William L. Conwill - Training Black Spirit: Ethics for African American Teens

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.

Rosa Parks

Training Black Spirit

Copyright: 2016: William L. Conwill

ISBN: 978-1-57951-223-1

Published by

Ronin Publishing, Inc.

PO Box 3436

Oakland, CA 94609

www.roninpub.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Production:

Cover & Book Design: Beverly A. Potter

Cover image: Can Stock Photo Inc/Kozzi

Fonts:

African, Allen R. Walden

African Gold, Christopher Kollat, Linotype

Gurnsey, Fonthead

Kalimba Family, John Vargas Biltren

Venis, Chank

Library of Congress Card Number: 2016941113

Distributed to the book trade by PGW

To the new generation of black teens, especially,

Alicia King

Braylon Conwill

Daphne Woolridge

Davia Conwill

Donald Woolridge

James E. Lowe

Joseph McFarland

Olivia King

Quinten Conwill

Sonrisa King

and to those who nurture them to adulthood.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Paul Robeson

The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.

Nelson Mandela

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

W illiam L. Conwill has a remarkably versatile background in psychology, philosophy, theology, education, martial arts, and fatherhood. This wealth of experience and knowledge makes him more than qualified to offer character-building and consciousness-raising guidelines to teenagers, especially to African American youth who are disproportionately vulnerable to being adversely affected by endemic social injustices and by what progressive, emancipatory theologians call the systemic evils of our societys interlocking inequalities of race, class, and gender.

These evils amount to injurious forms of structural violencewhether blatant or subtle in how they are manifested. According to the late Martin Luther King, Jr.s social vision, there are three giant evils in the world that should be countered, and to the extent possible, eradicated: racism, poverty, and militarism. These constitute the larger backdrop for the local stage upon which young black men and women can deploy the ethics explained in this insightful handbook.

The guidelines presented in this book represent ethical principles and spiritual values that, if truly comprehended and appropriately applied, can help black youth make their way through the challenges they are likely to face in their passage from childhood and adolescence into full adulthood. The journey toward adulthood is often complicated by various sorts of constraints and obstacles that need to be overcome through effective problem solving and an optimistic sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The wider environmental or societal context in which the journey toward adulthood takes place is ultimately influenced by forces much larger than the interpersonal interactions and conflicts that are the immediate sources of the dilemmas youth must learn to navigate skillfully and responsibly. Navigation across a challenging terrain can be enhanced if informed and guided by principles that have been tried, tested, and adapted for new generations.

Developing principled behaviors and deeper understandings of the world may lead individuals to directions where the application of ethical precepts may have implications for dilemmas at the micro and macro levels. In other words, some of the spiritual values addressed in this engaging text may have relevance beyond the immediate domain of 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 todays 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 youths 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.