Carby Gives Final DuBois Talk

Citing films and a classic work of literature, Yale Professor Hazel V. Carby said yesterday that efforts by liberal whites to improve America's racial climate by calling for social change are often doomed to failure because of their roots in self-interest.

Carby, addressing more than 70 gathered at Emerson Hall in the last of the three W.E.B. Dullois Lectures, drew on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the recent Lawrence Kasdan film "Grand Canyon" as examples of works by whites intended to preserve their social position, not to promote true racial equality.

"It is not a superficial gesture to juxtapose the two works," said Carby, a professor of English. American studies and African American studies, "because they are both cultural texts that fear for the security of white middle class America."

Using clips from the movie to support her argument. Carby said "Grand Canyon" identifies Blacks as either "good" or "bad."

'Christianizing'

In the same way, Carby said, Stowe's novel makes certain Black characters acceptable to whites by "Christianizing" and "de-Africanizing" them.

In both works, carby said. "Black bodies are a means to white salvation and they embody the anxieties of the middle class."

"Grand Canyon" establishes certain Blacks as enemies of white Americans in many of the same ways that movies about American wars in southeast Asia establish Asians as villains, Carby said.

'Fear of Chaos'

In this way, the filmmakers employ "the fear of chaos, of a disillusionment of social order" to establish the need for social change, a tactic that does little to improve racial equality, Carby said.

Responding to an audience member during a brief question-and-answer session. Carby said she was not sure she supported an analogy between "the cultural patronage of safe Black bodies and the way in which universities treat African-American studies."

Still, she said, "universities have been notorious in their classification of people in certain fields." She said that while some universities search for Black professors for African-American studies, classics departments do not seek out professors of Greek origin.

Carby's lectures have been sponsored by the Harvard University Press and the Afro-American Studies Department.