All right.
Let us jump into these three essays.
I had mentioned before the first class that
when you read The Souls of White Folk, you
get the most radical Du Bois.
Militant Du Bois.
It's probably the one text where he has more
Malcolm X in him than any other essay.
This is 1920.
So we begin with the 1903 essay.
We move to the 1920 essay and then, of course,
we look at the white world in the 1940 text.
We talked last week, of course, about the
veil on the other side.
You recall now, we've been descending with
the platonic move into the cave.
The Dantesque move into the inferno, Melville's
move into the trap, Elliot's move into wasteland,
and so forth and so on.
The Black Belt, Dougherty County.
We're beginning now to ascend, but always
keeping in mind the vertical strand, which
is always [inaudible 00:01:07].
Soul formation, soul craft, death, dread,
depointment, despair, and disappointment and
disease.
And then the horizontal path.
Empire, predatory capitalism, white supremacy,
male supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and
so forth and so on.
And in “Of The Sons of Master and Man”,
we get, in some ways, probably the weakest
chapter in this classic.
You can tease it out, can't you?
You say to yourself, "Oh, Du Bois.
Undeveloped people.
Ooh, that hurt."
That's that 19th century sensibility of people
who think that somehow because they went to
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Berkeley,
Chicago, that they're sophistication somehow
allows them to be arrogant and condescending
and look down on the humanity.
There's nothing wrong with looking down on
mediocrity, and that comes in all colors and
all genders and all sexual orientation, but
when you look down at humanity, ooh, social
Darwinian sensibilities.
We can raise questions about our dear Du Bois,
which is to say what?
We're trying to be true to Du Bois' own notion
of Paideia just like we need to Socratize
Socrates, criticize the very exemplar himself.
So it is with Du Bois.
We must also be critical.
There's no monopoly on truth in that regard,
but who does he begin invoking in that chapter?
The one and only Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How many have read poems by Elizabeth Barrett
Browning?
Raise your hand.
Raise 'em high.
Raise 'em high.
Not enough.
Not enough.
Aurora Leigh.
This particular poem, the vision of poets
of 1844.
She was one of the grand poetic voices of
the 19th century, inspiring a genius on Amherst
named Emily Dickinson.
Edgar Allan Poe would dedicate his first collection
of short stories to her because “The Raven”
was, in part, modeled on one of her poems.
“The Raven,” of course, one of the most
famous poems.
Not just of Edgar Allan Poe, but in American
poetry in the 19th century.
What is distinctive about Elizabeth Barrett
Browning was her family was profoundly rooted
in slavery, especially in the West Indies.
They controlled 10 thousand acres in Jamaica
on both sides, the Barrett side and the Clark
side, but she, in the grandest tradition of
paideia, took her stand against slavery.
Her parents told her, "Elizabeth, if people
were to follow through on what you are putting
forward, it will undermine the family business."
You can imagine what her dinners were like
at home.
And what did she do?
She intensified her struggle in the name of
integrity and honesty and decency and principle.
What an example.
Not just a great poet, but also a courageous
human being with morality and spirituality,
and deep religious sensibilities as well.
And what is the poem?
Let me just read it very, very briefly here.
"Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart to keep
a dream or grave apart."
Church, for the most part.
Complicit it is with slavery, patriarchy,
and other forms of xenophobic sensibility.
The mart itself, the market, claiming to be
neutral, only interested in making money.
Don't ask us about morality.
Don't ask us about spirituality.
I'm just a business man.
I'm just a business woman.
Oh, really?
What about your humanity?
What about the effects and consequences on
other person?
Yes, you can be a force for good, but you
have to be accountable like everybody else,
answerable like everybody else, responsible
like everybody else.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towering figure,
and she falls in love with who?
Somebody tell me.
Speaker 2: Robert Browning.
Cornel West: Absolutely.
Who was Robert Browning?
One of the greatest poets of the 19th century,
writes Men and Women while she's writing Aurora
Leigh.
Ooh, isn't it wonderful to have a soulmate
who can keep you accountable as opposed to
just an appendage of your ego and identity?
I'm gonna say that again for Dartmouth students.
Ooh, when you fall in love isn't it rich and
deep that you won't have sycophants telling
you how wonderful you are, but rather have
another human being who desires you in all
of your dimensions and facets and aspects
and keeps you fresh so you can grow and mature
and develop?
So it was between Robert Browning and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.
And her father pushes her out of the family,
disinherits her, and they move off to Italy.
And what does she do?
She becomes a crusader against child labor,
a crusader against imperialism of Italy, a
crusader in the name of women's rights, and
so forth and so on.
Du Bois' choices here are very important in
terms of getting at the white world, getting
at what we'll be talking about.
