The role of the black scholar

On April 19, 2012, Angela Davis will speak here at Duke about the role of the black scholar. Dr. Davis is one of the few black academicians who are able to engage issues in both the academy and society. In fact, we can begin to outline the role of the black scholar from her political activism and critical scholarship. But before we do that, there are a few questions that we need to keep in mind. For example, is the role of the black scholar any different from that of any other scholar? I sense elitism, self-indulgence and even self-flagellation beneath our rather high-minded consciousness that we, as black scholars, have an obligation to our community. How do we come to terms with that? Most importantly, we must ask the central but rather counterintuitive question, whose answer is equally enigmatic: Who is the black scholar? We may not find satisfactory answers, but these questions are worthy of our rumination if we really want to serve our community.

Historically, the black scholar has had neither the time nor the space to meaningfully examine these questions. Defending and affirming the humanity, dignity and rights of black people subsumed and defined her intellectual, and even existential, preoccupations. The urgency and the immediacy of this undertaking made introspection and critical examination of the collective history, experience and destiny of her people a dangerous luxury. In other words, such probing means scrutinizing and questioning who we are and the basis of our belonging and commitments. In the end, we might arrive at a contemplative, nonconformist, individualistic attitude that might weaken our resolve and unity as a community. In short, the black scholar was largely busy confronting external systems and forces of marginalization, oppression and exploitation.

And I think it is high time we turn inward. We must begin to probe blackness itself, its meanings and its presuppositions. What do we mean when we identify as black? Are we referring to our skin pigmentation or to something else, something deeper, more essential? Dr. Ward, my “Existentialism” professor, proposes a useful way of thinking about the limits of being black. Are we “black-therefore” (that is to say, as a result of that blackness we are)? Or are we “black-and” (meaning that we are black plus something else)? Thinking this way makes determining the role of the black scholar quite complicated.

If we believe we are black-therefore, then we do have responsibilities by virtue of our being black. And being black goes deeper, beyond mere skin color. It means that we share history, experience, identity and even destiny with other black people. Their problems are our problems and our well-being is ultimately linked with theirs. In this sense, the black person, scholar or whoever, has a role, an obligation, to her community—in the same way that a citizen has a responsibility to her country. In many ways, we are black in this sense and that is probably one of the reasons that black scholars feel that they have social or political responsibility.

But what if we believe we are black-and something? Does that absolve us from that commitment? What if you are black and more of something else than black? That is, by pigmentation, history and experience you are black and you recognize that as your background, but not as the defining or the most important part of who you are: Do you still have debts and duties to honor as a black person? Several friends of mine face this dilemma of being black-and more. They constantly negotiate where their loyalties should lie. It is a perennial reality for many minorities, this double-consciousness. But the pain and the difficulty seem to deepen and intensify with time. A friend tells me he feels like an adulterer. He feels that he cannot be faithful to both his blackness and his otherness at the same instant.

I am not sure whether I should sympathize with my friends or whether I should tell them to grow up and embrace the fact that every healthy and real human being, in one sense or another, is an adulterer. We cannot be faithful to everyone or everything­—community, identity or people—to which we think we should be faithful. But there is something else beneath the infidelity that the black-and more people (all of us really) feel, which sort of contradicts our thesis that we cannot realistically be faithful to everything: Namely, that our faithfulness to other communities is not necessarily a betrayal of, and does not always conflict with our obligations to, the black community.

Not all human commitments are exclusive.

Now, let’s return to a more immediate question: Does the black scholar have any particular commitment to the black community? Or rather, does the role of the black scholar lie within or outside of her academic interests and professional occupations? I say yes, that the role of the black scholar transcends her scholarship and that Dr. Davis is the best example. But what does that really mean? It means that we, as black scholars, have failed miserably in meeting our responsibility. We have several of the so-called public intellectuals, but not that many scholars whom we can seriously consider committed political activists. But the real alarm is that there are very few signs that the next generation of black scholars—the career scholars —is going to be any more engaged.