Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (10 page)

Marginalized groups often fear that dissent, especially if it is expressed in public critique, will play into the hands of dominating forces and undermine support for progressive causes. Throughout the history of black struggle against racism there has been, and continues to be, major disagreement over whether or not we should rigorously critique one another publicly, especially in racially integrated contexts. Efforts to censor surface whenever marginalized groups are overly concerned with presenting a “positive” image to the dominant group. Most recently, the outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights. As Clarence Thomas uses the power invested in him as a member of the Supreme Court to curtail human rights, to stand in the way of racial justice and the struggle against sexism, those who felt it was more important to support the “brother” because white folks were out to get him, must if they are at all aware see the error of their ways. We will never know what the outcome of the Thomas hearings might have been had powerful black leaders around the United States collectively called for mass support to resist this appointment.

Even though the Thomas hearings forced the American public to consider issues of race and gender, issues they ignore daily, many blacks (especially men) closed ranks to support Thomas uncritically, just as many feminists (especially white women and black women professionals) closed ranks to support Anita Hill. The essay I wrote on the hearings which suggested that the public needed to look critically at both individuals and their political allegiances led many of my feminist comrades (especially black women) to tell me that the piece should not have been written. A long-time black feminist comrade accused me of
having temporarily “lost my mind” as she felt my critique of Hill’s performance was a betrayal of feminist solidarity. Again and again, I have to insist that feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.

The negative responses I received about the essay on the Thomas hearings (now published in Black Looks) called to mind other incidents where friends and comrades have attempted to censor my viewpoint. A couple of years back, I wrote a critical piece on the work of a major black woman writer. Talking about this piece while it was still in process with prominent black women scholars and comrades, I was taken aback when I was told that it was not a good idea for me to complete it, that the writer would be disappointed and “hurt”. When the piece was published, I received word that the writer was not only hurt but that she no longer considered me an ally. The fact that the piece does not trash her work did not matter. My insistence that criticizing one piece did not mean that I do not admire and appreciate other writing by this same author fell on deaf ears. I was simply told that writing and publishing this piece would be an “act of betrayal.”

These responses compelled me to reevaluate the purpose of my piece—to search my conscience to see if there was any will to harm the writer in question. After this process, I remained convinced that it was an important piece to write. After it was written and published, I suddenly lost contact with a circle of black women with whom I had once considered myself close. I began to hear through gossip that I could not be counted on to “keep confidences.” The evocation of “confidence” has no direct relation to the integrity of one’s word or the pursuit of truth. Revolutionary feminist and black liberation movements have always insisted there be recognition of the way in which the
separation between public and private maintains and perpetuates structures of domination. Often the idea of privacy is evoked as a way to suppress dissent by falsely suggesting that there is or should be neutral, protected ground. Agreed upon confidences between individuals—promises—should be honored, and a distinction must be made between those consensual agreements and the sharing of information that is only later, and in the interest of protecting individuals, deemed private. Discussions of ideas, issues that take place in offices, homes, and hallways are certainly less public than lectures and published work, but they do not constitute neutral, protected space.

Fundamentally, many folks evoke keeping confidence as another way of talking about secret-keeping. Suppressing critical comments or making them in private one-on-one settings where there are no witnesses are deemed more appropriate ways to handle dissent. Bourgeois decorum upholds this means of dealing with conflict. Lying is often more acceptable than speaking truth. The equation of truth-telling with betrayal is one of the more powerful ways to promote silence. No one wants to be regarded as a traitor. Issues of regard are invariably linked to the desire to shape and construct images. Many individuals in the public eye want to determine and control their representation. When the notion of solidarity or allegiance is reduced solely to the issue of secret-keeping in the interest of both making and sustaining images, we lose our ability to form communities based on respect and mutual commitment to the free expression of ideas.

Among black intellectuals, critical thinkers, writers, and academics there is clearly an elite group. This group tends not to be appointed by black followers but are accorded status by the degree to which an individual garners the regard and recognition of a powerful white public. Running interference between the black community and mainstream white culture, these folks often assume the role of mediator, or what I euphemistically call
the “secret police,” regulating ideas, determining who should speak where and when, what needs to be written when and by whom, and of course meting out rewards and punishment. This group is not all-powerful, but it does seek to censor voices not saying that which is deemed acceptable. The folks at the top of these hierarchies are usually black men. Though they may not choose to repress and censor, they may be feared, and individuals will attempt to please them by not saying what they think these “leaders” do not want to hear. Fear of alienating black thinkers who appear to be power brokers leads to the suppression of black critical thinking.

Black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a major mover and shaker in intellectual and academic circles, published an essay focusing on “black anti-Semitism” on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. I found this essay very problematic. Although it contained a useful and necessary critique of black anti-Semitism, particularly in regard to certain narrow-minded nationalist strains of Afrocentric thinking and scholarship, there was no careful attempt in the writing to contextualize the relationship between black folks and white Jews in a manner that would oppose any monolithic construction of black people as anti-Semitic. Disturbed by this piece, I worried that the gaps in this essay would serve to legitimate further silencing of black voices who are in any way critical of white Jews, and that the essay would create further unnecessary divisions and conflicts.

