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Books by Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.
Colored People /
Our Nig /
The African American Century /
The Bondwoman's Narrative /
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley /
"Race," Writing, and Difference /
Wonders of the African World
In Search of Identity /
Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex /
The Signifying Monkey
Cosmopolitanism /
Identity and Violence /
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
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Skip
Gates and the Talented Fifth
The Doublespeak of Academic Equivocation
Editorial by Rudolph Lewis
In
his new book and PBS program
America Beyond the Color Line, neo-Babylonian Henry
Louis Gates—called “Skip” because of his gait and “Signifying
Monkey” due to his literary scholarship—has stepped forward as the standard bearer for what he calls
the “Talented Fifth,” which refers seemingly to those with
yearly incomes of six figures or more. His core argument can be
found in his 1998 essay, “Are
We Better Off?”
There
is a smug self-righteousness in Skip’s perspective of African
America as “two nations.” It contains a “crude form of
social Darwinism,” suggesting that he and his class enjoy
“success” because they had the right stuff, “behavior” as
well as talent and performed well and rightly and that the
comforts that he and his class enjoy were rightly earned and
obtained. That indeed may be true if all things were and had been
equal in America.
The
“Bottom Fifth,” of which Skip speaks derisively, are where
they are not merely because of “structural” racism. They
languish in poverty because they have not had the right
“behavior.” These black poor are where they are because of “black-on-black
homicide, gang members violating the sanctity of the church,
unprotected sexual activity, gangster rap lyrics, misogyny and
homophobia.”
If this “Bottom Fifth” were to check this
anti-social or low-class behavior, then he and his class would
have more political weight to confront the “Congress and
the President [to] enact a comprehensive jobs bill and the
equivalent of a Marshall Plan for the cities, as the Urban League
advocates each year.” For Skip and his high-class Negroes,
“joblessness, as [sociologist William Julius] Wilson maintains,
is our biggest crisis.”
Although
Skip counsels us against repeating “the
same old stale formulas,” he has no problem in putting forth one
that even the white TV personality Charlie Rose realizes that in
America’s present social and political climate “a comprehensive jobs bill” has a snowball’s chance in hell
of passing muster in
Congress. But what Skip really wants of us in African America is a
change in our attitude: he doesn’t want us “to blame ‘the
man’ for oppressing us,” for “the man” has allowed him and
his “Talented Fifth” to make six-figure incomes and become
American success stories.
So
you see “the man” and his system are not all bad. So we need to
cut "the man" some slack and check ourselves. The beam
is in our own eyes.
So
far we have only talked about 40% of African America: the upper
20% and the bottom 20%. There is no reason to think that either
one is representative of African America or the average Negro:
those who have bought into America’s evils; and those who are
“guilty” of their own evils. What about the other 60% of
discontented black Americans?
Before we get at this discontent, let us check
further Skip’s essay “Are
We Better Off?” Clearly, he defends the prerogatives
of this successful class of enterprising Negroes. He wants them to
enjoy their privileges without “guilt” or “angst” or
“deeply-felt anxieties.” Skip sees no need for him and other
members of his class to display a “symbolic black cultural
nationalism” to show “we're still down with the program.”
Thus, “we have to stop feeling guilty about our success.”
Second,
Skip raises the issue of “blackness,” in the sense of
awareness and consciousness. One can be a six-figure Negro and
still be black, Skip reassures us. “Far too many young black
kids say that succeeding is "white." Personally, I do not know any black kids who say this. Far
too many talk endlessly about the “bling-bling.” But many of
us, I believe, do not want to be a six-figure Negro at any cost.
Few of us want to be a Skip Gates or a Colin Powell, especially
when it means going against principle and ethical righteousness.
Martin
Luther King, Jr. could have become a “success” if so desired. He however chose a
more noble and different path. He was
"called" to preach the "kingdom of heaven"
rather than a "gospel of success." He could have
pocketed his Nobel Prize money and few would have complained in
that he had a wife and children. But he turned that money over to
SCLC and the Movement. So for King, commitment, service, and
sacrifice were the hallmarks of his character and "blackness."
