Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era” (Columbia UP, 2008)

New Books in African American Studies · Aug 4, 2011 · 1h 27m

In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Baker makes the argument that many contemporary black public intellectuals, otherwise known as African American “academostars,” are self-serving individuals who distort the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and belie the overall aims of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. He calls out five main figures: Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and even Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson. Betrayal has been described…