Dreaming Blackness

Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion

Melanye T. Price

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780814767672
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Nationalismus & Patriotismus

Black Nationalism is one of the oldest and most enduring ideological constructs developed by African Americans to make sense of their social and political worlds. In Dreaming Blackness, Melanye T. Price explores the current understandings of Black Nationalism among African Americans, providing a balanced and critical view of today's black political agenda. She argues that Black Nationalism continues to enjoy moderate levels of support by most black citizens but has a more difficult time gaining a larger stronghold because of increasing diversity among blacks and a growing emphasis on individualism over collective struggle. She shows that black interests are a dynamic negotiation among various interested groups and suggests that those differences are not just important for the "black agenda" but also for how African Americans think and dialogue about black political questions daily.

Using a mix of everyday talk and impressive statistical data to explain contemporary black opinions, Price highlights the ways in which Black Nationalism works in a "post-racial" society. Ultimately, Price offers a multilayered portrait of African American political opinions, providing a new understanding of race specific ideological views and their impact on African Americans, persuasively illustrating that Black Nationalism is an ideology that scholars and politicians should not dismiss.

1

Reconciling Race and Nation

Black Nationalism and African American Political Opinion

Black Nationalism as an ideology is a race-centered, self-deterministic view of black politics. As Malcolm X (Shabazz 1989b [1965]) succinctly states, “The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.” In Dreaming Blackness, one is categorized as Black Nationalist based on support for four principles that buttress all support for Black Nationalism. First, all Black Nationalists support black self-determination. For them it is vital that African Americans be able to exert control over the institutions that define their world. Some Black Nationalists have asserted that this can happen only through self-governance of a black nation; others emphasize having control over community institutions with which African Americans interact daily (e.g., schools, businesses). Second, a self-determining black community is also one that has a clear plan for independence and self-sustenance by virtue of its own financial, political, and intellectual resources in the form of self-help programs. Third, there is consensus that blacks must sever any ties with whites that foster notions of black inferiority and white superiority. The impact of slavery and other forms of oppression on whites’ images of blacks and blacks’ images of themselves has resulted in an entrenched American belief in black inferiority. Hence, African Americans should be cautious of (if not totally avoid) whites. Last, there is a focus on fostering a global view of black oppression that connects African American oppression to that of people of African descent cross-nationally. This entails fostering a Pan-African identity in which the liberation of all African descendants from oppression is interdependent.

Noted scholar August Meier (1991) has argued that during Reconstruction and beyond, “the continued hostility of whites, particularly in the South, encouraged attitudes favoring separatism” (12). Meier notes that this is true for a wide cross section of African Americans, even those who were not completely sold on Black Nationalism. However, this is not to suggest that Black Nationalist ideology is inherently reactionary. Supporters of Black Nationalism simply seek to follow the edict of Ture and Hamilton (1992) for the black community “to redefine itself, set forth new values and goals, and organize around them” (32). Similarly, Karenga (1993) suggests, after arguing that Black Nationalism results from the unique historical experiences of African Americans, that “[blacks] should therefore unite in order to gain the structural capacity to define, defend and develop their interests” (334). In Rodney Carlisle’s (1975) view, “Black Nationalism opposes [and some might say exposes]¹ the myths of American life because it presumes a black nation unassimilated along side the American nation” (4).² Nationalism stresses black self-help mostly through black organizations, psychological and social disentanglement from whites, and a Pan-Africanist identity (Henderson 2000). Its development is divided into two historical periods: the classical period that stretches from the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey, and the modern era from Marcus Garvey to contemporary times. The division should not be seen as overly rigid and discrete. Rather, it represents shifts from elite-based to mass-based movements and from predominant emphasis on emigration to a more expansive view of independence.

