The ‘Black Buddhism Plan’: A Buddhist Black Pacific Narrative
4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
September 28, 2022
Contact Info:
Bertrand Library, 213 – Traditional Reading Room
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In partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Gender, and the Department of Religious Studies, the Bucknell China Institute is pleased to present:
Professor Adeana McNicholl, Vanderbilt University
“The ‘Black Buddhism Plan’: A Buddhist Black Pacific Narrative”
Wednesday, September 28th, 4:30-6:00 pm, Bertrand Library Traditional Reading Room (213)
This talk traces the life and memory of Sufi Abdul Hamid to illustrate the generative possibilities
of creating new histories of American Buddhism that center Black Americans and race. Sufi
Abdul Hamid’s life and memory lie at the intersection of the racialization of Buddhism and the
deployment of U.S. intelligence against new Black religio-racial movements in the early
twentieth century. This talk will first discuss how Hamid innovatively constructed his own
religio-racial identity within the United States and the role that Buddhism played for Hamid’s
own thinking. It will then turn to how others constructed his memory after his death in 1938,
particularly in relation to the publication of a conspiracy theory called the “Black Buddhism
Plan.” By situating this theory within the broader context of the surveillance of religio-racial
Others in the United States and the creation of an imagined “Black Pacific community” by both
Black intellectuals and government surveillance agencies, this talk points to a longer history of
Black engagements with Buddhism in the United States, in which individuals have turned to
Asia to make sense of Black religious and racial identity, to critique white supremacy and
colonialism, and to repudiate Orientalism’s mutual subordination and separation of Black
Americans and Asian Americans.
The China Institute would also like to thank the Office of the Provost and the Dean’s Office of
the College of Arts &Sciences for their support.
Original source can be found here.
