Dr. Farah Griffin demands more from so-called ‘black intellectuals’

Dr. Farah Griffin is an author, scholar, activist and artist. The Harvard graduate is professor of English and comparative literature and African-American studies at Columbia University, and she has published a wide range of literary works, including If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing and many more. Dr. Griffin is an intellectual who understands why intellect isn’t enough in the ongoing fight for the elevation of the African American community, but it is a necessary component of galvanizing and communicating the specifics of that struggle. More important, Dr. Griffin believes that those who call themselves “intellectuals” bear a responsibility to be just that.

“What we have is an encouragement of a kind of reactionary response, a kind of immediacy that discourages what intellectuals are supposed to do,” Dr. Griffin explains. “We are supposed to think. We are supposed to reflect. We are supposed to read and re-read. Just because you read it five years ago doesn’t mean you still understand it. You have to read it again.”

Dr. Griffin participated in a panel called Black Intellectuals In Contemporary America at the National Action Network Conference in New York City. She had strong words for those who don’t put in the time and effort to be informed about issues that they address.

“There’s a lack of integrity when we present ourselves as people who have some knowledge to share but we aren’t doing the work to acquire that knowledge,” she stated. “The path of the intellectual is not supposed to be a [path] to money. That’s not why you do this. It’s not a glamorous path. It’s hard work every day. I think we have to respect the work that it takes, just like we respect the jazz musician who improvises in a moment of inspiration; but we know that he’s been practicing every day in order to do that. So that when those crisis are coming, we are prepared. We have the proper tools in our toolkit, the proper weapons in our arsenal. That we have them at our beck and call when we need them.

“We have to speak the truth to power, but you have to know what the truth is. And we have to have some kind of integrity as we do it. Whether we see ourselves as critics of whoever is in power, be they black or white, or whether we see ourselves as an advocate of that person; it is not [good] when the state — no matter who is in power — is comfortable with you. Intellectuals are supposed to make them uncomfortable. Why do you think when there are revolutions, the first people they come after are the intellectuals? If they aren’t a little on edge, a little uncomfortable, then we aren’t doing what we’re supposed to do.”