Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 272 pages
• Published by: Columbia University Press February 7, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0231139640
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0231139649
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 10.4 ounces

Product Review


" Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era is a vernacular broadside, brave and funny by turns. Houston A. Baker Jr. has written as cantankerous and eloquent a defense of the legacies of the civil rights movement as one is likely to find anywhere. With relentless irony, he bares the narcissism, trickery, and entrepreneurial doublethink of neocon America, especially its black representatives. Neither do the black academostars of the Ivy League escape his wrath, sharing as they do the neocon analysis that the agony of being black in America has to do with 'pathological' behavior rather than brutal structural inequalities. An urgent and persuasive book." -- Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota, and author of Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right

Product Description


Houston A. Baker Jr. condemns those black intellectuals who, he believes, have turned their backs on the tradition of racial activism in America. These individuals choose personal gain over the interests of the black majority, whether they are espousing neoconservative positions that distort the contours of contemporary social and political dynamics or abandoning race as an important issue in the study of American literature and culture. Most important, they do a disservice to the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who have fought for black rights.

In the literature, speeches, and academic and public behavior of some black intellectuals in the past quarter century, Baker identifies a "hungry generation" eager for power, respect, and money. Baker critiques his own impoverished childhood in the "Little Africa" section of Louisville, Kentucky, to understand the shaping of this new public figure. He also revisits classical sites of African American literary and historical criticism and critique. Baker devotes chapters to the writing and thought of such black academic superstars as Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele; Yale law professor Stephen Carter; and Manhattan Institute fellow John McWhorter. His provocative investigation into their disingenuous posturing exposes what Baker deems a tragic betrayal of King's legacy.

Baker concludes with a discussion of American myth and the role of the U.S. prison-industrial complex in the "disappearing" of blacks. Baker claims King would have criticized these black intellectuals for not persistently raising their voices against a private prison system that incarcerates so many men and women of color. To remedy this situation, Baker urges black intellectuals to forge both sacred and secular connections with local communities and rededicate themselves to social responsibility. As he sees it, the mission of the black intellectual today is not to do great things but to do specific, racially based work that is in the interest of the black majority.

Reader Reviews
There is a great deal of money and esteem to be made by making white people feel good about themselves. Bill Cosby made a fortune during the 60s, 70s, and 80s not talking about race. Raisin in the Sun is extraordinarily popular because it depicts a middle class black family who wants nothing more than to act like a middle class white family. This all goes to explain the high profiles and lavish praises rained upon guys like Stephen Carter and Shelby Steele. Thankfully, there are people like Houston Baker, who care about the black masses and understand that capitalist democracy, American style, isn't an upright moral system. White supremacy, in body and in mores, pervades the land, and too many black public intellectuals, citizen-soldiers typified by King and able to improve the quality of the entire nation, have instead, taken the easy pay and kudos available to any scholar who can make white people at ease with the hard work, low pay, institutional alienation which marks too much of the black majority. In 1968, Harold Cruse fleshed out the problems and responsibilities of the Negro intellectual, and too few scholars have followed in his example. Thankfully, Houston Baker takes on these issues, and American culture, with charm, clarity, and insight, and does not shy away from a thoughtful treatment of the black majority. His sections on King and Carter were extraordinarily strong, and the entire book portrays an compelling picture of the role of the black intellectual, and how easy it is to renege on that awesome responsibility. Comment | | (Report this)