Segregation Nostalgia and Black Authenticity

Abstract

“The politics of conversion shuns the limelight—a limelight that solicits status seekers and ingratiates egomaniacs” (20). Thus spake Cornel West, one of the foremost African-American public intellectuals, who, a few seasons ago, reminiscent of Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams, departed the stultifying environs of Massachusetts and embarked on a symbolic errand into the wilderness of Princeton, New Jersey. If there is a black intellectual tradition, the author of these words has identified one of its essential features. Authentic leadership is vernacular; it “stays on the ground among the toiling everyday people,” the unpretentious folk, “humble freedom fighters—both followers and leaders” (20). Let us not forget those prophetic leaders, engaged in colloquial discourses with “everyday people,” whom one encounters, no doubt, in peregrinations from Princeton to Harvard and back again. Organic intellectuals do, in all fairness, occasionally carry their evangelical revivals to such frontiers of civilization as Morehouse College or Wayne State University, although they seldom stay overnight. It would break their hearts to be relegated to hardship posts like Michigan’s Highland Park Community College or to the institution formerly known as Rhode Island Junior College (RIJC), which uncouth snobs pronounced “reject.” The rootsiness of public intellectuals is frequently observed in televised forums, where oversized panels nod vigorously in confirmation of one another’s sermons on the necessity of “giving back to the community.” In theory, the black intellectual tradition is valid only insofar as it arises organically from the folk. In order to be legitimate, it must be popular. If it is genuine, it must be grassroots. If it is authoritative, it must be vernacular; if justifiable, plebeian; if sound, democratic; if convincing, communal; if binding, proletarian; if valid, colloquial.