Melissa Harris-Perry: Breaking News: Not All Black Intellectuals Think Alike

Melissa Harris-Perry is an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man opens with a battle royal. The novel’s nameless black male protagonist is asked to recite his high school commencement speech touting submission and racial humility for the white citizens of his segregated town. When he arrives at the venue, he finds that the white men have arranged for him and other young black men to don boxing gloves and blindfolds and viciously fight one another for the entertainment of the white hosts. They even require the boys to scramble on an electrified mat for gold coins—which later turn out to be brass. Bruised and bloodied, the narrator is then required to deliver his speech to the men, who mockingly ignore his elocution. At the end of the night the same men award him a scholarship to the state college for Negroes.

This scene has been playing in a mental loop for me since I participated in the mini-tempest that exploded in the academic teapot in the aftermath of Chris Hedges’s Truthdig interview with Professor Cornel West, who stingingly criticized President Obama’s economic and social policies and painted the president as cowardly and out of touch with black culture. In my response to West on my blog at TheNation.com, I observed how West’s sense of betrayal is clearly more personal than ideological and as such “gave insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership that has been largely supplanted in recent years.” All of this prompted more discussion, criticism and attacks—from those organized in defense of West and from those supportive of the president....

I vigorously object to the oft-repeated sentiment that African-Americans should avoid public disagreements and settle matters internally to present a united front. It’s clear from the history of black organizing that this strategy is particularly disempowering for black women, black youth, black gay men and lesbians, and others who have fewer internal community resources to ensure that their concerns are represented in a broader racial agenda. Failing to air the dirty laundry has historically meant that these groups are left washing it with their own hands....