— Philosophy and the Black Experience —
— APA Newsletter, Spring 2006, Volume 05, Number 2 —
APA NEWSLETTER ON
Philosophy and the Black Experience
John McClendon & George Yancy, Co-Editors Spring 2006 Volume 05, Number 2
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FROM THE EDITORS
Throughout the course of our editorship of the Newsletter, we have insisted on the significance of and need for the reconstruction of the history of African American philosophy. In the Fall 2004 issue of this Newsletter, John H. McClendon III in his article, “The African American Philosopher and Academic Philosophy: On the Problem of Historical Interpretation,” presented a challenge to all of us to seriously undertake the tasks of recovering the role of the African American academic philosopher. In keeping with this challenge this issue of the Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience seeks to highlight the neglected topic of the history of African American academic philosophers by focusing on the contribution and legacy of a key figure, the late Dr. Richard I. McKinney. This article by John McClendon is entitled, “Dr. Richard Ishmael McKinney: Historical Summation on the Life of a Pioneering African American Philosopher.” Dr. McKinney, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Morgan State University, recently died at the age of 99 years old on October 28, 2005. Within our next issue, we will include an unprecedented interview essay by eminent philosopher William R. Jones based upon a set of clearly formulated questions set forth by George Yancy.
Also included within this issue is African American philosopher Robert Birt’s review essay of Cornel West’s new book, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. Birt’s review provides an appreciable overview of the text and raises significant questions that at once call into question and push the conceptual assumptions and syntheses within West’s text. For example, in reference to West’s claim that a tragicomic sense of hope, which grows out of the Black experience, is a site that challenges anti-democratic energies, Birt asks, “But does not the very idea of ‘nihilism’ as West conceives it make doubtful the resiliency of tragicomic hope?” And while Birt points out the eloquence and Socratic questioning that West brings to bear upon the imperialistic and plutocratic elements that erode the foundation of democratic practices and militate against the democratic spirit of the demos, he pushes the envelope of West’s understanding of democracy, suggesting that “perhaps we must go beyond the limited form of democracy afforded by an imperial capitalist republic, and seek nothing less than the reinvention of democracy itself.” Indeed, Birt implies that West brings us to the very precipice of a more radical critique of democracy that eventually falls short of the “radical implications of [West’s] own analyses.” The inclusion of Robert Birt’s review in this issue alongside an article on Richard I. McKinney is quite ironic. Only after we compiled this current issue did we learn that Birt was an undergraduate student of McKinney’s at Morgan State University in the mid-70s. Birt remembers that he studied Ancient Greek Philosophy under McKinney, noting that McKinney also taught a course in philosophy of religion and existentialism. Birt reminisces fondly about McKinney, disclosing that it was Richard McKinney who had an incredible way of teaching philosophy, transforming dry textual exegesis into a living philosophical tradition.
ARTICLES
Dr. Richard Ishmael McKinney: Historical Summation on the Life of a Pioneering African American Philosopher
John H. McClendon III
Bates College
Richard I. McKinney was born on August 8, 1906, in Live Oak, Florida, on the college campus of Farmer Institute (later named Florida Memorial College) where his father was president and both of his parents were alums.1 Valedictorian of his high school class in 1927 at Morehouse Academy, McKinney stayed on in Atlanta to attend Morehouse College where he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1931 after maintaining a major in philosophy and religion. After his graduation from Morehouse College, McKinney moved to Massachusetts and enrolled at Newton Theological Seminary. There McKinney expressed his philosophical and scholarly interest in Black life, and its ethical dimensions, as early as the submission of his Bachelor of Divinity thesis entitled, The Problem of Evil and its Relation to the Ministry to an Under-privileged Minority in 1934.2
In spite of having a period when African Americans were not admitted to Newton Theological Seminary, we discover that over the years a number of African Americans have attended this institution, which is now known as Andover Newton Theological Seminary. Previously, in 1874, the venerable George Washington Williams matriculated from Newton Theological Seminary as its first Black graduate. Amazingly, Williams was not only a Civil War veteran, lawyer, journalist, preacher, as well as the first Black member of the Ohio Legislature, but he was also the first modern (empirically-based) historian of Afro-American life.3
After McKinney finished his work for the Bachelor of Divinity, he then completed the Masters of Sacred Theology in the philosophy of religion from Newton in 1937. His S.T.M. thesis topic was The Cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead and Its Bearing on Religion and Theology. During the 1930s and 1940s, McKinney’s interest in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead was by no means atypical among African American philosophers. For instance, Marquis Lafayette Harris addresses Whitehead in his 1933 Ohio State University doctoral dissertation, Some Conceptions of God in the Gifford Lectures During the Period 1927-1929. Albert Millard Dunham (who studied with Whitehead at Harvard) wrote his 1931 MA thesis at the University of Chicago on Whitehead’s Philosophy of Time, and we have Cornelius Golightly’s 1941 University of Michigan Ph.D. dissertation, Thought and Language in Whitehead’s Categorial Scheme.
