Racism, AIDS and Truth: Responses to Khallid Muhammad

I realized, recently, that I've once again started to notice the Veritas emblems that abound here at Harvard. Sometime between a few days ago and my first few weeks as a first-year I had become used to drinking orange juice from Veritas paper cups and to wrapping muffins from the dinning hall in Veritas iron gate. However, recent events, in particular the speech given by Dr. Khallid Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and the discussion arranged by Jesse Jackson which followed the showing of the film "The Liberators," have forced Veritas back into my mind. What motto would Harvard have chosen for itself if it had been established in the past decade? "Truth" these days is not a very politically correct word. So heartless. So unyielding. I used to think that a malleable truth is an oxymoron, but apparently no longer...

At part of a three-day conference by the Harvard-Radcliffe Afro-American Cultural Center, entitled "Recapturing the Dream by Any Means Possible," Muhammad addressed the issue of truth by arguing that "white folks do lie" when they "tell you Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras and the other faggots are responsible for Western history." Instead, Muhammad insisted, it is Blacks who are responsible for Western history. How to make sense of this statement?

One of two implicit assumptions seems to govern Muhammad's logic. These assumptions relate either to his definition of "Western" or to his understanding of when Western history begins. In the cultural lexicon upon which we depend to communicate, "Western" is conceived as referring to the European/Mediterranean world. The role of Blacks in the early development of Western history was, therefore, necessarily limited. Contact with Africa remained confined to coastal regions as late as the year 1600 and de Gama did not even round the coast of Africa until 1498. In refusing this truth, perhaps Muhammad is implicitly asserting that the word "Western" extends beyond Europe and the Mediterranean to include Africa. If this is the case, however, he has construed "Western" so broadly that it is no longer of any value as a qualifier, and, furthermore, he ought to have notified his audience of his divergent use of the term. Perhaps, alternatively, Muhammad is suggesting that Western history did not begin until the period when a sufficient number of Blacks had been imported as slaves, such that they could have a significant influence. However, although the course of Western history was dramatically effected by Western society's reliance on the slave trade, a society already existed to be affected. Hundreds of years of its own history had brought Western society to the juncture at which it chose to engage in the evil trading in human souls. This choice did not mark the beginning of Western history.

Implicit in Muhammad's assertion that "white folks do lie" is, therefore, the assumption that anything displeasing is a lie and, as a logical consequence, anything displeasing to think that Blacks were not responsible to think that Blacks were not responsible for Western" or the beginning of Western history in such a way that the displeasure is removed. Truth is now reduced entirely to the subjective--a magic wand with which we manage to delude ourselves that the outer world conforms to our desires rather than a rigid measure by which we attempt to deduce the nature of reality regardless of our personal inclinations. Although, of course, the nature of human experience is such that objective truth will always remain elusive, we do have the choice to try to approach such truth as our ideal, rather than reject than reject it as inexpedient. If we do not hold the truth as sacred but instead choose to sacrifice it for ends we believe to be essential, then two inevitable questions arise: which ends and who decides? It is a disregard for the inviolability of truth that allows certain individuals to claim that the Holocaust never occurred. It is a disregard for the inviolability of truth that enables many of the same people to assume that Blacks are inherently laid-back, rhythmic and athletic. Yet in spite of these inescapable dangers, Muhammad does not even recognize the possibility of reaching for such truth. Instead he condemns the presence of white faculty in the Afro-American studies department: "What a slap in the face to bring in the slave master's son or slave master's daughter and to tell of the history they helped destroy." Clearly, this condemnation is grounded in the implicit assumption that the truth is entirely subjective, that history will not be told the same way by a white individuals as by a black one.

In the end, I cannot argue this point. It is irrefutably true. But at the same time, history would also be told differently by a man as opposed to a woman, an adult as opposed to a child, a wealthy individual as opposed to a poor one. The distinctions that separate us are infinite in number and the telling of history in inescapably representational. Unfortunately, however, an objectively true representation of history would only be possible if the impossible were true--namely, that the historian and his or her subject were one and the same.

What choice does this leave? Must each group reserve for itself the right to tell its own history? If so, what would then result? For within each group, there are smaller units, each of which experiences history in a different manner, and within these units. But wait a minute! Is this what we want? Do we really want to follow down a slippery slope that leads to complete alienation? Muhammad argues, "I didn't come to Harvard University to teach you to hate white people." But what exactly are you doing, Muhammad If you teach us that there is no truth beyond each subjective conciousness, what hope remains for any communication between individuals? And without communication, how can we possibly hope to coexist?

Apparently, however, Dr. Muhammad does not hold fruitful communication or coexistence as plausible or worthy values. His claim that Blacks should not trust Jews because of Israel's tendency to vote with South Africa on United Nations resolutions is premised on the view that the very fact of being Jewish entirely determines one's identity. As a result, Jews can only be "so-called...friends" to blacks because their very Jewishness causes them to resist Black aims. Opposition is inevitable.

Somehow, Veritas now means much more to me than a design associated with my morning cup of orange juice, my muffin-containing napkin and an imposing iron gate. An elite university should serve as more than a mere playground for the mind--it should forward the pursuit of truth. Without the shared assumptions that constitute the truth at any given point in human history, assumptions about the nature of common human experience, we are each reduced to an isolated clump of matter, Lacking any basis for communicatio with others. Muhammad's call for a new look at learning is a call for nothin short of total alienation. Harvard was not created in order to follow him into the abyss, but to find the planks with which a bridge may be built across it. Amalia Kessler '95-'94