Danger Black-on-Black.

What happens to our public conversation when black writers and thinkers bitterly disagree? Eight black authors ponder the perils and profits of controversy and dissent--the threats and the opportunities presented by so-called dangerous books

African Americans are hardly a monolithic people. Throughout history we have differed among ourselves in political outlooks. On every question about the welfare of the race as a whole, respected writers have held varied opinions on solutions--even while sharing the same goals--and enjoyed the freedom to express themselves. Nonetheless, those outside our cultural community not sharing the goal of equality and improvement of conditions for blacks have often exploited our differences, even attempting to polarize them into crippling divisions.

Every so often along comes a controversial book by a black author whose very publication prompts protests in our own communities, while others champion it. Some question the author's motives or loyalties. Others simply dismiss the ideas and the writer. BIBR champions freedom of speech and welcomes a diversity of outlooks, so the recent publication of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, by Ward Connerly (Encounter Books, see review, page 41)--his own account of his public opposition to affirmative-action policies--has prompted us to examine anew the question of dissent versus division. We invited a number of prominent authors, thinkers and commentators (a few declined to respond) to consider whether some books by black authors present a danger to the well-being and future of African Americans as a whole or whether we can benefit from examining the unsettling questions they may present.

BIBR asked them: Are some books indeed dangerous to our communities? Is Connerly's one of them, or should it be applauded? How should blacks who disagree with a writer's premise or aims regard such books? What do we do about books we find troubling? While no respondent exactly championed Connerly's views, none wanted to silence his expression. What follows are the range of illuminating comments we received.

[] June Jordan: Dissent or Dissinformation?

The reason somebody like Ward Connerly is dangerous is because he refuses a fair fight. He refuses to debate other black folks on these issues of compelling importance to our total black community. He propagates disinformation, knowingly, and enjoys incredible access to major media microphones and cameras, both. You will notice, however, that he never appears in a seriously challenging venue visible to the public at large.

For example, this Connerly guy is all over the place on the subject of education. "He is a real-estate developer!" He has never taught a class of any kind of students anywhere. Nevertheless, he runs his mouth and his computer all over educational policies bearing upon opportunities--or barriers--available to black people. So, yes, he's dangerous: His limitlessly well-funded access to major media--MINUS competent challengers--is dangerous. (By the way, Connerly is just one of the newly created Black Buffer Buffoons--apparently `black' personalities funded by racist right-wing think tanks.)

June Jordan is a poet and professor of African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Her most recent books are: Affirmative Acts: Political Essays (Doubleday, 1998) and Soldier: A Poet's Childhood, a memoir (Basic Books, 2000).

[] Raymond M. Brown: Political Pathology

`Dan-ger-ous adj 1. Involving or fraught with danger; perilous. 2. Able or apt to do harm.'

--American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

`A man of an ill tongue is dangerous in his city.'

--A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson

The editors at BIBR have to heed an earlier rooster to catch us with a trick question like `whether this book by a black American is dangerous to our community.' I'm sure they know that Connerly isn't black and that books are benign, when critically examined, even when their authors are dangerous.

Connerly's personal campaign for California's "Proposition 209" and support for other anti-affirmative action referenda imperil educational opportunities for black and Latino youth. His potential for harm continues since Connerly assures us he's no `freaky flash in the pan.'

His book, however, tells us things we ought to know, like his belief that he is not black. He allows conservatives to present him as an African American opponent of "preferences." Yet he boasts in this book of his personal genetic "formula" of equal parts `French Canadian, Choctaw, African, and Irish American' and praises the journalist who called this a `bloodline ... right out of a Faulkner novel.'

The book provides insight into Connerly's political pathology, and the vacuity of his position. He ducks issues like whether the "10% solution," a post-affirmative action response in Texas, creates diversity only while blacks remain segregated in areas underserved by social infrastructures. His infantile legal commentary is matched by his absurd suggestion that low SAT scores among blacks can be raised using the model of his youthful YMCA swimming lessons!

Worse still, Connerly avoids questions like whether reparations are an alternative to the affirmative action model or whether the traditional approach can yield benefits for those not in the middle class. Connerly's ditherings and evasions are unfortunate since we do need internal debate on these questions. Serious discourse is prevented (even discredited) by Connerly's murky thinking, bad writing and megalomania.

Raymond M. Brown is a visiting professor at Seton Hall Law School, a trial lawyer and an analyst for MSNBC.

[] Farai Chideya: Intellectual Black-on-Black Crime

Ward Connerly would never have gotten as much media `airtime' if he were white. It's a phenomenon I call the intellectual version of black-on-black crime, where black writers, black thinkers and black politicians serve as hit-men on one another's ideas.

