Dr. vs. Dr.

As you might -or might not- know, a couple of "black intellectuals" are at war with each other right now.

On one side of the battlefield is Dr. Eric Dyson, and on the other side is Dr. Cornel West.

The oratorical reciprocation and verbal jostling has been fun to watch.

Fortunately we have some brilliant black writers in the middle who can break it all down for us.

"I began reading Michael Eric Dyson’s lengthy essay for the New Republic, “The Ghost of Dr. Cornel West,” with some trepidation. By the time I finished it, I was sickened. Framed as an impartial assessment of West’s so-called steep decline as a scholar, public intellectual, thought leader and writer, Dyson backdoors into a scathing critique of his former friend that felt as bruising as a series of sucker punches delivered with increasingly gleeful frequency and viciousness.

The timing of the essay is jarring in this moment, particularly since it appears in the New Republic, which, until very recently, has been written primarily from a white, so-called liberal point of view. African Americans are being gunned down in record numbers by police officers and vigilantes in cities across the country, and we are living in a cultural, political and revolutionary moment of intensified black rage. This being the case, it hardly seems the time or place for rehashed Ivy League drama between two well-respected and accomplished African-American professors.

“In his anger toward me,” Dyson writes, “I was forced, for the first time, to entertain seriously the wild accusations levied against him.”

Dyson also mentions his razor-sharp takedown on Obama’s tepid racial politics and lack of loyalty at the 2010 “We Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda” conference in Chicago, as if that proves his willingness to critique the president for his lack of loyalty and commitment to black America. But in the New Republic piece, he criticizes West for becoming angry that Obama made promises to him that he didn’t keep:

Long before their ideological schism, however, West believed himself personally betrayed by Obama because of his (supposed) disinterest after the election. It is a sad truth that most politicians are serial rhetorical lovers and promiscuous ideological mates, leaving behind scores of briefly valued surrogates and supporters. West should have understood that Obama had had similar trysts with many others. But West felt spurned and was embittered.

 

This condescending reading of West’s issues with Obama is reductive and disingenuous. West is angry because Obama did backbends for the GOP; folded on authentic universal health care, specifically the public option; bailed out Wall Street; and is complicit in the droning of children. His critique of Obama's evocation of Martin Luther King Jr. is valid when his global policy runs counter to what King fought for—in action, if not always in rhetoric.
 

Dyson accuses West of being in the throes of “emotional catharsis” after beginning his piece slyly framing his former mentor as “a woman scorned.” This is typically an old misogynist hat trick to discredit the legitimacy of female viewpoints, and I was surprised to see Dyson pull it out in his essay—particularly because West is clearly not the one in his feelings here.

Perhaps Dyson’s move shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The river of bad blood between the two men has ebbed and flowed along the banks of President Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House, occasionally crashing ashore on cable networks for the world to witness. Through it all, I’ve still closely followed both of their careers with admiration and respect. The staccato boom bap of Dyson’s words, at times punctuated with a controlled gush of alliteration as if he’s masterfully riding a beat; and the powerful Baptist-preacher thunder of West’s voice, eyes ablaze with righteous fury, his Afro a subversion of the Ivy Leagues he favored throughout most of his career.
 

Meeting West remains unchecked on my bucket list, but I had the honor of meeting Dyson when we both participated in a diversity and inclusion event at Alcorn State University a couple of years ago. He is as brilliant and fearless in person as one would expect, laying waste to the deep-Southern-fried religiosity preferred by “sexual rednecks”—those black people whose contemptuous intolerance for gender queerness mirrors the bigotry of racist, Southern whites—with a signature fluidity that seems to come as naturally to him as breathing.
 

Though Dyson’s work has always impressed me and continues to do so, it is West, with his unwavering stances against poverty, police brutality, political tokenism, imperialism and global terrorism perpetuated by the United States, who represents the beating heart of global black liberation. As a rarely seen video of West being schooled by Sista Souljah will attest, he has not always been this way, but since his consciousness has been awakened, he’s remained consistent.

I’m not a scholar—I’m just a writer for myself and others—but I know this to be true: While Dyson was probably working on the second or third draft of his West essay last week, the man himself was marching and speaking against police brutality in New York City’s Union Square.
 

West told the excited crowd, “Don’t be confused by some black faces in high places. For seven years there’s been our black and brown brothers and sisters shot down by the police. Black president, black attorney general, black Cabinet secretary of homeland [security] and not one policeman sent to jail ... something just ain’t right.”
 

As the old folks used to say, “Stop him when he’s lying.”
 

I won’t delve too deeply into Dyson’s essay here because it’s really something to be read and digested on one’s own. However, several things stood out to me as hypocritical within a piece that felt intensely personal and vindictive.
 

Writing that West should accept his role as a “public intellectual, social gadfly or merely a paid pest,” Dyson also calls him a vain, unimaginative, bitter, self-anointed prophet. Interestingly enough, Dyson said that he would never call himself a prophet, but the lie detector test determined that was a lie.

In 2010, sitting across from West, he used the term “prophet” to encompass the thinkers gathered at the table discussing what President Obama owed to black America: “Black agendas are about America. When America is made best, black people stand up and articulate our visions, our dreams, our aspirations, our sentiments. We love Mr. Obama; we recognize him as president. We must have prophets who tell the truth and that’s what we’re doing here today.”  

