Okay, let us dive right into Du Bois' Damnation
of Women and dive into the issue of gender. It's very, very important here. This is a very tough, delicate, difficult
issue and yet it's an issue that is shot through every week. The last thing we want to do is to think that
somehow gender is some ghettoized issue. I think I've tried to note from the very first
week to keep track of the way in which gender is constitutive of the doings and sufferings
of any people, in this case Black people. It's not some kind of issue you just attend
to one week. We've seen this with Josie. We've seen this with his feminization of Black
culture. We've seen this in the various tropes that
he uses, but typically, often the case, when we male thinkers, male philosophers, male
scholars ... that we rarely highlight the issue. It's very rare you get an issue like this
one essay, and that's why we spent all week on this one essay. The Damnation of Women. I thought, of course, so she marries. That's a nice little cute kind of piece. You get a sense of his attitude toward his
doctor ... I mean towards his daughter, I should say. Towards his daughter. That was quite a slip right there, wasn't
it? It was towards his daughter. What it is to be a father in the 1920s. We want to be very clear about this. This is Du Bois in the 1920s. This is a long time ago. So many of we men, whatever color we are,
we still got a lot of challenges in 2017 because it's so very difficult, not just to wrap our
minds around the vicious legacies of male supremacy and the various ways in which women's
potential have been truncated and foreclosed. Trumped, and I'm not referring to brother
Donald Trump. That's trump, small T, trumped. To keep the focus on the vast majority of
human kind who are women. This is not a minority within a minority,
at all. It's so easy to believe that, why? Because the very traditions from whence the
boys come, the glorious dialogues that we have tried to accent in terms of legacies
of Athens, Paideia, how could Paideia, the deepest level of self-questioning and self-scrutiny,
the deepest forms of interrogating oneself still result in such patriarchal institutions,
patriarchal practices? What is it about this particular assumption
having to do with women's intelligence and women's capacities and women's abilities to
be something that is not an object of Paideia, an object of serious interrogation and questionings? You say how could, in fact institutions valorize
... by valorize I mean edify, elevate this questioning and yet end up so profoundly patriarchal
and tied in some sense ... this is where things really get frightening. Remember what the theme was in Du Bois' The
Souls of White Folk, that human hated and human contempt and misogyny is not just a
male insecurity in the face of women's bodies and women's potential and capacity, but sometimes
it is a fundamental hatred of women. White supremacy is not always that, but sometimes
it is a fundamental hatred of Black people. Well here in fact, we talk about not the women's
question, but catastrophe visited on women, specifically Black women, but of course we
have to understand this in light of the larger context. Now what's fascinating about the legend of
Athens is what? Oh, lo and behold, when you take a look at
those plays by Aristophanes and Euripides, and how women play a fundamental role on the
stage, even given the patriarchal households. What is it about these artists, they're trying
in their own way to stay in contact with the humanity of these particular people, the vast
majority of human kind so thoroughly dehumanized? Du Bois, in his own attempt to come to terms
with Black woman will be carrying with him part of the legacy of Athens, and part of
that legacy's always what? Profoundly ambiguous. It's [inaudible 00:05:09], it cuts in a variety
of different ways. Unfortunately, nearly every tradition that
we have had access to ... it could be Athens, it could be Jerusalem, it could be Liberalism,
it could be Conservatism, it could be Marxism, it could be Communism ... patriarchy is shot
through every tradition. It could be religious. Jewish, Catholic, Protestant. Even our Quakers. I haven't spent enough time with our Quakers
in the friend's house, but my hunch is if I had a chance to spend a whole lot of time
I could tease out some patriarchal sensibilities with that silence. The courageous Quakers are left wing on the
Reformation. So it is with our Hindu brothers and sisters,
with the castes. So it is with Buddhism, that Bell Hooks and
others have talked about. What is it about the very presence of we males