He was a man called to give all so as to make a better world for
all.
Though
Skip reminds us of Dr. King’s dream, he forgets King’s
sacrifices as a man, a father. But King is not the kind of leader
Skip truly idolizes in his spiel. He has problems with us
speaking “with one single voice, united behind one single
leader.” For Skip, unlike King, desires a black replica of the
present America: “As each black person knows, we have never been
members of one social or economic class, and never will be.” But
that condition was never one of choice.
But
as Skip
told Charlie Rose, the “curve of class for blacks should be the
same as for whites.” And as he wrote in “Are
We Better Off?”: “The best we can strive for is that the
class differentials within the black community cease their
lopsided ratios because of the pernicious nature of racial
inequality. . . . Even if racism disappears, we will still face
class differentials in the black community; we have had these
since slavery.” Such "class differentials" have never
been so crassly and publicly defended by any Negro as now by Skip
Gates.
For
Skip, “A household comprised of a 16-year-old mother, a
32-year-old grandmother and a 48-year-old great grandmother cannot
possibly be a site for hope and optimism.” Indeed, such a
scenario does not fit into the high-class Negro’s scheme of
respectability. But such a black family is not too much out of the
norm for much of black life in America.
Such
families marched, were whipped, went to jail, and died for such
persons like Skip to be a professor at Harvard and for a Colin
Powell to be Secretary of State. For such men to look down their
noses at black folk life now is the utmost betrayal. To be poor in
America is not a sin. For most of the black poor work and they
work hard and they do not receive their just rewards.
According to
Beth Shulman, “Fully 30 million
Americans—one in four U.S. workers—earn $8.70 an hour or
less, a rate that works out to $18,100 a year, which is the
current official poverty level in the United States for a family
of four. These low-wage jobs usually lack health care, child care,
pensions and vacation benefits. Their working conditions are often
grueling, dangerous, even humiliating” (Alameda Times-Star, 8/ 24/03).
These men and women (many of them black) are
“nursing home and home health care workers who care for our
parents; they are poultry processors who bone and package our
chicken; they are retail clerks in department stores, grocery
stores, and convenience stores; they are housekeepers and janitors
who keep our hotel rooms and offices clean; they are billing and
telephone call center workers who take our complaints and answer
our questions; and they are teaching assistants in our schools and
child care workers who free us so that we can work ourselves” (Alameda Times-Star, 8/ 24/03).
One of the last significant statements made by
Dr. King reaches far beyond what can be found in Skip Gates'
neoconservative America
Behind the Color Line: "We have moved into an era where we are
called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole
society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who
finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day,
we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces
beggars must not be restructured and refurbished."
But on such issues as these, ones of social justice, Harvard’s Signifying
Monkey is silent. He finds smugness preferable to indignation,
blaming the victim more comforting than struggling for
righteousness.
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on DVD
DVD
Description of
America beyond the Color Line
Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels the length and breadth of the
United States to take the temperature of black America at the
start of the new century. Gates visits the East Coast, the deep
South, inner-city Chicago and Hollywood to explore the rich and
diverse landscape, social as well as geographic.
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DVD Description of
African American Lives
Renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. DuBois
professor of the Humanities and chair of African and
African-American Studies at Harvard University, takes Alex
Haley’s Roots saga to a whole new level. Using genealogy and DNA
science, Dr. Gates tells the personal stories of eight
accomplished African Americans, tracing their roots through
American history and back to Africa. Participants include Dr.
Ben Carson, Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Mae Jemison,
Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and
Oprah Winfrey.
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DVD Description of
Wonders of the African World
Africa is a continent of magnificent
treasures and cultures--from the breathtaking stone architecture
of 1,000-year-old ruins in South Africa to an advanced 16th
century international university in Timbuktu. However, for
centuries, many of these African wonders have been hidden from
the world, lost to the ravages of time, nature and repressive
governments. Uncover the richness of these African Wonders with
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as he explores the many cultures,
traditions and history of the African continent.
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