Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois From a Collective Memoir of Souls by Rebecca Carroll

Author:Rebecca Carroll [Carroll, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies), Fiction
ISBN: 9780307419224
Google: Q7OPcbndfpkC
Amazon: B000XUBFD8
Barnesnoble: B000XUBFD8
Publisher: Broadway Books
Published: 2007-12-18T06:00:00+00:00

Cory Booker

I grew up with parents who were deeply rooted in where they came from, and so I had the sense growing up that I was the manifestation of that sense of rootedness. For me, the way to best honor that, and what I’ve always known I wanted to do, is to be part of the struggle, part of the fight. And I believe that we need everyone in order to fight that fight effectively.

There’s a great Du Bois quote in which he says, and I’m paraphrasing, “In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood, one can imagine the consequences of the absence of social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.” In my work, a lot of what I do is about getting people to move beyond the separation.

During the mayoral campaign, there were many things that were said, targeting my racial identity and allegiance, including the suggestion that I first needed to learn how to be an African American before I could be the mayor of Newark. For someone to question my background, especially when you look at someone like Du Bois, who was such a scholar, and to suggest that I’m not black enough based on whatever reasons is absurd. But there have always been black Americans who have been criticized by other black Americans for being what the latter might call “sellouts”—people who have won or sought the approval of the so-called mainstream, like Althea Gibson, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Bunche, even Sidney Poitier. I don’t especially mind the criticism, as long as I’m being true to myself, and in my heart know what I’m trying to do.

It’s always disheartening when black people turn against one another. It was disturbing to me, for example, when I heard Harry Belafonte’s recent criticism of Colin Powell, which was based solely on some sort of racial protocol. [In an October 2002 interview with talk show host Ted Leitner on the San Diego radio station KFMB-AM, Belafonte was quoted as saying, “There’s an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.”] Belafonte could tear Colin Powell apart for some of his political beliefs, and I might join him in that criticism, but who is Harry Belafonte, as great as he is, to be a purveyor of blackness with regard to select individuals? To call somebody out for not being black enough—there’s just no time for that. We, as in the social fabric of America, have so many other issues to contend with.

I resist any notions that there is one way to be black, and I have defined myself and my life with that in mind, and as something that will evolve as I continue to grow and learn.

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