with our insecurity, anxiety, and our fear of women's bodies? Oftentimes the response is what? Control. Possession. Property. Women as property. Bodies to exchange. Bodies on the market. It could be a sexual market, it could be a
social market. The history of the doings and sufferings of
women, no matter what color, is not a pretty history. How many of you have read Pride and Prejudice? You know what I'm talking about. What is Elizabeth about? Who is Mr. Darcy? Ten thousand pounds a year. Mr. Bennet, all those daughters. How would those daughters survive given the
fundamental role of women as property? The history of modern drama begins in 1879,
December 21st, in Copenhagen when the great Norwegian playwright Henrick Ibsen writes
A Doll's House. I know many of you have read A Doll’s House,
is that right? Some of you all read it last week because
you needed some distance from the studying for your exams, I understand that. What is the dollification of women? The objectification of women, the commodification
of women? When Nora tells Torvald: "It's time to sit
down and talk, we've been married eight years and we are yet to have a serious conversation
in terms of who you are, who I am, what I feel about you. I'm not your toy, I'm not your doll, I'm a
human being who has a right to a certain sense of respect and determination. A controlling of my own self as opposed to
the way my father treated me like a toy. The way my father dollified me and objectified
me. I went from my daddy's house to my husband's
house, just another doll. Just another toy, just another object for
sexual conquest or other forms of conquest, or maybe even just a trophy." Trophy for the male, for the male ego. All about the male ego and their ego is rooted
in such profound insecurity and anxiety and fear. Why? Because of Paideia we know all human beings
are wrestling with insecurity, anxiety, and fear. Those who pose and posture as if they're above
the fray, they're beyond fear, they're beyond insecurity ... all you have to do is just
touch their Achilles heel. Find out what it is and touch it and watch
them go ballistic. The way Torvald goes ballistic in that encounter,
when Nora says, "It's time to go." I was just blessed to go see A Doll's House
Part Two on Broadway, where they talk about when Nora comes back 15 years later. She's now a novelist who's writing these magnificent
stories for women and finds out she never got a divorce. She's got to convince Torvald to somehow get
a divorce after 15 years because she's still what? His property. All the money she makes from the novels is
subsumed under his name. In a property exchange what often happens
is what? I grew up Cornelia West, but when I get married,
I am now Cornelia Robinson, because I married a male named Robinson and I took his name. I am now subsumed under him, as in fact a
kind of appendage, and extension, as it were. Of course, we always want to acknowledge just
like there's highly enlightened white brothers and sisters wrestling with male supremacy,
there's highly enlightened males wrestling with male supremacy. Du Bois wants to offer himself as a candidate. Well, isn't that courageous of our dear brother? He says, "Oh, I know you all are going to
go at me because it looks as if I'm inconsistent." But he says quite consistently, I mean quite
explicitly here ... look at, for example, page 965. "What is today the message of these Black
women to America and to the world? The uplift of women is, next to the problem
of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. When now, two of these movements, women and
color, combine in one, the combination has deep meaning." You all see that there on the top of page
965? Du Bois said, "Look, I understand just how
deep misogyny cuts in every religious tradition and secular tradition. I understand the ways in which women have
been cast as property, and how limited the options are." The text begins with what? The choice between virgin and prostitute. Either pure and pristine so that the insecure
male ego can put the woman up on the pedestal and say, "Oh, you look so beautiful from here,
and I can't wait to control you when you're Mine," capital M. "We'll tell the whole world,
you're Mine." Ownership. Or, prostitute. You ought to be ashamed. Ashamed of yourself, selling yourself. "Selling myself?" The history of the subordination of women
is forcing them to engage in forms of exchange, often mediated with the market. Is Mr Bennet involved in trying to ensure
that his daughters gain access to cash that he doesn't have? Is that not a marketizing? Is that not commodify? "Well, it's not as wrong Professor West, come
on now, you know the difference between a prostitute and a Lady." Capital L.
