Wilentz, West, and Black Intellectuals: A Reply: Responds
Wilentz, Sean
Arguments The aim of my essay was not to measure reputations, as Martin Kilson claims The aim was to assess how reputations get measured these days. The essay grew from my dismay at how the...
...they really know how to draw a crowd...
...Looking back, Kilson's essay reads like a prospective defense of the Million Man March, an event that has given Farrakhan a degree of legitimacy and power unimaginable until now...
...In the same issue of Dissent where my original essay appeared, Kilson contributed an essay of his own, defending the efforts of black radicals and reformers to strike tactical alliances with racist authoritarians like Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad—figures he described, with an unnerving academic detachment, as xenophobic, Afrocentric "ethno-radicals...
...Kilson records the reservations and ignores the rest...
...Can't we, at long last, dispense with the whole idea of racial authenticity...
...and so, Kilson argued, it makes sense for mainstream black leaders to build "odd-bedfellow" ties with them—"ties aimed at a specific task of coping with the runaway drug crisis and criminal crisis in inner-city black communities...
...No critic to the left of Dinesh D' Souza would WINTER • 1996 • 95 Arguments claim that black writers have not derived great moral, aesthetic, and "systemic" lessons from the experience of black America, including the experience of white racism...
...And although the Million Man March has touched off a vigorous debate, it has also occasioned a good deal of commentary in the high-profile celebrity mode: judging the day's events (including Farrakhan's oratory) strictly on the grounds of their artfulness, enthusiasm, and camaraderie—their style—and gliding over their political content...
...they talk about some important issues...
...And if believing in integration makes me a neoliberal, so be it—but Kilson should know that he is in danger of dismissing many more erstwhile allies, black and white, besides me...
...But it also speaks directly to the issues of this exchange...
...My point, though, was neither to predict nor to dictate West's future, but rather to reflect on how the celebrity razzle-dazzle of today's intellectual scene makes that job more difficult...
...I know what he means, but this is where I stand...
...Instead of democratic politics, we get a jolt of Garveyite messianism and the old authoritatian rhetoric of revitalization: one more counternarrative...
...Representative John Lewis recently remarked that he sometimes feels like a square when he talks to people about the ideals of interracial democracy and the Beloved Community...
...As I have said elsewhere, I think that the notion of a "color-blind" America—a notion once proclaimed by the civil rights movement but since adopted and distorted by conservatives— is chimerical...
...Still, I have to wonder, especially given some of the ideological labels that he tries to pin on other authors...
...It is all very different from what I had understood as Cornel West's call for a new "politics of conversion" that, in West's words, "shuns the limelight—a limelight that 96 • DISSENT Arguments solicits status seekers and egomaniacs...
...I suspect that, deep down, Kilson and I actually agree about these matters more than we differ...
...Although I greatly admire Ellen Willis and am always delighted to be in her company (whatever our differences), I doubt that her loyal readers ever expected that she would be lumped with anyone as a neoliberal...
...Kilson made it clear that he abhors these people's "mean and twisted" views, and he fretted that alliances with them might prove "counter-productive to long-run democratic purposes...
...Nor can anybody deny that black American writers have been inescapably drawn to the themes of black history and life...
...Talk of black leadership has turned to discussion of black male charisma, of who best grabs the public's attention, with little visible consideration of programs and policies...
...Still, I appreciate Martin Kilson's willingness to raise his voice...
...Kilson's fixation on identity also overlooks that blacks have not been alone in writing superbly about black themes, or in stimulating other writers of all colors to do so...
...Nor does Kilson's reply consider how recent black writers have escaped the Jim Crow isolation that was imposed on their forerunners, only to find themselves competing for the "black" market niche...
...Near the essay's conclusion, I discussed the recent controversy over Cornet West's writings, as an example of how, paradoxically, even toughminded critics who try to look beyond the celebrity hype can wind up getting misled...