Richard I. McKinney received his Ph.D. in 1942 from Yale’s School of Divinity. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Religion in Higher Education among Negroes. McKinney’s dissertation was primarily a work in the sociology and philosophy of Black education. McKinney’s interest in the role of religion in higher education was not unlike that of other African American philosophers such as Charles Leander Hill’s “The Role of Religion in Higher Education,” and Willis J. King’s “Personalism and Race.” Before McKinney published his dissertation in book form, he developed an important article from it entitled “Religion in Negro Colleges,” which appeared in the Journal of Negro Education in 1944.4
For McKinney and his generation of African American philosophers, philosophy of education was of no small concern. For example, John M. Smith pursued the Ph.D. in philosophy with a dissertation on A Comparison of Plato’s and Dewey’s Educational Philosophies from Iowa in 1941. As with McKinney, Smith was at a historically black college and university (HBCU), serving on the faculty of Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. Francis A. Thomas, the long-time chair of philosophy at Central State University (Wilberforce, Ohio), received his doctorate in education rather than in philosophy. Thomas’s doctoral dissertation, from Indiana University in 1960, was on Philosophies of Audio Visual Education as Conceived of by University Centers and by Selected Leaders. All three philosophers, McKinney, Smith, and Thomas, considered their roles as philosophers to be inextricably tied to the educational aims of the HBCUs.5
Although Thomas Nelson Baker earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale as early as 1903, McKinney was just the second Black person to earn a doctorate from Yale to go on and become an academic philosopher. In the nearly forty-year span from Baker to McKinney, no other African American joined the ranks of academic philosophy with a doctorate from Yale. I should point out that while George D. Kelsey (Morehouse professor of philosophy and religion and mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.) graduated from Yale with his Ph.D. in 1946, it would take nearly twenty years before the next African American academic philosopher would emerge from Yale with a doctorate. (Kelsey was one of the first African Americans to hold a distinguished chair at a white institution. He was the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Christian Ethics at Drew University.) After Kelsey, Joyce Mitchell Cook received her doctorate in 1965. Dr. Joyce Mitchell Cook would also have the honor of becoming the first African American woman with a Ph.D. in philosophy.6
In spite of the fact that the first African American to gain the Ph.D. from an institution in the United States—Edward Bouchet in 1874 fromYale University—the limited number of African Americans with doctorates from Yale was primarily due to consciously designed forms of racial discrimination. In 1945 the Provost Edgar S. Furniss of Yale actually admitted in a letter to Yale’s President Charles Seymour that the racist exclusion of qualified Black applicants had willfully taken place there for a number of years.7
After Yale, McKinney conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the Sorbonne in Paris. McKinney was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and we find that throughout his academic career he was an active faculty member and administrator with several HBCUs. In 1935, for example, McKinney went to Virginia Union as assistant professor and director of religious activities. Although he planned to serve only as a short-term replacement, his stay was extended and hence his teaching and educational administrative career was launched. Eventually, in 1942, he assumed the post of Dean of the School of Religion.1
Despite his outstanding credentials and training, and with the exception of visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Medical College of Georgia, along with Bicentennial Lecturer at the College of Notre Dame, his academic career would essentially remain behind the shadow of “The Color Line” of segregation and Jim Crow. McKinney’s Bicentennial Lecture at Notre Dame—“A Philosophical Paragraph: ‘We Hold These Truths’ ...”—expresses his abiding interest in overcoming racism. The lecture was later revised and published with the same title in Samuel L. Gandy’s anthology Common Ground, Essays in Honor of Howard Thurman.8