Then you ask that lady 10, 15, 20 years after she's married if she married the wrong bloke. You're locked in just like a property exchange,
you see? This is before any kind of full-fledged citizenship. Women would gain the right to vote in America
in which year? Somebody tell me. Don't hesitate. Students: 1920. Cornel West: 1920. Big move at 1919. What did they have to do? They had to do something that was unprecedented
other than Black people. They had to amend the Constitution. Had to amend the Constitution, that's at the
highest level of publicness. Remember when we talked about that in relation
to one of the chapters in The Souls of Black Folk, right? Anytime you have that level of publicness,
it shows the depth of the catastrophe and the inability of the founding fathers themselves
to envision a conception of citizenship. This is just at the political level, and it's
very important when you talk about gender or race or sexual orientation or homophobia
or transphobia and so forth. These are never first and foremost political
issues. They're existential issues of self-worth and
self-respect and self-confidence. Yes, they have crucial political dimensions,
but so much of the public discourse in our society wants to highlight primarily the political
ones. Women's rights, civil rights, gay rights,
lesbian rights, bisexual rights and queer rights and so forth and so on. [inaudible 00:15:23], not in this class. The existential is always at the center. What are the conditions under which women
gain access to self-confidence and self-respect and self-worth? What kind of resources can they fall back
on? Now when you then dip into the history of
Black people, the vast majority of Black people, women. What do you see? Same quest for self-worth, self-confidence,
self-respect, indeed, but oh lo and behold, you've got to deal with 244 years of something
that for the most part disappeared in the history of Europe. Slavery. There's a reconstitution of slavery under
modern conditions in the new world. Those women who get off those slave ships
and are taken to the slave auction, they're not just property as women, but they are also
chattel property as slaves. Chattel slavery. Different forms of slavery, yes. Chattel slavery. We should keep in mind, of course, the very
beginning of that process. White brothers and sisters were also enslaved
from Europe. The racialization of slavery doesn't occur
until the 1660s. First flow of 1619. What is distinctive about the racialization
of slavery? Well, there's a number of things. One of it has to do with namelessness. If you go back and actually look at the records
of Jamestown, when they had a slave from Scotland or Ireland or England, they wrote the name
down. A slave from Africa, they just had a mark,
no name. Invisibility, namelessness, separated already
the slaves themselves. What also was crucial was, oh lo and behold,
the white sisters who were enslaved were not put in the fields, but the Black women were. Crucial difference. Slavery itself, of course from our vantage
point, barbaric, bestial, brutal, absolutely right. Already, a racial difference at work within
the very process, but also a gender difference at work, you see? The very notions of the virgin on the pedestal
who is highlighted in light of what she looks like, how she appears, the discourse of prettiness
and so-called beauty ... certain women are going to be chronically excluded from access
to that pedestal. Now that pedestal is not an achievement. That pedestal is still a form of dehumanization. Black women put in the field working along
with their Black brothers, there's a level of attack on self-worth, self-confidence,
self-respect. A level of degradation, a level of devaluation. A level of hatred, of contempt. Of course, things get highly complicated,
don't they? How come? Because these very women in the house were
raising children. Many of those children will suckle the breast,
the Black breast. These same women degraded, dishonored, devalued,
will be the object of sexual conquest of the white brothers running things. Not just a slave holder, but the foremen,
who themselves don't own slave. They still have white skin, and have a certain
white power and white privilege. They're not at the top. They're middle management, let's call it. That's what we'd call it today. Middle management. They're mediating between. There were also some Black males who were
foremen too. Many of them would engage in violation of
Black women's precious bodies. What we're dealing with is what we started
this class with. The depths of the underside, underbelly, underworld,
underground of modernity, and in this case, American US modernity. Keeping track of these different levels of
attack. Now for these 244 years, there's going to
be various attempts to preserve family. Various networks and so forth. We've talked before about religious institutions
having to go underground because it was not just against the law for Black people to learn
how to read and write, but it was against the law for Black people to worship God without
white supervision. The role of Black women in sustaining those
civic institutions, the families shattered. Baby born, sold 400 miles away. 500 miles away. How do you stay in contact with him? Church, underground. Patriarchal leadership, males as pastors. The vast majority of the church, women. In fact, many historians of the Black church
call the Black church a woman's movement with male pulpiteers as patriarchal leaders. In some way, that's true for the civil rights
movement too. Martin Luther King Junior, Julian Bond, Stokely
Carmichael. But actually who is sustaining the movement? Going into the office and you see Ella Baker. She's the one keeping things together. Details, critiques of Martin Luther King Junior. Martin Luther King Junior walks the street
