A STARK LOOK
BY ROBERT T. STARKS 2-3-06


“JOHN MCWHORTER IS DEFINED BY A LACK OF HISTORY”


After reading the excerpt from John McWhorter’s new book, Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America, in the Chicago Sun-Times last month, my first reaction was to simply ignore him and whatever he had to say. However, upon second thought, I think that it is important that we read Mr. McWhorter very carefully and engage him and those who think like him. We must do this because fundamentally, at the dawn of the 21st century, America is in the process of redefining, rewriting and retrofitting the African-American sojourn in this country. Ultimately, this revisionist tendency will attempt to recast the entire history of the African presence on the world stage. These same revisionists have already dismissed African Centered scholarship and history as reactionary and narcissistic, while eagerly embracing white supremacist historiography, social, economic, and political theory simply because it is now being dressed up and presented as race and ethnically neutral. These scholars and intellectuals do not understand is that the hegemonic domination of the intellectual center that defines and justifies the domination of the west over the rest of us, in the words of social theorist Edward Shils, will never yield to the alternate demands of the rest of us on the intellectual periphery. Further, no matter how much we might think that we have been brought into the center on our own terms, when we have been given the illusion of inclusion it is basically cooptation. That is the nature of hegemony. This is how and why the west dominates. In order to break from this domination we must begin the slow and tedious process of decolonization and the deconstruction of white supremacist intellectual hegemony. In the process, we must provide moral and intellectual leadership to the rest of the African World Community. The Italian, Marxist, intellectual, Antonio Gramsci in his Selections from the Prison Notebooks, characterizes hegemony in this manner. He says that “the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and as intellectual and moral leadership. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to liquidate, or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise leadership before winning governmental power …it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to lead as well.”
Clearly, the African World Community does not conceive of itself of subjugating by “armed force” the western world and its hegemonic domination; however, we must be prepared to provide intellectual and moral leadership to the “kindred and allied groups” within the African World Community. This charge demands strict sense of duty and dedication to the principals of liberation and independence. Unfortunately, I do not see that degree of dedication and desire to be intellectually independent when I read the works of intellectuals like Mr. McWhorter. On the other hand, I am led to conclude that these African-American men and women are satisfied to be co-opted into the western intellectual center at the cost of surrendering their very souls.

MR. McWHORTER’S THESIS

The most obvious and glaring error in the excerpt that I read from Mr. McWhorter’s book is the fact that it is woefully ahistorical and is fraught with wildly illogical leaps of faith and conclusions because of what Harold Cruse calls generational discontinuity.
While many of us came through the Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s and are now able to contrast and compare that time with the present, we are fully aware of the fact that we fell short of the revolution that we planned. We are also fully aware of the reality of the state of Black America and all of its shortcomings. However, at the same time, we do not concede to notion that we have devolved to a state of “empty posturing, a form of therapeutic alienation.”
To suggest that at the dawn of the 21st century Black American activism is now wallowing in a pathetic state of therapeutic alienation is a profound display of and disrespect for Black people. To be sure there are some Black activists who are empty, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. However, to characterize all as empty is criminal. One is moved to wonder if Mr. McWhorter would characterize those activists, elected officials and civic leaders who have spent the last two decades fighting against the escalation in incidents of police brutality who have offered sound legislative and administrative solutions to this grave problem as persons who are engaging in empty posturing. In spite of these brave and reasoned efforts by thousands of African-Americans across the country, this problem continues to register as one of the most enduring complains in virtually every Black community in America. The endurance of police brutality in the Black community is the result of deep seeded white supremacy and it’s most virulent expression, racism.
Are we to conclude that the fight for reparations is empty posturing? Is he saying that the fight for the eradication of poverty and American foreign policy bias against Africa is evidence of therapeutic alienation?
The greatest insult issued by Mr. McWhorter is his notion that Black American activists “inherited it [therapeutic alienation] from others: specifically, whites during the countercultural revolution.” While I am not completely sure exactly what he means by therapeutic alienation beyond the notion of a self imposed pathology, given the reality of the historical power arrangements of this country, it is possible that white activists of the countercultural revolution may have fallen victim to the syndrome of therapeutic alienation. However, Black American did not need white activists, neither then nor now, to turn them on to alienation. African-Americans were alienated from this society from the moment that they set foot on American soil. This alienation is not some sickness that can be cured by an inoculation of new age intellectualism such as that that is now being employed by those political scientists who preach the gospel of rational choice methodology.
I hope that Mr. McWhorter is not seriously suggesting that we have overcome all of the hurdles of racism and, therefore, we have no need for further struggle. I wonder if he is suggesting that this same false paradigm has the kind of universality that would allow it to be applied to Jewish Americans who have never ceased their activism that dates as far back as the Abraham and continues to today. I hope that he is not suggesting that Black activists and those Blacks who support them are engaging in this activity merely because it appeals to our habitual sense of duty and tradition without understanding why we do it and without any specific goals in mind. I am sure that some Black intellectuals and the majority of White America thought that my ancestors and those of Mr. McWhorter of four and five generations ago were engaging in something that was even more outlandish than therapeutic alienation when they prayed for, made the material and spiritual sacrifices, and engaged in activism to provide the opportunities that we now enjoy.
Lastly, I am not suggesting in any way that the intellectual and activist, theory and praxis sides of the Black Movement needs an infusion of new ideas and strategies. However, to dismiss the entire movements as irrelevant must be music to the ears of our enemies. Mr. McWhorter needs to seriously examine the history of social movements, what he will find is that movements have ebbs and flows, ups and downs, rough times and good times. In those rough times, the agents of social change, including the intellectuals do not dismiss the movement, they offer constructive direction. Black America should adjust to the realities of the 21st century and at the same fight with the dedication of the venerated military leader of the Viet Cong, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who repeated to his comrades for more than fifty years the mantra; “we will never, never, never, give up!”

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