Absolutely. What a magnificent day, beautiful climate
here in New Hampshire. I first want to thank my very precious indigenous
brothers and sisters for the dinner last night. It was just magnificent. Let's give it up for you all being so kind. Sadie and all of the other brothers and so
forth. We had a good two or three hours wrestling
with magnificent questions, difficult questions, painful queries, but we always had a smile
on our face. The same is true this morning. I was able to spend some good time with the
SEAD program I think it was, the Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth. Who was it there? It was Sister Erica, absolutely. We want to thank you, and Sister Rachel, too. Give it up for both of those wonderful students
doing magnificent work. It's just another example of the Dartmouth
students who are at work with paideia in a variety of different ways. It's an everyday affair. Paideia is not some abstraction. Education is not some abstraction. It's something to be enacted every day. We talked with Goethe about freedom and life
must be reconquered every day. So it is with love. So it is with courage. So it is with sensitivity, empathy, compassion,
and so on. It is a profoundly human affair, which is
to say it is shot through with failure and faults and foibles. But so what? We bounce back, as it were. You try again, fail again. Fail better, as Samuel Beckett says. Let us move now to Chapter 4. Of course, it's going to be over against that
very powerful Chapter 4 in Dusk of Dawn. Josie. In many ways, Josie is one of the most important
characters in this text. She's in some ways a metaphor of Black culture. She's in some ways a symbol of what happens
when progress, capital P, moves forward in this technological sense, in a variety of
so-called enlightenment conceptions that are casting light in certain corners, but unable
to cast light in other corners. Because Du Bois begins this text saying I'm
concerned with the underworld, the underbelly, I'm concerned with the underground of both
our lives as well as Americans, the American democratic project--he always wants to stay
in tune with those folks whose humanity is overlooked, whose humanity has been rendered
invisible--Josie becomes important. It's not just a question of gender, though
it is importantly a question of gender. The very fact when Du Bois engages in his
descent into his analysis of live on the chocolate side of the veil, of the Black sides of town,
the Black sides of the city, the Black sides of the country, that he accents a woman, a
young woman. Where does he begin in his epigraph? From one of the greatest poets and playwrights
of freedom [inaudible 00:03:20] in modern times, Friedrich Schiller. I don't know how many people have had a chance
to read Schiller. There is no Dostoevsky without Schiller. Schiller was the intellectual mentor, not
personally, he never knew him, but his work. Schiller's aesthetic letters on education,
Schiller's plays. When he was 21 years old, he wrote one of
the most famous plays in the history of modern Europe, called The Robbers. This particular poem is from where? Where is it from? Somebody tell me right quick. Where are the words from the epigraph from? Does anybody see it? Find it! Find it! We don't want to waste time. You're paying too much money to go to Dartmouth
to take time. Somebody yell it out for me. Where is it from? Speaker 2: Germany. Cornel West: Germany. What's the name of the play? Anybody know? The Maid of Orleans. Who was the maid of Orleans? Somebody tell me. Speaker 3: Joan of Arc. Cornel West: Joan of Arc. My dear brother is absolutely right. Who was Joan of Arc? Early 15th century, 19 years old, she's executed. She exemplifies the unbelievable heroic culture
of France in the Anglo-French 100 Years War, during the Lancastrian phase of that war,
when Henry V of England and Charles VII are clashing. What is it about Joan of Arc? She's from peasants. She's non-literate but very wise, just like
the writers of the spirituals, non-literate but very wise. She becomes a saint. She was canonized. But she's a teenage Black woman who signifies
so much of the best of French culture, vis-à-vis its fight with the British. Of course you can go to Paris these days and
talk about Joan of Arc and the French will just stop. I know my dear brother lives in Paris much
of the time. He can testify. You mention Joan of Arc, and what do they
do, brother? They have got to stop and recognize her as
a grand symbol. Is that right? Grand symbol that she is, you see. And so it is that Joan of Arc, high humanist
moment in the history of Europe, not just as historical figure, but as figure rendered
in the sophisticated art of Friedrich Schiller in the play. Constitutes a starting point for our understanding
of Black culture, our understanding of Josie at the center of the Black culture. You can imagine somebody thinking about a
paper, saying, "Hmm, a comparative analysis of Joan of Arc, the early 1400s, with Josie,
middle of the 19th century in rural Tennessee." Both with longings for freedom, both with
willingness to sacrifice for freedom. Not just talk about it. Not just pontificate about it, but enact,
embody, and still have to deal with patriarchal structures, still have to deal with one's
own self-doubts and insecurities and anxieties, and fear, both as human beings and also a
human being who is a woman dealing with various kinds of sexist challenges coming one's way. So it's nothing to do with political correctness,
everything to do with wrestling with what it means to be human. And in this case, for Du Bois, what it means
to deal with an age of progress. Now we see in Chapter 4 of Dusk of Dawn it's
also an age of what? It's an age of empire. It's an age of science. What is the complex relation between science,
in all of its various forms--no such thing as science in the abstract; there's various
sciences, chemistry and physics and biology and statistics, and so forth and so on--and