and they say, "Moses, Moses, Moses." Ella Baker's saying that they don't know this
Negro like I know him. Martin Luther King Jr. ain't no damn Moses. He's just a courageous loving brother trying
to do the best that he can but I've got some critique of him. That's the Paideia of Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer was the same way. She criticized Martin on television in Atlantic
City, didn't she? When he made his compromise with the Democratic
party. Said, "I question America, I question the
leadership of the Civil Rights movement." Does that include Martin Luther King Junior? Nobody criticizes Martin Luther King Junior,
he's exempt from criticism. No, the Paideia of Fannie Lou Hamer, questioning. Coming out of a tradition that Du Bois talks
about in this text. Harriet Tubman. Soldiering the truth, go on and on and on. Let's keep in mind now that this is not, and
should never be, some kind of uncritical glorification of anybody. Black women or anybody. From the very beginning we said this course
is a fallible quest for truth. If the condition of truth is to allow suffering
to speak in response to the suffering, then we have to be true to the experiences of the
people we're trying to stay in contact with. When we talk about these various women, we're
actually talking about truths that have been buried. I know the first wave, for example, of Black
history and Black studies in the 1960s ... I was old enough to be around at that time. Very few references to Black women. Very few references to the Ella Bakers and
the Fannie Lou Hamers, you see. It took the courageous truth-telling of disproportionately
Black women and others, women in general but then the brothers begin the catch on. Lo and behold, we have overlooked something
and this is not some kind of PR bandwagon. It's not a matter of the image of the Black
woman. It's a truth activity. Why is it so difficult to engage in intellectual
excavation to stay in contact with the doings and sufferings and efforts and failures and
practices of Black women? Well, you can imagine. When we look at the overarching history, it's
hard to stay in contact with the women as a whole. With the Greeks. What about Sappho? Hidden legacies of Jerusalem. What about the women in Judaism? What about those powerful voices in Judaism
itself? You think Amos has a monopoly on prophetic
utterance? We like Amos, he got something going on. You think he's the only one? What is it about Jesus? How come he didn't go 6-6 rather than all
12 brothers in his disciples? Well, he had a relation with Mary Magdalene,
she was a prostitute. She was the one right there at the tomb. The disciples got scared, Peter denied him
three times, so much for the brothers meeting the test. Where's the sisters? They're right there at the tomb. Why's Jesus hanging out with these prostitutes? I thought religion was about purity. Hmm. Thank God for prophetic Judaic sensibilities
that connects [inaudible 00:26:10] with the truth rather than purity and pristinity with
illusion. Delusion. Nobody pure and pristine in that sense. So it was even in that third legacy that we
talked about with Du Bois. The legacy of European modernity. Unbelievable enlightenment, breakthrough scientific
method, romantic individualism, misogyny and patriarchy shot through Romanticism. Shot through Liberalism. Shot through Immanuel Kant. Shot through David Hume. Shot through Montesquieu. My God, I thought they were enlightened? Relatively enlightened. But all, when it comes to the catastrophe,
visited on women. So it will be with the Black men and Du Bois
himself. Fredrick Douglass. The major Black presence at the founding convention
for the struggle for women's voting rights. Black man, standing there speaking on behalf
of women's rights. Rare but significant, Frederick Douglass,
but he, like Du Bois, like any of we males, we carry with us patriarchal baggage. Why? Because we've been socialized in civilizations
profoundly rooted ... unconsciously, semi-consciously, quasi-consciously, crypto-consciously, and
highly-consciously with patriarchy and misogyny. You say, "But brother West, my God. How could it be the case that if it cuts so
deep, do we have any capacity at all of breaking loose?" Absolutely. That's what Du Bois is talking about. Don't think that one effort or two efforts
or a few utterances or an essay or a book or marching in one demonstration is going
to do it. It cuts deep in our hearts, minds, and souls. When we read Du Bois, we see how honest and
candid he is. Let me tell you the story about the women
in my life. We know he grew up an only child. Didn't know his father. Marched with his mother. I was blessed just to go to Great Barrington
the day before yesterday and I just walked on the streets of Du Bois, just to revel in
that space. I've never had a chance to get to Great Barrington. My whole life I wanted to get there before
I died. I might die tonight, but that's alright. I've been to Great Barrington. I went to Du Bois' house and I can see where
he walked with his mother. I can see the church that he attended. I can see those beautiful mountains there,
with the beautiful foliage. He honest. he says, "You know, as a male I didn't have
a clue to what the plight and predicament has been for women. I know I love my mother. I didn't have a clue what it was like after
slavery in its chattel form was shattered." Then Jim Crow and Jane Crow and the South
especially, but in the North as well, but then the domestic maids ... the vast majority
of Black women, domestic maids. Working in white households, raising white
