Diverse: What led you as a literary scholar to write Betrayal?

HB: The motivation was, as interesting as it may seem now more than 20 years down the line, the culture wars that were launched by neoconservatives and the think tanks that support their point of view in the United States back in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. We had a number of people like Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, and Allan Bloom suggesting that the movement of knowledge of African-American studies, Black studies, women studies, Chicano and Chicana, Asian American, feminist studies — that all of these additions to the university curriculum were polluting Western civilization, bringing knowledge to its knees, and was being offered up only in the name of political correctness.

          So, I first thought that I should answer to the best of my ability what is being said by these predominantly, almost all to a man or woman, White scholars. Then I realized a curious thing. Among these scholars were (African-American) scholars like Shelby Steele and Stephen Carter. And I thought, ‘Wow, they’ve joined the neoconservative attack.’

So I put the plans on hold to write a book in response to works like Illiberal Education and Tenured Radicals. And I began reading the works, particularly of neoconservative Black scholars. As I read that work, I realized that they were certainly in company, in harmony — and often paid in think tanks by neoconservatism. I also began to notice something else — that there were other scholars who had at one point devoted most of their time, talent, treasure (and) intellect to very, very serious scholarly work in African-American literary, cultural, philosophical, and political science matters, and suddenly there were no books like the ones that had come earlier from these scholars. We were getting quick sellers and they weren’t supported (by evidence) and they didn’t seem very scholarly — almost on the order of pamphlets.