In 1944, McKinney left Virginia Union and became president of Storer College in West Virginia. Storer College was the first institution established that served as a teachers college for African Americans in the state of West Virginia. From its beginnings as a secondary school, Storer, by 1934, had developed four-year college-degree granting programs. Located in Harpers Ferry, the historic spot where John Brown led his raid on the federal arsenal, the area gained a sizable African American population in the wake of Brown’s armed crusade against slavery.9
From its founding in 1865 until 1944, when McKinney assumed the helm, Storer was headed by white men. In fact, Henry T. MacDonald, the second head and the first “official” president of the College (in the words of Dawn Raines Burke) had “a lingering paternalistic predisposition” in as much as he thought that only white people could properly educate African Americans and that African Americans were not equally equipped to educate themselves. In fact, MacDonald was president of Storer for 45 years, and he argued that special efforts should be made to attract white faculty there. Students complained about the atmosphere of racist paternalism and the paucity of Black professors on the faculty. Eventually, MacDonald resigned and thus McKinney became president. In that capacity, McKinney was not only an able administrator but also a mentor and inspiration to the African American student body. Additionally, McKinney had to have an abundance of courage to assume the position of president of Storer. For instance, when he first arrived the KKK burned a cross in his yard. McKinney, nonetheless, would not be intimidated by racist violence and terrorism. Along with founding a student government organization, McKinney even instituted a student branch of the NAACP on the campus.10
McKinney’s presidency from 1944 to 1950 was pivotal to the College’s academic expansion into a four-year college. McKinney increased the number of Black faculty to 11 of the 18 instructors. He recruited more foreign students and particularly advanced the number of African students at Storer. In this particular recruitment drive, McKinney worked closely with former Storer student Nnamdi (Zik) Azikiwe, who would become the first president of Nigeria. Azikiwe gave generously to his alma mater and regularly corresponded with McKinney. Later we discover that McKinney’s close association with Zik would be manifested in McKinney serving as a visiting professor at the University of Ife in Nigeria.11
Yet despite McKinney’s gallant efforts to establish Storer as a first-rate four-year college, it never gained accreditation. Sadly, McKinney also had to face an uncooperative West Virginia state legislature and a white Board of Trustees at the College that was not in sync with building Storer into a first-rate college with African American leadership. McKinney woefully remarked, “We couldn’t get the required facilities because we didn’t have the money. We couldn’t get the money because we weren’t accredited…We were in a vicious cycle.”12
From a historical standpoint, it is important to note that McKinney was just one of a number of Black philosophers who were presidents at HBCUs. Besides McKinney, those in this capacity included: Joseph C. Price at Livingston College (North Carolina), John Wesley Edward Bowen and Willis Jefferson King at Gammon Theological Seminary (Georgia)—King was also president at Samuel Huston College (Texas)—Marquis L. Harris at Philander Smith (Arkansas), William Stuart Nelson at Shaw University (North Carolina) and Dillard University (Louisiana), Broadus Butler was president at Dillard University as well as Texas Southern University, and Gilbert Haven Jones and Charles Leander Hill at Wilberforce University (Ohio).13
Keenly aware of the difficult plight of the African American presidents at HBCUs, McKinney would later publish a book on Howard University’s first African American president, Mordecai Johnson. The book, Mordecai, The Man and His Message: The Story of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, was published with Howard University Press in 1998.14 Indeed, much of McKinney’s published work centered on African American education and religion. We have the following book, History of the Black Baptists of Florida, 1850-1985, with Florida Memorial College Press in 1987, and his doctoral dissertation, Religion in Higher Education among Negroes, which was published in book form in 1945. In addition to the above, there is the more historically anchored monographic text that he published in 1981 under the title of Keeping the Faith: A History of the First Baptist Church, 1863-1980, in Light of Its Times, West Main and Seventh Streets with the Michie Bobs Merrill Press.
