This week, Michael Eric Dyson published a highly critical essay about Cornel West in The New Republic. The piece has generated much debate on social networks, with some bemoaning how the feud represents the search for fame and power that typified the rise of the “black public intellectual” in the 1990s, while others see Dyson’s essay as a typical example of how liberalism evades politics by making everything personal. The last response in particular was interesting to me, for as I read Dyson’s essay, what came to my mind was not how Dyson was trying to separate the political and Read more