children, raising their own children in their own households and trying to get along with
their Black males. Now of course there is a history of Black
lesbianism. There's a history of Black women with women. There's a history of bisexual Black women
and so forth and so on, so we don't ever want to homogenize Black women. The Audrey Lords and the others, very important
voices, but it's also true that they rarely have voices that surface. When Du Bois talks about Black women, he's
primarily talking about straight women, for the most part. What does he have to say? Well let's just turn to the very beginning
here. He says, "I've known four women. I remember four women of my boyhood: my mother,
cousin Inez, Emma, and Ida Fuller. They represented the problem of the widow,
the wife, the maiden, and the outcast. They existed not for themselves, but for men." That is one of the distinctive benchmarks
of patriarchal ideology, that women exist for the male normative gaze. Women are socialized in such a way that they
are told to always be aware of the male normative gaze, what they appear to be through men's
eyes. What shoes they wear, or the dresses. I don't know what the tops are. What do you call tops nowadays? Students: Tops? Cornel West: Just tops. Just tops, that's right. The dresses, the tops, the hats, and so forth
and so on. The male normative gaze. Are you dressing for yourself? Yes, I am, but I still wonder what I'm going
to look like when I walk through someone's home. You going to the club, you dressing for yourself? Well, I just want to make sure I get the kind
of dances that I would like. Walking through campus, oh, of course I dress
for myself. Oh, okay, okay. You've broken from the male normative gaze,
good for you. Oh, Du Bois said how they were named after
the men to whom they were related and not after the fashion of their own souls. I think in this first paragraphs, Du Bois
comes out of the blocks real strong. You know, you figure wow, you really got a
Black male feminist in the making. Then you keep reading. You say, oh, Du Bois is just like the rest
of we brothers. Think we so enlightened, think we're making
a breakthrough from patriarchal ideology, holding misogyny at arms like, no, we don't
hate women, we're not fearful of women, no we don't have insecurity and anxiety, no. Somehow we're going to treat them equally. Okay, well let's see how you behave [inaudible
00:33:13] manifest on the page. I think one of the high moments of this text
is on 953, he says the future woman must have a life work in economic independence. Which reminds you very much of Virginia Wolfe's
A Room of One's Own, one of the great statements of Black women's quest for freedom, autonomy,
needing independence. She gets it from 500 pounds of her aunt in
India. Uh-oh, there's the British Empire. What's your aunt doing in India? Where you getting 500 pounds from India, Virginia? Yes, she's involved in the Empirical activity
going on there, and then gaining access to the labor of the Indians, but I need that
money for my room. She's also rightly concerned about her economic
independence. She must have knowledge, Du Bois says. She must have the right of motherhood at her
own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood
must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood. That's serious business. That's serious business. Let's see, what Du Bois is saying, in part,
is very rare. That a man has a level of spiritual maturity
not to have some fear of a free woman. Just let that sit for a while, because so
many of you precious students are right at the age where you're about to fall through
that Black hole of falling in love. That's beautiful thing, it's a wonderful thing,
but will you have the maturity and the courage to be willing to fall in love with a free
woman? Or will she just be a certain kind of property,
a certain kind of extension, a certain kind of appendage, a certain kind of trophy, a
certain kind of elevated one on a pedestal? Very much like that movie, The Philadelphia
Story, you all remember The Philadelphia Story? That beautiful music of Cole Porter and Frank
Sinatra and Bing Crosby, the only time they ever sang on TV together. It's a musical. Television history. It's about ... Is it Princess Grace? Is that her name? You all remember that movie? You don't remember that movie? You haven't seen that movie, huh? What kind of shows you watch on TV? The Philadelphia Story? She's put on a pedestal. She's viewed as cold and aloof and detached. There's not passion there, and passion is
the raw stuff of an I-thou relation, not an I-it relation. A woman as a subject, not just an object,
you see? Du Bois is saying over and over again here,
oh this horror at free womanhood, given the bestiality of free manhood. Free men acting bestial. We've seen it in white supremacy, we've seen
it in male supremacy. We've seen it in Nazis. We've seen it in a whole host of other so-called
free man who are still very much a subordinate and still in bondage existentially and psychically
to their egos, unable to be sensitive ... and most importantly, to end courage to affirm
the self-worth, the self-confidence, and the self-respect of others. Other men, other women. Go on and on and on. Indigenous peoples, Black peoples, and so
on. Trans folk and so on. Tremendous spiritual lift that ought to come
through onto Paideia, but so rarely does. What does Du Bois go on to say? It says: "The world must choose between the
free woman or the white wraith of the prostitute. Today it wavers between the prostitute and
the nun. What of Black women? Oh, the world that wills to worship womankind
studiously forgets its darker sisters. They seem in a sense to typify that veiled
melancholy. Whose saintly visage is too bright to hit