When McKinney departed from Storer in 1950, he headed for Morgan State University where, starting in 1951, he spent the majority of his academic career. Prior to McKinney’s arrival at Morgan’s Department of Philosophy, William T. Fontaine was chair of the philosophy department until 1947, and Marc M. Moreland was on the philosophy faculty when McKinney arrived. Fontaine was the first African American to receive the Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, and he was the first Black person to gain tenure at Penn. Moreland was a fellow Morehouse alum and earned his doctorate in philosophy from University of Toronto in 1938.15
McKinney became the chair of the Department of Philosophy and the Division of the Humanities in 1951 and ultimately served as acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences before his retirement in 1978. After his retirement from Morgan State, McKinney assumed another administrative post as acting vice president for academic affairs at Virginia Union. McKinney was not inclined to “retire” literally and so he returned to Morgan and taught philosophy well into his 90s. In fact, it was reported that he had given a lecture just before he died.16
In an interview given in 1996 with Joan Morgan (in Black Issues of Higher Education), “Teaching the Young Keeps Him Young—90 Year Old Dr. Richard McKinney of Morgan State Still Going Strong,” McKinney stated, “I like to be around young people and if I stay around just older persons I will tend to think and act that way…and seeing me, they learn that age can be just a number.” A productive scholar and insightful teacher, McKinney published his views about teaching philosophy in an article entitled “Some Aspects of the Teaching of Philosophy,” Liberal Education V. XLVI (December 1960). Professor McKinney held that his philosophical viewpoint was essentially rooted in phenomenology and existentialism and he offers his insights into existentialism in an article entitled “Existentialist Ethics and Protest Movement.”17
No doubt Dr. McKinney’s joy as a philosopher was in teaching and in progressively changing young people’s lives. He stated, “A former student who is now in her thirties came to me while I was attending a concert to say she still had the textbook from when she was in my class and now she is teaching it to her 13-year-old daughter. I think that is the payoff for teachers—seeing the change in people for the better.”1
Indeed, not only have his former students gained from his teachings but also all of us have reaped the harvest of his contributions to the history of African American philosophy. Without a doubt, today we all stand on higher philosophical grounds, and this is especially so given the contributions of this pioneering African American philosopher and educator. Quite fittingly, Dr. McKinney’s passing on October 28, 2005, at the age of 99 years old, is marked by the establishment of the Dr. Richard I. McKinney Philosophy Scholarship Fund. You can help continue the legacy of Dr. McKinney by sending your contributions to the Morgan State University Foundation.
Endnotes
1. For an insightful interview of Dr. McKinney in his later years see Joan Morgan, “Teaching the Young Keeps Him Young—90 Year Old Dr. Richard McKinney of Morgan State Still Going Strong,” Black Issues in Higher Education (August 22, 1996).
2. “Morgan Scholar, Long-Time Professor and Author Dies,” Morgan State University Office of Communication and Public Relations, University News Desk (November 2, 2005). Also consult the fine electronic entry simply entitled Historymakers, “Richard McKinney”State University Office of Communications and Public Relations Morgan State University Relations.
3. After graduating from Bates College, Benjamin Mays applied to Newton and he was denied admission because he was a Black person. Mays went on to earn the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1935. See “Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Biography of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays,” http://www.seo.harvard.edu/resprog/maysbio.html. The race-based admissions policy at Newton was instituted by President George Horr in 1913. All records seem to indicate that this policy terminated at the end of his tenure as president in 1925, which would have been five years after Mays graduated from Bates. I want to thank Ms. Diana Yount of the Archives and Special Collections of Andover Newton Seminary for providing me with this information. John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams, A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Also read Earl E. Thorpe, Black Historians; A Critique (New York, Morrow, 1971).
4. Richard I. McKinney. “Religion in Negro Colleges” Journal of Negro Education V. 13, n. 4. (Autumn, 1944). Charles Leander Hill. “The Role of Religion in Higher Education.” Undated manuscript in Folder 39 of the Charles Leander Hill Collection at Wilberforce University. Also consult John H. McClendon III, “Charles Leander Hill: Philosopher and Theologian,” The A.M.E. Church Review V.CXIX, n. 390 (April-June 2003). Willis J. King. “Personalism and Race.” In Personalism in Theology: A Symposium in Honor of Albert Cornelius Knudson, edited by Edgar S. Brightman (Boston: Boston University Press, 1943). Also see Robert F. Herrington, “Bishop Willis J. King,” Journal of the Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church (1977).