Though compelled by serious political concerns to respond to this essay, I hesitated. Initially, I suppressed the impulse to write a response because I feared negative repercussions from black and white readers. Interrogating this fear, I saw it is as rooted in my desire to belong, to experience myself as part of a collective of black critical thinkers and not as estranged or different. And frankly, I feared punishment (i.e., not being offered desired jobs, grants, etc.). Even though I felt these fears were not rational— since I made peace long ago with the reality that dissenting
opinions often make one an outsider—these fears not only made me pause; for a time they acted as censors. It troubled me that as “established” as I am, and by that I mean being a full professor with tenure, I could fear speaking my mind. I wondered how someone less established could dare to speak freely if those of us who have the least to lose are afraid to make our voices heard.

Before I began writing my response to the Gates essay, I spoke with black colleagues, many of whom also disagreed with the perspectives in the piece. Some of them openly acknowledged that they had checked their impulses to respond critically for fear of reprisals. Whether the threat of negative reprisal is real or not, black critical thinking will never openly flourish if individuals are constantly self-censoring. If black academics with greater access to mass media use their power to silence, then there is no space for the cultivation of free speech that welcomes and celebrates dissent.

Often, major black writers and academics feel that it is their responsibility to determine which voices from the margins strengthen the struggle for racial uplift and which impede the progress of the race. Comfortable with censorship when they can assert that it is in the collective interest, they do not see a connection between these actions and overall efforts to undermine free speech in this society. At a major conference focusing on the works of a prominent black woman writer, I gave a lecture espousing ideas she did not agree with. Rather than engage me in critical exchange, she “dissed” me at the end of the day. Later, she told folks that I was an “obstructionist,” someone who went about things in the wrong way. To me, this was related to my greater willingness to engage in direct confrontation of issues and her more mediated approach. Yet I felt no need to trash her. I see a place for both approaches. Older black writers and thinkers often assume a traditional, parent-like hierarchical role in relation to younger thinkers. Then there are always those individuals who remain convinced that black folks must not air our dirty
laundry in public. Some of these individuals believe we must never appear to be criticizing blackness in front of white folks. While I can agree that there is always the risk that public disagreement and dissent may reinforce white racist assumptions about black identity, there are just too few all-black settings for us to maintain silence waiting for the best “politically correct” settings to speak freely and openly. Evoking “betrayal of the race” effectively acts to silence dissenting voices. Black critical thinkers, writers, academics, and intellectuals share a small universe, a world where opinions exchanged via gossip and small talk close doors, erect barriers, and exclude. The recent outraged and potentially censoring uproar over some individual black males’ “negative” responses to Toni Morrison receiving the Nobel Prize is further indication that there is more collective zeal to silence, censor, or punish speech deemed unacceptable than for dissent, free expression of ideas, and the formation of public space where folks can disagree.

Black folks do not hold public forums where we talk about ways we might promote a climate of critical discourse that supports and highlights the primacy of free speech while simultaneously furthering our struggles for black self-determination. If we do not address the issue of censorship in a thoughtful and complex manner, then old unproductive, habitual responses will determine the scope of our discourse. What cultural conditions enable black male thinkers to be critical of black women without being seen as giving expression to sexist or misogynist opinions? And what critical climate will allow black women a space to critique one another without fear that all ties will be disrupted and severed?

Usually, critique causes some pain and discomfort. I know the feeling. I will never forget the day I went to my favorite bookstore hoping to rid myself of a serious case of the blues only to open the anthology Homegirls to a passage declaring that I was “so homophobic [I] could not even bring myself to use the word
lesbian”; this was part of a larger critique of my first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. I felt devastated—not because I could not receive fierce intellectual critiques of my work, but because this particular declaration was simply untrue, yet I knew it would influence folks’ perceptions of me. I was deeply hurt. But it was up to me to cope with that hurt, put it in perspective, and respond to the issues and the individuals in an open-minded way. This is by no means an easy process. For those who are profoundly committed to free speech, to sustaining spaces for critical discourse where folks can speak their minds (hopefully constructively and in ways that do not threaten to malign and symbolically assassinate others), then there has to be a celebration of differing opinions even when there are conflicts, even when there are hurt feelings.

As a professor, I continually witness fear on the part of students to express themselves openly and freely. This fear is usually motivated by the concern that their peers will not like what they say, and that this will lead to some form of social punishment. Their willingness to self-censor in the interest of being liked, of being held in high regard by their peers, as well as their often profound fear of conflict, always indicts the notion that our classrooms are a place where the democratic assertion of free speech is possible. Professors will never create a learning community where students can understand the importance of free speech and exercise their rights to speak openly and freely if we lack the courage to fully embrace free speech. The same holds true for progressive political groups.

When repression via censorship becomes the norm in progressive political circles, we not only undermine our collective struggles to end domination, we act in complicity with that brand of contemporary, chic fascism that evokes romantic images of unity and solidarity, a return to traditional values, while working to deny free speech and suppress all forms of rebellious thought and action. In recent years, feminist thinkers have
fought long and hard to make feminist thinking, theorizing, and practice a radical space of openness where critical dialogue can take place. Much of that struggle has been waged by women of color, beginning with the conflict over whether or not to see issues of race and racism as feminist agendas.

Feminist movement, black liberation struggle, and all our progressive political movements to end domination must work to protect free speech. To maintain the space for constructive contestation and confrontation, we must oppose censorship. We remember the pain of silence and work to sustain our power to speak—freely, openly, provocatively.