the sense of human sight and, therefore, to our weaker view o'er-laid with Black." These daughters of sorrow and yet still able
in the midst of it all to muster the kind of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-respect
... dealing with a patriarchal family, dealing with deeply white supremacy and patriarchal
schools and patriarchal churches. Trying somehow to escape from the net of being
just property exchanged. The important thing in talking about this
is, like every week, to stay in contact with each level. It's easy just to reduce a discussion to just
symbols. Women as symbol, Black women as symbol, but
the materiality of the Black body tied to labor, the materiality of women tied to a
certain relation to the nation state ... second, third, fourth class citizenship. The materiality of what it is a Black woman
who is dealing in a Black community under unbelievable siege, but still having to come
to terms with patriarchy within the Black community and outside, and gaining access
to some it. To some love and some sense that one can reach
for the stars. Du Bois goes on to say ... He says on page
957: Out of this, what sort of Black woman could be born into the world of today? There are those who hasten to answer this
query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of Black slavery came
nothing decent in womanhood, that adultery and uncleanness were their heritage and are
their continued portion. So exaggerated a charge is humanly impossible
of truth. The half-million women of Negro descent who
lived at the beginning of the 19th century had become the mothers of two and one-fourth
million daughters in 1910. Five million granddaughters in 1910. Can all these women be vile and the hunted
race continue to grow in wealth and character? Impossible. Yet to save from the past the shreds and vestiges
of self-respect has been a terrible task. I most sincerely doubt if any other race of
women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire. So devilish a fire, he said. We turn to page 963. 963. As I look about me today in this veiled world
of mine, he's on the Black side of the veil, despite the noisier and more spectacular advance
of my brothers ... now we need to underline that, those words right there. The noisier and more spectacular advance of
my brothers. Even in the Black context, the most visible
and salient exemplars of breakthrough and progress often are Black men. They circulate much more in the larger public
sphere, and yet when you look beneath ... one of the aims of this class has always been
what? To look beneath the spectacular. Beneath what is highly visible and see something
a bit more concrete. What's sustaining folk day by day is not the
spectacle. It's the substantive. That's what sustains folk day by day. The everyday, mundane love, support, caring,
nurturing of others. Be they children, the elderly, be they male,
female, or so forth or so on. He said: I instinctively feel and know that
it is the five million women of my race who really count. Black women are today furnishing our teachers. They're the main pillars of those social settlements
which we call churches. They have with small doubt raised three-fourths
of our church property. He's talking the fact that 72% of Black church
members historically have been women, even given the patriarchal leadership that I talked
about. If we have today, as seems likely, over a
billion dollars of accumulated goods, who shall should how much of it has been wrung
from the hearts of servant girls and washerwomen and women toiling in the fields? The little money that they're making, they
still tithe one dollar out of ten dollars, going to the church. They're still supporting other Black institutions
and so forth. Most important here: As makers of two million
homes these women are today seeking in marvelous ways to show forth our strength and beauty
and, what's that last section? Our conception of the truth. Our conception of the truth. The quest for truth to take seriously the
lens through which Black women, in all of their variety and diversity ... the lens through
which they look at the world would change our conception of truth. This is not a matter of just being highly
sensitive to vulnerable people. This is not a matter of diversity, and it's
a nice thing to have variety of different bodies in the same room because we feel good
that everybody is so different. Difference and diversity don't mean nothing
if it's not tied to a serious quest for truth. This is not bureaucracy that we're talking
about. This is Paideia that's at stake. This is life or death that's at steak. Du Bois understands this, even given his own
patriarchal prejudices that we'll talk about. He understands this. What does it really mean to look at the world
through the vantage point, for example, of the characters in Tony Morrison's Beloved? Of Margaret Garner, where she kills her baby
because she doesn't want her baby to be thingified. She doesn't want her baby to be thoroughly
violated by white supremacists. She'd rather have that baby be dead, but when
she kills her own baby is committing murder? No. Why? Because murder legally means you're a human
being killing another human being, but she's a piece of property killing another piece
of property. She's sub-legal, she is beneath the legal
system. She's not even able to subscribe to the human
status, which is a precondition for the charge of murder. The judge was completely overwhelmed. Well, you've got one piece of property killing
another piece of property? I didn't know property engages in that kind
of behavior. What are you going to do? Well in many ways, that is the case for large
numbers of women of any color. It's just an extreme case making it clear,
