Ouch. If you’re interested in somebody taking Cornel West to the intellectual, literary, and ethical woodshed, go over to Inside Higher Ed to read Scott McLemee’s review of Cornel West’s recently published as-told-to memoir. (Yes, the professor hired a ghost writer!)
McLemee is right. Cornel West is not an academic celebrity—he is the parody of an academic celebrity. Think Stanley Fish without real cleverness and rhetorical élan. Think Harold Bloom without striking flashes of literary insight. Think Bill Ayers without any actual radical activism in his past. What McLemee leaves unmentioned is the fact that West is a phenomenon of a now passing era. He was created by post-civil-rights era white guilt, and its insatiable need to promote and celebrate and coddle and indulge their image of the “Black Intellectual,” a role he has played so well for nearly three decades. movie downloads
December 2nd, 2009 | 3:13 pm
Hey, why are you so raaaaaaacist. As Rush Limbaugh said in another context, someone was really looking for a black academic to succeed….I observe that there is not exactly a plethora of ‘people of color’ writing for FT either. So what’s your point? Was there some other black academic more qualified than West that was being held back because West took his rightful place? If so where is that chap and why isn’t he complaining?
If we are going to politicize academic hiring then there will be Wests. If we we refuse to politicize academic (and any other kind of) hiring, then you had better have a good explanation on hand for why there are not more people of color in positions that require, well, a certain amount of whatever it is that ‘people of color’ seem to be lacking an abundance of.
December 2nd, 2009 | 5:44 pm
It seems that the most impressive black intellectuals are on the political right, e.g. Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas. It is obvious that Rusty Reno was not knocking Black Intellectuals but the academic left’s bizarre image of what a Black Intellectual should be. The right respects Steele, Williams, Sowell, et al., not because they are black, but because they are first-rate intellectuals; the left lionizes West, I suspect, because he is black. The left tends to patronize “people of color” — there is a subtle racism there (the ‘soft racism of low expectations’, I think it has been called).
I see this, for example, in the way Clarence Thomas is routinely spoken of by my liberal colleagues: Scalia, Roberts, Alito are all conceded by my liberal friends to be very smart, but Thomas is just assumed by them to be an idiot — I have heard this over and over. If one reads Thomas’s opinions, however, or his autobiography, or listens to interviews of him — indeed, listens to his testimony in his confirmation hearings, one sees that he is highly intelligent man.
December 2nd, 2009 | 8:07 pm
Mr. Barr,
No doubt in my mind that Justice Thomas is an intelligent man. (I have read, and enjoyed, scores, I think, of his opinions.) You could add to that, a courageous man. Of all the black intellectuals on the Right you mentioned, I think one could also say that they are courageous, too.
For the record, I believe Bush’s quote was ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’ That phrase was uttered in connection with the NCLB legislation. I leave to you to judge whether the removal of this supposedly bigamous impediment by virtue of the imposition of national standards has improved the education of colored people, or any people.
The problem with your post, as I see it, is that you have re-defined the phrase ‘first-rate’. The individuals you mentioned are way ahead of the general curve perhaps, but in terms of pure brainpower, they are not first-rate.
Whether blacks on the Right are smarter than blacks on the Left is not to the point. The question is, whether Left or Right, would these individuals have the jobs they have, if they were white? This is the question that our noble Justice Thomas has evidently been wrestling with for a long time.
If they would not have those jobs except by virtue of their being minorities, then one must ask the question why minorities cannot get these jobs purely by their merits.
December 2nd, 2009 | 10:31 pm
The excerpt about his “love relationships with women” is hilarious. He seems to believe that love is some kind of cosmic experience, with him at the center, of course. Or is he talking about the sexual act? Who knows? In any event, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard drivel like this.
December 3rd, 2009 | 8:48 am
I think Mr. Barr involves himself in wishful thinking. The sheer fact that one can rattle off black “conservative intellectuals” shows there is no difference between liberal black intellectuals and conservative black intellectuals. We still begin with their race as the salient factor
We can blame liberals and liberal conspiracies for racial consciousness, but there is no point. For whatever reason if three white people are with three black people, the chances are the whites will identify with the whites and the blacks with the blacks.
