Eddie Glaude Jr. in person, where music trumps philosophy

I blogged here twice about philosopher Eddie Glaude, Jr. after trashing him as philosopher on my Studies in a Dying Culture blog:

Tavis Smiley meets Eddie Glaude: Black pragmatism in action

As I mentioned in my second post here, Glaude re-posted my first post on this blog, without comment, on his own blog on BlackPlanet.com. 3 comments followed.

Given the way I blasted Glaude in writing, it is only fair that I balance my account of him by recounting an agreeable personal encounter.

The stage for this encounter was an event that took place on the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. The event was held on August 28, 2013 at George Washington University: Soundtrack of a Movement: Freedom Songs in Perspective. The moderator of the event was Eddie Glaude, Jr.

Julian Bond was a featured speaker. I positioned myself to shake his hand after the event, but as he was coming down the aisle of the auditorium, just before he got to me, his attention was diverted by a pretty girl and I lost my chance.

There were also various artistic performances, among the artists my esteemed colleague harmonica virtuoso Frédéric Yonnet. Here are two videos of student performances: Soundtrack of a Movement 1; Soundtrack of a Movement 2.

It was an inspiring event, and Glaude did a great job. After schmoozing with various acquaintances and strangers afterward, I ran into Glaude as we exited the building. We two were among the last to leave. I did not identify myself as the person who trashed his philosophy. Rather I discussed music with him. When I mentioned the Spirituals, he melted. We shared a moment. I know my conversation made him happier than he was already and vice versa. Such moments of inspiration are what we live for.

So there, my two contrasting takes on Glaude. There is a difference between sensibility and concepts, between literature and philosophy, between theory and cultural expression. I find it tragic that in their eagerness to find an outlet for a certain sensibility and reaction to their world, people like Cornel West and Glaude do such a terrible job as philosophers. How is it that Richard Wright did so much better, working in a literary rather than philosophical genre? This is a vital topic to conceptualize and discuss. 

Philosophy is not cultural expression, even while it reflects social realities and ideological biases. If some philosophy is an expression of a given cultural formation, that might be the very reason NOT to celebrate it as an organic cultural expression but to criticize it as an ideological expression. It may well be that a foreign tradition reveals more about society X than society X's own predominant philosophy. See my post:

Pragmatism Blues

Even given the historical prevalence of a certain type of philosophy in a nation or region, e.g. pragmatism in the USA, empiricism in the UK, rationalism in France, etc., while the prevalence of these philosophies is in some sense an expression, better to say a product, of given social circumstances, that is not to say that said philosophical schools are essentially national or ethnic in character except insofar as they deal with cultural/social/specifics. There is a philosophical spectrum in every major civilization and no single philosophy that expresses its essence. (Also: I deem ontology, epistemology and logic to be the heart of philosophy, and all the rest mere commentary.) Hence there is a richness to be found in the philosophical spread of the major civilizations--Greek, Indian, Chinese, Islamic, etc. Whereas something like African philosophy, which grows out of an identity crisis, is anemic in comparison. And the notion of "black philosophy" is to me an absurdity, though there indeed are black philosophers, some or most of whom have dealt with the "black experience".

To translate sensibility into a non-mystical, non-metaphysical formulation is an endeavor yet to be undertaken. It was a major concern of mine when African American humanism finally surfaced in organizational form at the end of the 1980s. I was hoping to overcome the tedium of the atheist/humanist milieu. This was before the universal availability of the Internet. Well, we are a generation past and now in the fully interactive online era, in which the black atheist/humanist/skeptics movement suddenly blossomed just a few years ago and in which the atheist/etc. movement flourishes throughout cyberspace. A plethora of social and cultural interests are to be found, but not much philosophical progress. One aspect of confronting religious obfuscation is engaging cultural expression, confronting the seductive dimension of artistic expression as a vehicle of religiosity.

Eddie, wherever you are, I like you as a person, even if not as a philosopher.