5. John H. McClendon III. “My Tribute to a Teacher, Mentor, Philosopher, and Friend: Dr. Francis A. Thomas (March 16, 1913 to September 17, 2001),” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience V.3, n. 1 (Fall 2003). John H. McClendon III. “The African American Philosopher and Academic Philosophy: On the Problem of Historical Interpretation,” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience V. 4, n. 1 (Fall 2004).
6. Along with McKinney, Kelsey was also both a Morehouse and Newton graduate. See the biographical note, George D. Kelsey Collection at Drew University. On Cook consult chapter 13, ‘Joyce Mitchell Cook’. In African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, edited by George Yancy (New York: Routledge, 1998).
7. On Bouchet, see Caldwell Titcomb, “The Earliest Members of Phi Beta Kappa,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 33. (Autumn, 2001). Garry L. Reeder, “The History of Blacks at Yale University,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 26 (Winter, 1999-2000).
8. Please see “Morgan Scholar, Long-Time Professor and Author Dies.” “Richard McKinney” webmaster@thehistorymakers.com. Samuel E. Gandy, ed., Common Ground, Essays in Honor of Howard Thurman on the Occasion of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, November 18, 1975 (Washington, DC: Hoffman Press, 1976).
9. “Transcript of interview with Ancella Bickley for the film ‘West Virginia’,” WV History Film Project (West Virginia Division of Culture and History).
10. Dawn Raines Burke. Storer College: A Hope for Redemption in the Shadow of Slavery (Doctoral Dissertation: Virginia Polytechnic and State University, 2004) 344, 351-53. McKinney served on Dawn Raines Burke dissertation committee.
11. Dawn Raines Burke. Storer College, pp. 352-53. “Morgan Scholar, Long-Time Professor and Author Dies.”
12. The quote from McKinney can be found in Marc Bailes, “Storer College: Storer College Room Historic Exhibit Unveiled,” Martinsburg Journal (February 25, 1996).
13. See “The Tradition of White Presidents at Black Colleges,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 16, (Summer 1997).
14. McKinney was not just interested in Johnson, but he wrote about other Black ministers as educator/leaders within the framework of the Black Church. See Richard I. McKinney, “The Black Church: Its Development and Present Impact,” Harvard Theological Review V. 64, n.4. (October, 1971).
15. T. Ross. “William T. Fontaine 1909-1968,” Memorial Minutes, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 43. (1969-1970), 200-202. Marc M. Moreland’s dissertation topic was The Theory and Problem of Liberty in New England, 1636-1700, also see his The Tolono Station and Beyond (Boston: Christopher Publishing Co., 1970).
16. The reader should please consult the following electronic sources, “Richard McKinney” webmaster@thehistorymakers.com. On McKinney lecturing just before his death see the Andover Newton newsletter, Andover Newton Alumni/ae E-News (December 22, 2005) http://www.ants.edu/alumnews/alumnews12-16-05.htm.
17. Richard I. McKinney. “Existentialist Ethics and Protest Movement,” Journal of Religious Thought V. 22, n. 2. (1965-1966). Joan Morgan, “Teaching the Young Keeps Him Young—90 Year Old Dr. Richard McKinney of Morgan State Still Going Strong.”
BOOK REVIEW
Democracy vs. Empire: Cornel West’s Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
Cornel West (The Penguin Press HC, 2004). 240 pages. ISBN: 1594200297
Reviewed by Robert E. Birt
Morgan State University
Dr. Cornel West’s book Democracy Matters is, though steeped in philosophical thought, much more a work of cultural criticism and moral critique than of systematic philosophy. Written more in the manner of the man of letters than the academician, its narrative voice is that of an American moralist, imbued with Christian and socialist sensibilities. The subtitle—Winning the Fight Against Imperialism—may suggest a Marxian perspective, and West’s intellectual itinerary has involved an intimate, complex, and conflicted encounter with Marx. Yet the reader will not find the intricate institutional analysis and structural critique of imperialism as a system that is so characteristic of the Marxist tradition.