...Rather, as I suggested in my Dissent essay, I believe in an integrated America where different skin colors are no longer badges of inequality, an America radically different from our own, for blacks and whites and everyone else...
...Beneath the surface of our quarrel, I think that Kilson and I have a very specific and sharp disagreement over what he calls "black-connectedness and radical criticism" and their links to the celebrity cult...
...The essay grew from my dismay at how the conceits of celebrity journalism have increasingly garbled public presentation of ideas and politics...
...Carol Swain, for example, has written about the necessity of biracial electoral coalitions, and has raised serious questions about the pitfalls of race-based gerrymandering...
...and he obscures my basic point, which had to do with the state of current intellectual journalism and not with West's status or achievements...
...Farrakhan and company have charisma...
...Now, more than ever, each of us (and especially Dissent's editors) needs to air his or her views fully and forcefully, to check our consciences and then move on...
...Kilson's remarks about authorial racial, ethnic, and sexual identity fit today's fashions, but they overl000k the plain fact that many black writers (and not just "conservatives") have been rejecting pat racial identities without acquiescing in white racism...
...Merely to note the existence of writers like Thomas Sowell is not the same thing as endorsing their ideas or claiming that their voices are more "authentic" than those of other black writers...
...On some important broader issues, Kilson fabricates a hidden agenda on my part, and imputes to me views that I do not hold...
...as Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, and others have observed, it is difficult to write well about black America without also writing about white America, and vice versa, since the two Americas have helped to define each other, and to define the country at large...
...Although Kilson sees "black realities" as addressing the larger human condition, he also sounds as if he backs the common assumption that unless black writing analyzes and protests racial injustice, it is deficient, lacking in sufficient racial "connectedness...
...November 16, 1995 WINTER • 1996 • 97...
...I mentioned the first in passing, but concentrated on the second, where I believe the intellectual and political stakes are much greater...
...What Kilson describes, with some highly selective quotations, as my attempt to launch "a kind of assault on West's reputation" was actually a defense of West's efforts as a self-described "organic intellectual"—a sincere defense that applauded what I thought were West's main contentions about moral responsibility and the political situation of the black American poor...
...Not only do authors like Stephen Carter, Stanley Crouch, and Cornel West also write about other matters...
...In fact, even D' Souza allows as much...
...For myself, as an interested reader (and as West's friend, former academic colleague, and fellow Dissent editor), I hope that he will go on to write something on a par with The Black Jacobins or The Other America...
...With some reservations, the essay likened West's abilities and ambitions to those of Michael Harrington—the highest sort of praise of a politically engaged writer that I can imagine, especially coming in this magazine...
...The outcome of that logic is, in my view, ominous...
...But that is not all that black writers have been drawn to, either now or in the past...
...Kilson's tortured logic (which likens embracing Farrakhan to forging the New Deal) displays a startling political naivet...
...I did not attempt to discuss all of the criticisms directed at West—as I say, the essay was not primarily about him—but stuck to what I thought were the most important criticisms, about which I could write with a plausible measure of authority...
...Does this really make her a conservative, as Kilson describes her...
...It was my worries about these sorts of things that prompted my original essay, not a hidden desire to attack Comel West's reputation or to promote conservative writers...
...This assumption is so provincial that it cannot be right...
...Amid recent events, the lure of celebrity, catharsis, and drawing-power—and, at times, the vaunting of a purely racial solidarity—has clouded over what used to be fundamental principles and aspirations of the democratic left and the civil rights movement...
...I am much more worried today than I was six months ago...
...But in the end, he suppressed his fears and pointed out that the ethno-radicals' offer of "catharsis," along with their "massive entertainment value," have made them popular among inner-city blacks...
...The garbling occurs on many fronts, but it has been especially damaging in the coverage of two overlapping areas: the new pop world of postmodern academia and the writings of the so-called "new black intellectuals...
Vol. 43 • January 1996 • No. 1
