I certainly hope I do no violence to Prof. Gates by asserting a contrary
-- he seems altogether an active, sharp, and sensitive mind with a concurrent
ability for eloquence and focused writing (geez, everything I wish I were)
and also has that gentle sensibility (or objectivity) that tempers violence.
In other words, I'd feel bad to cut him down. And he really isn't wrong,
because his statements are more complex than I present them -- it's just that
I felt like making a dramatic statement.
Isn't it enough for me to love Frederick Douglass when he says in his
"Narrative of the Life of an American Slave": "He can only understand the
deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the
bloody arm of slavery." (_Black Voices_, p. 253)? I love this statement
because it is so honestly violent (what did Nietszche say about force being
the root or foundation of the universe?) -- he literally beat up his master
much in the same way that Ellison and Baldwin and Walker and a host of other
writers and thinkers offend my liberalist-universalist tendencies by saying
that my dream of universal brother-sisterhood is not for them (not in so many
words but expressed in jokes and _attitude_).
What then, shall we choose? Not if, but _when_ we cut down the masters of
the universe? I dunno. Does it matter?
Cut 'em down first, burn their houses to less than ash, eat their children.