Wilson Jeremiah Moses (1996) argues that the classical Black Nationalism period that spanned the 1800s to the 1920s emphasized and worked toward the development of a black nation-state. These efforts represented “a desire for independence and a determination to demonstrate the ability of black people to establish a republican form of government” (2). David Walker, in his famous Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, written in four parts between 1785 and 1830, offered clear expressions of a Black Nationalist ideology. In this appeal Walker initiated a call for the establishment of a black nation that would echo throughout history. Walker asserted that “our sufferings will come to an end, in spite of all Americans this side of eternity. Then we will want all the learnings and talents among ourselves, and perhaps more to govern ourselves.”³ Viewed as the ultimate practice of self-determination, some Black Nationalists have repeated Walker’s endorsement of black Zionism. Often framed in biblical allegories such as liberating the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery (Delany 1996 [1852]; 1996 [1861]), emigration efforts have frequently focused on Africa as the ancestral homeland of formerly enslaved blacks, but there have also been proposals for both resettlement in South America and the creation of a black homeland within the U.S. borders. In the “Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party,” Martin Delany outlined the needs of blacks in America and the vast resources potentially available to them on the African continent. He also noted the strong potential for alliances between returning Africans and those already residing on the continent. Beyond debates over the appropriate destination, Black Nationalists were fully in support of the goal of emigration. However, these early efforts at emigration were almost exclusively the adventurous undertakings of well-educated and well-to-do blacks who participated in various conventions. There is no evidence or even suggestion of widespread support.

Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) represent one of the most successful Black Nationalist mobilizing efforts and the first capable of making a claim of mass support from ordinary citizens. At its height from 1917 to the late 1920s, the UNIA boasted multiple chapters in more than thirty states and dozens of countries (Sewell 1990). During Garvey’s heyday, he and the UNIA were able to amass significant support for the “Back to Africa” campaign and the Black Star Line of steamships. Additionally, they “sponsored colonial expeditions to Liberia, staged annual international conventions, inspired businesses, endorsed political candidates, fostered black history and culture, and organized thousands” (Stein 1986, 1). His efforts sought the development of black nationhood and an increased African identity, simultaneously. For him, there was no debate; all black people were connected as “free citizens of Africa, the Motherland of all Negroes” (Garvey 1997 [1920], 26). So, there was no doubt about the appropriate space for relocation for blacks—the African continent.

Garvey’s mass support for Black Nationalism and African resettlement has historically gone unmatched. Smaller pushes for the establishment of a black nation have reared their heads more recently. One such effort during the Black Power era was led by an organization called the Republic of New Africa, which called for the United States to relinquish five southern (and most densely black) states and pay reparations for slavery.⁴ Other examples might also includes efforts to create what can cautiously be described as modern-day maroon communities that inhabit small self-determining and self-governing jurisdictions within the United States. For instance, for the last thirty-five years, a group has maintained the Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon, South Carolina.⁵ In their own explanation of their struggle, they link themselves and their goals directly to the work of Martin Delany and his Niger Valley Expedition. Additionally, the Shrine of the Black Madonna Pan African Orthodox Church runs a 2,700-acre farm and retreat center on the Georgia-South Carolina border that members believe will not only produce agricultural resources but also “represents an opportunity for Black People to realize GOD’s will—to live as a self-determined People of God.“⁶

For proponents of Black Nationalism, independence is a process by which blacks shed the indoctrination of black inferiority inherent in American society. Because African descendants initially arrived in the United States designated as chattel rather than fully human citizens and that legacy continued for centuries afterward, whites and some blacks see blacks as a group that should be kept in permanent servitude. In order for blacks to embrace independence, they had to rid themselves of any beliefs in white superiority and black inferiority. In 1833, Maria Stewart, though not strictly a Black Nationalist, cogently outlined the process that many Black Nationalists felt blacks had been subjected to in America. She asserted: “The unfriendly whites . . . stole our fathers from their peaceful and quiet dwellings, and brought them hither, and made bond-men and bond-women of them and their little ones; they have obliged our brethren to labor, kept them in utter ignorance, nourished them in vice, and raised them in degradation” (Stewart 1996 [1833], 98). Stewart went on to express incredulity at the fact that after everything whites had done to blacks, they were still unwilling to see blacks as fit for American citizenship and equality. Shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Martin Delany asserted that the very laws of America “stamp [blacks] with inferiority.” Further, whites had “despoiled” and “corrupted” blacks and left them “broken people.”⁷ Thus, from the early phases of Black Nationalism’s development, a major project of ideological adherents has been severing black social and psychological dependence on whites.

Though most early Black Nationalists defined this separation as possible only through emigration, activists and scholars have employed a more expansive meaning of separation to include economic and political independence within the American political context. African Americans needed to develop businesses, institutions, and organizations to sustain their community. For instance, another example of attempts to foster independent social and economic independence included the “Buy Black” campaign championed by Carlos Cooks in the 1940s and 1950s. Cooks believed this campaign would “make the black community behave like the other racial and ethnic groups. It will have blacks own and control the businesses in black neighborhoods” (Cooks 1977 [1955], 89). The economic independence principle has been lived out quite successfully by religious Black Nationalists such as the Nation of Islam and the Shrine of the Black Madonna, both of which promote the development of independent businesses to their members and have collectively, as organizations, engaged in entrepreneurial development. Black independence also includes community control of schools and other institutions that serve as socializing agents for children and adults alike. During the Black Power era, for instance, Black Panthers developed social programs—including free clinics, clothing and food drives, and free breakfast programs—as a key to recruitment and social change. Abron (1998) suggests that these programs “provide a model of community self-help” that was needed then and is still relevant today.

For Black Nationalists, self-reliance is based on more than social and economic independence. It is a broader sense of independence that allows blacks to choose any desired course for themselves, including the ability to defend themselves from white oppression through armed resistance and self-defense. This became particularly important in the Civil Rights era, when violence against blacks was both ramped up and widely publicized. These events served as both recent historical memory and fuel to the burgeoning Black Power movement. Support for nonviolence was a point of departure for increasingly radical activists engaged in social protest in the South during the late sixties. Activists like Kwame Ture (aka Stokely Carmichael) and Robert Williams took issue with activists who were wedded to Integrationist and nonviolent strategies despite the continued and escalating violence against black people (Tyson 1999).

In the modern era of Black Nationalism, the expansion of the meaning of independence has also elicited increased cultural production in the form of “authentic” black rituals and traditions, education about black history in America and abroad, and strengthening the connections to a glorious African past. For Garvey’s UNIA and Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, this involved high pageantry, rigid moral norms, and the development of new cultural products (Garvey 1997 [1920]; Stein 1986; Muhammad 1965). Parades and conventions brought widespread exposure and allowed for the recruitment of a more populist or grassroots membership, while the UNIA’s national newspaper, the Negro World, and the Nation of Islam’s weekly meetings provided a forum for mass education. Through these networks, blacks learned histories that exposed them to the contributions of African Americans to American history, as well as mythical narratives about the origins of racial divisions and social structures. Many of these narratives were aimed at reclaiming or embracing a long-lost African past in which blacks were noble and dignified, black men were strong leaders, and black families were functional.

Breaking away from whites and their skewed view of blacks leaves a void for what identity African Americans should embrace. Although one could argue that African Americans had ably created a hybridized culture that was both American and African, for Black Nationalists, Africa has historically been the focus of identity-building primarily because of ancestral connections to the continent.⁸ The look “back to Africa” has been couched in various narratives, however, simultaneously a source of pride and shame. Early Nationalists, in particular, really saw Africa through a Western hegemonic lens. Africa was a place to be civilized by their newly returning descendants. Henry Highland Garnet saw Africa as a place “to be redeemed by Christian civilization,” and that would be achieved by the “voluntary emigration of enterprising colored people” (Moses 1996, 142). Garnet and many other Black Nationalists of the time viewed Africa as a place worthy of pity and prayer, but not really habitable without an enormous amount of activity and ingenuity on the part of returning blacks. References to the continent were often gloomy characterizations such as “outraged shores,” “Africa’s agony,” and “the injured country.” Their view of Africa was overly simplistic, judgmental, and one-dimensional. This was true despite their longing for reconnection and resettlement.

This simple hegemonic view of the African continent continued in the modern era of Black Nationalism. Though the perception of Africa as an uncivilized outpost subsided somewhat, in terms of political and social outlook, Black Nationalists in America largely saw it as a geographic blob of resources and political alliances. Thus, Garvey can proclaim in his “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World” that the UNIA believed “in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics; we also demand Africa for the Africans at home and abroad” (Garvey 1997 [1920], 22). This push for return to Africa, though not as imperialistic as that of previous Black Nationalists, is rendered a natural phenomenon that is both noncomplex and predestined. The difficulties that must be overcome lie in the ability to mobilize and persuade Africans throughout the Diaspora that return is necessary and then to gather the material means to return.