Politics in our age has added a dimension to identity. If one is conservative, all self-identified conservatives are brilliant and one’s allies. All “liberals” are responsible for every known evil and all problems.
I doubt that is true. I doubt if there is a God, He is interested in hearing about what other people do wrong.
Mr. Barr asserts that “Our Blacks are great and we love them not because they are black, even though we make them famous because they are black, but because obviously our blacks are just great, unlike those damned liberals and their blacks who are just black and not great at all.”
I think that is just sad, but if it makes you feel good to confess the sins of liberals over and over, please go ahead and do so: at least you are living the life of your times where Glenn Beck will take over the role of Martin Luther King next summer in his March on Washington. I cannot wait to hear what such a great intellectual as Mr. Beck has to say. I know he is great because he is a conservative and no conservative is not great.
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:05 am
Jan,
I do think Steele, Williams, and Sowell could have had the jobs they have whether they were white or black. I could have also mentioned Condoleeza Rice, who also could have had the job she had whatever her color.
December 3rd, 2009 | 2:16 pm
Jan Petrosky writes: “If we we refuse to politicize academic (and any other kind of) hiring, then you had better have a good explanation on hand for why there are not more people of color in positions that require, well, a certain amount of whatever it is that ‘people of color’ seem to be lacking an abundance of.”
Substitute “conservatives” for “people of color” in that sentence and see if the sentence isn’t just as cogent. See Mark Bauerlein, “Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 November 2009.
December 3rd, 2009 | 7:41 pm
Reno doesn’t seem able to read. Nowhere does McLemee suggest that West is untalented. Indeed, the article is about how West’s ego and success has aided in the wasting of his talents. (To make this perfectly clear, this implies that he not untalented.) West has an IQ of 168, and is immensely learned. (He doubled his course load in his final year at Harvard while working two jobs, still graduated Magna Cum Laude, etc.) The suggestion that he not an intellectual is preposterous and, one surmises, a result of racial stereotyping. It is outrageous.
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:14 pm
Mr. Barr,
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on qualifications subjectively arrived at. Do you suppose that those whom you allege are first-rate would still qualify for their positions based on objective criteria–test scores for example?
For the record, do you really believe that Michael Steele is the absolutely best qualified person to be the head of the Republican party, based on his mental merits?
I suppose I should modify my initial question. Perhaps they could have those jobs if they were white. But, should white people of that level of intelligence have such jobs?
As an example of what I mean, I ask: if the civil service returned to its previous testing standards, how many people of color would remain in its ranks?
Question for DM: how do you know Prof West’s IQ?
Regards,
Jan
December 3rd, 2009 | 10:14 pm
Jan,
This has come out in his new book. (West mentions that it was this test result that earned him entry into a gifted program as a kid.)
December 4th, 2009 | 12:45 pm
I think a legitimate black academic on the left is HL Gates of Harvard. I can’t comment on whether his scholarship is Harvard quality. I certainly have no patience for deconstructionists and post-modernists of any color, so I don’t torture myself by reading his genre of journal articles.
However, his work on genetics, genealogy and culture has changed how we think about migration and his Black Patriots Project is also changing how we think about the Revolutionary War. And when I say changing, I mean in a good way — with evidence and with facts, not with rhetoric and intellectual intimidation.
Yes he and the Du Bois Institute are so politicized that they’ll never give one of their annual awards to a Rice or a Steele (although perhaps Colin Powell now that he’s broken with the GOP).
But if you said you rejected the scholarship of everyone whose politics are anathema, we might as well close down the entire Ivy League and all of the elite state schools like Michigan, California, Texas, North Carolina.
December 4th, 2009 | 7:20 pm
DM:
168 would be astounding. But at this point why should we take Prof. West at his word?
