I own that book and Goodrick-Clarke’s other book “Black Sun” which is about all the neo-Nazi, neo-Fascist loons who have some links to occultic or esoteric thought (and there are a bunch of them.) They are an invaluable resource in understanding that Hitler did not come from nowhere; he was prefigured for years by these Germano-Austrian groups who wanted a national leader to bring a form of Greatness to the Germanic world, and after Naziism burned Europe to a cinder, how similar people were desperately trying to fill a Hitler-shaped hole in their lives because the changes in the postwar world were too much to take.

a) cherrypick some titles of courses or articles to demonstrate that a particular field, approach or all of academia is worthless, ridiculous, politicized or otherwise dismissable
b) assert that the titles are sufficient guide to the entirety of the contents (whether pedagogical or scholarly) and moreover that to further investigate the contents would taint the critic.

That combination is a perfect act of turtling: there is no dialogue to be had, because the critic is never going to come out of the shell. The critic hasn’t just started from a false premise, they’ve defended the false premise as a wholesome and necessary practice. Riley said in her second post (and has since repeated) that there is no incentive, neither argument nor money, that could ever motivate her to take any further interest in the history midwifery as the subject of midwifery is by definition always a waste of time. This is only partly based on what you identify above, a belief that scholars should only study issues of great practical relevance to contemporary public policy debates. (Humanists who take up that responsibility tend to get blasted by critics like Riley for being “political” the moment that they rise to the bait.) In this particular case, there really is something specifically racial going on: the proposition that black people and black communities are primarily only interesting in terms of the managerial problems they present to white people. But I’ve seen other cases of the “dismiss by the titles” approach (mostly but not exclusively from conservative critics) which aren’t about race or even about the idea that scholarly labor should be focused on practical problems. In all cases, the judgment is based also on an unvoiced, unexplained and impossible-to-question “common sense” about the topics or titles being mocked.

There isn’t any way in, no way to engage. It’s like trying to play checkers with someone who is determined to play mumbly-peg. The only response possible is that this is a violation of a lowest-common denominator standard, a baseline responsibility. That doesn’t stop the person in question from carrying on with their attacks, and the best one can hope for is that anyone who might be influenced will concede that there’s a pretty basic violation of decent behavior going on when you attack something that you refuse to read, understand or gain any further knowledge about.

You know, I still would not have fired the columnist, Naomi Schaefer Riley. It makes her a martyr. Better I think is to publish ripostes. But, first let us admit the slipshod nature of Riley’s critique:

“Then there is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s.” Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today . . . ”

As my colleague David Freund has conclusively shown, the redlining of whole neighborhoods by realtors conforming to the government’s refusal to guarantee loans to African Americans wishing to live in neighborhoods that were not “historically” African American, resulted directly in a kind of white paradise of suburbia, with individual home ownership; and on the other side, housing projects that crammed thousands of people together with nowhere for children to play in a structured environment. If there were attempts to ameliorate this vast injustice, by accelerating African American home ownership in the 1970s, it would not be extraordinary to see the effort permeated by the trailing elements of the same forces that curtailed integration previously, and so remade in the still toxic environment of iniquitous and hierarchical racial coding. But then:

“(Not much of a surprise since the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don’t tell them about the black president!)”

Gratuitous. And then:

“She explains that “The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.” The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.”

Easy to quote a line out of context. What was the argument? If it is a bad argument, let’s hear it.

“But topping the list in terms of sheer political partisanship and liberal hackery is La TaSha B. Levy. According to the Chronicle, “Ms. Levy is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan.”

With this last, so far no problem, one would think. Then:

“Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights?

This is simply a political polemic masquerading as criticism. Ms. Levy *argues* that they played this role in assaulting civil rights. She may be wrong, but a lot of work on Sowell (let alone the lesser lights) makes this point. Does that make black studies a farce?

“Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments.”

This is a criticism about the force behind academic movements and their disconnect with public policy issues. It is easy to make about many, many social science subfields, but even easier to make more broadly about the Humanities — say, Art History. As a criticism it fails to understand what scholars are actually about. To be concise: We do not work for the government.

Still. This can be looked at from another point of view. If we do not label Riley a “racist,” and accept her as an interlocutor, the trajectory of her remarks can be traced back to a major subset of students and parents and others connected to land-grant universities in this country, whose sentiments are similar. Are they to be ruled out of bounds, hors de combat? Such a ruling looks awfully elitist to me. “Don’t bother us, we are working,” is the meaning of firing Riley. “We are doing important things and need not answer to the likes of you.” I’d rather we encouraged a dialogue — even with an unreliable logician.

I will add, however, that at some time in my former life I encountered a display at a prominent Black Studies department claiming that the famous Olmec Heads were of Africans, and not the chiefs of the native Amer-Indian peoples living in the area. The claim was based principally on features said to be, ummm, characteristic of Africans, something about noses and chins, and stuff. What did I take away from this? Profound disappointment and sadness to see that in seeking to dignify their own history, they stole it from someone else. Not that this sort of thing isn’t done everywhere already (is Jesus white? or black? or oh yeah… a Jew). But did I jump off the wagon and start shouting that Black Studies is illegitimate. How could I, when I’ve attended lectures in Critical Theory?

*I put /know/ in scare-quotes, out of deference for what philosophers think they mean when they someone /knows/ something.