it's relation to imperial expansion taking place all around the world? Berlin conference reshaping the map of Africa. A big land grab is taking place, you see. The Japanese, vis-à-vis the Chinese, the
Japanese moving in on Korea. This is a global affair. It's not just in the West. It's happening around the world, and the United
States is but one nation participating in it among other nations. But the major empires are the empires who
were at war against each other for those 100 years, and especially in that particular phase
with Joan of Arc, the French empire of the 19th century, the British empire of the 19th
century. And of course the British empire is the empire
upon which the sun never set in the 19th century, unprecedented control of land and territories,
with a powerful navy and so forth. Now move to the spiritual. "My way is cloudy." Now what is that? The exact opposite of the favorite metaphor
of the inimitable Goethe. Cloudless sky, blue skies, clear. My way is cloudy, another spiritual of course. Clouds do what? They cast shadows. The generate more darkness. Here Du Bois is setting the tone once again
with the bicultural double voiced European poet, artist, writer, and the spirituals. "Once upon a time I taught school in the hills
of Tennessee, where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple
to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men
thought that Tennessee beyond the Veil ..." That's very interesting. Every time I read that, I put a question mark. Tennessee beyond the veil? Hmm. Really? What a grand aspiration. "Was theirs alone, and in vacation time they
sallied forth in lusty bands to meet the county school-commissioners. I shall not soon forget that summer." Now we get Du Bois moving not just into Nashville,
the urban space, but he's going all the way into the corners and the nooks and crannies
of gut bucket rural Jim Crow Tennessee. To do what? To be in contact with the humanity of those
folk. And Josie emerges as symbol, metaphor, and
concrete human being that he interacts with. She also becomes a vehicle through with he
has access to the Black mine shaft. Those communities were face to face, soul
to soul. Not really modern societies, mediated with
vast bureaucracies and markets and so forth. No. This is the mine shaft. This is old school, old style community. Families sit around and talk, reflect. To sustain themselves, you need institutions,
usually churches, but of course they could be Jewish brothers and sisters. There were synagogues. Or there could be Muslim brothers and sisters
there with mosques and so forth. But you need those civic ...
You remember the register that I had. Was that last week or was that two weeks ago,
brother? Was that just last week? It seems so quick. Remember the register I had? The social? Centrality of the family, the centrality of
those institutions between the individual and the nation state. Family, lodges, various kinds of organizations
that had nothing to do with politics, had everything to do with constituting sites of
belonging, constituting sites of persons being recognized. I cannot overemphasize how important institutions
that recognize us as the human beings that we are. It's a very, very important place where we
are shaped and molded. It reminds me of the moment in Waiting for
Godot, when Beckett has DiDi and Gogo send a message to Gogo. What shall we tell Gogo? Tell Gogo we want to be recognized. We want to count. We want to act as if we in some sense matter
in life. One of the saddest things in the history of
any human life is to go from womb to tomb with your body about to be extinguished and
nobody ever recognized you, either gave you a name, or touched you, or thought that you
were worthwhile, or worthy of attention, you see. This is a deeply human need of every person. When you talk in Du Boisian language about
race, it's not a discourse first and foremost about policy, politics, or which side you're
on. It's about what kind of quality human relations,
god bless you, allowed you to be affirmed in your own individual humanity, you see. That's why so many of us fall in love with
our grandparents because they usually kind of run out of gas by being highly punitive
with grandkids. They applied that to their own kids. So by the time the grandkids come along, all
the want to do is let you know how much they love you all the time. You say to yourself, "Well, I don't deserve
this kind of love, but I'm ready for it. Just give it to me. Give it to me. Thank you, Granny. Yes, yes indeed." Oh, that's a beautiful thing. That's what Du Bois is concerned about here. What does he say about Josie over and over
again? She longed to learn. She longed to learn, to overcome her ignorance. She was always concerned about the school,
longed to go away to school. You see the connection between the paideia
that we talked about the first week, the ways in which paideia is manifested in the heart,
mind, and soul of this precious and priceless little Black girl in Jim Crow Tennessee. At the core of it is, like any other human
being, the need for tender love and care, the need to be recognized, the need to be
affirmed. Then her quest for freedom, but the quest
for freedom and the quest for literacy and education and paideia go hand in hand. This is another reason why education is not
some kind of game that people are playing just in order to gain access to some upward
social mobility. It's more than that. It's a life and death affair, you see. And what's at stake? The quality of the kind of human being you're
going to be. This is Du Boisian concern about the kingdom
of culture, you see. All the struggle of getting to school. "First came Josie and her brother." This is in the paragraph "it was a hot morning
late in July." Now which page would that be in your text? "It was a hot morning late in July when the
school opened." Speaker 4: 407? Cornel West: 407. "I troubled when I heard the patter of little
feet down the dusty road and saw the growing row of dark solemn faces and bright eager