Regards,
Jan
December 5th, 2009 | 8:06 pm
No one has mentioned John McWhorter, the linguist who writes brilliantly on language (see THE BASTARD TONGUE) as well as essays on Black America. My only personal comment goes back to the campaign of 2008. Listening to Rev. Wright (and just as depressing, Fr. Pfleger) I was plunged into a bleak awareness of just how great the chasm is between my white, working class (with a couple of degrees), Southern, and Catholic world view and that of the reverend and his flock. When commenters at Insider Higher Ed remarked that “whites don’t get it,” I can only agree. I don’t understand what academics such as Cornel West and Patricia Williams and Randall Kennedy are trying to accomplish. Just driving through the City of Detroit breaks my heart. At Thanksgiving dinner I confronted a white upper middle class liberal as to what is really being done for the poor and working poor of black Detroit. Not much. Maybe, with my roots in blue collar America, I am too pedestrian, too materialist, too intellectually flatfooted to appreciate elevating black consciousness above a decent education, a safe neighborhood, family, opportunity… Suburban liberals are surprisingly unmoved by the spectacle of Detroit, the South Side of Chicago, the South Bronx, South Central LA. No wonder the Depression-era, Appalachian poverty of people like my parents and their life-long struggles have become a white trash minstrel show in Hollywood, New York and college campuses everywhere. What’s missing among too many intellectuals — black and white — and the affluent whose tuition payments keep them in discretionary income is old fashioned human feeling, Christian compassion, the sense that even those not among us have immortal souls. How could identity scholarship not be, in the long run, a fraud.
December 9th, 2009 | 11:35 pm
…for the record, there were a number of black scientists who worked on the manhattan project, such as Lloyd Quarterman, William J. Knox, and Ernest J. Wilkins.
December 10th, 2009 | 6:18 pm
West’s personal style is the epitome of Christian charity. He exemplifies in his person (if not in his autobiographical writings) generosity, deference, and respect to all. That’s more than I can say about Reno who seems all too gleeful to pounce on a black intellectual’s human shortcomings. Hmm, motive? If you actually read the book (which is co-written, not ghost-written BTW), what stands out is West’s dedication to the Christian project, to Jesus, and to living a life reflecting that commitment. This profound testimony was quite unexpected and moving for me, his Jewish student. Since your readers/commentators only seem to know black scholars three people deep, I might point out that there are hundreds of “Harvard quality” (whatever that means) academics out there who are black. Jeez, get out of your white bubbles. Besides having read farther and wider than you (whoever you are), West is a master at integrating landscapes of knowledge into his public oratory like no other. Walter Williams; Who? Clarence Thomas; what? What a sorry state of Catholic conservatives, spiritual descendants of the Irish and Italians who rioted, lynched, and block-busted African-Americans. Shame!
December 12th, 2009 | 5:16 am
McLemee has written (among other things) a repudiation of the misreading that produced this blog entry: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee268
How could R. R. Reno have misunderstood, and misunderstood so badly, such a plainly written piece?
December 14th, 2009 | 12:51 pm
@Graham Combs
I think it’s unfair to lump Randall Kennedy with West and Williams. Kennedy has always written both scholarship and popular writing, and even his popular books have footnotes.
December 17th, 2009 | 2:59 pm
Sir
This offhanded post is a preposterously broad and uncharitable write-off. Given your public Christian commitments and the creative range of your other work, I find myself deeply surprised. Of course West is a flawed man (he would be the first to admit it) and his popular books warrant no sort of academic acclaim. Nonetheless, your deterministic dismissal of the man (“created by post-Civil-Rights-era white guilt”) is beyond obtuse; it reeks with the kind of rassentiment of which Nietzsche accused modern followers of Christ. By his own lights as a deeply flawed Christian saved by grace, Cornel West goes a long way to counter such Nietzschean judgments.
Furthermore, your characterization of West as a stuffed shirt is simply inane. Have you read his work on race? On pragmatism? On the work of the intellectual? Have you heard him speak? If so, can you seriously maintain the claim that he is “without real cleverness or rhetorical élan”?
This type of non-discursive wholesale trashing of an intellectual life and work is unbecoming of the legacy of this fine newspaper.
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