CORNEL WEST LECTURE. NOVEMBER 4th, 2004
Race Matters: The Call To Social Responsibility
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posted by How, Then, Shall We Live? @ 12:04 PM
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Comments on West's Restoring Hope by D'Anthony Allen at Freshmen Orientation
Restoring hope in our communities has a significant tie to both our history and our humanity. As human beings, we must preserve these entities as if our existence depended on it. Because, in a large sense, it does. Without our history, we have no idea of where we come from. Without our humanity, we are nothing more than a machine that has the capability of thought. But the arts remind us of who we are and keep us intoned to our emotions.
Harry Belafonte made a significant point when he politicized art in his argument. He said “the culture of a people is the soul of a people. It expresses their highest hopes and aspirations. And in that hope, and in that aspiration, there is a political statement. So that is someone is overtly political or artistically great and speaks to the human condition in a way that illuminates and inspires, [he sees] that also as a political consequence or a political act….Our art was the substance of our soul and our survival because it was our art that permitted us to survive.” Well, in fact our art was barely permitted to survive. But in many cases, it was outlawed. Now, we enter into a new era. We have music, pictures, paintings, sculptures, verbal and written art. But the question is, how are these things being permeated throughout our culture. Does the popular art today truly reflect our history and our humanity? Why is it hard for me to see art as political, when it is. My opinion is art today is no less political than it was during the Harlem Renaissance. It’s just not hope-specific. Today art doesn’t necessarily showcase the human condition as is and neither does it accurately showcase the human condition as it used to be. There are those of us who remain in high places who indirectly are responsible for marketable art. Take small time artists like our Greg pond who portray accurate pictures of humanity, but maybe because of prestige or the lack there of or the influence of pop-culture may not receive the recognition he deserves. Take soulful artists who rap, sing, and play about other things besides sex, violence, and drugs and how much play-time do they get on VH1, BET and MTV. And by the way, they’re owned by the same company. Belafonte and Martin Luther King were worried about the burning house affect. Integrating ourselves in a commercial death trap. There is a difference in personal pride and material pride, and I feel like we as a people often mix that up. In movies that portray African American men, do we them taking pride in their personality, or their possessions and positions. Not that these things are important, but there is a then line between glorifying and acknowledging. Yes, acknowledge the successful brother who worked hard in school and reaps the benefits. No, don’t glorify the things that he has gained because of his position. See, that’s why so many successful middle class blacks aren’t giving back to their communities. Instead of working to strengthen the public schools, we’re running to the suburbs, following our light-skinned neighbors.
This paradox is identified by Wynton Marsalis. He sees a gap between generations as lack of respect for the culture. If it was never instilled in us as a people, just how important our culture is, we have no desire to preserve it. That’s why it’s extremely important that we listen to our parents and grandparents about our history. That’s why our parents and grandparents need to continue to share our history. We are loosing site of ourselves, our differences, becoming a monoculture that lacks humanity. There is nothing wrong with sharing, I’m glad Emenim is rapper, Tiger is a golfer, and Lenny Kravits plays rock and roll. But we also need to hold dear to those things that were important to our fore-fathers. How many of you all enjoy history. See? As a black student, we don’t get African American history in our schools. We get snippets of recognition which are seldom accurate. But, a lot us don’t like going to devotion, which is our oral history. In mass media, European movies like Troy, Patriot, Braveheart, King Arthur, wins the hearts of so many Americans. While movies like Amistad and the Last Samurai come out in a blue moon, and we barely support them. I’d like to ask, how can we better preserve our history? How can the hope be passed from one generation to the other? How can we come to respect and learn of the many cultures that represent America today?
Cassie Mansfield, from a Faculty Panel on Cornel West
What brings me to the panel today is a desire to introduce Cornell West’s role as a public intellectual into our conversations over the next couple of weeks. First, it would probably be helpful for me to define “public intellectual” especially as it differs from “celebrity.”
Here’s my definition: a public intellectual is someone who has gained prominence for his or her intellectual attainments, a person who feels that public discourse benefits from the presence of reasoned discussion and debate, a person who believes that his or her intellectual work should not be confined to specialized journals but should be available—and accessible—to all citizens. Finally, a public intellectual is a person whose opinions and analysis is sought by popular as well as high-brow media.
My definition of a celebrity revolves largely around the idea that someone is renowned more for who he or she is rather than what he or she does or has done. My favorite example of a pure celebrity is Angelyne, a resident of Los Angeles who in 1976 began exhibiting her own name and likeness on billboards mainly around Wilshire and Hollywood. She has never really done anything nor has she sold any product, except, perhaps, herself.
