Antonio Monteiro
20th August, 2010
Charles Pete Banner-Haley’s book From Du Bois to Obama: African American Intellectuals in the Public Forum (2010) is a history of African American intellectuals from the standpoint of Barack Obama ‘s presidency. From his Obama post racial dream-world, Banner-Haley tells us, “African American intellectuals in the twenty-first century can take their cue from an Obama presidency and the words he spoke in Philadelphia during the race for the nomination. They can become ‘transformative black intelligentsia’ (123).” It should be obvious, the last thing black intellectuals need to do is “take their cue” from a pro-war, pro Wall Street, pro American imperialism presidency. Rather than fulfilling the legacy of W.E.B Du Bois (as the author claims) it is its opposite. Obama’s presidency represents a rupture with Du Bois and the progressive wing of black intellectuals. Obama’s Philadelphia speech was a neo-Booker T Washington compromise speech (equivalent to Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Address delivered in 1895). Obama decidedly argued that we had pretty much moved beyond racism’s most lethal forms. For him, while slavery was the nation’s ‘original sin’ racism left scars that damaged both whites and blacks. Hence, both his white grandmother and Reverend Jeremiah Wright represented the past of racial prejudice, stereotypes, fear, animus and anger. He positioned himself as representing the future of racial compromise and reconciliation. In neo-Booker T Washington style he urged black folk literally to “put your buckets down where you are”, instead of challenging white supremacy. The Obama presidency, in the end, seeks to fashion a racial compromise with conservatives, similar to Washington’s compromise with the Jim Crow South.
In These New Times 