White Man, Listen! By Richard Wright 46 ratings, 3.85 average rating, 6 reviews Quotes Showing 1-2 of 2 “Hence, there is no such thing as an absolute objectivity of attitude. By Richard Wright, from Wliite Man Listen! Copyright© 1957 by Richard Wright. Used by permission of John Hawkins & Associates, Inc., and the Estate ofRichardWright. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Chris Calhoun Agency: Excerpt from 'Ka' Ba' by Amiri Baraka, copyright©. White man, listen! Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. White man, listen! By Wright, Richard, 1908-1960. Publication date 1995 Topics Black race.

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White Man, Listen! By Wright, Richard. HarperCollins Publishers. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside.

by Ralph Dumain

Richard Wright's White Man, Listen! had more or less disappeared for decades from theAmerican scene since it originally appeared in the repressive 1950s. However, after thumbingthrough the book and stumbling upon certain passages at random, I am once again in awe of thecentrality of Richard Wright's intellectual role in the 20th century. It appears that Wright is onceagain the missing link to issues I've been concerned about but have not been generally faced. And I doubt very much that the new introduction by Cedric Robinson does justice to what is mostexciting and innovative about the book, i.e. that Wright has set himself up as the mediator bywhich the non-western world can see itself clear to entering modernity on an equal basis with theWest!

When you read this book by Wright, which I believe follows Pagan Spain chronologically,you will realize how useless academia has been in bringing us the message of what Wright was allabout, even now that it has rehabilitated his neglected oeuvre of the 1950s. Wright dedicates thebook to Eric Williams and the tragic elites of the colonized world who stood at a historicalcrossroads. Wright is a mediator primarily in a philosophical sense. In my short essay on individual identity (see first link at bottom of page), I asked how history's victims can place themselves in a historical progression that negates their traditional world-views. This is precisely the task that Wright set himself, as an advocate of modernism serving to mediate philosophically the process of decolonization and the appropriation of modernist values by history's victims. Wright sees the contradictions between the West's own savagery and the rationalist values that it engendered, and the paradox of the basis on which the semi-savage Europeans conquered the non-western world. As a modern, secular man who was also by virtue of his race excluded by the western world, Wright understood the paradoxes very well, and so understood the need of colonized peoples to fight their way out of subjugation as well as appropriate the best values of the modern West. The inhabitants of the non-western world, being as human as anyone, can also be understood in their behavior, contrary to the usual racialist thinking of the West, as admixtures of rational and irrational thought, and so the curious spectacles of irrational beliefs and practices getting mixed up with modern tendencies should not shock westerners, given the West's own history of savagery and superstition.

In the 1950s, Wright knew what he was dealing with, and there must have been those outside of the USA at least who knew what he was talking about. Isn't it curious, then, that a decade later, in the anti-western, anti-imperialist climate of the late 1960s, also coterminous with the Black Power movement, the ideologues of the time should have so totally neglected Wright's philosophical position even where it preserved the memory of his contributions on other fronts? Now Wright is resurrected in the ideological climate of postmodernism, which his philosophicalposition explicitly contradicts. One can predict what uses the liberal academic intellectuals willmake of him--the postcolonialists, the feminists, all the usual suspects. An intensive examinationof Wright will show up how useless they all are.

Note the chapter titles: The Psychological Reactions of Oppressed People, Tradition andIndustrialization, The Literature of the Negro in the United States, The Miracle of Nationalism inthe African Gold Coast. The chapter on African-American literature is very interesting in its ownright. Once again, Wright begins this book with a quote from William Blake (as well as one fromDylan Thomas).

The following gem of a quote reveals the philosophical difference that rendered the Black Powermovement incapable of absorbing the totality of Wright's perspective:

I feel constrained, however, to ask the reader to consider and remember mybackground. I'm a rootless man, but I'm neither psychologically distraught nor in anywise particularly perturbed because of it. Personally, I do not hankerafter, and seem not to need, as many emotional attachments, sustainingroots, or idealistic allegiances as most people. I declare unabashedlythat I like and even cherish the state of abandonment, of aloneness; itdoes not bother me; indeed, to me it seems the natural, inevitablecondition of man, and I welcome it. Nokia n72 themes free download. I can make myself at home almostanywhere on this earth and can, if I've a mind to and when I'm attracted toa landscape or a mood of life, easily sink myself into the most alien andwidely differing environments.

The prevalent mentality of the 1960s could not accept this rootless cosmopolitanism. This is theheart of the matter, but the paragraph continues:

I must confess that this is no personal achievement of mine; this attitude wasnever striven for. . . . [ellipsis is in original, unabridged text] I've been shaped to this mental stanceby the kind of experiences that I have fallen heir to. I say this neither in atone of apology nor to persuade the reader in my ideological direction, butto give him a hinting clue as to why certain ideas and values appeal to me more than others, andwhy certain perspectives are stressed in these speeches.

Recently a young woman asked me: 'But would your ideas make people happy?'And, before I was aware of what I was saying, I heard myself answering witha degree of frankness that I rarely, in deference to politeness, permitmyself in personal conversation: 'My dear, I do not deal in happiness; Ideal in meaning.'

— Richard Wright (in Paris). White Man, Listen! New York: HarperPerennial 1995. (Originally published 1957.) Quote from pp. xxviii-xxix.

(10 November 1999, edited and uploaded 28 June 2000)

Richard Wright Study Guide
(includes following links & more)

Lest We Forget—The Hidden History of the African-American Autodidact:
A Belated Tribute to Black History Month

CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 28 June 2000

About This Item

Doubleday & Co., 1957. Stated first edition. Black cloth, red/white titles. A book-length essay in which Wright tackles some of the racial attitudes that have become part of our culture. Book very good with overall aging, top edge soil. DJ very good with some loss at heel of spine, one or two short tears. 190 pp. 1st Edition.

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Details

Bookseller: citynightsbooks (US)
Bookseller Inventory #: 15342
Title: White Man Listen!
Author: Wright, Richard
Book condition: Used
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday

White Man Listen Richard Wright