Crisis After Cruse

THE PUBLICATION OF Harold Cruse's The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual in 1967 was meant to serve as a death blow to Black intellectual timidity. Specifically, Cruse called for an end to "pro-Semitism" which he felt was stifling Black thought.

He asserted correctly--and not anti-Semitically, that while the Jewish intellectuals emphasized their own cultural independence, they played fast and loose with the cultural independence of Blacks by advocating integration. As long as Black intellectuals continued to defer to their Jewish colleagues, according to Cruse, the Black community would be devoid of the kind of intellectual scrutiny that defined the Jewish community.

However, Cruse's call for a divorce of what he sees as an ill-gotten marriage between Blacks and Jews has not materialized--if the lectures he gave at Harvard last fall and at the third annual W.E.B DuBois Graduate Colloquium last weekend are any indication.

The Jewish bugaboo which Cruse railed against is still haunting the Black intellectual community--only now in a new way.

Twenty years ago Cruse was there to criticize Black thinkers for holding to a dictum that every Jewish opinion was a good one. What the Black community needs now is a thinker of Cruse's force to confront Black intellectuals, and here Cruse is included, for holding to a new and equally blinding axiom: no Jewish opinion is a good one.

BLACK INTELLECTUALS' continued refusal to discuss the anti-Semitic views of the Nation of Islam's Minister Louis Farrakhan highlights the fact that Jewish opinions continue to frame the content of debate in the Black community.

Farrakhan is indisputedly a Black leader of import. After twenty years of ineffective sentimentalism on the part of the traditional Black leadership, Farrakhan is an original, if not pleasant voice in the Black community.

Not only did he fill to overflowing Madison Square Garden and the Convention Center in Washington, D.C., but he also illicited vocal approval from guests at Cruse's Harvard lecture last fall and at last weekend's colloquium when his name was mentioned in presentation or debate.

But Cruse, after blasting the lack of intellectual scrutiny among Blacks, proceeded to wave away any questions concerning Farrakhan at last fall's lecture. While he noted the leader's boldness, he hinted that he saw problems in Farrakhan's ideology. But he flatly refused to go into detail.

Conrad West, associate professor of philosophy of religion at the Yale Divinity School and star of the colloquium, effectively outlined a plan for a new critical consciousness, but declined to articulate that plan in relation to Farrakhan. To loud applause, West simply noted that the minister was a symbol of defiance. He added as apposite that Farrakhan was anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and decidedly anti-intellectual. It is safe to conclude that little of West's qualification was heard, never mind accepted.

To date, Jewish leaders have only emphasized Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. But in Cruse's world of cultural nationalism, this should not be surprising. Black intellectuals should be the ones responsible for looking at Farrakhan rationally, rather than emotionally.

But precisely because Jewish leaders have made so much of Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism, Black intellectuals shy away from raising objections to him.

IT IS NOT my purpose to take issue with Black intellectuals for not openly denouncing Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. But, I do take issue with the intellectual waffling of both Cruse and West for failing to apply their considerable talents of analysis to criticize a Black leader with whom they find much fault.

While Cruse and West are men of ideas, Farrakhan is not. Rhetorical excesses define Farrakhan, while respect for words are the hallmark of intellectuals like Cruse and West. Furthermore, Farrakhan emphasizes a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality that is at odds with the approaches of both Cruse and West to the problem of cultural and intellectual rejuvenation. Farrakahn is a man of money--not of the mind.

But both West and Cruse refuse to voice their intellectual disagreements with Farrakhan. Sure Farrakhan is anti-Semitic and anti-intellectual, and his popularity is symbolic of the degree to which the Black underclass has been de-socialized. But to say as much would be to side with Jewish critics. How much easier then to refer to Farrakhan simply as a symbol of "defiance," an intentionally hollow word.

If Black intellectuals would stop worrying about what Jews think, which is only what Cruse called for two decades ago, then they could become catalysts for change. As it stands, Black intellectuals--if the colloquium can be taken as an example--discredit themselves by exhalting critical scrutiny while they sweep an intellectually turbulent problem out of view.