Harris-Perry: Breaking News: Not All Black Intellectuals Think Alike

[tishaLA]

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man opens with a battle royal. The novel’s nameless black male protagonist is asked to recite his high school commencement speech touting submission and racial humility for the white citizens of his segregated town. When he arrives at the venue, he finds that the white men have arranged for him and other young black men to don boxing gloves and blindfolds and viciously fight one another for the entertainment of the white hosts. They even require the boys to scramble on an electrified mat for gold coins—which later turn out to be brass. Bruised and bloodied, the narrator is then required to deliver his speech to the men, who mockingly ignore his elocution. At the end of the night the same men award him a scholarship to the state college for Negroes.

This scene has been playing in a mental loop for me since I participated in the mini-tempest that exploded in the academic teapot in the aftermath of Chris Hedges’s Truthdig interview with Professor Cornel West, who stingingly criticized President Obama’s economic and social policies and painted the president as cowardly and out of touch with black culture. In my response to West on my blog at TheNation.com, I observed how West’s sense of betrayal is clearly more personal than ideological and as such “gave insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership that has been largely supplanted in recent years.” All of this prompted more discussion, criticism and attacks—from those organized in defense of West and from those supportive of the president. <...>

Whatever the accuracy or erroneousness of West’s remarks, there was little new in them. Arguments about the corporate control of American politics, the ascendance of Wall Street over Main Street and the imperial impulse of American foreign policy have been the standard talking points of the left for more than a decade. What fascinated the press were the salacious tidbits offered by West that suggested black-on-black infighting. My response and those that followed added to the impression that black intellectuals were engaged in a battle royal. As in Ellison’s opening scene, it is the fight, not the speech, that is the main attraction. That African-Americans strenuously disagree among ourselves about goals and strategies is an ancient historical truth that is masked by our nominal partisan similarities. But the intense media attention over West’s critique of President Obama can be understood only by the repeated refusal by mainstream media and broader American political culture to adequately grasp the heterogeneity of black thought. The Nation

I really, really don't want to reargue the same material about Profs West and Harris-Perry from last week, but I like her piece and, frankly, I think her ability to recall the opening scene from Invisible Man is both impressive and apt.

[Karenina]

1. Girlfriend is all that and a bag o' chips. n/t