Gianna Hayes
Chief News Editor
The Office of Equity and Belonging hosted Wooster’s Lee A. McBride III, Frank Halliday Ferris chair of philosophy at the College, to give an address in honor of Black History Month. The talk, titled “Insurrectionist Ethics and Angela Davis,” took place on Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 6:30 p.m. in Allen Commons, and was based on an article McBride wrote in 2017.
Angela Davis is a philosopher and activist, and was a prominent member of the Black Panther Party and Communist Party — leading to her high-profile prosecution and trial by then-Governor Ronald Reagan and the FBI in 1970. In 2015, she was invited to lecture at The College of Wooster as part of a series of talks under “Global & Postcolonial Ethics,” alongside fellow academics María Lugones and Kristie Dotson.
McBride began his talk by asserting that his audience is oppressed peoples and defining the concepts of oppression, racism and the act of insurrection. He defined oppression as “a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize and mold people who are assigned to a denigrated/stigmatized group, and subordinated to another group.” Racism was defined as “a polymorphous network of interrelated forces and barriers which allows one group to empower itself by not only stigmatizing and dehumanizing a targeted group, but also stripping that group of its assets and material resources.” Finally, McBride defined insurrection as “the action of rising in arms or open resistance against established authority or governmental restraint; an act or resistance of rising in revolt, rebellion or resistance against civil authority or an established government.”
When speaking of insurrection, McBride specifically referred to abolitionists and insurrections carried out by oppressed peoples. McBride also posed a question on legality and quoted Davis, asking if “you and I [should] rise and openly resist/defy this oppression, this injustice, even if it is commonplace and legal? Should we assume ‘a militant posture of resistance?’”
McBride then outlined the four basic tenets of an insurrectionist. First, an insurrectionist has a willingness to defy norms that perpetuate oppression. Second, they have a dignity and moral imperative to act radically on behalf of oppressed peoples. Third, they find affinity groups and work with others who also want to enact meaningful and lasting change. Lastly, insurrectionists have character traits such as boldness, tenacity, indignation, irreverence and guile—traits that McBride explained are not usually thought of as “virtues,” but he argued as being “important, maybe necessary for you to fight back.”
McBride examined Davis’ activism by mapping these four tenets onto her work. Speaking on Davis’ rejection of social norms, he outlined her political persecution in the 1970s that led to her arrest by the FBI and her eventual acquittal. McBride also argued that her self-conception pointed to her insurrectionist attitude, saying “she can also see that how I group myself and who I see myself as a part of could change … To change things in the world, you actually have to group yourself and work with someone else.” Davis also spoke on the virtues of audacity, tenacity and forcefulness, particularly when exhibited by abolitionists.
McBride argued, “I think when you are in the position of being oppressed within these structures that mold you and limit your options that having the ability to access insurrectionist character traits is something that the oppressed needs …”
McBride ended his lecture with a call to action, quoting Davis: “This is just the beginning of a very long agenda for social change. We will have to do a lot of work — a lot of work on ourselves, a lot of work with each other, and we have to try to make sense of what appears to be a really depressing world.”
McBride took questions from the audience members for the remaining 30 minutes.
One audience member asked for McBride’s opinion on the recent protests in Minneapolis and how insurrectionist ethics may or may not be exercised there. McBride responded by saying that protesters “have been nice, and they have tried to explain to people and it’s not working, and they’re seeing people get harmed in the streets, and what can you do? I do think you could try to apply these ideas there.”
Another audience member asked how McBride’s iteration of insurrectionist ethics differed from those of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which many have called an insurrection. McBride responded that he did not consider them on the same level because the rioters in that instance were “attempt[ing] to uphold and to maintain certain structures … I would also add that the vast majority of those people weren’t oppressed.”
Yet another audience member suggested that dismantling oppressive systems requires changing the flow of money, and asked how that affects insurrectionist efforts. McBride emphasized the importance of education, saying that he has “come to see that some of us who are teaching can ‘infect’ people, put the germ in them, and then send them off to work … We have the ability to, with smart students, to put ideas in their head — not that they’re going to do exactly what we think, but maybe some of them might change some things.”
