., and the odds are that a good percentage of them are here without documents. That being the case, I’d like to give Romney the benefit of the doubt on that point, because that’s my style when considering anyone, but then I immediately ask myself where the hell the nuance or the understanding of others is when these right wing jack offs are out there debating in front of right wing audiences.
It’s kind of related to the way I see the larger immigration issue: I agree that a sovereign nation must be able to control its borders and determine whom may be offered entry and residence and whom it these benefits will be denied to, but I see absolutely no willingness to take anything beyond their own selfishly defined point of view. There’s no effort to consider the conditions in Latin America, and especially in Mexico, today; there’s no effort to consider the history that exists between the two nations, most particularly, how Texas became part of the U.S. and then how enormous parts of northern Mexico were stolen by our forbears after the U.S. war and the treaty that followed. See now, to me, taking both these issues into account– the need of the U.S. to set a border policy and the need of the U.S. to consider its obligations to a neighboring country and in particular, a neighbor in which there is a long, sordid, and one sided history. In fact, I find doing this not just the only way to see anything; i.e., that the diunital view is the only one that allows me a clear view of any social phenomenon, but I also find it’s not really that hard to do. I mean, how we would reform our policy towards Mexico and Mexicans would surely be complex and difficult, it’s a hell of a lot easier to me to imagine doing that than it is to adopt such a one sided policy, the simplicity of which has led to all the suffering that exists on our border and more importantly, to those who live on the other side of it.
There’s a hell of a lot I’d like to say about the same subject as it relates to the history and the relationship between white and black Americans. I respect “The Cynic,” Tyrone, and Abagond for the three dimensional views each takes; I mean, I especially like Abagond’s observation that one can be racist in some ways and still be a good person– if more whites understood that, we could make some progress on the issue but for many, many complex factors, all of which essentially come down to what white America sees as its own interests, it’s hard to picture the white America of today being able to do that. I do think that a generation or two from now, though, that we’ll make some real progress there. As far as “The Cynic’s” question about white America, I have to say that while the stuff you see on the internet probably reflects the slice of white America that is more angry and weak and frustrated, I’d add that the basic assumptions you can infer from the kind of stuff you see posted there is probably pretty much in sync with the majority of those in white America today, though I’m speaking primarily of my generation, Gen X, the ones ahead of us, and the one just behind us. I think many of today’s kids are a little bit past where we are, but when they go out into the world, the racism they’ve absorbed will probably emerge as they try to create an identity in adult society.
Abagond’s various posts about white America strike me as largely correct; in fact, I rarely read the things he posts and disagree with them. His tone is one that many whites will find too intimidating to listen to and as a result of that, most of today’s whites, reading Abagond, would automatically shift into a defensive posture in which they would reply to every general statement with a claim of how many examples they know that contradict the rule, and they’d reply to each anecdote with the claim that whatever it revealed didn’t reflect the opinion of EVERY white person. They’d miss the whole lesson, is what I mean, which is unfortunate but not surprising. I like the fact that every few posts, Abagond reminds the reader that his blog is not for whites; it’s for himself and for other black Americans. I think he’s totally right, and I’d add that it’s a great place for white Americans to learn; I’ve learned more here in about eighteen months than I think I’ve learned from probably every other thing I’ve read or studied on these subjects put together. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is; there’s something about the combination of what he writes, the force with which he writes it, and my personally being ready to have received the message that simply makes things clear that I haven’t encountered elsewhere.
So thanks, Abagond, though I didn’t mean for this to have wended its way to this point. I hope you keep this up because though I understand, I think, your reasons for writing this, I can tell you for sure that you’re offering more to white America than either you or it can probably begin to understand in 2011. While I realize that’s not your point in doing this blog, I still say it’s a hell of a valuable blog and that down the line– way down the line, like I mean, in ten or twenty years, this is going to be something that is going to make a huge difference in race relations in the U.S.