eyes facing me. First came Josie and her brothers and sisters. The longing to know, to be a student in the
great school at Nashville hovered like a star above this child woman amid her work and worry." And what does he say she did? Now this is something that maybe all the undergrads
at Dartmouth ought to read in unison. "She studied doggedly." What does doggedly mean? Somebody tell me. What does it mean to study doggedly? It's just a description of your lives, right? Is that right? That's what you all do? You study doggedly. Tonight you're going to study doggedly. Tomorrow night? I'll hold off on Friday, but tomorrow night,
the night after that, you will study doggedly. There is no paideia without yearning for freedom,
learning, studying doggedly. But studying doggedly is not just reading
a text, is it? Oh no. It's critical reflection on that text. It allows you to get distance and think for
yourself so you find your voice over against the voice in that text. It's not just memorizing the text, especially
for the student, so you can get some good grade. No. It's allowing it to marinate in your own heart,
mind, soul, and body so you can begin to question yourself, just as you question that text,
just as Joan of Arc questioned what was going on and was ready to go to the siege of Orleans,
giving her support of Charles VII as a freedom fighter, you see. Josie, freedom fighter. It's not Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, all
the well-known textbook figures. This is our dear sister Josie. Like any other human being, in this case under
Jim Crow apartheid situations. "There they sat, nearly 30 of them, on their
rough benches, their faces shading from a pale cream to a deep brown, the little feet
bare and swinging, the eyes full of expectation." I love to be in classes like that. We had that today and this morning and last
night. You walk in, eyes of expectation, anticipation. How am I going to learn how to die today? Oh brother West, thank you for allowing me
to learn how to die better, scrutinize better, interrogate better, criticize better, so that
I can live better, more courageously, more critically, more visionary, more love, more
courage, and so forth, that process of paideia that we talked about. "With here and there a twinkle of mischief
in the eye and the hands grasping a blue-black spelling book." There's just such wonderful descriptions. I can't go on and on because I want to be
able to weave some of the 1940s texts into this 1903 text. But just the description of the [inaudible
00:20:34] that he has. Now we should note, and we were talking about
this with brother Jed over lunch. I've just been so blessed to be in conversation
with this brother. He wears a fascinating coat every week. Pink one week, green the next. I don't know what color it is now, but he
is on the cutting edge in so many ways, intellectually as well. This is the same Du Bois who loses his virginity
in this context. Now he doesn't talk about it here, but all
the biographers say, "Oh, Du Bois. He fell in love with Josie's mother." Or at least Josie's mother fell in love with
him. Oh yes. Now she's much older than Du Bois. You can imagine how inexperienced he was. I mean, he'd come out of Great Barrington,
you know? It's not Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Atlanta. You all funny though. You think I'm meddling a little bit too much,
my dear sister? Speaker 5: Keep going. Cornel West: No, but it's very important because
Du Bois is a human being like anybody else. His humanity and sexuality go hand in hand. We don't want to reduce his humanity in no
way, the autobiography. We don't want to reduce it to sexuality at
all, but also we have to be very clear that in Du Bois's prose, there's a certain intensity,
and he talks about it primarily in relation to Josie. We know Josie is this Black Joan of Arc under
apartheid US conditions in which she, more than anything else, not just longs to learn,
but what does she say over and over again, too? Maybe it's painful. Is it a painful process, too? Yes it is. If you're undergoing paideia and it's not
painful, nobody has not in some way unsettled you and unhoused you. You haven't gone through proper paideia. If all you got is just affirmation of your
own prejudices, you haven't undergone paideia. That's what Josie was after, too. That's what Josie was after, too. Du Bois becomes almost a kind of quasi member
of the Dole family. So when he returns 10 years later, he says,
"I want to see the condition of the school, its relation to the white elite who facilitated
the school." You all know the story of Du Bois having to
sit down, eat alone, and so forth, but still being open enough to the white commissioner
to convince the commissioner to have a school. This is very important, especially for the
poor students of any color, working class students of any color, any students who have
in some sense been marginalized and your quest for education has met impediments. There might be some students, for example,
who have very few impediments. That's fine. They're human beings like anybody else. But for students whose burning and yearning
to be educated is enacted under these conditions, it ought to say something to us. It ought to say much to us, in regard to the
kinds of access to education we have here at Dartmouth. Are we taking advantage of it? It's good to see my good sister, Faith, here
though. Absolutely. Made that delicious mush yesterday. Oh that was so good. Definitely so good to see you. I know you're going to bring your dear sister. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. But that sense of education being of existential
value. Not just financial, not just social, not just
something to wear on your sleeve, not just an ornament or a decorative thing, but something
that has been shot through your whole heart, mind, and soul. Look at this. "I have called my tiny community a world,