So, what we find is not a formal treatise but a critical narrative echoing prophetic cadences reminiscent of the Old Testament, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., and the black churchly tradition of sacred rhetoric. In this respect, West’s own rhetoric reflects his commitment to his deeply cherished “prophetic” Christianity. There is a somber optimism in West’s new book. Democracy Matters is an eloquent paean to America’s “deep democratic tradition,” and a somber jeremiad lamenting the erosion of “democratic energies” by the corrosive power of a “market-driven” empire. But far from being a mere sermon, Democracy Matters is the critical narrative of an African-American philosopher who favors the Socratic spirit of critical inquiry as a force essential to the renewal of the democratic spirit. West seeks to employ this critical spirit in union with the voice of prophetic witness and the spirit of a tragicomic sense of hope as part of his critique of racism, economic injustice, militarism, and the nihilistic spirit of profiteering imperialism.
One quickly finds within Democracy Matters a certain continuity of themes (and manners of addressing them) that ties this book to earlier works. This is apparent in the first chapter wherein West introduces most of the central concerns which the book will address. West specifically identifies Democracy Matters as a sequel to his 1993 book Race Matters. In that earlier book he explored and sought to demystify race, “racial reasoning” (as opposed to “moral reasoning”), white supremacy, and “nihilism” as a “disease of the soul” in Black America.1 He now insists that the pivotal link between these two books is a concern for the future of democracy. Race Matters sought to spark a national conversation on “the ways in which a vicious legacy of white supremacy contributes to the arrested development of American democracy.”2 Analogously, Democracy Matters will attempt a critical look “at the waning of democratic energies in our present age of American empire.” For West believes that the “rise of an ugly imperialism has been aided by an unholy alliance of plutocratic elites and the Christian Right, and also by a massive disaffection of many voters who see little difference between two corrupted parties, with blacks being taken for granted by the Democrats, and with the deep disaffection of youth.”3 In short, there is a shift of emphasis from racism to imperialism (though racism remains central) as the primary antithesis to democracy.
Does this apparent shift of emphasis from racism to imperialism imply that race matters less? Does class or economic forces take priority over race? That is a view long common within much of the Left, and one not exactly foreign to West’s own thinking. As early as Prophesy Deliverance (1982), West writes that “racial status contributes greatly to black oppression” and that “class position contributes more than racial status to basic forms of powerlessness in America.”4 Yet there’s a delicate tension. Imperialism is “market-driven” but also profoundly racist. And its racism is no mere accidental feature. In fact, West writes in his chapter on American nihilism that the “pursuit of empire and racist oppressions and exclusions have been intimately interlinked.”5 Far from declining in significance, race “is the crucial intersecting point where democratic energies clash with American imperial realities…..”6 Moreover, West holds that the “fight for democracy has ever been one against the oppressive and racist corruptions of empire.”7 When West identifies “the dismantling of empire and the deepening of democracy”8 as the “great dramatic battle of the twenty first century” it may seem that empire has replaced the color line which W.E.B. Du Bois once saw as the problem of the 20th century. But democracy cannot triumph in America without the defeat of imperialism, and American imperialism cannot be defeated without the defeat of American racism. Hence race matters are of vital importance to democratic life as West conceives it. And the color line remains an essential problem of the 21st century.
But for West the market, with its growing dominance—its virtual devouring of American social, political, and cultural life—is the primary culprit undermining democratic energies. The market is the engine of empire and its militarist adventures abroad. The same market forces undermine democratic life at home. “In our market-driven empire,” West argues, “elite salesmanship to the demos has taken the place of genuine democratic leadership.”9 The tendency is to turn the citizenry into mere consumers, and the demos into passive recipients of stupefying amusements. Citizens largely abandon political life as they see political leadership confined to Republican and Democratic parties, both of which are subservient to corporate money and interests. But what becomes of democracy when the demos are disaffected? Perhaps it shrivels and dies as the people become, in West’s favored Emersonian expression, a comatose nation of “sleepwalkers.”
