MASTER OF THE INTELLECTUAL DODGE: A REPLY TO HENRY LOUIS GATES

   [INLINE]

   Martin Kilson

   (These comments are in response to Henry Gates' rebuttal of Professor Ali
   Mazuri's critique of Gates' film series "Wonders of The African
   World," [see Mazrui's "Preliminary.", editors])  I hope the postmasters
will be so kind
   as to accommodate the length of the article, which I shall endeavor to
segmentalize.
   Have a wonderful weekend reading.


PART 1

   As far as I am able to determine, none of the African-American
   intellectuals here at Harvard University has contributed thus far to
   the very important discussion - indeed firestorm- around my colleague
   Henry Louis Gates' film series, "Wonders of the African World." I am
   now on the elderly side of the African-American faculty around Harvard
   these days (I formally retired as of Spring Term 1999 - at 68 years of
   age) and I was expecting someone among the younger age-cohort of
   progressive Black intellectuals here at Harvard to join the ranks of
   Black intellectuals who have rightly challenged the intellectually
   atrocious film series that Henry Gates has served up for American
   viewers - for White viewers mainly I think. Among the younger
   age-cohort of progressive Black intellectuals at Harvard whom I
   thought would join this discussion were the following: Christopher
   Edley and Lani Guinier in the Law School; Cornel West in
   Theology/Afro-American Studies; Lorand Matory in
   Anthropology/Afro-American Studies; Larry Bobo in Sociology; and
   Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham in History/Afro-American Studies. So the
   absence so far of any participant from my Black colleagues here at
   Harvard in critiquing Gates' intellectually shameful film series, has
   partly sparked my decision to join this criticism. But it was
   especially Henry Gates' response to his critics - especially to
   Professor Ali Mazuri - that really pushed-me-over-the-edge, so to
   speak; that fired me up enough to join the discussion.

   I've known Henry Gates as an academic colleague quite well during the
   past decade of his tenure here at Harvard. I was part of the
   Afro-American Studies Appointments Committee that selected him in
   fact. I had a good collegial academic relationship with Henry Gates up
   to about 1995/1996 academic year, at which point I decided to probe
   Gates' particular style and modus operandi as a Black academic
   entrepreneur intellectual, in context of forerunner Black academic
   entrepreneur intellectuals like the Sociologist Charles Spurgeon
   Johnson and the Historian Carter G. Woodson both of whom I worship. My
   probe of Gates was for a chapter in an ongoing three-volume study of
   the 20th century African-American Intelligentsia. My study is titled -
   THE MAKING OF BLACK INTELLECTUALS: STUDIES ON THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN
   INTELLIGENTSIA, Volume I of which might get published by late 2000.
   The chapters in the three-volume manuscript (now nearly all written
   after 25 years or so in-the-making) comprise mainly case-study probes
   of the intellectual careers of specific individuals (Horace Mann Bond,
   John Aubrey Davis, Ralph J. Bunche. Martin Kilson - myself that is);
   case-study probes of Black political class professionals (Adam Clayton
   Powell, Gen. Colin Powell); and case-study probes of intellectual
   discourse produced by a given Black intellectual which make up the
   majority of the chapters in the three volumes (e.g., Harold Cruse, E.
   Franklin Frazier, Carter G. Woodson, Ira Reid, Ida Wells- Barnett, St.
   Clair Drake, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Orlando Patterson et. al. - the
   latter two are part of an extended dissection and probe of
   contemporary Black establishmentarian and conservative intellectuals
   in Volume II and Volume III).

   My chapter on Henry Gates deals with his intellectual discourse over
   the past decade or so. As I searched the numerous articles he has
   published (including his memoir - COLORED PEOPLE) dealing with the
   character of African-American social, cultural and political patterns,
   I discovered two things that I disliked about Gates' intellectual
   discourse. One was an almost neurotic need to couch discourse on
   African-American socio-cultural and political patterns in what I call
   "Black put-down terms," a mode of intellectual discourse on Black
   realities that Gates' intellectual confrere Kwame Anthony Appiah is
   also addicted to, I should add. Second, much of Henry Gates' discourse
   on African-American socio-cultural and political patterns exhibits a
   thoroughly chameleon trait - an almost manic need to produce a
   discourse on Black realities that migrates between a "Black put-down"
   or "Black-averse" mode, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a
   seemingly redeeming "Black-friendly" mode, though in ultimate essence
   the redeeming posture is phony.

   This chameleon trait - so fundamental I think to Henry Gates as an
   intellectual - stood out as I read his reply to Professor Ali Mazuri's
   fully valid critique of Gates' film series "Wonders of the African
   World." The overall character of Gates' reply is one of "an
   intellectual dodge." By which I mean, a clever bid to translate the
   overwhelming negatives of his film series into intellectual positives.
   By "overwhelming negatives," I refer to 1) the numerous intellectually
   convoluted or twisted put-downs of African realities in the film
   series, and 2) the Euro-centric derived irreverent posturings toward
   African realities by Henry Gates, even while simultaneously
   characterizing a given African reality as positive, as "an African
   Wonder." As Ali Mazuri rightly put it: "Gates seemed incapable of
   glorifying Africa without demonizing it in the second breath."

   Henry Gates' reply to Professor Ali Mazuri's valid critique of
   "Wonders of the African World" is, then, a premier example of
   discourse as an intellectual dodge, something Gates is quite adept at,
   I suggest. Henry Gates paints several self-serving images of himself -
   seemingly objectively rendered - and weaves betwixt-and-between them,
   straining, for what might be called a self- portraiture crescendo to
   hook his readers on. But don't be caught by any of it, snared in
   Gates' self-portraiture trap so to speak. For starters, Henry Gates
   would have his readers believe that an academic year spent in the
   village society of one of the few genuinely progressive African states
   in the early 1970s - Tanzania - translated automatically into a
   Socialist-friendly demeanor on his part. Gates would have us believe,
   furthermore, that courses taken at the University of Cambridge by him
   in the 1970s under a genuinely progressive African intellectual like
   Wole Soyinka also automatically translated into a progressive-
   friendly demeanor on Gates' part. But don't you believe it. Henry
   Gates' intellectual arrogance is such that he thinks he can get people
   to believe just about anything.

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