We Are Not What We Seem

Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century

Roderick D. Bush

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780814771464
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Nationalismus & Patriotismus

An "Indispensable" Book of The Black World Today website

Much has been written about the Black Power movement in the United States. Most of this work, however, tends to focus on the personalities of the movement. In We Are Not What We Seem, Roderick D. Bush takes a fresh look at Black Power and other African American social movements with a specific emphasis on the role of the urban poor in the struggle for Black rights.

Bush traces the trajectory of African American social movements from the time Booker T. Washington to the present, providing an integrated discussion of class. He addresses questions crucial to any understanding of Black politics: Is the Black Power movement simply another version of the traditional American ethnic politics, or does it have wider social import? What role has the federal government played in implicitly grooming social conservatives like Louis Farrakhan to assume leadership positions as opposed to leftist, grassroots, class-oriented leaders? Bush avoids the traditional liberal and social democratic approaches in favor of a more universalistic perspective that offers new insights into the history of Black movements in the U.S.

1
The Contemporary Crisis

The time is past when the white world can exercise unilateral authority and control over the dark world. The independence and power of the dark world is on the increase; the dark world is rising in wealth, power, prestige, and influence. It is the rise of the dark world that is causing the fall of the white world.

As the white man loses his power to oppress and exploit the dark world, the white man’s own wealth (power or “world”) decreases. . . .

You and I were born at this turning point in history; we are witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy. Our present generation is witnessing the end of colonialism, Europeanism, Westernism, or “White-ism” . . . the end of white supremacy, the end of the evil white man’s unjust rule.

—Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy

They say there is no hope for the youth, but what they mean is there is no hope for the future.

—Tupac Shakur, “Keep Ya Head Up”

There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved. How humiliating.

—Jesse Jackson

Malcolm’s words above reflect the utter optimism of the spirit of Bandung, symbolizing the revolt of the third world against white, Western, colonial domination. Yet a mere thirty years later Tupac Shakur’s statement seems to summarize the desperation of our own times. Tupac’s lament seems to be a stark reversal of Malcolm’s hope. Yet appearances are not always what they seem. In this case the apparent reversal of hope for Black people and other subjugated peoples is the most misleading signpost of the current era. We are in the midst of a fundamental transformation of our world, but we must beware of hasty generalizations overwhelmed by the pessimism of the moment. The reality is more complex. Malcolm, Tupac, and Jesse all capture a certain reality. We need to look beneath the surface appearance to understand the true relationship between Malcolm’s hope and Tupac’s lament.

We should note that the medium through which Tupac’s sentiments are expressed is almost as significant as the sentiment itself. Tupac Shakur, son of a former member of the Black Panther Party, speaks through rap music, a cultural form that Frank Owen deemed a “brutal form of musical reportage about life in the inner city free-fire zone, a chilling reflection of the boiling rage and loss of hope felt by young, disenfranchised blacks.”¹ Indeed there is much discussion about the loss of hope among Black youth. The popular Black public intellectual Cornel West decries a new nihilism among Black youth.² While Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign urged that our most important task is to “keep hope alive,” even he now joins in this chorus, seemingly bringing us full circle.³ Representatives of the civil rights mainstream increasingly argue that a new civil rights movement in the 1990s must have at its heart the issue of “Black-on-Black” crime and violence, as if it can be understood apart from the cruel economic redundancy of many Black youth, the hateful images of Black youth in the minds, hearts, and eyes of white America, and the outright discriminatory behavior to which they are subjected. Intimidated rather than emboldened by the rightward lurch in U.S. political culture since the 1970s, the civil rights mainstream is also seeking the middle ground by increasingly expressing views that are perilously close to President Clinton’s claim that Black-on-Black crime is the nation’s number one problem, and that if Martin Luther King were alive today his focus would be on Black crime, not on the struggle for equality.

It all seems so clear now. The struggle for civil rights was clearly won in the 1960s. The next phase of the civil rights movement should have been for Black people to prepare themselves to enter the mainstream. Many have done just that. Those who still linger at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder do so because it is their own fault. Then comes the revisionist punch line: “we must have the courage to face these unpleasant truths.” Courage indeed.

In view of the “triumph of capitalism” circa 1989, revisionist history now argues, with seemingly perfect hindsight, that Malcolm’s (and others’) optimism about the spirit of Bandung was clearly misguided. Not only have the national liberation movements that aroused our optimism succumbed to the necessity of a subordinate and dependent position vis à vis Western capitalism, but the socialist states that claimed to be an alternative to capitalism have succumbed to the “magic of the market.” The triumphalism of the 1960s and 1970s has turned to dust. The vision of a just and egalitarian world order was a false hope.

According to this revisionist conception, realism demands that we admit that inequality is a natural component of a world in which people are not the same. The failure of the socialist experiments indicates that egalitarianism does not work. Economic prosperity can take place only when the most talented are rewarded for their efforts; the less talented should not be encouraged to aspire to be their equals. The moral philosophy of this new world order is the law of the jungle. Insofar as society elects to include humane considerations in its social policy deliberations, it should be understood that such considerations will inevitably promote a feeling of entitlement among the lower strata and thus should be kept to a minimum and be clearly promoted as a gift of the strong, which the weak should receive gratefully.

Notwithstanding an increasingly conservative consensus that calls for repressive and regressive measures against the poor, the disadvantaged populations are not only not grateful, they are positively incensed about continuing injustice and are collectively much stronger than they have been at any time in the past. This combination makes for political dynamite; the conservative backlash has its match in the multifaceted resistance of the oppressed. That this resistance does not take familiar forms means that we tend not to understand its depth until it materializes as it did in South Central Los Angeles.

The protagonists of 1989 in Eastern Europe were fond of pointing out that ’89 was ’68 turned upside down. The essence of this imagery is that the revolutionary events of 1968 are being reversed by the counterrevolutionary events of 1989. While 1968 might be viewed as a worldwide revolt against U.S. and Western hegemony in the world, 1989 is seen as an affirmation of the values and practices of the capitalist West. I will argue here that this imagery is a misperception of reality, but we should note that the same imagery can be applied to domestic affairs in the United States. I hold that 1989 in the United States is a continuation of 1968, as indeed it was on a world scale. The revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s is the reality of the 1990s.⁴

The systems of power that were relatively entrenched and secure in the 1960s, and that proved their security with the largess with which they responded to some of the demands of the insurgents, are much less strong in the 1990s. The mature global liberalism of a hegemonic world power has given way to a mean-spirited conservatism on one hand and a Janus-faced neoliberalism on the other. Neoliberalism as a political philosophy is indeed a sign of our times. It is a confusing brew in which politicians seek to act liberal while looking conservative or act conservative while looking liberal, playing to different audiences, as most politicians are wont to do in our political culture. Yet neither approach represents anything more than a holding pattern, incapable of solving the fundamental problems of racism, social polarization, and economic decline on the one hand, and an impending collapse of civil society on the other. We are now entering a time of difficulties that will be as frightening for some as it will be potentially liberating for others. Some of the oppressed possess a fighting spirit and an open disregard for the civilization and system that have demonized them—an attitude that the activists of the 1960s only hoped would come to exist among the masses. As Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein argue, 1968 was just a rehearsal.⁵

What then is the time of troubles to which I refer? There is widespread concern about violent crime, racial violence, religious violence, and what some feel to be a veritable culture of violence that is wracking the cities of the United States. At the same time the polarization of wealth and income proceeds apace. The crimes of the powerful who are deeply implicated in this state of affairs are often dutifully reported but seem to incite very little media fanfare, except as spectacle (witness the lack of an effective outcry regarding the savings and loan debacle as compared to the public furor about violent imagery in rap music). Moreover, homelessness, joblessness, underemployment, and a veritable war against the poor are the economic essence of our time. It seems clear that the long-festering contradictions of our historical system (of race, class, and poverty; of imperialism and war; of social polarization and economic underdevelopment) are undoing the moorings of our civil society.

This should not surprise us. The concept of contradiction as used here implies that certain practices simultaneously represent the ongoing evolution of a given entity and the transformation of that entity. The extent to which any entity evolves in a systemic manner is definitive of that entity. This consistency over time reaffirms the entity’s essential nature. But everything also changes over time, and therefore is in a process of transformation. Thus our historical system is stronger than ever by its own light, but this very strength is undermining the foundations of the system. A simple example is the extent to which the increasing mechanization of production is creating massive joblessness.

This is not unique to the particular time during which I sit down to write these words (winter 1997–98). I am not speaking here in terms of what Fernand Braudel calls the time frame of the event.⁶ Indeed, the events that could be presented as evidence of a societal (and global) crisis are regularly and dizzyingly evident. The events multiply as we speak—in fact much faster than we can speak: the uprising in South Central Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict; the conflagration between Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (involving the accidental killing of seven-year-old Gavin Cato and the [suspected] revenge murder of Yankel Rosenbaum); the murder of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens; the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn; Colin Ferguson’s attempt to gain retribution against white society by gunning down suburbanite commuters on the Long Island Railroad; the assassinations of rap artists Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G; widespread concern about the popularity of Louis Farrakhan and his controversial (former) lieutenant Khallid Abdul Muhammad (who came to widespread public awareness as a consequence of remarks made at Kean College);⁷ the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; Baruch Goldstein’s rampage against Palestinians as they prayed, the revenge shooting of Hasidic youth on the Brooklyn Bridge, allegedly by a Lebanon national; the appearance of one million Black men in the streets of the nation’s capital at Farrakhan’s call; and the appearance of more that one million Black women in the streets of Philadelphia. The list is endless.

I do not deny the significance of any of these events, but our most pressing imperative is to look at their meaning and understand to what extent they are signposts of an impending sea change in the political culture of the United States and the modern world.

I intend to argue that the trajectory of African American social movements throughout U.S. history certainly has had some bearing on our current state of affairs, but not in isolation from other factors. That is why it is crucial to situate any review of African American social movements in the context of the larger social world. We need to know the story of the African American freedom struggle, but we will also benefit from understanding it against the backdrop of the ongoing centralization of capital and polarization of wealth, and the crisis of legitimacy of the states in the capitalist world-economy. In this context the practice of the social movements will largely determine how we negotiate this societal or civilizational crisis.

Thus the history of African American social movements is consequential not so much because of the victory of the civil rights movement, but because of its impact on the overall balance of power between the dominant and subordinate groups both in the United States and on a world scale. Some movements that have been failures organizationally and institutionally have been of enormous import for world rapports de force. The revolution of 1848 spread throughout large parts of Europe but was decisively defeated in country after country for the most part within the year. But the Manifesto of the Communist Party was a product of this revolutionary period, and most subsequent revolutions have carried forward the tradition and lessons of 1848. I will argue that the world revolution of 1968 had much the same impact. As George Lipsitz argues, failures in the war of maneuver (the holding of state and other institutional power, control over resources, etc.) do not necessarily mean a failure in the war of position (the struggle for hegemony). Bourgeois hegemony is inherently unstable. The struggles of the oppressed result inevitably in the accumulation of sensibilities that we call a culture of opposition, which survives any individual episode of struggle.⁸ At the same time as this culture of opposition builds and deepens among the oppressed, there occurs an evolution or devolution of the capitalist world-economy, ultimately presaging a denouement that substantially strengthens the ability of subordinate strata to contest their domination by the ruling elite. It is therefore important that we do not consider our contemporary crisis merely or primarily a cyclical downturn in the economy. Although the cyclical downturn has been a crucial aspect of the world-economy since the early 1970s, we cannot understand what is happening if we do not also consider the consequent restructuring of production processes and thus of labor markets and labor forces the world over, and the ongoing broadening and deepening of the capitalist process in our society and in the world. It is precisely the broadening and deepening of the capitalist process and not its weakening that sharpens the contradictions of the system and will create the social conditions that will make fundamental social transformation possible.

Although an understanding of the social, economic, and political processes is essential for the telling of our story, this will not be the focus of the story I will seek to tell. It is, however, the crucial framework, the only means by which we can truly grasp the dynamics of the struggle of the African American people for peace, justice, and equality.

There is and has been great consensus regarding the radical democratic nature of the American experiment. It was in the United States that classical liberalism was to achieve its full unfolding. Classical liberalism held that the good of all would best be served if each individual were left as free as possible to pursue their own ends.⁹ Classical liberalism came to be so widely identified with the United States that few contested the notion that the United States was indeed the land of opportunity. Yet the claim that the United States is the land of the free and the home of the brave did not apply to all of America’s population. For all of the partially justified pride in the greatness and the glories of the United States and the achievements of its civilization, there are few who would dispute that the sorry history of racial injustice, particularly toward Black people, has been the Achilles heel of U.S. democracy.

Nevertheless, there was a period in the late 1970s when there seemed to be an emerging consensus in the middle part of the political spectrum, encompassing most of the Right and the moderate Left as well, which argued that for the most part the civil rights movement had abolished racial discrimination. Henceforth the residue of social inequality as it affected Blacks and other racially subordinate groups was due to other more impersonal “economic” or “cultural” factors. Thus the system worked; equality for all was now guaranteed, except for those who were not prepared to take advantage of it. This was canonized in the late 1970s not by the conservatives, but by a bona fide social democrat, William Julius Wilson, in his award-winning book The Declining Significance of Race.¹⁰

From the mid-1980s with the rise of racist violence—especially in New York City, the bastion of liberalism—the wide consensus about the “declining significance of race” notion collapsed. On the contrary, there was now abundant and clear evidence that racism is stronger than ever. At the very moment of the presumed triumph of capitalism over any competing mode of organization of society (communism, socialism, and national liberation), race remains the most divisive issue in the United States. One might argue that the specter of an intractable, hostile underclass composed mostly of people of color has become the new threat to American society.

Following George Bush and Dan Quayle, President Clinton (in his November 13, 1993, speech at the convention of the all-Black Church of God in Christ in Memphis) has declared that the most significant problem of our time is the lack of morals and values among the African American poor. The liberal Washington Post and the neoconservative Commentary declared this to be the most important speech of Clinton’s presidency. The consensus across the political spectrum of the defenders of the status quo can be matched only by the lack of consensus about what is to be done among that significant portion of the U.S. population who truly believe in freedom and justice f...