We have a lot of public celebrities in our culture, often individuals who have gained some fame or notoriety by appearing in movies or television shows. And many of these celebrities participate in public discussions of important social and cultural issues—and they are eagerly sought by the media because celebrities function in the market like currency: one day they’re selling a movie, the next day they’re selling soap, the day after that they’re selling opinions on CNN or Fox News.
For me, two things distinguish the public intellectual from the celebrity:
1) the public intellectual’s prominence and credibility come from his or her attainments in an area that requires thinking and building reasoned arguments;
2) the public intellectual resists being transformed into currency for easy cultural transactions. The public intellectual endorses ideas, not products.
I would add that the public intellectual also engages actively with the real world, has a public stake in society—and this includes taking political stands (of course, some celebrities do this, too).
The United States has not been a particularly fertile plot for the growth of public intellectuals. Our culture seems more comfortable with the idea that academics—if they belong anywhere—belong cloistered in academia, that debate and reasoned critique are fine for the ivory tower but not relevant to everyday life. Some have associated our dearth of public intellectuals with a general “anti-intellectualism” in our culture, and perhaps there’s something to that. Whatever the source of this perceived anti-intellectualism, it is clear, I think, that intellectuals or academics do not fit easily into any of the hero-myths of our culture which tend to revolve around self-making (it’s hard to make a claim to being “self-made” when you’ve spent over 20 years being educated by others) or around “rags-to-riches” stories (we may have rags, but rarely do we achieve riches). In Europe, the situation is rather different. In France, for instance, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who died in 2002, was a frequent contributor to popular newspapers, a voice recognized by millions from various backgrounds. Who are our public intellectuals? We don’t have many, really. Perhaps Noam Chomsky? But he doesn’t have quite the same popular status. Can you imagine Noam Chomsky appearing on an evening news broadcast with Dan Rather or being quoted on the front page of the New York Times as opposed to the Sunday magazine section or the op/ed pages?
Of course, the resistance to public intellectuals among major media has to do with the public intellectual’s resistance to being commidified or used to sell soap. Because that is the only goal of media: to sell advertising time or space and they can only sell ad time or space if they can prove that they are effective at getting people to buy stuff. This may be worth repeating because I talk to a lot of people who think that CNN or Fox or the CBS Evening News is in the business of informing their viewership about things other than products available in the marketplace. Presenting information is just a vehicle for sales, so naturally there is no integrity there.
OK, down from the soap box, so to speak.
The differences between the public intellectual and the celebrity as well as our wariness of intellectualism in general are relevant starting points for a discussion of Cornell West as a public intellectual.
Cornell West is a distinguished scholar of American Pragmatism, a noted authority on African American history and culture, he has been a tenured member of two of the country’s most influential African American Studies programs at Harvard and at Princeton. What interests me today are his efforts throughout this career to break down the barriers between what is done by so-called academics and intellectuals on university campuses across the country and what is done every day.
Like many of us in this room today, I spent a lot of time last week and over the weekend with visiting alumni. I heard from graduates—as I often hear from students on campus—a yearning to take what we’re doing here in our classrooms, in our discussions related to How Then Shall We Live speakers—to take these experiences into our bigger lives beyond the gates of Sewanee.
Cornell West has responded to this pull by positioning himself deliberately as a public intellectual. How has he done this?
• By writing books aimed at popular as well as scholarly audiences (for instance, I was struck—and impressed—at his taking the time in his new book to define arcane terms for his readers, terms such as Manichean or parrhesia)
• By engaging in political activism, working on behalf of political candidates
• By participating in events and conferences devoted to real-world not just academic issues, for instance conferences and summits on AIDS or children’s welfare
• By appearing on radio and television broadcasts
• By exploring alternative—especially youth-oriented—media and venues through which to disseminate ideas about justice, spirituality, social responsibility, and cultural values. This effort has probably been his most controversial because it involves West’s collaboration in the production of a couple of hip-hop CDs, the first one released in 2001; another this year.
It was actually these various public activities that led to Cornel West’s decision to leave Harvard University. In the fall of 2001, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, asked West to a meeting. An account of the meeting and its aftermath appears in West’s new book, Democracy Matters. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read this book yet, I’ll summarize: Summers expressed his concern that West was not using his time as he should. He criticized West’s dalliance with popular music as well as West’s efforts on behalf of presidential candidates. He urged West to focus on writing scholarly books, preferably on American philosophy. According to West, Summers also accused him of dereliction of duty by not showing up to teach his classes. West was incensed and felt that Summers was unfamiliar with his publication record—he had already produced precisely the philosophy book Summers seemed to want him to write. When the nature of the meeting was leaked to the press, presumably by Summers, West was further angered and felt publicly disgraced. Summers than convened another meeting where, according to West, he fell over himself to apologize for his earlier comments and for his previous ignorance about West’s scholarly work. West left the meeting satisfied. The next morning, the papers reported that the pair had met but that Summers had refused to apologize, claiming that West needed to be brought into line. This was the last straw for West, who then went public with his version of the story and eventually accepted a position at Princeton University.
