among some African A mericans. Washington, who wrote simply and directly, spinning out profundity from quot id i a n t h re ads i n work i ng l ives, cre ated an oasis of rationality in Tuskegee, where outside irrationality reigned. (Naipaul mentions Louis Harlan’s biography approvingly, but omits the less appealing dimensions of Washington’s political wizardry.) Washington died early, and his “achievement, Naipaul admits, “was great” if tragic (154). DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, on the other hand dealt with “tears and rage,” offering “no program” (152). Worse, DuBois, living on past mid-century, had been seduced by Africa in the end: “facing irrationality with irrationality -he left the United States and went to live...in Ghana, a former British colony that had i n i ndependence very quickly become an African despotism” (152). It follows that Naipaul dislikes the literary “conceit” of the veil to describe segregation. Maybe he has little feeling for DuBois’ searching evocation of a rooted African American past, which was more poetics than techne; it is both biblical: Moses, in Exodus, covering his face after speaking to God; and redolent with folk idiom: a fleshy caul over the eyes at birth, an indication of mystical, extrasensory sight.
BLACK LEADERSHIP
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o wh i le Na ipau l ad m i res t he ac c ompl ish ments of African American communities over racism and segregation, he is less than sensitive to some of the complexities of black culture, and he despairs for the future of African American institutions. He’s touched o n a s et of overl appi ng rel at io n s t h at h ave lo ng dominated racial politics in the U.S. In racial thinking,
PETER KURYL A
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