Diverse: What led you as a literary scholar to write Betrayal?
HB: The motivation was, as interesting as it may seem now more than 20 years down the line, the culture wars that were launched by neoconservatives and the think tanks that support their point of view in the United States back in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. We had a number of people like Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, and Allan Bloom suggesting that the movement of knowledge of African-American studies, Black studies, women studies, Chicano and Chicana, Asian American, feminist studies — that all of these additions to the university curriculum were polluting Western civilization, bringing knowledge to its knees, and was being offered up only in the name of political correctness.
So, I first thought that I should answer to the best of my ability what is being said by these predominantly, almost all to a man or woman, White scholars. Then I realized a curious thing. Among these scholars were (African-American) scholars like Shelby Steele and Stephen Carter. And I thought, ‘Wow, they’ve joined the neoconservative attack.’
So I put the plans on hold to write a book in response to works like Illiberal Education and Tenured Radicals. And I began reading the works, particularly of neoconservative Black scholars. As I read that work, I realized that they were certainly in company, in harmony — and often paid in think tanks by neoconservatism. I also began to notice something else — that there were other scholars who had at one point devoted most of their time, talent, treasure (and) intellect to very, very serious scholarly work in African-American literary, cultural, philosophical, and political science matters, and suddenly there were no books like the ones that had come earlier from these scholars. We were getting quick sellers and they weren’t supported (by evidence) and they didn’t seem very scholarly — almost on the order of pamphlets.
So I thought, ‘Wow, I think we need to take a look at our intellectual tradition,” and that’s what set it all off. About eight years ago or so, I began writing this book, chapter by chapter, integrating into its arguments a critique of American neoconservatism in general. And here it is.
Diverse: Can you talk about the distinctions between a Black neoconservative and a Black centrist?
HB: That’s a great question. I would define Black neoconservatives in a too shorthand way — those who are in league with and, indeed in proximity, meaning physical, with the neoconservative movement in the United States of America — a movement that traces its lineage back to the end of the second World War, but really gets its legs, finds its designation, and is up and running in the 1970s.
