Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question

Notes

notes Preface 1. arendt protests the label “philosopher” in her 1964 interview with günter gaus: “i do not belong to the circle of philosophers. My profession . . . is political theory. i neither feel like a philosopher, nor do i believe that i have been accepted in the circle of philosophers” (EU 1). in the same conversation she claims that there is a tension between philosophy (man as a thinking being) and politics (man as an acting being), so much so that philosophy has enmity toward politics. arendt rejects this enmity and states, “i want to look at politics, so to speak, with eyes unclouded by philosophy” (2). 2. alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (new York: Harcourt Brace, 1983), 13 (emphasis in original). also cited by Patricia Hill-Collins in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (new York: routledge, 1990), 13. introduction 1. richard Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, Ma: Mit Press, 1996), 10 (hereafer, HAJQ). For a thoughtful review of Bernstein’s book, see robert Bernasconi, “richard Bernstein: Hannah arendt’s alleged evasion of the Question of Jewish identity,” Continental Philosophy Review 32(4) (october 1999):472–478. 2. HAJQ xi. see also JW. 3. see Jacob toury, “‘The Jewish Question’—a semantic approach,” Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute, Year Book 11 (1966):85–106. toury locates the phrase in the mid-eighteenth century with reference to a pamphlet, Reply to the Famous Jewish Question, published in London in 1754. see also Charles Zueblin, “ethics of the Jewish Question,” International Journal of Ethics 2(4) (July 1892):462–475. With all of its problematic claims, this article offers an interesting example of the ways in which the Jewish question was thought about alongside race problems, race mixing, and intermarriage in the united states in the late eighteenth century. Zueblin claims, “in studying the growth of this people [Jewish people], we may learn not only our duty toward them but also the solution of the many race problems now confronting the american people” (462). He later declares, “We must recognize our duty to the Jew for the altruistic reason that we should aid the oppressed, and for the egoistic reason that the solution of this problem will enable us to solve the greatest question before our nation—the assimilation of the races. We must see the Jew as an opportunity” (474–475). 4. see derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (new York: Basic, 1993). i use “colonialism/imperialism” here because arendt calls imperialism what others (like Jean-Paul sartre, aimé Césaire, and Frantz Fanon) refer to as colonialism. i have in mind the invasion of lands, enslavement of persons, and exploitation of resources by europeans (and “americans”) under the guise of discovery and civilization missions. 5. The importance of the negro question compared to and contrasted with the Jewish question is readily apparent in The Origins of Totalitarianism, but implicit in essays like “reflections 131 132 | Notes to Pages 2–4 on Little rock.” The question also looms in arendt’s interviews, personal correspondence, and political writings, such as On Revolution and On Violence. 6. at the end of Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (new York: schocken, 1995), sartre states: “richard Wright, the negro writer, said recently: ‘There is no negro problem in the united states, there is only a White Problem.’ in the same way we must say that anti-semitism is not a Jewish problem; it is our problem” (152). 7. gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (new York: Harper, 1944), 669 (my emphasis). 8. alfred schutz, “equality and the Meaning of the structure of the World,” in his Collected Papers, vol. 2 (The Hague: Martinus nijhoff, 1964). 9. see Hazel rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times (new York: Holt, 2001), 326. dorothy norman was the founder and editor of Twice a Year: A Semi-Annual Journal of Literature, the Arts and Civil Liberties. she was also known for her poetry, photography, and activism. 10. James Baldwin, “Letter from a region in My Mind,” New Yorker (november 17, 1962):59– 144, reprinted in The Fire Next Time (new York: Vintage international, 1963) (hereafer, LrM and FNT). There is an article titled “nation: The root of the negro Problem” in Time magazine (May 17, 1963) on Baldwin, his role as a reluctant negro leader, and the so...