Monday, May 02, 2005

Gone, but not forgotten

Two giants died this past month. While the Bush administration lies in bed cooing to the far right, a scholar who had a great deal to do with breaking the hold of the far right on our educational system and starting the process of desegregation, Kenneth Clark, died.
As the New York Times obituary said, "In 1973, with a backlash to integration mounting, Dr. Clark said in an interview in The New York Times Magazine that "one of the things that disturbs me most is the sophisticated form of intellectual white backlash," citing the writings of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others. "In their ivory towers, they have lost all empathy with low-income people and black people. They are seeking to repudiate their own past liberal positions, fighting against their own heritage at the expense of the poor.""

This leads us to wonder what he would think of the Cos. Cosby has been loud about what he sees as the black community's own responsibility for its failings. Professor Michael Eric Dyson has a new book coming out responding to the Cos. He sounds an awful lot like Clark in this MSNBC piece when he says, "It is that general public, especially white social critics and other prophets of black ethical erosion, that has been eager for Cosby’s dispatches from the tortured front of black class war. Cosby’s comments let many of these whites off the hook. If what Cosby says is true, then critics who have said the same, but who courted charges of racism, are vindicated. There’s nothing like a formerly poor black multimillionaire bashing poor blacks to lend credence to the ancient assaults they’ve endured from the dominant culture."

Also leaving us was Dr. Alvin Novick. This Yale physician made his name researching bats and sonar, but his reputation by standing up for the rights of victims of AIDS when few others would. Wonder what he would think of the oppressed becoming the oppressors. Dr. Clark would not be surprised.

posted by Andy Mais @ 9:03 AM

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