Eddie Glaude Jr. & BlackPlanet.com

Eddie Glaude Jr. evidently found my previous post on him here, as he re-posted it, without comment, on his own blog on BlackPlanet.com. There were two initial responses by others. After I discovered Glaude's blog: I responded to one particularly irritating individual who calls herself Brilliantrose. This is my retort, written on 2 Jan 2009:

Clearly, Brilliantrose did not understand a word I wrote. Checking my original blog, I do not see any confusion between "ethic" and "ethnic"; hopefully Brilliantrose knows the difference. I chose to write "ethnic" instead of" racial" because "ethnic" suggests a cultural formation rather than a biological category, and hence speaks more directly to mindset.

Brilliantrose also mistakenly assumes that I have a high regard for the Ivy League, but my point is that whatever their origins, however humble they may be in some cases, black intellectuals who have made it to the level of professor at Ivy League institutions have enjoyed opportunities for expansion of their ideological perspective than average uneducated persons do, and so they have a choice whether to undergo the risky business of ruffling the feathers of their own alleged constituency or pander to popular ignorance, an ignorance which obviously pervades the middle class as it does the poor.

As for needing many voices, additional voices are useless unless they have something enlightening to say. One essential property of a modern democracy that black communities as well as fundamentalist rednecks have yet to learn is the precious principle of separation between church and state. Religious revelation has no place in public argument or policy. Eddie Glaude, as an allegedly progressive theocrat, is apparently too dense to understand this. He gets away with it by basing himself on ethnic provincialism, i.e. a narrowly tailored black religious rhetoric, peppered with scraps of philosophical concepts totally at odds with the irrational basis of religious belief. This just serves to retard the intellectual development of black America as surely as the black church has done.

And that's where it ended. I looked further into BlackPlanet.com and found it as disgraceful as I had been warned about.

I found two active groups of relevance. Freethinkers New Trinity is as full of crackpots as the rest of this site. Today's Atheists of America is much more reasonable, but still extremely limited. So, while a few people with intelligent thoughts emerge on this site, it is so hopelessly idiotic and oriented toward the lowest of low common denominators, no one should be caught dead on it. Glaude hasn't posted on it all year to date: if there is a reason for this, it's anybody's guess.

Eddie Glaude Jr. & the bankruptcy of the black religious intellectual

I commented on philosopher-theologian Eddie Glaude Jr. in March 2007 on my Studies in a Dying Culture blog:

Tavis Smiley meets Eddie Glaude: Black pragmatism in action

I singled out what I considered to be the strategic essence of his ideological positioning: "a combination of ethnic provincialism and the impersonal rhetoric of professional philosophy, creating an illusion of intellectuality combined with community engagement." Analyzing his deployment and intertwining of two cultural code languages, I concluded: "The combined code of bourgeois professionalism and ethnic provincialism is pretty slick."

Glaude is in the news again, and once again ideological scrutiny is in order.

"A call to give religion full voice in the public square," USA Today, December 9, 2008.

Glaude spoke on race and religion at the second annual Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Key West. (The full transcript should soon be available at PewForum.org.) Glaude complained that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were unjustly forced to mitigate their expression of the religious basis of their political convictions. Note carefully the basis of Glaude's complaint, as reported here:

Glaude observed both men seemed to say that democracy demands religiously motivated people translate their concerns into universal, not sectarian, terms, that a religion’s claim to truth is not sufficient or persuasive.

But, Glaude said this would mean only those who argue from reason, i.e. facts or science, not from revelation, can make their case in the public square. Revelation can be subjective, personally interpreted, and relevant only within a religious community not beyond it, he said.

Glaude views such enforced translation into universal secular terms is conducive to an “unchristian result", whereby politicians cannot authentically express their real convictions. The nauseating obscurantism and ignorance embedded in this perspective reveals the menace that lies concealed in the ideological interventions of today's left-liberal clergy. The very essence of a secular society and secular democracy is the presumption that only rationalistic, universalistic criteria are legitimate in the public square, and that neither institutions nor policy can be based on religious revelation or supernaturalist superstition, though in their capacity as private individuals people have the right to believe and express whatever nonsense they choose. Glaude's advocacy of the irrationalist pollution of political discourse is a manifestation of a decaying society and its prevailing rightist tendencies. Was the religious left of earlier generations as bad as this?

Now see:

Black church and politics in the Obama era by Michael Paulson, The Boston Globe, December 8, 2008.

