Public Intellectualism and the Dilemmas of Black Men Intellectuals

The greatest dilemma facing black men intellectuals, outside of white supremacist, institutionalized structures, is the question of naming and identity. In my early years in the academy, I personally experienced my gendered version of the Dilemma of the Black Intellectual or Cruse’s “Crisis.” I submitted portions of a paper for a special issue of the Journal of Men’s Studies on the challenges facing black men in the academy. The title of my paper was “Dilemmas of Black Men Intellectuals.” I was dumbfounded by the comments from the reviewer who beyond stating that I needed to provide solutions to the “dilemma,” excoriated me for asserting the designation “black men intellectuals.” I was told in so many words that the term was awkward and made me seem, to put it mildly, nonacademic-even suggesting stupidity on my part.


Ironically, this review was written by another black “male” intellectual, who otherwise found the essay to be quite good. After getting over the initial shock and fury of the academic rejection I received, I rolled up my thick critical skin to reassess the situation from another angle. I concluded that my reviewer, as many black men intellectuals before, struggled with the gendered veil and double consciouness Du Bois spoke of, that embodying an intellectual who was black and an embattled man, seemingly swimming against the tide of his own inability to negotiate conflicting notions of self, exiled in American society and culture. The burden of legitimization, even for the most brilliant and ivy degree-decorated among us, has not escaped most if not all black intellectuals of a men's gender.


The refusal to acknowledge the twin evils in the black struggle-those of race and gender-has not only impeded the progress of black women-but has helped to subjugate black men themselves and placed us in a situation where we embrace silences of rage and frustration at our inability to negotiate a common identity.


Historically, while not being able to disclose these dual identities, due, in many instances, to intimidation or fear of death from lynching and other forms of violence (remember Du Bois and the Sam Hose incident), many black men have chosen to take out their frustrations on black women in certain arenas of the black public sphere, namely the church, seminary, and academy or others choose to exist in compliant isolation and bitterness.


Even when black men intellectuals, such as the venerable Du Bois, advanced racial causes as race men, they spoke from the depths of their own understanding concerning the black condition. They could not speak for black women, or be expected to, because, in many ways, they found it difficult to fully ascertain the meanings of their own racialized and gendered realities. Even in his classic Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois essentially penned an autobiographical study of himself and his understanding of the black experience; speaking from the perspective of an embattled black man who, although a giant among intellectuals was still considered, by many in the white world, as nothing more than what Kenneth Janken and Charles Henry have depicted black men intellectuals as: Bad Negroes with Ph.Ds. Malcolm X put it more bluntly when he answered his own rhetorical question of what many call a black man with a Ph.D. in a hostile and ambivalent white world: a nigger.


Even in this post-modern era, where the black public intellectual finds himself and herself as a celebrity, wooing audiences and making six figure salaries, they yet remain dislocated from the morally authoritative position of “race men,” and “race women.” I wonder what is the composition of the spell-bound fascination of predominately white audiences towards these black men and women intellectuals. Is it their evident brilliance and insight, which they offer with passion and fire, utilizing the vehicles of seemingly non-religious, spiritual civil sermons for a mass public, yet, segregated audience?


This fascination is the same commodified fascination with black culture Ellis Cashmore discusses in his work The Black Culture Industry. In general, the fascination with soul as expressive culture, as opposed to soul as a manifestation of black humanity, renders white audiences to the level of mere consumers of black identity rather than participants who also self-identify within the bounds of an active and mutually engaging milieu. The hope that some aspect of expressive or performative soul can be extrapolated and acquired has particularly hindered black men from being able to transcend the veil of stereotype and conjecture. For many audiences, even some black ones, the intellectual musings of many contemporary black public intellectuals (men and women), have been confounded by public appetites of mere entertainment. This insatiable demand for what Roediger characterizes as “white looks,” into a partial black reality, oftentimes, results in the dissolution of the urgent messages and prophetic utterances of black public intellectuals.[1]


[1] . Harold Cruse. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: Morrow, 1968; Gerald Horne. Race Woman: the Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois. New York: New York University Press, 2002.