When Elephants Fight Only The Grass Gets Hurt: Reflections on Michael Eric Dyson's (diss)course on Cornel West — Ádìsá

There is an African proverb that states: When elephants fight only the grass gets hurt. It speaks to the notion that when important people battle over small stakes most often they are not the ones who feel the pain. I am neither hurt nor saddened by Michael Eric Dyson 10,000 word self absorbed screed, The Ghost of Cornel West[1] (link provided below), although it does contain truths that are both a window — into Dr. West's ego starvation—and an mirror—for the author own ego hunger.

And while it is disappointing, the personal beef played out publicly is not misplaced, historically speaking. There is a long history of these kinds of Battle Royales in our community (Dubois and Booker T, James Baldwin and Richard Wright, Langston and Zora) and in others communities as well. White intellectuals—here I’m thinking the "New York Intellectuals"[2] like Irving Howe, Mary McCarthy, Lionel Trilling, Dwight MacDonald, Daniel Bell etc.—have long history of intellectual disputation as blood sport and though the “public” always spoke for and too were white folks, white was and remains the synonym for human in the alabaster imagination.

What this falling out between Dyson and West underscores, what it reveals is what many of us already kinda know: That public intellectualism is mostly performance art that nods towards activism and is tangentially interested in people and social justice. Let me be clear here: For me, there is a difference between intellectual who is public-- a thinker whose work and idea gathers public attention through the sheer force of their intellect, which shows up in the form of them and their ideas at work, and a "public intellectual" —someone whose primary notoriety comes from the sheer force of their public persona.

Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Stokely Carmichael, for example, were thinkers (intellectuals, if you will) who became public because of the power of their ideas in demonstrated practice.[3] They intellects represented a quality of thought in practice. What we seem to have increasingly is really smart, very well trained television personalities, who speak on issues of the time but very often follow the (spot)light rather than bringing illumination.

We should be clear that the conflation of academic with intellectual is relatively recent historical phenomenon. Historically, intellectuals existed largely outside of predatory sprawl of academia. For Black folks, most of our intellectuals had very little connection with academy, most of the 19th century nationalist[4], most of the intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance[5] (Although Alain Leroy Locke was certainly a motive force) as well as most of those affiliated with the Harlem History Club[6] were, in the words of Ellis Thorpe," scholars without portfolio."

What we are seeing here in the Dyson piece is a battle over new plantation real estate. The definitive piece on the Black Intellectual phenomenon, in my opinion, remains Adolph Reed Jr's 1995 Village Voice piece, "What Are The Drums Saying Booker?"[7]

What should have people who love Drs. Dyson and West and/or their ideas appalled, is not their lovers' quarrel, which is unfortunate. What should be offensive is that at a time in which Black life is increasingly placed in peril by the larger white society, a strong mind saw fit to expend ten thousand words on playing the dozens, and not on police terrorism, or the increase in white racial animus, or the chronic intra-community violence or mass incarceration. That tells you everything you need to know about elephants fighting and why the grass always gets hurt.

— Ádìsá

Notes

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[1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall

[2] For a more detailed discourse, see Thomas Bender’s, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time. Johns Hopkins University Press (1988) and Russell Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals: American Culture In The Age Of Academe. Basic Books (2000).

[3] See Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. The University of North Carolina Press; New edition (2005) and Chana Kai Lee’s For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. University of Illinois Press (2000)

[4] Wilson Jeremiah Moses’ masterful The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925. Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (1988)

[5] David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue. Penguin Books; Reprint edition (1997)

[6] The venerable historian and ancestor John Henrike Clarke credits his early development to Arthur Schomberg, Willis N. Huggins and aggregation of thinkers who comprised Harlem History Club.

[7] Adolph Reeds original essay, “What Are the Drums Saying, Booker? The Current Crisis of the Black Intellectual,” Village Voice 40 (April 11, 1995), 31–6. It can also be found in his essay collection, Class Notes: Posing As Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. The New Press (2001)