Those white fears and insecurities and anxieties
that make it so very difficult to stay in
contact with the humanity of peoples of color,
especially Black peoples, and it's tied to
the white power and white privilege and right
benefits that flow from systems.
But Du Bois begins again with the artists,
very important.
Very important because it's nearly impossible
to talk about the white world, the Black world,
the different sides of the veil without beginning
with the raw stuff that art is about.
We've seen the question of what it means to
be human, and then the spiritual "I'm a rolling."
"I'm a rolling," now why is that important?
Because Du Bois understands from this particular
spiritual where the major question is a call
for help.
Are you willing to roll with me in creating
a better world, interracial solidarity at
the center?
And of course William James and his famous
Gifford lectures made it so very clear when
he said the very core of religion is the call
for help.
The call for the help, the sense of existential
helplessness and impotence, the need for something
beyond your own ego.
That Psalm 123 and Hebrews scripture and all
of it, genius.
"I lift mine eyes into the hills from which
cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord."
A particular response to that question, the
call for help, and the call itself may be
just music.
The response is music.
The call itself may be simply arts.
It may be a friend.
It may be a mother or father, but it's some
call for help to get us out of our egocentric
predicament.
And what Du Bois is trying to convey, it seems
to me, is any serious talk about trying to
understand the complex dynamics of the white
world, and they stay in contact with our humanity
at the same time is to enact the kind of courageous
witness and poetic quest for beauty and truth
that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was about,
and then the Negro spiritual.
Are you willing to roll with me?
In fact, we could actually just turn on The
Isley Brothers' "Caravan of Love."
Y'all know that song?
You ever heard of "Caravan of Love?"
We oughta just play that thing.
Ooh, you got your computer?
Monique: Sure.
Cornel West: You got your computer?
Let's just play a little Isley Brothers here
before we get into the dynamics, the ugly
dynamics of white supremacy in all of its
mess.
Now the things is The Isley Brothers.
Monique: "The Caravan of Love?"
Cornel West: "The Caravan of Love" is the
name of it, but would people be able to hear
it in the back?
Monique: No.
Who knows.
Cornel West: Let's turn it on and see.
Turn it on and see.
Monique: If you turn it on microphone, you
may be able to hear it.
Cornel West: Can you hear it?
Okay, here it is.
Just listen to it.
These Isley Brothers from Cincinnati, Ohio.
They live in Teaneck, New Jersey.
You got it as high as you can?
Monique: Yeah.
Cornel West: I'll sing it if you want.
No, just kidding, but just get a sense, see?
Just get the version of I'm rolling in that
national solidarity.
Speaker 4: Are you ready for the time of your
life?
It's time to stand up and fight.
Alright.
Alright.
In the caravan to the motherland.
Cornel West: I think my sisters from North
Carolina know this.
Oh, Fayetteville's in the house.
Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:12:04]
Cornel West: But keep in mind now, solidarity,
interracial solidarity, intersexual solidarity,
human solidarity, but you've got to pay a
cost.
Speaker 4: ... the highest mountain, and falling
low we'll join together with hearts of gold.
Now the children of the world can see.
Cornel West: All the children.
Speaker 4: There's a better way for us to
be.
Cornel West: There's a better way.
Du Bois is smiling from the grave while The
Isley Brothers singing this song.
Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:12:36]
Cornel West: Can you hear it in the back?
For the part everybody, everything join the
caravan of love.
Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:12:36] Every woman,
every man...
Cornel West: I just wanna get to the section
where he says "We call for help."
He's calling for help.
Speaker 4: Stand up, stand up, stand up.
Cornel West: Stand up.
Speaker 4: Everybody take a stand, join the
caravan...
Cornel West: Is that the end of it already?
Monique: No.
Speaker 4: ...of love.
Cornel West: Okay, here it comes, here it
comes.
Here we gonna shook right back now.
Speaker 4: I'm your brother.
Cornel West: I'm your brother.
Monique: Oh, you keep, okay.
Cornel West: Oh, Lord.
Monique: It's right here.
I got you.
Cornel West: I'm your brother.
Yes.
Monique: You, wait, hold on!
Watch your hand because it keeps replaying.
Cornel West: I'm your brother, he says.
Your sister.
Speaker 4: I'm your brother, don't you know?
Cornel West: Then he goes up.
Speaker 4: I'm your brother.
I'm your brother, don't you know?
You'll be living in a world
Cornel West: Okay, that's the call.
That's the call.
Thank you so much Monique.
This is Monique.
Thank you so much Monique.
That's the call.
So this is just scratching the white supremacy.
It's always connected to acknowledging not
just humanity, but to call for help.
And what does that do?