very clear. For so long, the wives were just pieces of
property. What happens when they kill their husbands? Is that murder? I hate to say that, God knows it's on tape. They're going to say, "Oh, brother West talking
about wives ought to be killing their husbands." No, I didn't say that. I said, "Thought experiment." No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. What happens when a piece of property behaves
in that way? Doesn't have the same human status. It's easy in 2017 to think, given the progress
in relation to fights against the misogyny and fights against patriarchy, that we've
made so many big breakthroughs. Du Bois is making it very, very clear. Our very conception of truth is at stake. Page 965: From Black women of America, this
gauze has been withhold and without semblance of such apology they have been frankly trodden
under the feet of men. When in this world a man comes forward with
a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not, how does he look, but what is his message? It is of passing interest whether or not the
messenger is beautiful or ugly. Of course, we've seen some very ugly brothers
do some very wonderful things. We've seen some beautiful brothers who are
gangsters. It is of passing interest whether or not the
messenger is beautiful. The message is the thing. This, which is axiomatic among men, has been
in past ages but partially true if the messenger were a woman. The world still wants to ask that a woman
primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "What else
are women for?" That male normative gaze. If it's not pleasing to my eyes, what other
role does she have to play? Beauty "is its own excuse for being," but
there are other excuses, as most men know, and when the white world objects to Black
women because it does not consider them beauty, the Black world of right asks two questions:
"What is beauty? Suppose you think them ugly, what then?" Where does your conception of ugliness even
come from? Du Bois makes it very clear through this text
over and over again, his conception of beauty is one that's in stark contrast than the dominant
conception of beauty in the white male normative gaze, and even the white female normative
gaze. Clashing of perspective, you see. Clashing of orientation. The bottom of page 962 he says: For this,
their promise, and their hard past, I honor the women of my race. Their beauty, their dark and mysterious beauty
of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces is perhaps more to me
than to you, because I was born in its warm and subtle spell; but their worth is yours
as well as mine. Why? Because the conception of truth effects all
of us if we're concerned about Paideia. No other women on earth could have emerged
from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds Black women
in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before
them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims,
these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and
ridicule and wantonly to insult. He ends up with this [inaudible 00:50:39]
as it were, this salute. This praise, as it were. Yet at the same time, Du Bois, man that he
is, carrying the assumptions and presuppositions of those traditions that we talked about,
from Athens, Jerusalem, and European modernity, and the Black tradition itself in its major
institutions forms of family and church ... dealing with misogyny, hatred and contempt of Black
women, and dealing with patriarchy in the Black context in an attempt to ensure that
women remain dolls, objects of conquest, of control with men in the saddle. Du Bois wants to open up the conversation. When he wrote this essay, so many of the Black
brothers condemned him, and so many of the Black sisters said Du Bois, you've got a whole
lot of work yet to do. When I had you read just a little brief piece
on his daughter to give you a little sense ... the nameless daughter. Gives you a little sense of the marriage. I just read my [inaudible 00:52:01] powerful
dissertation. Oh, what a magnificent piece of work it is,
on [inaudible 00:52:07] and Zora Neal Hurston. She's got this section on The Tinker’s ... marriage? Students: The Tinker’s Wedding. Cornel West: The Tinker's Marriage, one of
the great plays by the great Synge. Students: The Wedding. Tinkers' Wedding. Cornel West: The Tinker’s Wedding, that's
it. Tinkers' Wedding, and the refusal to engage
in the exchange and the indictment of patriarchal marriage, which is very different than love. You can affirm love and be highly critical
of a marriage that abuses and wounds. Yet for Du Bois and his talk about the marriage,
it is not just proud father ... he's got a right to be proud. We fathers have a right to try to love our
kids, but the way in which he characterizes it, and the very fact that his daughter married
Countee Cullen ... everybody knew that Countee Cullen was gay except Du Bois. The marriage, 3000 people in Harlem, 1000
people outside. Tons of money, Reverend Miller who was one
of the historic ministers of the church there in Harlem brings them together. Countee Cullen goes on the honeymoon with
his male lover. Not a good way to start a marriage. It's over quickly, see. How do you stay in contact with realities
on the ground in regard to caring, nurturing, self-worth, self-confidence, and self-respect? That's one of the reasons why I had you read
that piece, but want to talk primarily about the issues of gender being constitutive in
Black history, Black culture, and primarily the Damnation of Women. I had you read that little essay just to give
you a sense of how much work Du Bois needs to do, and yet he is still the Du Bois that
we've been reading throughout this class.