I would prefer a good debate and a fair fight rather than a false sense of unity, but it is never a fair fight. The media culture today favor,,; the ideas of men like Connerly over the argument that racism persists, affirmative action is needed, and that we must search out more ways to level the playing field. Witness the ways in which the deeply flawed book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (Free Press Paperback, 1996,) was greeted with media splendor and splashed across the covers of magazines across America--a reception never given a black book on. remedying the racial divide. Black books that advocate proactive solutions to the racial gap are often not reviewed at all, assigned to ideological hit-men, or relegated to minor coverage. That is the failure of the system, and that skews the debate in our own community.

Farai Chideya is the author of The Color of Our Future: Our Multiracial Future (Quill paperback) and Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation about African-Americans. (Plume, 1995) She is editor of Pop and Politics.com

[] Ellis Cose: No Harm, No Censorship

I don't think Ward Connerly's book will do much harm, because no one is reading it. The book has been largely ignored by the media and by just about everyone else. It was published by a small company without much fanfare and is neither very interesting nor insightful; so I can't see it as much of a threat to anyone.

Does Connerly have a right to present his views? Sure he does. As a journalist, I would be the last person to endorse some kind of ideological censorship. But I think the larger harm he does is not through his book, but through his political campaigns. I think The Bell Curve was infinitely more harmful than Connerly's book, largely because a number of people decided to take that piece of garbage seriously.

So how should we think of Connerly? I think we should see him merely as an author who is not very good and whose book deserves the inattention that, for the most part, it is getting.

Ellis Cose is the author of The Rage of a Privileged Class (Harper Collins, 1993), Colorblind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World (Harper Perennial, 1998), and several other books. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Newsweek magazine.

[] Jill Nelson: Censorship is `Knuckle-headed'

The purpose of art is not to conform to current fashion, political or otherwise, but to provoke, challenge, confront and motivate us to think, see, feel or act outside the box, even when we don't like what that art says or represents.

I'm certainly no fan of Ward Connerly, but I am a fan of his right to publish what he wants. It's self-hating, condescending and knuckle-headed to think African Americans and other people of color are incapable of reading critically and need to be "protected" from ideas some of us might find offensive.

It's also censorship. To quote the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Jill Nelson is the author of Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience, Noble Press, 1993, and Straight No Chaser: How I Became a Grown-Up Black Woman (Penguin, 1999), and the editor of Police Brutality: An Anthology published in May 2000 by W. W. Norton.

[] Sam Fulwood III: The Slippery Slope to Repression

No book, no idea presents a danger to the well-being of any community. Regardless of what the bulk of our people may think of Ward Connerly or his crusade against affirmative action, he has a right to express his views. If he can find a publisher willing to spread them, more power to him. Correspondingly, black readers have no obligation to read him and every right to engage in spirited debate over whatever Connerly writes. Free speech is free for all, including those who express unpopular views and for those who disagree.

Connerly and his publisher, Encounter Books, could have no reasonable expectation that this book will be a Blacklist bestseller. Rather, they expect the howls and protests that are sure to come from black intellectuals, civil rights activists and, yes, even journalists. The danger in trying to squelch unpopular views is that it empowers others with greater resources and greater power to do likewise to kill views they deem unsavory. That's the step down a slippery slope to repression, where everyone's freedom of speech will have been diminished--including ours. We don't want to go there.

The best response from black communities is not to kill the messenger but to mount a vigorous attack in the robust glare of publicity on the message. If Connerly's views are as repugnant as so many black folks are inclined to believe, then allow it to wither in the best of all disinfectants--the bright sunlight of public debate.

Sam Fulwood III is the author of Waking From the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class (Anchor Books, 1996) and a columnist for The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio.

[] Dori Maynard: The Real Danger is No Discussion

A few years ago a white male magazine editor was explaining to me why he published an issue on affirmative action written solely by white men. `I could have included Shelby Steele,' he said, `but you would have considered him a traitor.'

A traitor? Shelby Steele might have a vastly different point of view than do I, but to suggest that African Americans are so monolithic that we cannot tolerate differences of opinion is ludicrous. It would have been equally insulting to this editor had I suggested that including Barry Scheck's views in a piece on the O.J. Simpson verdict would have been too much for him to bear. It is critical for all perspectives to be given the opportunity to be heard and debated.

A book alone cannot sway a nation. There have been any number of books written about African Americans that contain ideas that could be considered dangerous to our well being. Most end up in the remainder pile at our local bookstores, gaining only a lunatic fringe as a loyal audience.

Even when a so-called dangerous book finds fertile ground with an influential audience--perhaps particularly then--it is in our best interest to have the book published and the idea exposed to the cold light of day. That at least gives us the opportunity to discuss and unmask it for the flimsy flavor of the month that it is.

Dori Maynard compiled Letters to My Children with Robert C. Maynard (Andrews and McMeel, 1995). She is director of communications for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, Calif., as well as a lecturer on media and opinion.