It deflates arrogance.
It deflates hubris.
It deflates condescension.
It provides a possibility for humility and
generosity and acknowledging, not just that
you might be wrong, but you may have to give
up some significant benefits.
Oh, thanks.
Yeah, thanks a lot, brother.
I heard you singing in the back.
But we had a nice little thing going on here.
Speaker 5: Glad you heard me.
Cornel West: Oh, indeed, indeed.
I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Now, in this particular essay, giving you
elitism.
What does he call for?
The best of the white side of town, the best
of the Black side of town, the highly educated,
okay we understand that.
He's been calling for that over and over again.
That's just a version of Paideia in its elitist
form.
But what we see when we move to The Souls
of White Folk, and we gonna save good time
because we want some wonderful dialogue with
our fellow human beings in this class for
that.
My God, my God, my God.
And this page, what page is that?
Monique: 652.
Cornel West: It's 9...920, yes, yes, yes,
yes, yes.
The Souls of Black Folk.
“High in the tower, where I sit above the
loud complaining of the human sea, I know
many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but
none there are that intrigue me more than
The Souls of White Folk.”
And of course, he's known for being the author
of The Souls of Black Folk.
But he can't engage in an inquiry about The
Souls of Black Folk without also connecting
his analysis with The Souls of White Folk.
Very few people get a chance to read this
essay.
It's a very different Du Bois than what you
get in 1903.
"Of them I am singularly clairvoyant."
Ooh, that's a strong claim.
One of certitude.
Let me see.
"I see in and through them."
Very interesting.
It reminds me of James Baldwin formulation.
1960, James Baldwin says, "Most white brothers
and sisters really don't have to pay that
much attention to Black folk other than exotic
objects or their entertainers on TV in the
form of athletics and singing."
You don't have to dig deep into the lower
frequencies of their humanity, but for Black
people to exist, to survive, to make it, they
better understand white brothers and sisters
and all of their individuality and duality
and their collectivity.
So, when you hear the conversations in them
beauty salons and barber shops about The Souls
of White Folk, you hear some stories.
So many of those white sisters have been raised
in the white youth, generation after generation
after generation.
That's serious business, isn't it?
You can suckle the white baby on your breast,
but you can't sit in the front of the Jim
Crow train.
You can't go to the department store and put
the clothes on your body, but somehow at that
deep level of nurturing and caring, bring
in sister Johnson, she's so loving, like Delcy
in the great novel of William Faulkner.
Faulkner probably the second or third greatest
American novelist after Melville and along
Tony Morrison and Henry James.
Maybe a Saul Bellow on a good day.
Maybe not.
Sister Courtney, I'm just playing with you.
You know I'm playing with you now.
One of the great editors of Madame [inaudible
00:18:06] and we mentioned before was responsible
for bringing James Baldwin in.
But the point is, Du Bois says, "I know 'em."
"I view them from unusual points of vantage.
Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native,
not foreign, I'm bone of their thought and
flesh of their language."
That's the reformulation of what?
The first part of The Souls of Black Folk.
Bone and bone and flesh and flesh are Black
people.
But Du Bois, Great Barrington, [inaudible
00:18:33], Massachusetts, Harvard, Berlin.
Highest echelon of the American academy.
Not in terms of teaching, but in terms of
organization and profession.
He says I'm bone of their thought.
And of course what Du Bois is saying is I
actually know more about the legacies of Athens,
the legacies of Jerusalem, the legacies of
Berlin and Rome and New York than most white
folk in America at the time.
Given the level of education that I have,
you see.
"Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler
or the colonial composite of dear memories,
words.
Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants
have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist
of artisan.
I see these souls undressed and from the back
and side.
I see the working of their entrails.
I know their thoughts and they know that I
know."
Ooh.
Du Bois gonna get in trouble now.
I like the spook who sat next to the door
in the 1960s.
Eavesdropping in.
I know what you're talking about in there
and you're a little different when the door
opens.
You shut that door.
It was like going to some of the country clubs
among the brothers in here.
All that patriarchal banter.
And they come out saying, "Oh, I believe women
are equal, of course, indeed, indeed.
I wanna make sure my daughter gets in to Dartmouth
too, but I'll get inside."
Trump's not the only one talking that mess.
No, no, no.
And I'm including myself on a bad day.
I'm not encouraging.
I don't encourage it, but I kinda listen in
to brothers and say "Y'all shouldn't be saying
that, but okay I'm still listening."
That's patriarchal banter.
It's real, it's just the peak of the iceberg.
So it is with white supremacist banter.
It's very real, but the peak of an institutional
practice as it relates to Black and brown
folk.
"This knowledge makes them now embarrassed,
now furious.