Yet for West the disaffection of the citizenry, though dangerous, is not the greatest danger to democratic life in America. He thinks the greatest dangers are the three “anti-democratic dogmas” of “free market fundamentalism,” “aggressive militarism,” and “escalating authoritarianism.”10 Free market fundamentalism, which West likens to religious fundamentalism, “makes an idol of money and a fetish of wealth.”11 The capitalist market—Holy Grail of the Right—takes on all the mystical qualities of sacredness. Major corporations “are delegated magical powers of salvation rather than relegated to democratic scrutiny concerning both the ethics of their business practices and their treatment of workers.”12 Free market fundamentalism, whose ethos pervades both Democratic and Republican parties, promotes gross polarization of wealth and a vision of life which glamorizes narcissism, materialistic gain, and a “pursuit of narrow individualistic preoccupations,” which “trivializes the concern for public interest.”13 By valuing profit over the common good and consumerism over civic consciousness, the fundamentalism of the market devalues community and drains the democratic spirit from American society.
Aggressive militarism, like free market fundamentalism, is viewed by West as a kind of obscene idolatry. And the dangerous policy of preemptive strike against potential enemies is only a part of it. The militarist dogma as described by West seems to have quasi-religious qualities. For it “posits military might as salvific in a world in which he who has the most and biggest weapons is the most moral and masculine, hence worthy of policing others.”14 This militarism allows elites to sacrifice in foreign adventures thousands of American soldiers who are mainly working class and youth of color. It takes the form of unilateral invasions and occupation of other countries, and also the shunning of international cooperation. And there is a severe domestic cost as well. At home the militarist dogma expands police powers, augments the prison-industrial complex, and legitimates unchecked male power and violence at home and in the workplace. In short, militarism deepens or unleashes authoritarian forces and tendencies raging within the body of the republic.
West sees “escalating authoritarianism” as rooted not only in a fear of terrorism but in “our traditional fear of too many liberties, and our deep distrust of one another.”15 By escalating authoritarianism, West seems to mean a curtailing or “repression of our hard-won rights and hard-fought liberties.” The Patriot Act, which has been supported by America’s Supreme Court, is only a part of the picture. For that piece of repressive legislation coincides with a general “loosening of legal protection” of civil liberties and a “slow closing of meaningful access to the oversight of governmental activities” in the name of a security that trumps liberty. The already mentioned expansion of prisons and police powers is perhaps the most obvious indication of growing authoritarianism. But even the “media,” which since the Enlightenment has been seen as an essential bulwark of freedom, has become a market-driven corporate institution that feeds authoritarianism by narrowing the range of political dialogue. West fears that we are even losing the value of dialogue “in the name of sheer force of naked power.”16 But this substitution of force for dialogue is for West, as for classical Greeks who called it tyranny, the “classic triumph of authoritarianism” over the kind of critical questioning essential to democratic life.
Yet, on a more optimistic note, West claims that there is a deep and abiding love of democracy among the American people. There is a “deep democratic tradition” which is also a tradition of critique and resistance to American imperialism and authoritarianism. In opposition to the three anti-democratic dogmas, there are three vital traditions that fuel democratic energies. There is the Socratic tradition of critical inquiry invented and bequeathed by the Greeks—a tradition emphasizing reflective self-examination and critical questioning of authority and dogma. There is the tradition of prophetic witness and commitment to justice for all humankind inherited from the ancient Hebrews, and foundational to the Christian and Muslim faiths as well as the Jewish. Finally, there is the tragicomic sense of hope, the ability “to laugh and retain a sense of life’s joy—to preserve hope even while staring in the face of hate and hypocrisy—as against falling into the nihilism of paralyzing despair.”17 For West the profoundest expression of tragicomic hope is found in “wrenchingly honest yet compassionate voices of the black freedom movement,” and in African-American blues and jazz. Thus, while many Western cultural critics have esteemed Hebraism and Hellenism as foundational to Western civilization and democracy, West emphasizes the African or African-American pillars of the democratic tradition.
