Race Against Integration: Response

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY Although Levinas' profoundly moving reading of the Hebraictradition has revivified that tradition for an international audience ofJews and non-Jews alike, itmaynonetheless be worth pausingbefore we plunge too eagerly down the path ofhis "difficult freedom." For along with the Hellenic concern for Being, truth, and universality, there are also ethical-cum-political injunctions inthe Hellenictradition worth takingseriously . Levinas has brilliantlydemonstratedthecosts of forgetting the Jewish dimension ofWestern culture; the no less dangerous costs ofsuppressingthe Hellenic is a lesson we haveto go elsewhereto learn. JANUAR.Y/ FEBRUAltY 1991 IVOLUME 6, NUMBER. 1 Race Against Integration: Respons e byMichael Eric Dyson C ONTEMPORARY BLACK nationalism, or neonationalism, is primarily a cultural affair : witness rap music, Spike Lee films, and the symbolic adoption ofEgypt as a trope ofracial origins. Though these cultural achievements are often significant and provocative , they do notbythemselves promise a racial or cultural politics that can deliver the political vision, economic rehabilitation, moral renewal, and socialreconstruction thatthe Black communityso desperately needs. Nordoes iteffectivelyaddressthosewho arethe most desperate: The Black poor, mostly women and children,whosuffera silentdeath bysuffocation in the decayofourinner cities. JUJ,Y/ AUGUST 1991IVOLUMK6, NUMBER. 4 UniversityTruths byArnoldEisen H ow EASY, HOW CRUEL, and how utterly stupid to lump thousands of years oftexts-Jewish, Christian, Islamic , and secular-in a rubble on which one scrawls the obscene label "dead white males." The image smacks to me of the crematorium. It shows no respect whatever for human dignity-ofthe individual or ofthe group. It holds up the finger to me, a one-day-to-be-dead white male, and announces that my irrelevance has INTERVIEW WITH Peter Gabel ByJo Ellen Green Kaiser TIKKUN:You were criticallyimportantto the founding ofTikkun magazine. How didyou getinvolved with Tikkun's beginnings? PETER:Michael [Lerner] and I met in 1975 at the Wright Institute. I was a lawprofessor goingbackto get a Ph.D. inpsychotherapy, alienatedbythe traditional natureoflaw atthattime, particularlyits emphasis on rule manipulation anddetached analytical thinking. Myinterest was inthe heartandsoul. I hopedthatdimensionofexistence would be illuminatedby psychology. Actually, in partbecause ofTikkun, we've been able to develop an approachto lawand legal culture that emphasizes thehealingcapabilityoflaw in helpinghumanbeingsto create a better world andtowork through conflict in a waythatfosters mutual understanding . But, stickingwith the story, Michael was going back to get a second Ph.D. in psychology. I guess he felt aboutphilosophy-hewas a philosophyprofessor atthattime- as I felt aboutlaw. Whatanimated both ofus was thatwewere social activists shapedbythe movements ofthe 1960s,andwe wantedto connect theinner and outer dimensions ofreality in a deep way. Itwasthe time oftheVietnam war, and therewere two prevailingways ofunderstandingthings ifyou were critical ofAmerican society and the inhumanity ofwar and thereality ofinjusticebased on class, race, gender, and sexual orientation.One waywas through the economicsystem, throughMarxism, with its focus on externalities-the external inequalityofthe classes andthe economicmotivations underlyingimperialism and nationalistexpansion.The other wayto understandthe world focused on the internal aspect ofhuman beings, on psychology and thewaythat 22 TIKKUN WWW. TIKKUN .ORG NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006 ...