They deny my right to live and be and call
me misbirth!
My word is to them mere bitterness."
He's trying to tell the truth, but he's viewed
as bitter.
"And my soul, pessimism."
So it's hard to give a beat.
Now, we've seen the optimism in The Souls
of Black Folk 1903.
He been given the darkness laid bare.
But in 1920, what is it about 1920?
It's after World War I.
What happened in World War I?
Millions of precious Europeans killed.
Europeans killing each other.
Killing each other.
What does Du Bois say on page 929?
"As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of
battle smoke" - do you see at the bottom of
929? "and heard faintly the cursings and accusations
of blood brothers, we darker men said: This
is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration
nor insanity; this is Europe."
Oh.
Reminds us of the 1940s.
Oh my god the sophisticated civilization of
Germany that produced Beethoven and Schindler
and Kant and all the great Nietzsche and the
others - how could they treat our precious
Jewish brothers and sisters the way they did?
This is an aberration!
No, maybe this is very much part of the heart
of Europe.
Ooh, that's a serious charge Du Bois is saying.
It's the 1920s, why?
Because they've already had the experience
of Africans being treated in such vicious
ways.
There's always been long histories not just
of enslavement, internment camps, mass killings,
terrorizing and so forth.
"This seeming Terrible is the real soul of
white culture--back of all culture--stripped
and visible today.
This is where the world has arrived--these
dark and awful depths and not the shining
and ineffable heights of which it boasted.
Here is whither the might and energy of modern
humanity.
This is where it has gone."
Reminds you in some ways of the Frankfort
school critique.
Of European modernity.
Remember in class we talked about the age
of Europe, right?
1492 - 1945.
[inaudible 00:23:12] Jews.
Nationalism beginning with Spanish empire.
Publication of the first grammar of vernacular
language.
And then, the indigenous people encountered
with Christopher Columbus.
'45 it's over.
Du Bois in 1920, he already is prescient.
Which is to say he already prophetic.
That inside all of the claims of liberty and
freedom and democracy and equality sits this
barbarism and treatment.
Beginning with peoples of color but now, in
World War I, the killing of other Europeans.
But also, in the United States, what happens
between 1917 and 1919 in return of the Black
soldiers?
A whole wave.
We talked before of Josephine Baker.
The whole wave of riots, which were attacks
on Black people.
Hundreds and hundreds of Black people are
attacked and lynched.
The Ku Klux Klan begins to organization, almost
wins mayorship of Detroit, wins the mayorship
of many cities in Indiana.
With the film of 1950, what's the name of
that film?
Birth of a Nation.
Premiered where?
In the White House.
Under which president?
Democratic president, sophisticated president,
Princeton president, governor of New Jersey,
educated, exemplar of a certain kind of Paideia,
but what does Woodrow Wilson say at the end
of that film, which is nothing but a glorification
of the Ku Klux Klan?
He says this is history told by lightning.
I support it whole heartedly.
This is a backdrop for Du Bois.
The domestic one.
It's also a time in which there's massive
rounding up of immigrants, scapegoating of
immigrants, beginning with Germans, given
the war, World War I.
The massive incarceration of socialists and
communists.
The Palmer Raids that take over socialist
newspapers and shut them down.
And the socialist congressmen like Victor
Burger, socialist mayors in Oklahoma City
are all pushed out.
Why?
Mass hysteria.
You can see it here echoes in our own way
of our own time, you see.
The scapegoating taking place is here.
And Du Bois says this is a coincidence of
what he talks about in terms of this human
hatred.
The hatred is to be understood as human.
He says it over and over again, I wrestled
with the same issues, but he says the dominant
form when it comes to institutional benefits
is a white supremacist end and aim.
Can you imagine what it was like to live in
the 19 teens after claiming that you're involved
in a war to make the world safe for democracy,
and yet the consolidating and the solidifying
of European civilization, especially a European
empires, even as one or two empires went under.
Austro Hungarian Empire goes under.
Ottoman empire goes under.
Here comes Turkey.
Here comes a set of new nations.
Yes, indeed, but for Du Bois and the American
empire, he sits high in his tower and says
"Lo and behold, let me keep track of this
Europe."
Let's turn to page 930.
"Why then is Europe great?
Because of the foundations which the mighty
past have furnished her to build upon: the
iron trade of ancient, Black Africa, the religion
and empire building of young Asia, the art
and science of the Italians, the Mediterranean
shore, East, South, West, as well as North.
And where she has built securely upon this
great past and learned from it, she has gone
forward to greater and more splendid human
triumph, indeed, but where she has ignored
this past and forgotten and sneered at it,
she has shown the cloven hoof of the poor,
crucified humanity, she has played, like other
empires gone, the world fool!"
The benchmark of empire is the refusal of
elites and empire to be accountable to the
victims of empire.
Let me say that again.
That the benchmark of empire is the refusal
of elites and empire to be accountable to
the victims of empire.
The American empire has never been accountable
in any substantive way to indigenous peoples
even given the various symbolic gestures.
Model on the massive human suffering and costs,
you see.
They've made various efforts to be accountable
to Black people, descendants of slaves, but
what happens?
White progress, white backlash.
Black progress, white backlash.
Black progress, white backlash.
Black progress, Black backlash.
You see.
Swings back and forth, back and forth.
Looked like there was a breakthrough in the
1860s, multiracial democracy, almost unprecedented
in human history, America's on the move.
Boom.
Black codes.
Jim Crow.
Jane Crow.
Lynching.
Wait until 1960s.
Here comes Martin Luther King Jr.
And all of those Negroes loving white folk.
What you gonna do brother Martin?
"Oh, we're gonna join with those other towering
figures.
The Dorothy Days and Rabbi Heschels and others."
Oh, but they're gonna get in trouble in their
own communities as they side.
Unbelievable breakthrough, here comes the
1980s.
Backlash.
Backlash.
Strong backlash.
God bless you.
I know you got a cough.
Du Bois is saying mm-hmm (affirmative), I'm
aware of this.
Now of course, he begins the play certain
kinds of games with them in the dialogue.
"You claim that Europe is so great.
Europe didn't produce Socrates or Jesus.
Athens predates Europe.
Don't try to subsume Athens under the European
category.
Europe didn't exist as a category at that
time."
"No, no, he was probably white like us."
Really?
You think Socrates thought he was white?
There was no category of whiteness.
Where's it come from?
Very much a modern construct.
They said Socrates's nose was flat like Curtis
Mayfield.
That's why they called him "brilliant," "wise,"
but he had these "ugly aspects."
Ooh, you can still see certain judgments,
because the ideal of Greek beauty was not
Socrates.
[inaudible 00:30:16] tells us.
It was not Socrates.
Did Europe produce Jesus?
Hell no.
Does Jesus look like most of the pictures
that we see that resemble Michelangelo's uncle
rather than the particular Jew from Palestine
that he was?
And of course poor Hollywood would never have
a Jewish looking swarthy complexion when they
were portraying Jesus.
The box office would collapse.
Collapse!
And if Jesus looked like me or Barry White,
even Black folk would for the most part stay
away.
"No, no Barry White.
Not Jesus.
No, they going too far, now.
I like his music.
Can't get enough of your love.
Okay, I understand that.
Jesus, no."
No, no, no.
But Europe does have Gerda, does have Dante,
we talked before.
Does have Maimonides tied to Arab and European
culture.
You see.
And Espinoza and has Nietzsche.
Yes.
But, does it ascend to the highest heights?
That's what Du Bois is wrestling with and
playing a certain kind of game with this defender
of white supremacy.
It's interesting of course to see at the curriculum
of various universities these days to get
a sense of how cosmopolitan and international
their discourse is in terms of the quest for
truth and goodness and beauty.
We got a long way to go.
A long way to go.
Just the very fact that you all allow me to
talk about Du Bois.
I was just at Shabazz house.
There's only two houses in the whole world,
universities in the whole world that have
houses named after Malcolm X. I was blessed
to give a lecture at the University of Sheffield
in Britain, which was the last place where
Malcolm X spoke before he was shot down, in
Europe, before he was shot down in Harlem[inaudible
00:32:24].
February 1965.
They were saying, Brother West it's so good
to have you here.
We want you to give a lecture on Malcolm X.
We're revealing this magnificent statue of
Malcolm X, and we're the only university in
the world that has a house named after Malcolm.
I said "No, no, Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Dartmouth,
Dartmouth, Dartmouth."
Well, they call it Shabazz, it's not Malcolm
X, but it's the same brother.
Same brother.
All you gotta do is go there and look at it,
and you see his face.
Unbelievable determination.
Dignity.
Trying to engage in that parrhesia that we
talked about the first week.
Fearless speech and unintimidated speech.
That frank speech, that plain speech, that
come from the soul, not just cerebral.
Goes through the mind, through the intellect,
but it's connected through a passion to making
the world better so Du Bois says "Ah, I do
understand a degree to which a truth must
indeed be towed."
But what does he say about the challenge of
trying to tell the truth?
Oh, lo and behold, we turn to the white world.
Turn to page - where are we here?
Turn to page 664.
664.
"The greatest and most immediate danger of
white culture, perhaps least sensed, is its
fear of the truth."
And the condition of truth is to allow suffering
to speak.
Truth is always, as we see in [inaudible 00:34:15],
love is metaphor.
Truth always has iciness to it.
Icy does what?
It cuts against the grain.
It doesn't satisfy any of it.
No matter who we are.
Just like the truth about yourselves.
Let your friends really tell the truth about
yourself, let your spouse really tell the
truth about yourself.
It's gonna hurt.
And if it doesn't hurt, they love you in such
a way that they're lying.
I do believe love trumps lives.
So I've lied myself.
My mother, I don't tell the full truth about
Mom.
"Mom, you're right."
I know she's not fully right, but my love
trumps the truth, tell her.
But there's gotta be a balance.
But when it comes to white supremacy or male
supremacy or empire, homophobia, transphobia,
is the country, the empire, are we willing
to come to terms with the truth?
"The childish belief in the efficacy of lies
as a method of human uplift."
And he says what?
Mendacity.
It reminds me of that wonderful line of that
white bluesman called Tennessee Williams,
born in Mississippi.
Cat on a hot tin roof.
That wonderful moment when big daddy speaks
to the young brother in the car.
And he says, "Mendacity is the name of the
system under which we live."
Tennessee Williams was vanilla blues man who
told the truth.
Mendacity.
Hypocrisy.
Hidden and concealed.
The criminality.
Hidden and concealed.
Crimes against humanity.
Hidden and concealed.
"We deliberately and continuously deceive
not simply others, but ourselves as to the
truth about them, us and the world.
We have raised Propaganda to capital 'P.'"
Now, he's not writing this in the age of Trump.
Our dear brother Donald Trump comes out of
a long tradition.
He's not there by himself.
Now, he may have pathological proclivities
toward lying.
We don't know.
That's a question.
Evidence doesn't look too inviting, but he's
not alone.
What he's engaged in is connected to elements
inside of our own souls.
Because all of us have proclivities toward
lying, maybe not as intense Brother Donald
Trump.
We don't know.
Because I don't know you all, so I don't know
your life, now.
I don't have any business.
I'm not meddling.
But I just assume most of you have worked
things through a little bit better than Brother
Donald.
That's all.
But that's not the point.
1920.
"Raised Propaganda to capital 'P,' and elaborated
an art, almost a science of how one may make
the world believe what is not true."
White supremacy a lie, but still alive.
Male supremacy a lie.
Gentile supremacy against Jews and others,
a lie.
But very much alive.
And so forth.
The tax on trans, a lie, but still very much
alive.
"Provided the untruth is a widely wished-for
thing like the probable extermination of Negroes,
the failure of the Japanese imperialism, the
end incapacity of India for self-rule."
This is 1920.
It would be 47 years before India achieves
its independence, and even then, full of challenges
and ugly wars with Pakistan and so forth.
"The collapse of Russian empire.
When in other days the world lied, it was
to a world that expected lies and consciously
defended them.
When the world lies today, it is to a world
that pretends to love truth.
In other words, according to you, white folk
are about the meanest and lowest on earth."
Now, this is old Roger die man.
"They are human, even as you and I."
Du Bois true to his humanistic understanding
of Paideia, but still wanting to tell the
truth in regard to these effects of lives.
They say, "Why don't you leave them then?
Get out, go to Africa or to the North Pole,
shake the dust of their hospitality from off
your feet?"
And that's quite fascinating, isn't it?
You get folk who just arrived in the new world
in 1880s, and they turn to Negroes who been
there for 200 years, and they say, "If you
don't like it here, why don't you just leave?"
I'd say, "Hey, you just got here.
What makes you think you are the definitive
authority defining what it is to be American?
We been building this country for centuries.
You just got here and you become the gatekeeper?
What's going on here?"
Oh, arriving not knowing they were white,
but then falling for the white mis-category
onto the benefits.
The psychic benefits, the material benefits.
We talked before about how did the Irish and
the British because solidarity partners, given
800 years of ugly imperialism of Britain vis-à-vis
the Irish?
But oh, in America, they all white.
They all white.
The Italians get here, don't know what whiteness
is, especially the ones in the South who'd
been so abused.
They get to America and they see, oh, there
go Roosevelt.
"Oh, I guess I understand what whiteness is
now.
I'm becoming an American."
It's the process of Americanization, it's
a process of a whitening for those who understand
themselves over against Black or red.
And brown folks complicate it.
Latinos very complicate it.
We got folk on the same family.
Jose, Juanita.
One is brown, one is yellow.
How's it gonna fit?
Boy, this America really makes some tough
choices, doesn't it?
Either or.
One drop rule.
Where do you go on the Jim Crow bus?
"There are abundant reasons.
