Law, Liberty, Love, and Land

Announcing my essay in "A Pathway to American Renewal (Vol. II)"

Book announcement

LAW, LIBERTY, LOVE, and LAND

Announcing my essay in “A Pathway to American Renewal (Vol. II),” edited by Robert L. Woodson Sr.

Michael David Cobb Bowen

What if militant black radicals of the ‘60s decided culture was more important than politics? Then they might be more like my father, an original cultural Black Nationalist who genuinely believed African Americans should repatriate back to Africa. Robert T. Bowen Sr. founded the Institute for Black Studies in 1966 in the wake of the Watts Riots. My family celebrated Kwanzaa instead of Christmas in Los Angeles and became the model for what we today call “community organizers.” I got up at 6AM every morning and went jogging with my father. I spoke Swahili at home. I was a prototype for the young, gifted, and black. 

My parents had every reason to believe their activities and those of the Institute were monitored by the FBI. We were televised guests of the noted journalist Louis Lomax. We were associated with the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC). We rode in the parades of the Watts Summer Festival. I was a candidate to be the child star on the groundbreaking series Julia, starring Diahann Carroll. 

Today I am a data engineer working for a startup. I have been a Republican, a student leader, and a number of other things including a founding member of the Foundation for Free Black Thought. I never did then, and don’t now, have any hatred or antipathy for white folks, and I think most conversations around race in the US are counterproductive. In fact, I’m one of those people who find Coleman Hughes much closer to the moral truth than someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, or Ibram X. Kendi, or their intellectual progenitors like Quincy Troupe or Maulana Ron Karenga, whom we knew personally.

How to reconcile my upbringing with my current thinking? If I could reduce it to a few words, I would have to say those words are class, friendship, religion, philosophy, and family. A studied, ethical discipline around these concepts, not race, has guided my life. However, the fact that I always had 100% confidence in my young black self, surrounded by respect and love, was something that started in my Black Nationalist family. In contrast, Black Nationalism echoes through today’s society in racial and political terms, cool poses, and oppositional narratives. But that particular legacy of Black Nationalism is not my story. 

My parents raised a family in an era of violent protest, political assassination, and insouciant political bosses, such as Sam Yorty, mayor of Los Angeles during the period of the Watts riots, who dismissed concerns about police brutality and stoked racial division. My parents’ dedication to service and citizenship was constantly frustrated by a society they found hostile to the needs of the poor and sometimes backward Negro. The promise of a new society and mindset they could cultivate by expatriation from America was much more appealing than engaging in racial conflict in America, especially considering that my uncle was successfully realizing the former in West Africa through the Peace Corps. This is the subtext of my brief story of the creative impulse to build civilization from scratch in my chapter “Law, Liberty, Love and Land” in the upcoming book, now available for pre-order, A Pathway to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black, Volume II, edited by Robert L. Woodson Sr.

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Michael DC Bowen is a co-founder of Free Black Thought, a Stoic writer, author of the award-winning blog Cobb, and data engineer. He has been published in Newsweek, was a regular NPR contributor, host at Cafe Utne, and founder of the Conservative Brotherhood and Rights Universal. His online writing projects on political, cultural and philosophical subjects reach back over 23 years. His latest project, is Stoic Observations, where a previous version of this essay was posted. His previous posts at the Journal of Free Black Thought include a review of John McWhorter’s 2021 book, Woke Racism and “Black Suffering: Who Needs It?” Michael lives with his wife and three children in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter.