Only Connect ...

Year 2014, Issue: 39, 1 - 4, 01.04.2014

Laurence Raw

Abstract

It seems that the inability of individuals from different interest groups to connect with one another remains as problematic as ever. Only recently I encountered a biography of the African American singer Paul Robeson, which depicts the struggles he experienced during the early Fifties, when he was denounced as a communist and a subversive for daring to preach the cause of civil rights, while expressing admiration for the way in which social issues were handled in the Soviet Union. However much Robeson preached the importance of “the oneness of mankind […] the likenesses – the common human spirit that we see in the various people’s songs” Goodman 47 , he was considered a “political meddler” – someone who had no right to intervene in affairs that did not concern him 77 . The State Department “did not like his peacemongering or his support for the international struggle against colonialism” 82 . Dismissed as “a black nationalist,” he was considered a potentially subversive person, dedicated to forging a new world order in which “black men will overwhelm the whites whom he [Robeson] sees as the blind purveyors of shame and misery” 117 . Thus it was hardly surprising that he had his passport withdrawn for most of the Fifties; to let him sing abroad was considered politically damaging. No attempt was made either to understand him, or the true nature of his desire for social equality.

References

• “E. M. Forster: English Academic, Critic, and Novelist.” British Humanist Association, 2014. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
• Goodman, Jordan. Paul Robeson: A Watched Man, London and New York: Verso, 2013. Print.
• Kynaston, David, and George Kynaston. “Education’s Berlin Wall: The Private Schools Conundrum.” New Statesman 31 Jan. – 6. Feb. 2014: 23-29. Print.