History vs. Polemic

...In fact, the overwhelming majority would appear to agree with Draper that "the totalitarian potential in the black nationalist movement threatens all democratic-minded blacks, whose role in this struggle [for justice] is peculiarly difficult and thankless...

...Most blacks recognize that the demand for "community control" is ultimately a demand by one faction for control of the entire community, and that nationalist factions are as likely to fight among themselves for dominance as they are to fight against integrationists...

...Arnold Schuchter is one of these liberals, and his book...

...The coexistence of separatist and integrationist feelings among their leaders has been reflected in the various nationalist movements...

...Liberals who would out-black the blacks are in many ways the modern-day counterparts of last century's white proponents of colonization...

...Reparations, demonstrates that the fascination blackness holds for many whites is merely indicative of their extreme self-hate...

...Significantly, the different poll results I have seen indicate that no more than 15 per cent of the Negro community (and often a good deal less) has identified with nationalist goals...

...blacks resisted it vigorously at the time, demanding their freedom and equality in the land of their birth...

...The sole criticism he offers of James Forman's Black Manifesto is that it strikingly omits "a demand for resources to organize a political revolution designed to reverse the black man's life chances in American society...

...it is impotent in the fight for a redress of grievances in America...

...It is Schuchter's profound, though not profoundly expressed, hope that "blacks can turn the tables on big white daddy...

...We arc thus very fortunate to have Theodore Draper's newest book, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism...

...And these liberals, for their own part, take a certain perverse pleasure in being castigated by blacks...

...Unlike the anticolonial struggles of Asian, African and Latin American peoples, where nationhood has been an irresistible and realistic goal, black nationalism—for all its militancy—actually represents a withdrawal from political, action...

...Gayle not only shields himself from self-criticism, but also wards off criticism by whites...

...In this sense, he is no less racist than those who regard blackness as an elemental force that will destroy whites...

...Draper observes that Malcolm left his own best epitaph: "My whole life has been a chronology of?changes...

...Seen in the context of the preceding quote, this statement reveals why he is incapable of confronting, let alone resolving, the inconsistencies undermining his position...

...Although many of Malcolm's followers have used his phrase "by any means necessary" as a rallying cry for violent revolution, his position was far too sophisticated and complex to be encapsulated in a slogan...

...Reparations?The Black Manifesto and Its Challenge to White America By Arnold Schuchter Lippincott...

...To be sure, it is a protest against racial injustice, and its very existence constitutes a severe indictment of the United States...

...Most people, for example, think black separatism is entirely without precedent, yet the precedents date back over a century...

...His problem is that he has a schizophrenic conception of blacks...

...Black nationalism has not addressed itself to this problem, and herein lies its futility...

...is a black skin...

...At one point he says to his father, "I will not try to educate them...

...One passage is particularly revealing...

...For those who regard it literally, it is the assertion that black Americans constitute an individual nation...

...This, of course, implies a territorial base, and there have been several proposals for the establishment of a Negro state in Africa or on territories that arc now part of the United States...

...The contradictory nature of black nationalism is dramatically illustrated in the lives of some of its major proponents...

...Reviewed by Carl Gershman Research Director, A. Philip Randolph Institute Black nationalism, despite all the intellectual energies expended on its explication, remains one ot the most misunderstood phenomena of American life...

...The coming of blackness, he continues, "is a prophetic indictment of whiteness as a state of mind and an instrument of oppression...

...Schuchter never thinks of criticizing the Black Manifesto from the pragmatic point of view that it has precipitated a conservative reaction within the Protestant church and consequently has been counterproductive...

...In any examination of the black situation, he writes, "the necessary qualification for participation...

...Aside from the moral problems this Jim Crow position raises, it bespeaks a deep intellectual insecurity...

...In addition to providing us with an excellent history, he probes the ambiguities and antinomies that have marked every black nationalist mode...

...The reluctance of black nationalists to deal forthrightly with the issue of democracy is clearly evidenced in Addison Gayle Jr.'s The Black Situation...

...Of course, not all of the enlightened commentary by whites will be enlightening...

...Negroes,' some negro leader (probably Wilkins or Young) has remarked, 'are conservative on everything but the race issue.' This is an understatement...

...The Black Studies movement, Draper shows, has offered young blacks a "surrogate sovereignty," yet at the same time it is a "subsidized sovereignty," since its members "demand all the trappings of 'self-determination' except the ability to pay for themselves...

...I will go to them, not to teach, but to learn—to learn things that no white God could ever teach me...

...In both cases the individuality of black people is subordinated to their race...

...Blackness seems to represent for Schuchter an elemental force that can save corrupt whites...

...Martin Delaney, often referred to as the father of black nationalism, devoted the major part of his career to the struggle for equality in America, going so far as to incur the wrath of South Carolina's black Reconstruc-tionists by supporting the gubernatorial campaign of Wade Hampton, a Democratic white moderate...

...The Muslims, for instance, have called for a separate state, either in the United States or elsewhere...

...Yet these are the same people he criticizes elsewhere for following moderate black leaders who address their appeals only to white America...

...The Black Panthers have tried to balance their strong separatist tendencies with a "socialist" analysis but, according to Draper, this has opened them up to attacks on two sides, "from those who want a black nationalism not dependent for its ultimate success on a white social revolution, and those who want a social revolution untainted by black nationalism...

...Marcus Garvey, the militant leader of the "Back to Africa" movement in the 1920s, never even visited Africa...

...Draper's analyses are especially potent because he resists abstract theoretical formulations, instead allowing the intrinsic contradictions of separatism to emerge from his examinations of concrete situations...

...Draper rightly identifies it as an escape from the fundamental problem of eliminating racial injustice from American society...

...Draper's chapters on the Panthers and Black Studies are the most thorough and penetrating accounts of these groups to date...

...Were Gayle confident of his ideas, he would not resort to protective racial walls to block out potentially critical positions...

...Jefferson and Lincoln were among the eminent Americans who proffered the notion of a "return" to Africa...

...The vital question that gets lost in this sadomasochistic symbiosis is how a majority of the American people can be mobilized to support programs that will eliminate the injustices which produced black nationalism in the first place...

...The majority of them, even those in the Watts' [sic] and Harlems of America, are racial conservatives as well, aspiring more to become middle-class misfits than healthy, human beings...

...Indeed, while criticizing Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man for being "irrelevant" (since it is not "art for people's sake"), Gayle sets down the dictum that "the black writer can never accept elitism, or a barrier which separates him from other black men...

...Perhaps they will teach me to make fire-bombs, and give me the strength and courage to throw them at the nearest slum building...

...Martin Luther King reached far more negroes than Malcolm X, not because King's philosophy is sounder—safer maybe, but not sounder—but because King appealed to the dominant desire of the majority of negroes to be good niggers as opposed to bad niggers, conformists as opposed to individuals, bourgeois as opposed to proletariat...

...A revolution, therefore, should be subsidized by those whom it seeks to overthrow...

...Colonization, one of the early forms of black nationalism, was not even a black idea...

...Gayle, a young intellectual who has gained some prominence in the separatist movement, aims at "perpetuating those differences between Blacks and Whites which mandate two separate societies...

...Gayle and other nationalists depend upon the receptive audience they have in liberals like Schuchter...

...His belief in racial purity allowed for good relations with the Ku Klux Klan, and his attraction to the principle of black self-help made him an admirer of Booker T. Washington, hardly a separatist...

...He is only distressed that white churchmen who condemn racism "hypocritically" fail to take the next step of adopting the strategy that would eliminate it, namely, Foreman's idea of a revolutionary seizure of power by "an armed, well-disciplined, black-controlled government...

...The frustrating history of black nationalism is pervaded with an element of pathos, for its doctrine is not a product of hope but rather has sustained itself on despair and defeat...

...6.95...

...But Elijah Muhammad declares in his Program and Position: "As long as we are not allowed to establish a state or territory of our own, we demand not only equal justice under the laws of the United States but equal employment opportunities?NOW...

...they will educate me...

...Schuchter's position is as flippant as it is odious...

...280 pp...

...The change that took place in the thinking of Malcolm X toward the end of his life is now well known...

...But separatism can never proceed beyond repudiation...

...Black power is moral power," Schuchter writes, "and the coming of blackness is the conscious development of black moral power as an ideological weapon against the imperfections in the American value system...

...Draper points out that it was "a white man's fantasy for Negroes...

...It is unlikely that Gayle has ever stopped to analyze his extraordinarily elitist assumptions about "the people...

...Renouncing his belief that all whites are guilty of oppression, he also acknowledged the importance of political action?as long as it's intelligently directed and designed to get results...

...As Draper notes, Delaney "represented [racial] reconciliation far more than emigration...

...For others, black nationalism is a mood of pride and independence that has lately found powerful political and cultural expression, from separatist demands and antiwhite rhetoric to "Afro" fashions and a new interest in black history...

...The confusion caused by the many forms of black nationalism has been further complicated by the characteristically American failure to view issues from a historical perspective...

...What are we to make of this...