An Open Letter to My Students

Following is the text of an open letter distributed this week by Professor of Government Martin Kilson to members of his class, Government 1570: Politics and Society Among Afro-Americans.

Since we have been attempting to explain in our lectures and discussion sessions the complex interplay between the pragmatic activist mainstream sector of African-American intelligentsia on the one hand, and the Black solidarist or Afrocentrist sector on the other hand, my attention was immediately drawn to articles in The Crimson on the Black Students Association's (BSA) unfortunate invitation to Professor Tony Martin, whom I consider a xenophibic Afrocentrist and also to the BSA's proposed Kwanzaa Rituals celebration ("Martin Speaks at BSA Event," news story, Dec. 2, 1994; "Martin Speech Tests Hillel-BSA Relationship," news story, Dec. 2, 1994; "BSA to Hold Its First Kwanzaa Celebration," news story, Dec. 2, 1994).

From my vantage point, these two events reflect a persistent need among many Blacks for cathartic responses or symbolic rebellious responses to racist patterns in American society. It never ceases to fascinate a pragmatic leftist member of the Black American intelligentsia like myself that the appetite for Black solidarist catharsis is still quite strong among competent Black middle-class students (or working-class students soon-to-become bourgeois professionals) at top-level colleges like our fair Harvard College.

As you all are aware, at least two of our course members--Joshua D. Bloodworth '97 and Kristen M. Clarke '97--clearly nurse a strong appetite for Black solidarist catharsis, and especially its high-symbolic and emotive forms represented by Kwanzaa Rituals celebration.

While I've always been pragmatic and ecumenical in my reaction to students like Mr. Bloodworth and Ms. Clarke with their preference for Black-solidarist cathartic activism, I persist in articulating to such Black students here at Harvard College what I believe to be a more viable mode of Black-individual and Black-group metamorphosis in our complex post-Capitalist (e.g., Hi-Tech Capitalist, Global Capitalist, etc.) era. Namely--translate your strong cathartic appetite into a strong outreach-to-Black-poor ethos; into an activist healing-hand value orientation that focuses on the manifold crises of cultural life and societal life among our African-American poor (e.g., male violence against women, male neglect of family obligations, runaway teenage births, nihilistic violence by macho males, etc.). The simplistic catharsis of xenophobic, Afrocentrist discourse is just plain useless in the face of these manifold crises confronting perhaps 40 percent of Black households today.

In this mature way of managing the trauma of persistent racist victimization of Black folks in American life (trauma recently reinforced by the racist discourse found in The Bell Curve, by Charles A. Murray '65 and the late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein), you should be formulating week-by-week and month-by-month numerous projects to assist that long-haul task of outfitting the Black poor and underclass youth to read adequately, to manage math, to replace vulgarity with beauty, to overcome hyper-macho, anarchic and anti-humanistic values and personal identities.

Thus you--you Mr. Bloodworth, you Ms. Clarke, etc.--should form tutorial programs for the millions of poor Black children in our cities--programs in reading, thinking, math, historical reasoning, biology, etc. We already have a fine example of this viable, helping-hand-to-Black-poor activity to imitate--namely, the activity of former Harvard student Rev. Eugene Rivers, organized through a Pentecostal mission church program in Boston.

This long-haul task--defined in activist uplift terms, not cathartic terms of Afro-Romanticism--is, of course, less symbolically stirring and solidaristically glamorous than your Kwanzaa Rituals celebration proposal, that's for certain. But from my vantage point as a pragmatic activist and leftist member of the Black intelligentsia, I can say without fear of contradiction that Rev. Rivers's kind of humanistic and activist outreach program will produce greater modern transformation and benefits for our massive Black poor population (32 percent of Black households, compared to 29 percent of Latino households) and 15 percent of white households). Yes, indeed--much greater benefits than your high-cathartic Kwanzaa Rituals celebration proposal and your misguided invitations to xenophobic Afrocentrists.

Anyway, I offer this "open letter" to my Government 1570 class in general and to Mr. Bloodworth and Ms. Clarke and others in their circle in particular, as both critical advice and loving advice, too. This mode of advice--critical but loving--used to be a common pattern of exchange between the "Old Heads" among Black leadership and the young.

Martin Kilson is a member of the Government Department and the Committee on African Studies.

The simplistic catarsis of xenophobic, Afro-centrist discourse is just plain useless.