Summers has not been West’s only critic. Others, whites as well as persons of color, have criticized West for many reasons. Some state that he is too bound up with his own ego, too much in pursuit of celebrity. Others echo Summers’ distaste for his forays into popular culture. Still others argue that West’s accounts of the contemporary African American condition do not offer much for women, especially African-American women. His call for a prophetic approach to current social crises is characterized almost exclusively in masculine terms.
However, as an academic I admire West’s willingness to engage with issues outside the safety of the ivy covered walls. I think he offers an example for all of us, maybe especially those of us behind the lectern, so to speak.
Here are the questions I’d like to put into play:
1. Do academics or other intellectuals have a duty to remain out of politics and real-life social concerns or the opposite, a duty to become involved in them?
2. Does activism or public involvement pose a threat to productive intellectual discourse? Does it threaten to water-down or polarize intellectual endeavors?
Also, in relation to broader issues pursued by West, I’d like to ask whether he has moved too far from his original efforts on behalf of race. His latest book addresses race, but does not foreground race in the way that most of his previous work has done, particularly Race Matters and the related Restoring Hope. It seems to me that race is an issue that’s been largely suppressed or ignored in this election so it was with some surprise and disappointment that I found West’s new book makes a similar move.
3. Does race still matter? Or are there more pressing matters at the moment, preventing us from addressing race in a sustained and forthright fashion?
Houston Roberson, from a Faculty Panel on Cornel West
West Talk
Shortly after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, reflecting upon their many successes posed the question: Where do we go from here? The years between 1955 and 1964 had been difficult ones, to be sure, but the movement had engendered unparalleled unity and enthusiasm among people of good will, and it also had garnered sympathy, admiration and support from persons all over the world for the cause of racial equality. Though it may seem naïve and unsophisticated in 2004, civil rights leaders believed that racial issues would be solved though education and exposure. They were convinced that when white children and black children and children of all so-called “races” were educated together and grew up together the problems of racial prejudice would somehow abate. Later King and many others came to rather troubling realizations and conclusions: that in America while color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality. And that while the Civil Rights Movement and many of the other cultural protests of the 1950s and 1960s had addressed and improved some problems, that these agitations had simultaneously uncovered the insidious nature of racism and larger, more fundamental institutional foibles of the nation—from the economic system’s inequitable distribution of wealth to the failure of the political system to bring about a true democracy to society’s failure to create hope and meaning.
Arguably one of the most prolific and provocative voices to respond to America’s post Civil Rights Movement state of crisis has been Cornel West. In his analysis, West brings to bear intellectual traditions that have flourished in the African-American community over the years: his works employ the oratory of Frederick Douglas, the critical race theory first proffered by W. E. B. Du Bois, and the activist protest traditions of the anti-lynching crusader, Ida Wells Barnett. West contends that beneath all of the “problems” and issues with which the country struggles, the most fundamental concern is America’s problem with identity? For West, it seems, the question is not so much where do we go from here, but who are we? He argues that there is a powerful disconnect between who we claim to be and the what our history and our present condition reveal that we are? West asserts that America claims to be a land of opportunity and to have a history of a democracy perpetually enlarging to become more and more inclusive. In reality, he contests, America is a nation that has over-rewarded the few while undervaluing the many. The three hundred years of slavery and subsequent one hundred years of legalized racial discrimination suggests a history where opportunity and oppression are wed. In Race Matters West tells us “we confine our discussions about race in America to the ‘problems’ black people pose for whites rather than consider what this way of viewing black people reveals about the nation.” Recalling the words of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time West reminds us “The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another—or others—always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this.” Even more troubling and more pointedly illustrative of the disconnect between who we are and who we confess to be is Americans’ embrace of what West calls “market” values or the privileging of “things” over relationships and life itself—seeking happiness and meaning, not by working to build healthy and vital relations with other people, but through perpetually acquiring things. Our favoring of “market” values leads to a kind of nihilism, which West defines as (distinguished from the philosophic doctrine that there are no rational grounds for legitimate standards) but rather “the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness.”
West borrows from Malcolm X when he explains that the conundrums exposed by the Civil Rights Movement—an insidious racism, a market-driven value system and feelings of hopelessness and lost can only be remedied by a “physic conversion that cements networks and groups in community, humanity, love, care and concern.” Only then can the chasm between the American promise and the American reality be reconciled.
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