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Very interesting that the book you referred to covered this. The dichotomization within rhe culture was touched on in Marimba Ani’s Yurugu as well.
Quote:
“And here [with Plato] begins a pattern that runs with frighteningly predictable consistency through European thought, continually gathering momentum for ages to come. The mind is trained from birth to think in terms of dichotomies or “splits”. The splits become irreconcilable, antagonistic opposites. Holistic conceptions become almost impossible given this mindset. First the dichotomy is presented, then the process of valuation occurs in which one term is valued and the other is devalued. One is considered “good”, positive, superior; the other is considered “bad”, negative, inferior. And, unlike the Eastern (Zen) conception of Yin and Yang or the African principle of “twinness” these contrasting terms are not conceived as complementary and necessary parts of a whole. They are, instead, conflicting and “threatening” to one another”
END
Within this society, I get the sense that past and present are dichotomized as well. It’s as if the past if viewed as obsolete: the “march of time” consuming it and discarding it. It is bad to “hold on to the past” and when something is “in the past” it is somehow less relevant (though EVERYTHING that HAPPENS is in the past, by definition). Another view is that the past is always present. This post which was certainly written in the past, influences the present as it is read. Thus, the present owes the very nature of its existence to the past. That is a complementary view rather than an antagonistic “split”. It seems reasonable that the former would lead to a more traditional stability while the latter would fuel a desire for “progress” away from devalued term.
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Of course Bulanik, Abagond suffers also a bit from dichotomous thinking. As such calling people “black” or “white”, is not helping racial tensions, negro and muzungu or paleface would make it much easier to indicate groups, without stressing antagonistic images.
Giving a white teddybear to your fiancee at the engagement party seems still
a very curious mzungu novelty in Kenya, if I am not mistaken.
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Interesting.
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Interesting post. It might be fair to say that (white) American culture is a dichotomous culture. We tend to love our villain/hero narratives. The cold war was built on it, and every war since then. Our movies, television, etc., reflect this. Stephen Spielberg built an empire on this narrative: save the kids from the evil monsters.
It’s an immature worldview, the view of a boy rather than a man. A man knows that men are generally neither all good nor all bad; rather, most contain elements of both good and bad.
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Fascinating stuff! Thanks for the cool post, Abagond.
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I think this comes up again wrt to Abagond’s ‘reading while white’ post and the instinctive insertion of “ALL” before “white people”. There are the dichomotous thought patterns again: “all” or “none” not gradations of patterns of behavior among various individuals. I like to use the word ‘culture’ a lot because it is a template that tends to produce individuals that think and act in a certain way. Obviously, the degree of immersion and uptake may vary from person to person. There may even be people who defy the pattern entirely but they must necessarily be extremely rare or else the culture could not survive. The cultural personality of Euro-America is racist because its imperialism (which is its highest aim) is rationalized by racism and the doctrine of white supremacy. As a result, it is very unlikely for one who identifies with this culture to not be racist in any way. That does not mean every white person is a secret member of the Klan. But it is hard for white people to read these things and not feel that that is what is being suggested. It’s “all” or “nothing”, “good” or “bad”, “Klan member” or “not seeing color at all”.
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Origin, you hit the nail on the head with this:
The cultural personality of Euro-America is racist because its imperialism (which is its highest aim) is rationalized by racism and the doctrine of white supremacy. As a result, it is very unlikely for one who identifies with this culture to not be racist in any way.
Exactly. This ties in with the self-hating non-whites who have embraced said culture, ‘sold out’ so as to be accepted into said culture, thus being/becoming acceptable to the ‘majority’. The acceptance only lasts as long as the self-haters continue to destroy their very sense of self, but they maintain the delusion that they’ve finally ‘broken through the glass ceiling’. Sadly though, when the harsh reality sets in, suicide is the only answer – after all, isn’t that the ultimate act of self-destruction?
I’m going to explore this thought further on my blog at a later date…
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