The democratic value of the Socratic tradition lies in its tendency to empower citizens “in the face of elite manipulations and lies….” Socratic questioning calls forth “relentless self-examination and critique of institutions of authority, motivated by an endless quest for intellectual integrity and moral consistency.” For West, the Socratic spirit expresses itself in “fearless speech” that “unsettles, unnerves and unhouses people from their uncritical sleepwalking.”18 West sees the Socratic spirit as implicitly democratic and the dialogical form of discussion as a deeply democratic form of discourse. And this is despite Plato’s use (born of fear of the masses) of this “essentially democratic genre for antidemocratic ends” and the furtherance of “aristocratic conclusions.”19 The Socratic praxis of critical questioning and dialogue is “predicated on the capacity of all people…to engage in a critique of and resistance to the corruptions of mind, soul and society.”20 This critical questioning spirit is seen by West as part of America’s deep democratic tradition, a democratic force essential to our resistance to the deceptive sophistry of imperial elites and the corporate media.
West sees the prophetic tradition as a democratically valuable force in the face of the callous indifference to the suffering wrought by American imperialism. The prophetic tradition, a Jewish invention inherited from the Old Testament, is a tradition of commitment to justice for an oppressed people. This tradition, a vital part of the legacy of Islam and Christianity, has been especially prominent in African-American religion since slavery. One easily recalls James Baldwin’s observation that the “more devout Negro considers that he is a Jew, in bondage to a hard taskmaster and waiting for a Moses to lead him out of Egypt. The hymns, the texts, the most favored legends of the devout Negro are all Old Testament….”21 What is important for West is that prophetic witness does not focus solely on personal morality and individual salvation. Rather, it calls attention to the causes of “unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery.” Prophetic witness, as West interprets it, “highlights personal and institutional evil,” including the evil of indifference to such evils. And it does not countenance “individual conversions that precludes collective insurgency.”22 Thus it is hardly surprising that West esteems most of all the life and vocation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose leadership (like the Movement he led) resounded with the language and themes of prophetic witness and a message of deliverance—one that “should inform and embolden us in revitalizing our democratic fires.”23
The tragicomic spirit is vital to democratic life insofar as it is a kind of spiritual armor against the temptations of a “cynical and disillusioned acquiescence to the status quo.” Tragicomic hope is a “profound attitude toward life,” which West thinks discernible in works of artistic genius from various lands and times. But in America it has been most powerfully expressed in the black invention of blues and jazz. What West calls the “blues sensibility” (a black interpretation of tragicomic hope) is an expression of “righteous indignation with a smile and deep inner pain without bitterness or revenge.”24 Indeed, West thinks that the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing oppression and hatred “is the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity.”25 The barbarity against which tragicomic hope steels the soul is found not only in the form of physical violence but also a certain spiritual emptiness of life—an emptiness or meaninglessness, which West often calls nihilism. West regards the tragicomic hope expressed in the blues to be “a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.” Its essence is “to stare painful truths in the face and persevere without cynicism or pessimism.”26
A number of questions come to mind concerning the three “traditions” West deems so vital to the quest for democracy. How well can the Socratic, prophetic, and tragicomic traditions work in unison? Do their varying perspectives imply different—perhaps conflicted—readings of the meaning(s) of democracy and social justice? One surmises that West desires a synthesis. Is such a synthesis possible or likely? For example, can the prophetic voice thundering, “Thus saith the Lord!” in demanding that we love mercy and do justice sing in harmony with the critical Socratic voice which queries “Tell me friend, what is Justice?” Perhaps both voices can challenge social injustice and oppression. But how well can they abide with each other? And do they engender reconcilable or antithetical visions of justice? Can the moral fervor of the prophet live with the critical Socratic spirit? Can the inquiring, critical spirit abide the unswerving righteousness of the prophet? One wonders what becomes of the democratic project as conceived by West if the prophetic and Socratic traditions prove incapable of a long-term union. Is it perhaps the apparent unity of the prophetic and Socratic traditions in the life and work of Dr. King that elicits so much of West’s esteem, inducing him to describe Dr. King as “the major American prophet” of the twentieth century?27
And how well does tragicomic hope, so movingly expressed in blues and jazz, harmonize with the prophetic and critical spirit? Perhaps West hears a blue note in the heart of Socratic irony.28