First, they have annexed the earth and hold
it by transient but real power.
Thus by running away, I shall not only not
escape them, but succeed in hiding myself
in out of the way places where they can work
their deviltry on me without photography,
telegraph or telephone, or mail service."
You go to Africa - what's in Africa?
European colonialism.
You go to Ethiopia, oh the one country that
was not colonized by Europe, just Eritrea,
that one Italian slice, you see.
There's the emperor.
No accountability of the emperor vis-a-vis
the Ethiopian empire, but he's Black.
Here comes a genius beyond genius of Bob Marley.
Rastafarian, looking for Black self-respect
and self-determination.
Haile Selassie, that's our man.
Whoa, hold it Brother Bob Marley, we love
your music, but check out old Haile.
He's an emperor.
No accountability, but he has unbelievable
self-respect.
Very important.
It's psychic and spiritual.
Even though structurally and institutionally,
it is still very much tied to domination.
Where are you gonna go?
Garvey's going to Africa.
What part of Africa are you gonna go?
Black folk left Nova Scotia, went to so-called
Liberia.
What did they do?
It was a settler colonial nation just like
Australia.
Just like the United States.
They subordinated the indigenous people, they
renamed the country itself Liberia, and they
renamed the capital after James Monroe.
That's not a lot of Black linguistic creativity.
If you're going to Africa, why you going to
name something after somebody who was part
of a settler colonial - "Oh, because we're
America."
Oh, I see.
You still got the American sensibilities.
Fascinating.
Fascinating.
You just representing American civilization
as you go.
You doing exactly the same things that the
worst of the Europeans did vis-a-vis indigenous
peoples.
But it's just Black folk treating other Black
folk that way.
Issues of morality and spirituality.
That's Du Bois.
He says what else.
"But even more important, I am as bad as they
are.
In fact, I am related to them and they have
much that belongs to me.
This land, for instance, for which my fathers
starved and fought.
I share their sins.
In fine, I am related to them."
"By blood?"
"By blood."
"But you are not white?
What then becomes of all your argument, if
there are no races and we are all so horribly
mixed as you maliciously charge?"
"Oh, my friend, can you not see that I am
laughing at you?"
What is the comic?
The comic is the acknowledgment of the absurd,
of the ridiculous, the ludicrous, the radical
incongruity of someone trying to make something
look consistent.
And inconsistencies bursting out all the time.
It's like a professor who walks in to give
a elegant lecture about the most serious subject
matter and has a banana peel when he turns
hanging out his.
That's Charlie Chaplin.
That's Keaton.
That's Lenny Bruce.
That's Richard Pryor.
That's Eddie Murphy.
Paul Mooney.
What's the brother who just died?
Bonafide genius.
George Carlin.
Incongruity.
You have to laugh.
And for Du Bois, he says what?
He says lo and behold, he says the highest
moment for him, and we turn right back to
The Souls of White Folk.
It's the highest moment for him, that weekend,
where is it here?
Page, let me get this for you here.
You all see that there.
Talking about the weekend and the wonderful
chuckle, and he says...
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Actually, it's in the White World Within,
I think, actually.
Does anybody see that section where he's talking
about that chuckle?
That laughter.
Here it is.
662.
"Two finest things in the industry of the
West/ One is the Black laborers' Saturday
off."
Work from Monday to Friday.
Friday night, hit the club.
Freedom.
Be yourself.
All of their repressed wounds and scars, tied
to white supremacist perceptions, white supremacist
practices, dealing with the interests and
fears and insecurities and anxieties of those
on the white side of town.
What happens in those 48 hours, those 48 golden
hours?
He says there's unbelievable release of spirit.
And the music.
In the humor.
In the laughter.
"And then, the second thing, the laughter
itself.
The greatest of the gifts of God, laughter.
It dances and sings.
It is humble.
It longs to learn."
That's Paideia at the core!
"It loves folk.
It loves men.
It loves women.
It is frankly, baldly, deliciously human in
an artificial and hypocritical land.
If you will hear men laugh, go to Ghana, Black
Bottom, Niggertown, Harlem, South Side of
Chicago, Huffing, Cleveland, South Central
in Los Angeles.
I know there must be a street of Negroes in
Hanover somewhere, is that right?
Is there a little street of Negroes somewhere?
Just zoom in on the chuckle.
You see.
It doesn't take a whole lot of 'em.
Some of them do it all by themselves.
"If you want to feel humor too exquisite and
subtle for translation, sit invisibly among
a gang of Negro workers."
This is where the blues comes from with the
work songs, where jazz flows from all the
way to hip hop.
Especially the high moments of hip hop, not
that cheap, commodified version.
That was just a little editorializing here.
