Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience

351 Pages·2000·1.24 MB·English

by  Manning Marable

Dispatches from the
Ebony Tower

Dispatches from the
Ebony Tower
Intellectuals Confront the African
American Experience
Edited by Manning Marable
C
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dispatches from the ebony tower : intellectuals confront the African American
experience / edited by Manning Marable.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-11476-1 (cloth)—ISBN 0-231-11477-X (pbk.)
1. Afro-Americans—Study and teaching (Higher) 2. Blacks—Study and teaching
(Higher) 3. United States—Race relations—Study and teaching (Higher) 4. United
States—Ethnic relations—Study and teaching (Higher) I. Marable, Manning, 1950–
E184.7.D57 2000
305.896′073′0711—dc21 99-055525
CIP
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and
durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: Black Studies and the Racial Mountain 1
Manning Marable
PART ONE Theorizing the Black World: Race in the Postcolonial,
Post-Civil Rights Era
1. Toward an Effective Antiracism
Nikhil Pal Singh 31
2. The Political Moment in Jamaica: The Dimensions of
Hegemonic Dissolution
Brian Meeks 52
3. Sandomsand Other Exotic Women: Prostitution and Race
in the Carribean
Kamala Kempadoo 75
4. Race and Revolution in Cuba: African American Perspectives
Manning Marable 90
5. The Fire This Time: Harlem and Its Discontents at the
Turn of the Century
Johanna Fernandez 108
6. Crack Cocaine and Harlem’s Health
Beverly Xaviera Watkins and Mindy Thompson Fullilove 121
vi Contents
PART TWO Mapping African American Studies
7. African American Studies and the “Warring Ideals”:
The Color Line Meets the Borderlands
Johnnella E. Butler 141
8. The Future of Black Studies: Political Communities and the
“Talented Tenth”
Joy James 153
9. Black Studies and the Question of Class
Bill Fletcher Jr. 158
10. Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment
Maulana Karenga 162
11. Black Studies Revisited
Martin Kilson 171
12. Theorizing Black Studies: The Continuing Role of
Community Service in the Study of Race and Class
James Jennings 177
13. A Debate on Activism in Black Studies
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Manning Marable 186
PART THREE Afrocentricity and Its Critics
14. Afrocentricity, Race, and Reason
MolefiKete Asante 195
15. Afrocentrics, Afro-elitists, and Afro-eccentrics:
The Polarization of Black Studies Since the Student
Struggles of the Sixties
Melba Joyce Boyd 204
16. Reclaiming Culture: The Dialectics of Identity
Leith Mullings 210
17. Afrocentrism, Cultural Nationalism, and the Problem
with Essentialist Definitions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality
Barbara Ransby 216
18. Afrocentricity and the American Dream
Lee D. Baker 224
19. Multinational, Multicultural America Versus White Supremacy
Amiri Baraka 236
Contents vii
PART FOUR Race and Ethnicity in American Life
20. The Problematics of Ethnic Studies
Manning Marable 243
21. Prophetic Alternatives: A Conversation with
Cornel West 265
22. Race in American Life: A Conversation with
John Hope Franklin 280
Contributors 301
About the Editor 309
Index 311

Preface
The great challenge every editor faces in the construction of a volume of
academic essays is bringing together independent and frequently diver-
gent perspectives into a general intellectual conversation about a common
issue or theme. There have been literally hundreds of articles published in
scholarly journals during the past thirty years on the definition, character,
and meaning of black studies. Even a short list of prolific and widely read
scholars whose writings have largely defined the field of African American
studies—which would certainly include Molefi Asante, Henry Louis
Gates Jr., Harold Cruse, Maulana Karenga, Audre Lorde, Cornel West,
Angela Y. Davis, bell hooks, and Amiri Baraka—would probably disagree
about what black studies is, and what it should become. Scholars involved
in gender studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, and other new fields of in-
quiry are engaged in similar debates, which are also informed at times by
larger political questions about the status of minority groups within U.S.
society today. My hope here is not to come up with definitive answers or
solutions but to generate a set of fruitful and provocative questions about
black studies—concerning its past, present, and future—while also en-
couraging a more constructive conversation among scholars in the field.
Dispatches from the Ebony Toweris the product of more than a quar-
ter-century of my involvement in African American studies. My first
real job after graduate school was my appointment in 1974 in the Afro-
American Studies Program at Smith College in Massachusetts. Hired to
x Preface
teach African American literature at Smith that same year was Johnnella
Butler. Both of us were in our twenties, and saw the growing field of schol-
arship, as literary critic George Kent put it, as an adventure of blackness
in Western culture. My first guest lecture in an African American studies
course was in the introductory level course at the University of Massa-
chusetts at Amherst, which was taught by anthropologist Johnnetta Cole.
I became acquainted with the work and ideas of a number of black intel-
lectuals who taught African American studies in the area at that time, in-
cluding John Bracey, Bill Strickland, Michael Thelwell, Paul Carter Har-
rison, and Sonia Sanchez. My knowledge and involvement in the field
expanded yet again when I developed an informal affiliation with the ad-
ministrative staff and scholars at the Institute of the Black World in At-
lanta in 1976. As a young scholar, I was privileged to meet and develop re-
lationships with Vincent Harding, Howard Dodson, and Robert Hill.
Through IBW I had the honor of knowing Walter Rodney. And, for all of
its limitations, IBW was for me then, and remains now, a standard by
which research in African American studies should be judged. In the twen-
ty years since that time, I have taught at the Africana Studies and Research
Center at Cornell University, was hired to reestablish Charles S. Johnson’s
Race Relations Institute at Fisk University, which I briefly directed, creat-
ed and chaired the Africana and Hispanic Studies Program at Colgate
University, from 1983 until 1986, served as professor and chairman of the
Black Studies Department at Ohio State University, and, since 1993,
founded and directed the Institute for Research in African American Stud-
ies at Columbia University. During this period I have spoken at or visited
the majority of black studies departments, programs, and research centers
that currently exist in the United States. My experiences have provided
some insights into what African American studies was first conceived to
be and what it has evolved into as a body of intellectual work and aca-
demic programs, with all its strengths and contradictions.
When I was appointed at Columbia University, my immediate idea was
to reconstitute a project that W. E. B. Du Bois conceived and implement-
ed at Atlanta University a century ago. Du Bois hosted an annual confer-
ence, bringing together scholars and researchers to examine and discuss
some problem or aspect of the black experience. The Institute for Re-
search in African-American Studies sponsored in 1994 an international
conference on the admittedly ambitious theme “Politics and Theory in the
Black World.” Other conferences followed on themes such as “The Crisis
of Black Youth,” “Race and Revolution in Cuba,” “Race-ing Justice: