Avant-Garde Journal

A SHORT HISTORY OF PROPAGANDA
From the Collected Writings of Anthony Monteiro

At the end of the 20th century, Harvard's 'Dream Team' of Cornel West & Henry Louis Gates and Temple University's Molefi Kete Asante represented two opposing camps of Black Studies. What united them was their rejection of W.E.B. Du Bois, as Anthony Monteiro argued in this essay from 1998.

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"While one hundred flowers bloom and a thousand schools contend, Harvard and Temple Universities’ African American Studies Departments have become the vanguard of opposing trends; one modernist and Eurocentric, the other Afrocentric and traditional. They represent the most publicized and well known of the centers of Black Studies. Each has its renowned scholars and stands upon its own theories and philosophies. Different political camps within the Black and white communities support each. Through academic journals, scholarly conferences and public discourse, Harvard and Temple struggle to gain the upper hand in deciding the direction of Black Studies and ultimately Black intellectual and political life. Each side claims history as the test of the validity of its positions, although none of the key players could be considered an historian and neither department has produced any significant historical texts.

"While these public differences are debated in the media and academic departments, below the surface the two schools share certain common beliefs and sensibilities; commonalities which neither is completely comfortable with, yet which neither can escape. At the core of these commonalities is their rejection of W.E.B Du Bois’s legacy. Both sides, while acknowledging Du Bois’s brilliance, define him as a failure. The Harvard school rejects him because he was not Eurocentric enough; while Temple rejects him because he was not sufficiently Afrocentric. Ironically, in rejecting Du Bois as the central figure of Black Studies, Harvard and Temple have turned the debate over Black Studies into a debate about Du Bois. The project to eliminate Du Bois as the central intellectual figure in the formation of the Black intellect can only be understood as a crucial part of the history of propaganda directed against the struggle for Black freedom. It is connected to the main centers of white propaganda and is shaped in significant ways by them. And thus the history of the struggle between the two schools of Black Studies is in substance a short history of propaganda. However, the central player in all of this is neither Asante and Temple, nor Harvard and West and Gates, it is the mighty Du Bois. To understand these camps one must understand how they understand (or more appropriately, misunderstand) Du Bois."

A Short History of Propaganda Publication date: 1998 | First published in The Real News, later in African American Futures Note: At the time this essay was written in 1998, African American Studies was, in the words of Dr. Mont…