"The white world has its gibes and cruel caricatures;
it has its loud guffaws, but to the Black
world alone belongs the delicious chuckle."
And of course Du Bois is being too essentialist
there.
We know that's not always the case.
I know a whole lot of Black folk don't even
have a sense of humor.
Especially some upper middle class Negroes
I know.
They lost it.
They've lost it.
Even our comedians these days are so flat
and mediocre, show up at a comedy club, what
do you get?
All they wanna do is just talk about the people
in the front row.
What shoes they got on?
Why their legs misshaped?
Their head and so and so and so and so.
You say, "No, I didn't come here to get talked
about.
I come here to have a performance."
Comedy is about laughing with people.
It's not about laughing at people.
But the laughing is part and parcel of what
it is to be in a position of manipulation.
To put people down and think it's funny.
It's think that male identity, that machismo
identity, a brute force and raw violence,
and pose ane posture like it's so big and
bad.
You see this so much in popular culture.
It's nothing but a sign of the insecurity
and the inability to gain assets to some tender
love and care.
It's what every human being wants.
And if you can't get it, you gone act like
you some cowboy.
Some urban cowboy in the hood, or whatever,
you see.
Du Bois is saying how do you keep contact
of that?
And most importantly, and I wanna end on this,
most importantly for Du Bois, is what we have
been talking about in this class and what
the Isley Brothers were talking about when
he talks about the capacity for love.
Look at that page 661.
You see.
"Admitting that the problem of native human
endowment is obscure," all communities of
different colors and genders and sexual orientations
have varieties of capacities and so forth.
It's what it is to be human in any group.
"There is no corresponding obscurity in spiritual
values.
Goodness and unselfishness; simplicity and
honor; tolerance, susceptibility to beauty
in form, and color and music; courage to look
truth in the face; courage to live and suffer
in patience and humility, and forgiveness
and in hope; eagerness to turn, not simply
the other cheek, but the face and the bowed
back; the capacity to love."
Caravan of love.
Love of truth, beauty, goodness, and, if you're
religious, the holy.
"In these mighty things, the greatest things
in the world, where do Black folk and white
folk stand?"
That's the benchmark, Du Bois said.
When you tell me about the greatness of your
country, don't tell me about your military,
don't tell me about your architectural edifices
that usually are fallow centric expressions
headed to the sky, always hard.
Not impressed.
The spiritual issue.
The moral issue.
Where's the capacity to love that's cultivated?
Where's the capacity to quest for beautiful
in its form of relating to especially the
vulnerable.
That is the measure.
How you're treating your children, how you're
treating those off to prison.
How are you treating the elderly?
How are you treating the trans?
How are you treating the Black folk?
So forth and so on.
That's the criteria, Du Bois says.
And of course Du Bois himself gets that from
the legacy of Jerusalem itself.
He said Black folk themselves are not those
creators of this.
Part of traditions that say how you treat
the least of these, you treat the ultimate
power in the cosmos.
Yahweh always self.
God, God, self.
Or, the secular version, of just how does
it connect to the highest ideals of excellence
and beauty and equality that we have.
Look at the bottom of 661.
He says, "What great Art have we made?
Very few.
The Pyramids, Luxor, the Bronzes of Benin,
the Spear of the Bongo, "When Malinda Sings"
and the Sorrow Song she is always singing.
Oh, yes, and the love of her dancing.
But art is not simply works of art; it is
the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music
in its soul and the color of sunsets in its
handkerchiefs."
And this beautiful sentence that I love, that
I've loved for the last 40 years.
"That can dance on a flaming world and make
the world dance, too.
Such is the soul of the Negro."
The intolerable shirt, the flame, T.S.
Elliot talks about in The Wasteland.
The fire connected to Prometheus.
There's no accident that the chapter ends
with Promethean doom, doesn't it?
Prometheus, we talked before, stealing that
fire, providing humankind with gifts alienated
from God but able to pursue their own self-determination,
but that Promethean bound, forever, bound.
Pain, such a major cost, and each generation
seemingly having to try to seemingly regenerate
itself at its best.
Soul of the White Folk.
The white world.
And then sons, masters, and slaves.
Du Bois providing us with the challenge that
is directly connected to our present-day realities
after we engage in subtle interpretation of
the differences as well as the similarities.
Now, we're gonna save good time for our presenters,
because we got a number of presenters, and
then we're gonna open it up.
Because this is a week where, as I said before,
it's very delicate subject matter, you know.
You start talking about white supremacy in
all its forms at a deep level, it's a challenge
to all of us.
We're not used to really engaging the issue
the way Du Bois has, but it's a wonderful
thing to be able to attempt to do so.
