Quasi-Intellectuals That Happen to Be Black But Work for Whites

In theory, an intellectual is one whose devotion is directed toward the exercise of intellectual pursuits. Intellectual, a word that stems from the Latin, means one who studies, reflects or speculates.

African American culture is replete with a history of scholars and intellectuals. These include the self-taught astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Carter G. Woodson, Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. Recent history includes many from the ranks of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Benjamin E. Mays, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Ivan Van Sertima and Cheikh Anta Diop.

Since the latter group, there has been a major drop off. As a scientist and professor at Emory University, it was rare that I would see others that indulged in academia to the extent of conducting research that focused specifically on African Americans, especially in my area of behavioral epidemiology and disease. However, the few that do exist often go unnoticed in the eyes of the masses.

Today there are many African Americans who claim to be intellectuals, but they are really pseudo intellectuals who think of themselves as better than the people in the communities from which they come. They promote themselves more than the needs of others. Harold Cruse first noted this in his 1967 treatise "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual."

His premise is that most African American intellectuals are from the middle-class, which often functions to separate it from its historical mission — helping African Americans as a collective rather than individuals. Since Africans in America have had limited control over their political and economic lives, we should develop our own intellectual standards. However, this has not been the case with individuals such as Tavis Smiley, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Shelby Steele, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Niger Innis, Jeff Johnson and many others.

These individuals represent a small corpus of media and self-proclaimed "experts" and "specialists" on African American culture and consequently Representatives of the people. They proclaim via rhetorical and pedantic proclamations to understand every issue regarding race and culture, even if it has to be manipulated to match the audience they are addressing.

In many instances, the key of discussion is premised on issues associated with racial injustice under the guise of social, political and economic equality. I guess this is why they are paraded on the media so frequently since most such oral dissertations are polemic and aggressive refutation of the opinions of another and not rooted on causation.

The African American intellectual is a dying breed and what is often passed off as representatives of this group are merely polemics that claim to advance the philosophies engendered during the Civil Rights Movement, while their singular goal differs extremely from the views of Martin L. King Jr. or Malcolm X. Unlike these and the aforementioned men, they are disingenuous centrists who favor individual vanity, fame and success over the well-being of the larger corpus of African Americans who bear the brunt of all forms of injustice in the United States today.

comedy i couldnt make up

Tavis Smiley calls in Tom Joyner calling out Sharpton and others for being blind Obama followers.

Al Sharpton calls in to the show and says Tavis was "buck dancing" for the Clintons...

Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley go at it head-to-head this afternoon:

Cant we agree to disagree?

40 on 40

This April will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s been forty years since that tragic day in Memphis of which I still recall very vividly.

Forty years, so what has happened since then? Let’s us see, well outside of more folk like me on television and in movies, albeit still in the roles of tricksters and clowns, fewer African American farmers, lower literacy rates and easier access to guns, credit cards, and strip malls (and clubs), I would suggest very little.

This strikes me as strange, for although I can see some movement toward his vision, it seems wit each step we progress forward, we are either kicked back or worse, kicking ourselves back three or four more steps. Yes, we have seen four or five Presidential candidacies from the likes of Jackson, Chisom and recently, Obama. But outside of that, I can’t place my hand on any one tangible accomplishment other than the vote (BTW which my granny said they didn’t die and bleed in the streets for – in her words it was justice and liberty). She as the men in my family always told me that if you have to ask for freedom, then one must question if they are actually free.

I mean, never was this so clear, the divisiveness when I accidentally ran across the forum annual held by Tavis Smiley last week. Dr. Cornel West and another member of the panel ripped him apart, for less than petty reasons, one being that he had the audacity to announce his candidacy on the same weekend of the forum. They even had a problem with him announcing his candidacy at the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois. Never mind that it makes good sense, being that Senator Obama is the U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois, in which the State Capitol is SPRINGFIELD.

I guess folks like West and Smiley and even BET founder Jones feel that Obama has to kiss and wipe their ass for permission, or worse, that he aint black enough to stand for or represent black folk in America. Especially given his perspective regarding where Obama’s loot is coming from. Talking about "white” folk and “Jewish” folk money and all.

To me it shows that he is able to gather support from all folk not to mention that the astute scholar, who I met personally while in Ethiopia during an AIDS conference, doesn’t seem to recall that legal and tender notes we call dollars are green and have no religious affiliation. He called him the “skinny guy with the funny name.”

West himself, when invited to Chicago by Rev. Michael Pfleger to speak at his St. Sabina mass said himself that “We have been living for 40 years in a political, moral and spiritual ice age.”

Like I said, its been 40 years since that day an assassin murdered one of my idols, one of the men, regardless of color that spawned my mind to think freely, and critically. And what has happened since then, I would suggest little, now we enslave ourselves. But it took Moses 40 years, maybe now is really the time.