and so its isolation made it." You all with me on that page? Speaker 6: 410. Cornel West: 410. Thank you so much. "And yet there was among us but a half-awakened
common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief." Now keep track of that word joy. He didn't say pleasure. What's the difference between joy and pleasure? Oh, you can write a dissertation on that one. American culture these days, so much a joyless
quest for pleasure. Joy is something deeper than pleasure. Joy and grief at basic activities, rituals
of every human culture. Burial, going back to [inaudible 00:25:56],
where humanity ... "Birth, wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and
low wages; and, above all, from the sight of the veil that hung between us and opportunity. All this caused us to think some thoughts
together." It doesn't say all thoughts. Du Bois refuses to homogenize any community,
including the Black community. But think in common some thoughts, indeed. "But these when ripe for speech, were spoken
in various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five or more years
before had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," name emancipation, "saw in every
present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own
good time." In God's own time, the fundamental role of
religion projecting a paradise, projecting good times beyond history, on the other side
of the Jordan, the other worldly Christianity. That would play a fundamental role in shaping
Black identities. "The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim
recollection of childhood." This is a new generation. This is very much like the young generation
today, because your whole generation, you're post Martin Luther King, you're post Obama,
you're post Prince. Prince is gone. We got to acknowledge that, now. I had a sister this morning telling me that
Tupac lives. You remember that, sister Erica? I understood the sentiment, but I said, "No,
his body is gone. The worms got him. The worms got the brother." But you all, post King, post Obama, in the
midst of brother Donald Trump himself. Oh. You've got some paideia to do. Indeed, indeed. So it was in this day, you see. This is post emancipation. Frederick Douglass is still alive but running
out of gas. He's in Haiti at the moment, representing
the US government. He's no longer a prophetic figure on such
intense fire against the government. He's now working for the US government. God bless brother Frederick Douglass, as he
underwent his changes and transformations then. "The young folk found the world a puzzling
thing. It asked little of them, and they answered
with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand,
and therefore sank into listless indifference." What is listless indifference? Indifference is a distance from not just the
passions of the time, but it's also a distance from suffering of others. These days it could be characterized as those
who are addicted to their own egos and narcissistic quest for pleasure, so they're indifferent
toward the feelings and the humanity of others. They're only preoccupied with themselves and
the next fleeting moment of instant gratification. That's the kind of updating of Du Bois's text. Listless indifference. Or self-medication. Can't wait 'til the next drug. Can't wait. And the drug can take a number of different
forms. I was watching a show the other night called
“Games of Thrones.” Is that the name of it? You all heard about that show? Did some of you watch that show? Phew, I'm telling you. I had never watched that show before in my
life. So you see how out of touch I am. It's true. Because I went there, and the place was just
packed. "Oh we can't wait!" On the edge. There's fantasy and there's killing and ... I
said, "Oh my goodness." Phew. I need more cognac. My brother was kind enough to give me some
cognac. I need some more. “Games of Thrones.” Culture of mass distractions generate indifference
toward the things that really matter. Now I'm not saying “Games of Thrones”
does that, because I haven't given it enough time, but that one episode, I must say. Jesus. I don't understand this culture. "Or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado." What is reckless bravado? Swagger, especially among the males, pose,
posture, big and bad, acting like you are somehow some urban cowboy. Can't wait for the next conquest to satisfy
your sense of power and domination. How insecure, how spiritually vacuous, how
morally empty can you get? That's just my digression, but it's a way
of updating was Du Bois saw among Black folk then: giving up, indifferent, big and bad,
bravado, braggadocio, and so forth. Juxtaposed to Josie. This is an intra-Black affair at this point,
right? This is within the Black community. It's within the veil. As opposed to Josie, who's on fire for freedom. "There were some, such as Josie and Jim, to
whom war, hell, and slavery were but childhood tales, whose young appetites had been whetted
to an edge by school," paideia, "story," narrative. What does story and narrative do? God bless you. It tries to connect what Saint Augustine called
the three dimensions of time. It connects your present to a past so you
can present a vision of a future, so that there's some connection between a past and
a present and a future. What is distinctive and what Du Bois is talking
about in so many ways, what is distinctive in our own day, is the severing of our relation
to the best of our past. So the present becomes simply a repetition
of the same, over and over again. Spectacle, pleasure, money, status. Spectacle, pleasure, money, status. Then you die. The story drops out. The narrative has very little power, you see. All you have are these moments in which we
human beings move from one to the other. "And their weak wings beat against their barriers,
barriers of caste, of youth, of life, at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that
imposed even a whim." When he comes back 10 years later, what does
he find? Progress, capital P. Progress, capital P.