Glaude highlighted the racial dimension of the election and its aftermath, mentioning also the speculation over whether Obama will enroll his family in a black church in Washington. Glaude scoffed at the notion of a post-racial historical moment, though the emergence of black leaders who never experienced American apartheid marks a historical shift. Glaude also contemplated the impact of Obama's presidency on the black church.

"How will black suffering speak publicly? [. . . ] "Wherever power is operating, there is a role for a prophetic voice, but it's going to be complicated because a black man is running the empire.''

I don't disagree with this last point, which at least alludes to a sociological perspective that could be delineated much more clearly than Glaude's otherwise murky ethno-religious perspective.

This next article is even more revealing of the issues:

Trends beyond black vote in play on Prop. 8 by Matthai Kuruvila, San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2008.

This article highlights the uncomfortable implications of the reported claim that "70 percent of African Americans voted to ban same-sex marriages in California." However, many commentators warn that improper conclusions may be drawn from this statistic, including a tendency to place the blame or credit squarely on blacks for the outcome of this vote:

But demographers say the focus on one race not only disregards the complexity of African American identity but also overlooks the most powerful predictors affecting views on same-sex marriage: religion, age and ideology, such as party affiliation.

Faith is emphasized as a key factor:

A number of black gay and lesbian Christians say the No on 8 campaign underestimated the role of faith in the election. The impact of poor religious outreach was compounded in the African American community, where the church remains the single most powerful organizing force.

Historically black churches, which have a diverse array of denominations, include many with a long tradition of biblical literalism, said Professor Eddie Glaude, who teaches religion and African American studies at Princeton University. Glaude said many black churches in the 1960s believed that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was "too radical."

Glaude is quoted:

"Failing to engage the black Christian community is a failure to understand that there's an internal argument to be had among all Christians about how we ought to understand same-sex love [...]"

It's a shame that this Princeton prof can't dig beneath such banality to get to the bedrock issue. As long as religious authority holds sway, an internal religious dialogue aimed at liberalizing religious dogma is undoubtedly better than nothing, but the problem with the black Christian community runs deeper than theological disputation. Liberal middle-class professionals who occupy a genteel world have the luxury of a pretend open-mindedness that blinds them to the viciousness undergirding social institutions, the popular imagination, and their manipulation by power-brokers. The failure of black intellectuals, in a post-apartheid era no less, to challenge the authoritarianism and backwardness of the black church, not just in terms of specific positions, but in its fundamental nature, is appalling. Traditionalism, authoritarianism, and religious orthodoxy are fueled by a culture of ignorance and fear. Without challenging the fear-based cultural basis of the black church-- its pretense to a love ethic notwithstanding--and without challenging its obsolete provincial ethnic basis, the black intellectual becomes a traitor to the intellectualism that got him where he is. To be a socially conscious black intellectual in a post-apartheid era wherein the class divide within the black population marks a historically new problematic is better than simply jumping ship and shifting one's loyalty entirely to the upper classes, but an ethnically and religiously based ideology is an inadequate posture. Glaude is a protege of Cornel West and his vacuous "prophetic pragmatism". It's too bad the Ivy League fails to yield better than this.

Glaude is also quoted in a Pew Forum article on Obama:

"Does Obama need to find a black church to call home?" by Adelle M. Banks, December 9, 2008.

Obama's engagement with Jeremiah Wright and his church remains an enigma, meaning, as does everything with Obama, all things to all people. To what extent Obama's self-reportage of his motivations and his faith is authentic is only one question, for the deep question of ideology is how people fool themselves, not others, how they dwell within an ideological universe whose real operation remains obscure to them. Obama's earlier association, which did him well in Chicago black politics, proved to be an impediment to his presidential ambition, though obviously not an insurmountable one. Obama's church affiliation compounded the ambiguity of his political self-presentation, attacked or defended by the right and left on bogus grounds. I agree with Adolph Reed Jr., who termed Obama a neoliberal fraud. Cornel West is a much gentler critic as well as an Obama supporter, but West's own Christian rhetoric blurs the analytical contours needed to assess the situation.

Elements of the black religious left continually vaunt the phrase "speak truth to power," but they continually blunt the still-forbidden truth that needs to be spoken.