As the politics on the continent evolved after World War II and independence spread, the relationship between blacks in the Diaspora and on the African continent can be more appropriately characterized as bilateral and interactive than in previous periods. Probably the most vivid example of this is Malcolm X’s travels in West Africa and the Middle East and his relationships with Kwame Nkrumah (Shabazz 1992 [1962]; 1989a [1965]).⁹ Malcolm X uses those experiences to articulate an internationalist view of Black Nationalism with Africa as a free agent rather than a fixed object. When Malcolm X sets out the structure and purpose of his Organization of African Unity in his “After the Bombing Speech” in 1965, he relates how his travels and meetings with Africans, Arabs, and black American expatriates have shaped his belief in the value of and mobilization effort toward forming a Diasporic coalition (Shabazz 1989a [1965]). In that way, he extends the anti-imperialist and Pan-African work of DuBois (1995 [1922]), who suggested in an editor’s note in Crisis that West Indians and American Negroes “have no more right to administer Africa for the native Africans than native Africans have to administer America” (661). Additionally, in the Black Power era, Black Nationalism in America was influenced and somewhat reshaped by African nationalist intellectuals. The writings of Frantz Fanon (1982 [1967]; 1963), for instance, served as important guiding texts for organizations such as the Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. Additionally, many of these new revolutionaries ended up seeking counsel and refuge in burgeoning independent African nations after fleeing the United States.

In the contemporary context, the role of Africa in Black Nationalist America has been as an alternative cultural home and source of opposition to Western values. This has played itself out particularly in the development and popularity of pedagogical frameworks such as Afrocentricism and new cultural traditions such as Kwanzaa. Molefi Asante’s book The Afrocentric Idea (1998) serves as the guiding text for this paradigmatic outlook. Asante defines Afrocentricity as a perspective that places “African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior” (2). In this process, “African” values rather than European norms and values become the standard for critically examining all aspects of black life such as educational institutional structure and curriculum. Additionally, Kwanzaa, a holiday created by Black Nationalist leader Maulana Karenga, is widely celebrated in African American communities (Karenga 1996).

In the seventies Carlisle (1975) argued that the most recent revival of Black Nationalism served as a reaction to “disillusionment” with whites and slow progress in improving race relations. During this time of increased African independence from Europe, African leaders began to employ the philosophies of black scholars like DuBois and Washington. Additionally, frustrated supporters of integration efforts by the Civil Rights Movement (e.g., Kwame Ture and other members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]) began a renewed call for blacks to withdraw from the American political system and make changes within their own community structures and institutions.¹⁰ Nationalism looks inward as a community to find solutions to black problems through internal resources. Brooks (1996) suggests that racial separation (whether limited or total) is juxtaposed with racial segregation, the latter of which is achieved by external imposition and coercion. It is also important to note that, at various points in history, African American leaders have adopted separatism as a temporary strategy before integration. This was predominant in the period from emancipation to the early part of the last century, when some black leaders argued for internal education and skill-building before integrating into the larger society. For instance, Frederick Douglass supported temporary segregation of certain institutions as a first step to eventual integration (McGary 1999). Additionally, Booker T. Washington (1968) believed that there needed to be concerted efforts by blacks to become “upstanding” and “worthy” members of the American community before they could be fully accepted by whites and able to contribute to American advancement. Policy preferences of this group would focus on those issues that are aimed at more community control and self-determining initiatives for African Americans. These kinds of initiatives would include community control of schools, cooperative economic efforts such as support of black-owned businesses, and efforts to transform African America’s individual and group self-image through increased awareness of black American and African history.

Rejecting Nationalist Notions

By no means has Black Nationalism been the only ideological position taken by black elites or the masses. Previously, I referenced Dawson’s offerings of six categories. Many blacks have been much more reluctant to reject the optimism of a more equitable and tolerant political climate within the structure of the American political system. The earlier quoted passage from Maria Stewart described her view of what white Americans had done to blacks and the impact of these actions on black people, but ultimately she went on to fervently declare that she would not allow that to drive her to a “strange land” by exclaiming that “before ...