More money is made, much of it hemorrhaged at the top. Technological innovation takes place, much
of it spectacle, rarely empowering those below. He finds what we've seen throughout this text:
massive forms of death. The physical deaths, the psychic deaths. The language that he describes of our dear
sister Josie. "When the spring came, and the birds twittered,
and the stream ran proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed
with the passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home a nameless
child." Young woman giving birth. "Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision
of schooldays all fled." Paideia, more and more a pipe dream for her. Freedom, more and more a pipe dream. "With a face wan and tired." Now you might recall, we talked the first
week, at the very beginning of this text, Du Bois talks about being weary. He talks about being very, very tired. In fact it reminds me in many ways of one
of the great one-page reflections in the history of the 20th century, of Kafka on Prometheus. Kafka says there's four different versions
of Prometheus. Stealing the fire from the gods, that's one. Prometheus at one with the rock, almost like
[inaudible 00:35:35] jumping into Mount Etna. We human beings become at one with nature. Prometheus becomes the rock. The third is Prometheus is forgotten, the
rock is forgotten, all is forgotten. That's the darkest moment for Kafka. The fourth moment is when even Prometheus
himself is just too tired and weary to even move. Oh, that's serious business. I got to write a name, my partner, just in
order to deal with this moment. Anton. Come help us Anton. We need you. Of course on the blackboard, it's the blues. We need you. What are you going to say to Josie? She's running out of gas. She's about to become one with organic nature. She's about to die. But she's weary. We're going to see the very end of Du Bois's
text, the weary traveler. How do you deal with spiritual fatigue and
moral fatigue in the face of catastrophe and still muster the courage to be on fire, to
confront that fatigue and work through that fatigue? That's very much a problematic of the great
Chekhov. I know you're weary. I know you're running out of gas. Even if you have Prometheus's fire and energy,
you run out of gas. But how do you sustain it in the long run? Now this may sound very alien to some of you
because as sophomores, you may not be as tired as you will become later on in life. If you are tired now, I'm just here to inform
you that you're going to encounter forms of weariness you know not of in the years to
come. Du Bois is talking about spiritual striving. He's talking about not just Josie as an individual,
but the whole culture getting weary. How do you sustain it? "She worked until, on a summer's day, someone
married another. Then Josie crept to her mother like a hurt
child and slept, and sleeps. My log schoolhouse was gone." The next paragraph. "In its place stood Progress. Progress I understand is necessarily ugly." Du Bois is not presenting a unilateral monological
one dimensional conception of progress. He knows certain kinds of progress are being
made, technologically, economically for some, but as we saw with our registers last week,
at the existential level, at the social level, at the civic level, there are forms of progress
that can undermine family and structures of meaning. There's forms of progress that can undermine
structures of meaning. There's forms of progress that can produce
nihilism in your soul, even though you've got a smart phone in your pocket. You say, "Oh my god this magic is just magnificent." I think I've got mine right here because my
daughter is in Turkey, and I try to call her all the time. I call her in Turkey, and I just can't believe
I'm talking to her on the beach in Turkey. That's Progress, capital P, of a certain sort. After the phone call, lo and behold you find
it difficult to move forward. You're existentially weary and so on. That's the underside of it, the dark side
of it, you see. Du Bois, he's preoccupied precisely with that. "My journey was done and behind me lay hill
and dale, life and death. How shall man measure progress there, where
the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance
a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and
yet how human and real. And all this life and love and strife and
failure, is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?" That's beautiful writing. It's poignant writing, poetic prose. Then that last sentence takes us right back
to reality. "Then sadly musing, I rode to Nashville in
the Jim Crow car." Back to the veil, dealing with that wall of
demarcation and so forth. Now in the next two chapters, “Of the Wings
of Atalanta,” Du Bois is fundamentally concerned about what? What happens when, on the other side of the
veil, the Black side of the veil, the chocolate side of the veil, they themselves are seduced
by the gospel of wealth, of money, of spectacle, of image? You see the paragraph, "In the Black world,
the preacher and teacher." Which page is that? "In the Black world, the preacher and teacher
embodied once the ideals of this people, to strive for another and a juster world." Speaker 7: 418. Cornel West: 418, thank you so very much. 418. The bottom of 418. "The vague dream of righteousness, the mystery
of knowing; but today the danger is that ..." Paideia, love, justice, courage, service to others,
"Will suddenly sink to a question of cash and a lust for gold." Viewing life as a gold rush results in worshiping
the golden calf, and the golden rule becomes he or she who has the gold rules. Spirituality drops out. Morality drops out. Du Bois sees this more and more penetrating
the Black side of the veil. Now we saw in the first chapter, what did
he say? He said these Black folk are the true oasis
in the dusty desert of dollars and smartness. You all remember that line? Because I'm not just quoting out of my mind. That's from the text. That's straight from the text, straight from
the book. Indeed. Oh, Du Bois says. Now look at this. "Here stands his Black young Atalanta, girding
herself for the race that must be run; and if her eyes be still toward the hills and
sky as in the days of old, then we may look for noble running." Oh he's very nostalgic. It's like me standing here and talking about
the golden days of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. I know look at me like, "Brother West, we
tired of that. We living in the days of ..." These days. It's hard to characterize it. We living in these days. Difference between critical nostalgia, trying
to recover the best to confront the present, and an uncritical nostalgia, where you just
want to live in a golden age. Because every golden age had along with it,
what? Some kind of night side, some form of barbarism,
some structure of domination that somebody was overlooking. There's no such thing as a golden age where
all was paradiso, all was like a paradise. No such thing. For DuBois, he says, "What if the Negro people
be wooed from a strife for righteousness, from a love of knowing." That's Josie again, coming back. "To regard dollars as the be-all and end-all
of life?" You see, what Marxist theorists would call
ubiquitous commodification and the fetishizing of commodities, the ascribing of magical powers
to commodities, as if those commodities can provide meaning for your life, as if those
commodities are something that you fall back on in a moment of crisis and catastrophe,
as if those commodities somehow will kick in when you're at your grandmother's funeral. That's what Du Bois ...
And this critique of course is a critique that's held by right-wing thinkers, Eric Voegelins
and Leo Strausses and others. It's held by left-wing thinkers like the Frankfurt
School and Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and the others. And it's held by Du Bois, because he, as we
saw, comes out of the highbrow humanist tradition of the Victorians, of John Ruskin and Thomas
Carlyle and others who had said similar kinds of things. The response for Du Bois is always more paideia. "The wings of Atalanta are the coming universities
of the south." Broadly cultured men and women. These are they. Coming through Dartmouth and other places,
"Who are gained only by human strife and longing." This is the next to last paragraph of that
chapter. "By ceaseless training and education, by founding
right on righteousness and truth on the unhampered search for truth." Do you all see it right there? Speaker 7: Yeah, 422. Cornel West: 422. Thank you so much. "Founding the common school on the university
and the industrial school on the common school, and weaving thus a system not a distortion,
and bringing a birth not an abortion." Renaissance. The renaissance of paideia. Critical consciousness. Love festivals, in terms of those falling
in love with truth and goodness and beauty and the holy and so forth and so on. Du Bois falling back on his own theme that
we've seen over and over again. "The night falls on the city of the human
hills." Is anybody here from Atlanta? The actual Atlanta, the city? You're from Atlanta. Absolutely. It would be interesting when you look at contemporary
Atlanta, in light of the Atalanta that he was talking about 114 years ago, in terms
of the commodification and the marketization. You say what? Speaker 8: [inaudible 00:47:24] the whole
fifth district. Cornel West: The whole fifth district? Yeah, I don't know the fifth district, but
I believe what you're saying. I could imagine. I could imagine indeed, indeed. And, of course, the training of Black men,
again, as a certain kind of encomium and praise of the ways in which the training of Black
folk and the training of white folk can create a certain kind of interracial bridge. We see Du Bois falling back again on his attempt
to make sure that what he understands as the best in the white community and the best of
the Black community having close relations, to be able to sustain a legacy of paideia. Now we've seen before, on the one hand there's
a certain kind of elitism because he's talking about highly educated, especially formally
educated; but on the other hand, there are certain truths in what he's talking about. Because if you actually undergo paideia at
its deepest level, you're already conversant with the best that has been presented to the
various cultures that you have been exposed to, you see. It's impossible to be, for example, a great
poet in the language of Shakespeare or Milton in the United States, without already being
conversant with what's going on, on the white side of town. And it ought to be vice-versa. If you're a poet on the white side of town,
then you ought to be in love with Gwendolyn Brooks. You ought to be in love with Robert Hayden
and other poets, on the other sides of town. Ought to be in love with poets coming out
of indigenous communities, poets coming out of Latino communities, and so forth. That's what it is to aspire to excellence,
[inaudible 00:49:11]. It's like going to the Olympics and thinking
you'll stay to your little country and group. No, no. In the Olympics, you're on the international
stage. Let's see what you got. Go on and jump in that pool, Mark Spitz, and
see what you got. Okay. This is what I got. Give me my medals. I'm the best in the world, global, cosmopolitan. So it is in the life of the mind. So it is in the world of letters. It is cosmopolitan, international, all the
way down, but with roots. We all come from various traditions, from
various communities. That's precisely what Du Bois means when he
ends this chapter with the most famous moment in regard to literary allusion and reference,
in The Souls of Black Folk. "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not." You all see that? Speaker 7: 438. Cornel West: 438. "Across the color line I move arm and arm
with Balzac and Dumas." You all see it there? "Where smiling men and welcoming women glide
in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing
between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius
and what soul I will." Nothing human is alien to me in my form of
paideia. "And they come all graciously with no scorn
nor condescension." Let me just read those last few words: "no
scorn or condescension." This is very important. Some male poets may call for Emily Dickinson,
or call for Nikki Giovanni, and the male poets will be very condescending. Okay, the woman poet from Amherst. I'll listen to what you have to say, but then
I'll get back to my serious work. No. You read Emily Dickinson and watch her shake
your soul to the core. Condescension will be gone. Scorn will be gone because what's at work
here is the quest for excellence in and of itself. That's what he's getting at. "So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil." Paideia has the possibility to take us above
the veil for Du Bois. "Is this the life you grudge us, o knightly
America? Is this the life you long to change?" This life above the veil, with Shakespeare
and Dumas and the others. "Is this the life you want to change into
the dull red hideousness of Georgia?" The crushing of the Josies and her brothers
and cousins? "Are you so afraid lest peering on this high
Pisgah." Somebody tell me what Pisgah is. What is Pisgah. Now I know all you know. Tell me my brother. Speaker 9: The mountain from which Moses saw
the promised land. Cornel West: Absolutely. He's standing on the top and he's looking
over. It's almost like Martin right before he was
shot, right? "I've seen the promised land. I know I won't get there." Moses is not going to make it, is he? But he's standing there, Olympian like, and
he's seeing all of these rich possibilities, all of these rich potentialities. He's seeing a world in which the Josies can
flower and flourish and soar like eagles, rather than get crushed like cockroaches. He's seeing a world in which the Shakespeares
and the Emily Dickinsons and the Gwendolyn Brooks, all of them can commune together without
scorn or condescension. It's not a question in any way of some kind
of tolerance in the thin sense. It's a reveling in the work and humanity in
the deep sense. He moves from here. It's my Pisgah. "Between Philistine and Amalekite." He was the grandson of Esau. "We sight the Promised Land.” Possibility. Utopian energy tied to paideia. We see 37 years later, lo and behold, Du Bois,
in the era of empire finds himself doing what? Let's turn to page 596 where he says, "The
Negro problem in my mind is a matter of systematic investigation and intelligent understanding. The world was thinking wrong about rare because
it did not know the ultimate evil was stupidity. The cure for it was knowledge based on scientific
investigation." Then lo and behold here comes Samuel Hose,
lynched, knuckles in the window of the store. Du Bois says, "Lo and behold I recognize." Look at the bottom of page 602, top of page
603. "To the time in which my studies were most
successful, there cut across this plan which I had as a scientist a red rage." You can underline that, circle that. "A red rage which could not be ignored. I remember it first that startled me to my
feet, a poor Negro in central Georgia, Sam Hose, killed his landlord's wife. I wrote out a very careful and reasoned statement
concerning the facts, started down to the newspaper, didn't get there. On the way, he had been lynched. Two thousand folk at the lynching." Spectacle. His body pieces carved up and sold, with his
genitalia selling more than any other piece, given the sexualization of the Black male
body, vis-à-vis significant slices of white America, so that the connection between the
attempt to control and dominate these Black bodies tied also to a certain understanding
of their bodies as a threat to one's own sexuality and one's own sexual identity, you see. And he says what? "I began to turn aside from my work." Not the work for freedom, but as a scientist. "I never did meet Joel Harris. One cannot be a calm, cool, and detached scientist
while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved. There's no such definite demand for scientific
work I was doing anyway. Lo and behold," he says, "I have got to rethink
my vocation." This is a very crucial moment for Du Bois,
very pivotal, because he had a very thin enlightenment understanding of race. It was just a matter of folk being ignorant. If they knew the facts, they would change. No, it's much deeper than that. It's ignorance but deep interest, prejudice,
irrational fears, unreasonable anxieties. All of that had to be taken into consideration
to understand what is going on, when one talks about this so-called race issue. It is through plain speaking. Look at the top of page 613, where he talks
about plain speaking. It's considerable plain speaking in the movement
that he was trying to enact. Page 594, again, he talks about, "It was my
plainness of speech." You all remember that? It goes back to [inaudible 00:57:35], the
first week, the fearless speech, the intimidated speech, the frank speech, about something
that is so terrifying. That is what is required. It's interesting that The Niagara Movement
was founded not in the United States, but where? Canada. They had to get a hotel on the other side. We got our Canadian brother here, too. On the Canadian side, you see. Yes. Not that Canada is a paradise, but lo and
behold another vicious legacy of white supremacy for Black people, indigenous people. We can argue back and forth. But they had to go to Canada to even have
the meeting. It's very interesting. And that becomes, in four and a half years,
the NAACP. As a result of what? The vicious attack on Black people in Springfield,
Illinois. Springfield, Illinois of course being one
of the places associated with Abraham Lincoln. So, Du Bois again is saying this Black Freedom
Movement, having to deal with terror and trauma coming at it. The NAACP was founded as a result of Du Bois's
plain speaking, as he joined with white liberal elites, but recognizing that it's not going
to be a matter of just that paideia, sitting above the veil, it was going to be paideia
getting its hand very, very dirty, on both sides of the veil. It is a multiple critique. It's a critique of the white side of the veil. It's a critique of the Black side of the veil. Because the critique itself has a universal
character to it. In the name of truth, it cuts across culture,
cuts across societies, cuts across nations. Justice, beauty, and so on. For Du Bois, at the very end, he talks about
people selling out. Look at that, page 611. "I was invited to name my price." Booker T. Washington's machine invited me
up and said, "We will pay you any amount of money you want." If you do what? Fall in line. What did Du Bois say? Kiss my ... No, he's not that kind of brother. I know. That's what I would have said. No, but Du Bois said, "No, I guess I will
refuse to accept that and go off and sip my tea." He's Victorian style, but it's the same point. It's the same point. What does he say, quite explicitly? He says, "I had to tell them they sold out." Look at the top of page 617. "I published in The Guardian a statement concerning
the venality." What is venality? People selling their souls. "Which I charged had sold out to Mr. Washington." I had to point it out. They sold out. "I knew," he said, "because they offered me
the price and I didn't take it. I refused to take it. So I ended up living my life with less money. I ended up living my life with less income,
but with more integrity, with more decency." Not purity, not any kind of narrow, dogmatic,
ideological purity, but with integrity, trying to do the right thing. That's what Du Bois is trying to get us to
see. What is critical, at the top of page 618,
is that he saw "the strangling of honest criticism." You all see that, in the fourth line there? "I proposed a conference to oppose present
methods of strangling honest criticism." That's not just a criticism of Booker T. Washington's
policies. There's no possibility of any robust, uninhibited
discussion and dialogue, of honest criticism, if in fact all you're doing is proceeding
in such a way that you're just paying folk off. He said, "But I had missed it most of my life." I'm going to end this at the bottom of page
623. "But the history may be epitomized in one
word: empire." Empire, the domination of white Europe over
Black Africa and yellow Asia, through political power build on the economic control of labor,
income, and ideas, the echo of this empire," what he calls industrial imperialism, "in
America was the expulsion of Black people from American democracy." Domestic dynamic, international dynamic connected. "Subject to caste control and wage slavery. This ideology was triumphant in 1910." He's only up to this particular time in his
own life. So science, empire, paideia, and forms of
collective organizing to resist and reform. Du Bois is not yet a revolutionary. He is a reformist, but he's a radical reformist
no doubt. A radical reformist, no doubt.
