Black Intellectual Analysis

Black Intellectuals have always been caught between the preverbal rock and hard place. They have constantly had the dilemma of establishing their existence not only in the white world, which seeks to diminish and minimize them as mere cases of either affirmative action or charity, but also the Black one as well, who has no conception of the work and the toil that these individuals face day in and day out in their intellectual inquiry into the political, social, and economic workings of our planet. While there may exist a value gap from the larger society regarding the usefulness of the Black intellectual, these people serve a fundamental and important purpose in our society. Black intellectuals provide essential counter-narratives to the larger …show more content…
For the sake of this reflection paper, I will only elucidate upon the first two. Rodney first begins by saying that the burden of the black intellectual is to combat the onslaught of “white cultural imperialism.” (Rodney 62) Here, Rodney is essentially saying that the black intellectual is responsible for the dissolution of social myths and ideologies that exist within society that befall those who are of African descent. Secondly, Rodney advocates that black intellectuals be “connected to the happenings of the black masses.” (Rodney 63) In this, Rodney is saying that it is important that black intellectuals be constantly invested in the plights and interests of those who are a part of the larger black community. These two burdens, in particular, guided my thoughts when conducting and creating my service project. Thus, this reflection seeks to explain the interconnections between the thoughts of the black intellectuals and the community in which I …show more content…
For this debate, the discussion revolved around the idea of respectability politics. This is to say, the aforementioned young man who shared his story about his encounter with the police, went on to say that his mother asked him to cut his hair, as it may have been a factor in why the police officer stopped and interrogated he and his brother that day. This conversation was particularly interesting as it gave me a first-hand look as to how different forms of socialization and understanding of presence in the world can fundamentally influence how we see and understand ourselves as political beings in the larger system of politics as a whole. For this one student, he was more than willing, in a cost-benefit analysis framework, to cut his hair if it means he “won’t get killed”. On the other hand, other students in the classroom seemed to disagree with this sentiment. Immediately following his statement, another student responded and said that he “ain’t about to cut his hair off for