One distinctive and unfortunate part of African American culture is the too-often repeated exercise of public rants against each other. This habit is not ameliorated because it has a very long-standing tradition within the community, nor is it okay just because both famous and not-so-famous Black folk engage in it.
At the beginning of African American literature in the 1760s, Jupiter Hammond, our first published poet, made insulting comments about the writing of fellow poet and first woman published in America Phillis Wheatley. The comments seemed to be based on both jealousy and the need-to-be-the-only Black voice syndrome that we too easily get into. This is also called the ‘anxiety for influence’ motivation, which has been a bear to control in most of us.
Looking at the historical records, it is very easy to find public examples of Black intellectual and artistic feuds: Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, Ph.D., and Booker T. Washington (“It seems to me, said Booker T …. I don’t agree, said W.E.B.”); Dubois and Marcus Garvey; Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston; Richard Wright and James Baldwin; Martin Luther King and Whitney Young; John Henrik Clarke and Maulana Karenga; Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah etc. It seems we have loved throwing semantic bombs and barbs at each other in the streets, so to speak. Keeping the in-fighting in-house, even when we knew that was the best thing to do, was just a mountain too high to climb.
Here we go again. This time, for this era, we have Michael Eric Dyson, Ph.D., the author, sometimes MSNBC commentator, Georgetown University professor, and public intellectual, versus Cornel West, Ph.D., the Harvard-Princeton-Union Theological Seminary author and professor, and very well-known public intellectual and activist. It seems Dr. West has been on a speech-making rampage lately attacking the character and credentials of any Black intellectual who does not share his wholesale criticism of President Barack Obama. From 2011 to 2013, he consistently slammed professor Dyson, professor Melissa Harris-Perry, and Rev. Al Sharpton as bootlickers and water-carriers for President Obama. He publicly questioned their individual and combined commitment to helping Black folk, even calling them out as race traitors in one presentation.
In May of this year, professor Dyson, a former friend and mentee of professor West, took West to task in a 10,000-word article in New Republic Magazine. He essentially called West a bankrupt and barren intellectual who last published anything of significance in 1993, with his book “Race Matters.” The article profoundly excoriated West.
Both have since continued the feud unabated in several subsequent public forums, essentially “playing the dozens” in public arenas, calling each other all sorts of vulgar and caustic names. While expressing love and respect for each other’s work, they have been very uncivil.
Sometimes such open sniping at each other has helped the Black community move forward by articulating more explicitly the differences between two or more envisioned paths forward. One good example of this is the explanation of non-violence as both a philosophy and a tactic, and the youth advocacy of the Black power movement.
But mostly, these public spats have done little or nothing for the Black Movement beyond feeding pettiness, revenge and ego-gratification. And sometimes, they have gotten people killed (e,g., the Black Panther-US dispute ended up with the deaths of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins at UCLA in the 1960s).
One thing is crystal clear in this current iteration of public feuding among Black leadership; it is having no positive impact on relieving us from sudden death by police misconduct, increasing incarceration, the decline in Black male school graduation rates, and re-directing the abysmal un- and underemployment rates in the Black community, among many other issues.
Professors Dyson and West, button up! Nobody but your acolytes cares about this silly feud you have going. We’ve got real work to do and each of you have some important participation to contribute. Let’s get on with it, please.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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