Interesting.
 

It becomes clear that his change of heart happened around the same time that West expanded his anger at Obama to include those he felt sold out for a seat at the political table.

Let’s be clear: What Dyson did in the New Republic was not scholarship; it was a hit piece wrapped in scholarly words. He sliced West up, took out his insides and returned them in such a haphazard way that those familiar with West’s quest for justice, peace and love by fire would no longer recognize the man he presented to us. It took close to 10,000 words for Dyson to call West a delusional, self-aggrandizing, washed-up has-been who has overstayed his welcome in academia. Well, if academia doesn’t want him, the people living, working and dying outside of it sure do. I’d much rather West put aside his “esoteric” erudition and “make it plain.” 

I’d rather he make it plain about President Obama being a “Rockefeller Republican” in blackface. I’d rather he make it plain about the United States being complicit in the droning and murder of innocent people in Palestine and Yemen. I’d rather he make it plain about the issues facing our “dear brothers and sisters,” instead of propping up a gender-exclusive initiative like My Brother’s Keeper to prove that President Obama cares about black people. There is more than one way to be a “public intellectual” that does not revolve around the academy, and it is elitist to suggest otherwise. In doing so, Dyson displays the very same arrogance he attributes to West by exhibiting a “callous disregard for plural visions of truth.”

There is no doubt that West has left himself open for retaliation from his former friends. Dyson has been publicly derided by West as being easily seduced by access to power, and he has every right to defend himself. Still, he shouldn’t disguise a festering vendetta as an aboveboard scholarly pursuit." [Article]

Personally, I love it. There is nothing wrong with two men of some intellectual stature battling each other for all the world to see, and staking out their ideological positions for us to dissect and  consider.  

*Pic from hbcudigest.com

 

 

Coward!

So Eric Holder thinks that we are cowards here in A-merry-ca because we don't talk openly about race. (The guy obviously doesn't ever come to this site) And of course every red blooded white A-merry-can took offense; some more than others. If you didn't happen to catch the shout fest between Pat Buchanan and Michael Eric Dyson on "Hardball" tonight you missed a real treat. For a moment there I thought Pat was going to drop the "N" word, I sure know he was thinking it. (*How many of you Negroes can look at a white person and just tell when he/she wants to call you the"N" word? Raise your hands.*) Say what you want about Pat, at least he seems to be pretty honest about his feelings on race. Now there is a guy I could start a dialogue with. Eric Holder was not talking about the Pat Buchanans of the world. He knows just how he feels about black folks, and he doesn't seem to have any illusions about it. I like that.

Now Lorie Byrd, on the other hand, not so much.

See Lorie is your typical misguided conservative. I will try not to be too hard on her because she is a Tigers fan like moi. Still, her recent post on Wizbang about Holder's comments was sad but not surprising. She thinks individual black people achieving in business and politics is a fair measuring stick of how far A-merry-ca has come on matters of race. As if every time she sees a black woman she sees Condi or Oprah, and every time she sees a black man she sees Obama or Will. The anecdote about her daughter and her black playmate....well here, read for yourself:

"Here's the Associated Press report:

Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was "a nation of cowards" on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said.
Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, but "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."
Maybe one day we will know Americans are no longer cowards on race if they pass a law to protect the civil rights of minorities.

Or a black woman becomes one of the most successful businesswomen in America.
Or if a black man or woman can serve as secretary of state.
Or if one day they elect a black American to the highest office in the land.
Or if a black man can serve as attorney general, Eric Holder.

Of course all those things have happened already. But Holder is talking not so much about concrete progress made by minorities, but about how Americans discuss race and how they choose to associate in their private lives. Make of that what you will, but when someone in the government starts worrying about who I choose as my friends, I get worried that they are way deeper in my business than I care for them to be.

Update: It just occurred to me that while I was writing this post my daughter was in her room playing with the little girl who lives across the street -- who just happens to be black. The fact that it did not even occur to me until now, in my opinion, is more indicative of progress. Would you prefer to live in a country where you associated with those of other races without even thinking about it, or a country in which race was always on your mind and discussed at every opportunity. I know which America I choose and it is quite apparent which one Attorney General Holder would prefer. I guess in his book that makes me a coward.
Update II: Michelle Malkin talks about real race cowards.

Funny. When I think of racial cowards, I think of Barack Obama at Jeremiah Wright's church, sitting there week after week, year after year, saying nothing about the separatist demagoguery echoing from the pulpit to the pews.

When I think of racial cowards, I think of all the navel-gazers who fret about poisonous racial dialogue, but say nothing about "My President Is Black" bigotry...
...Holder doesn't want an honest dialogue about race. In the Age of Obama, "talking enough with each other about race" means the rest of us shutting up while being subjected to lectures about our insensitivity and insufficient integration on the weekends.Allahpundit points out that Obama could have talked more about race during the campaign if he wanted to, but the Jeremiah Wright made that hard to do.

I didn't think about this when I first posted, but what does it say about Democrats/liberals who won't allow black Americans to identify themselves as conservatives or Republicans without calling them derogatory names? I guess it could be considered cowardice that so many liberals are afraid of and threatened by black conservatives who flee the liberal Democrat plantation."

Hmmm, did she write "black conservatives who flee the liberal Democrat plantation"? Nice try Lorie, but the last time I checked; the big house was still a part of the plantation.

Article Here: