Black Separatism and Social Reality. Rhetoric and Reason

291 Pages·1977·7.942 MB·English

by  Raymond L. Hall (Eds.)

Other Books of Related Interest
Halpern, F. — Survival: Black/White
Katz, P. — Towards the Elimination of Racism
Black Separatism and Social Reality:
Rhetoric and Reason
Editor
Raymond L. Hall
Dartmouth College
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Black separatism and social reality.
Includes index.
1. Black nationalism—United States—Addresses,
essays, lectures. 2. Pan-Africanism-Addresses,
essays, lectures. I. Hall, Raymond L.
E185.6.B63 1976 320.5'4 75-34419
ISBN 0-08-019510-5
ISBN 0-08-019509-1 pbk.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Printed in the United States of America
To my mother, Anna May Gregory, who first taught me to
find and explain cause before foolishly and blindly accept-
ing effect.
Contributors
Ladun Anise — A Nigerian from Yorubaland, he teaches political long been interested in Afro-American and African relations
science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is interested in in particular and intergroup relations in general. He teaches
American politics generally and black politics in particular. sociology at the City University of New York.
Imamu Ameer Baraka — Author, playwright, activist and social Milton R. Henry - Born in Philadelphia, he is a 1950 graduate
thinker, he has recently embraced Marxism as the most of the Yale Law School, a close friend of the late Malcolm
viable liberation strategy for black people. X, and a founder of the Republic of New Africa. He now
practices law in Detroit.
Robert S. Browne — Formerly an economics professor at
Fairleigh-Dickinson University, his ideas are regarded by Lewis M. Killian — Co-author of Racial Crisis in America
some as the ideological model for the Republic of New (1964) and author of The Impossible Revolution: Black
Africa (RNA). He now heads the Black Economic Research Power and the American Dream, among others, he is Pro-
Center in New York City. fessor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst.
Stokely Carmichael — Catapulted into national headlines on the
theme of Black power in the mid-1960s as chairman of the Willie B. Lamouse-Smith — Born in Cape Coast, Ghana, he has
now defunct Student Non-Violent Coordinating Com- taught at the Free University of Berlin, Makere University
mittee (SNCC), he now heads the African Peoples Party in Uganda, and Syracuse University. He is now Director/
headquartered in Conaky, Guinea, and the Black United Dean of African and Afro-American Studies at the Univer-
Front in Washington, D.C. sity of Maryland, Baltimore.
Locksley G.E. Edmondson — A native of Jamaica, he is now Richard A. Long - Professor of English at Atlanta University,
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the he organized the Conference on Afro-American Studies
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He formerly (CAAS) beginning in 1968. This conference was among the
taught political science at Cornell University. forerunners in pointing the way for developing Black
Studies Programs.
Dennis Forsythe — Born in the West Indies, he has taught at
McGill University in Montreal and now teaches sociology at Arline Sakuma McCord — Co-author with Charles V. Willie of
Howard University. Black Students on White College Campuses, she has
authored numerous works in the area of urban education,
James A. Geschwender — A keen observer of the black com- stratification, and sex roles. She is Associate Professor of
munity, he has written extensively on some aspects of Sociology at Hunter College.
black life. He is Chairperson of Sociology at the State
University of New York at Binghamton. William M. McCord - Author of Lifestyles in the Black Ghetto,
Mississippi Summer, Springtime of Freedom, the Origins of
Raymond L. Hall — A student of social movements, he wrote his Alcoholism, etc., he has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and
dissertation—which subsequently became a book—on black Rice Universities. He is presently Chairperson of Sociology
separatist social movements. He earned his Ph.D. degree at at the City University of New York.
Syracuse University and teaches sociology at Dartmouth
College. Clarence J. Munford — Associate professor of History, Univer-
sity of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, he received his doctorate
William B. Helmreich - Author of The Black Crusaders, he has in History from the University of Leipzig.
x Black Separatism and Social Reality
Thomas Pettigrew — Long a keen observer of intergroup rela- Gene-I.Q. controversy. He is Associate Professor of Soci-
tions, he authored A Profile of Negro Americans and ology at Princeton University.
Racially Separate or Together, among numerous other
works on the subject. He is Professor of Social Relations at S. Jay Walker - A prolific writer on black American literature,
Harvard. having written a book on the subject, he received his
training at the University of Nottingham. He is Professor of
Bayard Rustin — A co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equal- English and Director of the Black Studies Program at
ity (CORE), and a long-time activist and eloquent spokes- Dartmouth College.
man for black-white solidarity in the labor movement, he is
presently Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute in Ronald Walters — A prolific author on, and an activist in, black
New York City. politics, he received his training in International Relations.
He is Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard
Bernard E. Segal — A participant in the civil rights movement University.
in the 1960s and author of Racial and Ethnic Relations, he
pays close attention to theoretical issues in intergroup rela- Charles V. Willie - Author of several works on the black
tions. He is Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College. family, among others, and an activist-scholar in the civil
rights and women's movements, he has been chairperson of
Socialist Workers Party - Headquartered in New York City, the Sociology and Vice President for Student Affairs at
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a Trotskyite Socialist Syracuse University. He is now a professor in the School of
organization which attempts to accommodate both social- Education, Harvard University.
ism and black nationalism.
Brunetta Reid Wolfman — A specialist in Urban Studies, she has
Howard F. Taylor - A social psychologist specializing in small long been involved with the black and women's move-
groups, he authored the important book Balance Theory in ments. She is a Special Assistant, President's Office, Univer-
Small Groups and has recently completed a book on the sity of Massachusetts, Boston.
Foreword I
WILLIAM McCORD
The contemporary debate over black separatism has a long the Depression.
history, almost as long as the black presence in America. Both In the modern era, as Raymond Hall incisively demon-
blacks and whites have argued for and against racial separation strates in his dissection of contemporary ideological perspec-
as a mechanism for achieving black liberation. As an example, tives, the ideal of black separatism flourished in ghettoes and
some 130 years ago Frederick Douglass, a black man, passion- prisons, on political podiums and Muslim pulpits, from college
ately contended that blacks and whites could live together in dormitories to Broadway stages. While emotionally moving and
mutual harmony if they so desired. At the same time, John morally valid, many of the ideological statements reproduced in
Brown, a white man, vehemently argued for the establishment this book still would appear to ignore reality. C.J. Munford, for
of a separate black nation. Brown believed that his ill-fated example, argues from a Marxist perspective that "racial discrimi-
attack upon the federal armory at Harper's Ferry would not nation is an essential mode of imperialist exploitation." This
only lead to a revolt but to the abolition of slavery and the may sound reasonably like Marxism but not when put in the
creation of a black country comprised of Virginia and other context of Marxist logic. Munford states that automation is a
parts of the South. He contended that violence would give birth capitalist tool leading to the elimination of black unskilled
to an economically and politically autonomous realm governed workers. According to Marx, in contrast, automation meant the
by freed black men. Ironically, Frederick Douglass — an ex- death of capitalism since, by discharging workers, capitalists
slave and another great emancipator — dismissed the idea as automatically eliminated their source of surplus value. Thus,
Utopian and totally impractical. In their correspondence, from a strictly Marxist point of view, capitalists would welcome
Douglass chided John Brown for ignoring economic reality. the unskilled black worker as their last remaining source of
As this splendid book demonstrates, the argument did not profit.
end with John Brown's defeat nor with the North's eventual Imamu Ameer Baraka (who recently denounced black
victory. In the early 20th century, Booker T. Washington, nationalism in favor of Marxism-Leninism) earlier argued for a
W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey continued the debate in set of "black" values and lists a magical seven of them. There is
bitter, often vituperative terms. Washington opted for economic nothing wrong with the values, but they are neither parochially
advance while accepting social and political segregation; as Jay black nor are they backed by any other proof than Baraka's
Walker's article brilliantly demonstrates, Washington — "a sepa- assumption that they are "good."
ratist in golden chains" — won superficial approval from the Milton Henry and the Black Muslims advocate a separate
white community of his times. He had to repay dinners with black state, but its realization seems dependent upon God's
Theodore Roosevelt and Queen Victoria, however, with exclu- whims. This is an unfortunately slim reed to lean on. Para-
sion from Pullman cars and the refusal of immigrant maids to phrasing Stalin, one might ask how many divisions can God
clean his room in a Southern hotel. DuBois, a black Harvard mobilize?
aristocrat, went through many mutations: advocacy of an elitist The list could go on and on, but the fact remains that
integration for educated blacks, a flirtation with Marxism, and most separatist ideologies — whether they drape themselves in
eventual espousal of Pan-Africanism from his self-imposed exile the "hard-headed" realism of Marx or a faith in God — lack
in Ghana. Garvey (that strange mixture of charlatan, idealist, any sense at all as to how they might fulfill their dreams in the
and visionary) stirred the hopes of millions of blacks with the cold world of political, military, and economic reality.
dream of returning in glory to Africa. After his ill-starred ships In the third part, Thomas Pettigrew does a yeoman's job in
sank one after the other and lawsuits punctured his empire, exposing the similarities of white racist assumptions and black
Garvey and "Garveyism" faded into dismal oblivion. separatism. And Bayard Rustin, an elder statesman of the black
In the 1930s, the Communist Party revived the ideal of movement but one often accused of being an "Uncle Tom,"
separatism in its proposal for an independent black republic realistically assesses the prospects of black separatism.
(strangely reminiscent of Milton Henry's writings in this This book serves an eminently useful purpose in bringing
volume); this proposition, too, met its death at the hands of together for the first time many of the diverse ideologies of a
xii Black Separatism and Social Reality
Carmichael and the Pan-Africanists, of Marxists and the Black As the very disparity of the articles produced in this fine
Panther Party and others. Devoid of pragmatism, however, these book demonstrate, no one can answer these questions with
ideologies parade without the Emperor's clothes. assurance. In the middle 1970s, the data are too confusing and
In the last part of the book, William Helmreich presents a contradictory to lead to a definitive policy. Those who look to
comprehensive review of the history of separatist thought and economic advance as the key to black progress, for example,
an excellent bibliography concerning the relation of Afro- might take heart from the 1974 report of the President's
Americans with Africa. Lewis Killian dissects white attitudes Council of Economic Advisors. It indicated that black families
and points to the very real danger of a violent eruption earned 76 percent of the income of white families (as opposed
between whites and blacks. With his usual incisive brilliance, to 57 percent in 1959). Young black families almost achieved
Howard Taylor demolishes the arguments of those who contend parity with whites (blacks under 35 earned 93 percent of the
that intelligence decisively separates blacks from whites. income of white families of the same age). In fact, by any
Taylor also presents another side to the question discussed standard, black female college graduates earned more money
by Ronald Walters at the end of the volume: Is there a need than white women. These facts would hearten Booker T.
for a distinct, "black" social science? Apparently Walters Washington but they do not lighten the burden of continuing
believes that the unique experience of blacks in America neces- discrimination.
sitates a separate discipline. Taylor, on the other hand, cogently Political separatists could gain confidence from the fact
argues "that while certain uses and applications of the scientific that 374 blacks won office in the South during the by-elections
method are racist, the scientific method itself is relatively free of 1974 — although the South remained under resolute white
from institutional racism." His articles demonstrate beyond control.
question that the canons of good research are indispensable in Intellectuals who view education, particularly in black
evaluating the pronouncements of contemporary racists. Indeed, studies, as a road to advance could happily cite the fact that
the entire last part of the book illuminates the ways in which more black students than ever before were enrolled in college in
unbiased social science can help to resolve ideological issues. 1974. They would have to face the disheartening fact, however,
Thus, in a vital and literate way, the book raises funda- that the proportion of black students in American colleges has
mental issues that have recurred throughout the last century significantly declined since 1965.
and continue unabated today: Whether blacks should take an economic, political, or
education road to achieving true freedom — whether expressed
Should black Americans seek their political destiny in a separatist culture or not — still remains an open issue. That
apart from white Americans? is exactly why this book offers a unique opportunity for both
Should white liberals be eschewed as allies, as merely blacks and whites to explore the role of separatism in our
"covert racists"? society. We owe a great debt to Raymond Hall for crystallizing
Can economic growth within the black community the issue in this fine work.
eventually lead to true "black power"? The whole ideal of black separatism is today a vibrant issue
Is the destiny of black Americans linked intrinsically in American society. John Brown's body may be rotting in his
with that of Africa, or, as was the view of Tom Mboya, grave, but his dream keeps marching on. I personally hope that
Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Julius Nyerere, must Africans Frederick Douglass' wisdom will prevail over John Brown's
pursue their own fate separately from their "American ghost.
cousins"?
Should a cultural revolution" among blacks precede
any other form of liberation?
Foreword II
S. JAY WALKER
In any discussion of black separatism in its traditional sense contrary, in terms of lands habitable in the light of present
— that is, the hope for the establishment of an Afro-American technology, is overcrowded. There is no African nation — and
state somewhere on the continent of Africa or the lopping off probably not all of them together — that could absorb 22
of a few of the United States for a separate black republic million foreigners (and foreigners is precisely what black
somewhere on this continent — only one fact need be Americans are in Africa) without disaster to its own socio-
remembered: economic structure. Liberia, for instance, is only slightly larger
The fact is that it is not going to happen. than the state of Tennessee, and has a population of less than
The periodic resurfacing of this idea in one form or two million.
another — from the establishment of Liberia in the early 19th Any Afro-American state organized in Africa would thus
century, to the Nigerian explorations of Martin Delany just have to be taken by force from its present inhabitants, precisely
before the Civil War, to the Pap Singleton vision of a black as Israel had to take Palestine from its indigenous peoples; in so
Kansas in the years following the war, to the Marcus Garvey doing, it would establish precisely the same legacy of hatred
movement of the 1920s, to the Elijah Muhammad movement of and bitterness which keeps the Middle East the most dangerous
the '60s and the plethora of imitators which exist today — says area of the globe. No black separatist could possibly announce
something, certainly, about the degree of black discontent with an intention to reduce the people of, say Sierra Leone, to the
our "assigned" place within the structure of American society. status of Arabs in the Jewish State; the doctrines of Pan-
Yet with the persistence of the vision of a black Israel has Africanism preclude such an announcement. Yet none, either,
persisted also a willful refusal to look at the historical, political, has been willing to say where or how such a state might be
economic, and psychological conditions which make all such established without doing just that.
visions no more than fantasies diverting much of our energies Even given that willingness, there is another factor that
and thoughts away from the actions that can and must be makes the Israeli parallel, in Watergate terms, inoperative. When
taken within the framework of American citizenship. the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the full horror of the
The contemporary separatist fantasies tend to be based, Nazi death camps was fresh in everyone's mind, and Palestine
one and all, on the most shockingly careless parallels with was under the "protection" of Great Britain and the United
modern world history: the establishment of the State of Israel Nations, dominated at the time by the Atlantic Alliance. It was
and the massive reparations paid to that state by the Federal a relatively easy thing for the West to assuage its own con-
Republic of Germany in the aftermath of the Nazi holocaust, science by partitioning someone else's homeland. (It should not
the Mau Mau revolution which freed Kenya, and the Algerian be forgotten that at about the same time Britain very gener-
Revolution against the French. All indicate the ability of a ously offered to "give" Uganda as a homeland for Israel.) The
determined nationalist group to carve out a state for itself, idea that the United Nations today, no matter how touched by
against overwhelming population or overwhelming military the plight of blacks in America, would, or could, repeat that
odds; the German support for Israel indicates that a nation may action flies in the face of all the realignments of power that
be brought to recognize the wrongdoing of its forebears and to have taken place in that organization in the past 25 years.
make amends for that wrongdoing in cold cash. None of these An African solution, then, is out. African nations may
situations, however, has the remotest applicability to the visions welcome a few black Americans who can bring to them highly
of black separatism. developed skills: educators, medical personnel, technicians —
The founding of the State of Israel is regarded as the exactly, in fact, those blacks who are most economically viable
pattern for the establishment of an Afro-American state on the in the United States. They can do nothing at all to benefit the
continent of Africa, but the realistic parallels are ominous black masses.
rather than encouraging. The separatists would seem to be The partitioning of the United States, perhaps most imagi-
hypnotized by the sheer bulk of the African continent into natively stated in what Fletcher Knebel called the GAMAL plan
ignoring the fact that Africa is not "empty" but, on the — Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — is, if any-
xiv Black Separatism and Social Reality
thing, even more farfetched. Basic outlines for establishing a Puerto Rico any time that a plurality of Puerto Ricans requests
black nation in that territory are two. The first is that white it, and it is Puerto Rico — not the GAMAL states — which
America, in some sudden conversion to righteousness, will stands in relationship to the United States as Algeria stood to
recognize its past misdeeds and its inability to correct them and France. The same factor that sent the Union into the bloodiest
will, as an act of justice, cede the crescent states as the basis of our wars in 1861, the prospect of dismemberment of the
for a black republic, with an orderly exchange of populations — essential body of the United States, would send it to war again,
all whites in those states moving north or west and all blacks in and any politician or political party that refused to commit
the rest of the nation moving in to take their places. This plan maximum armed strength to prevent that dismemberment
also suggests that the United States will "support" the new would be destroyed in the next election by the approximately
nation for the next half century, or "until it can get on its nine million southern whites forcibly expatriated from their
feet." homes.
The second scenario involves no such light on the road to For these very practical reasons, then, separatism in its
Damascus but rather protracted guerrilla warfare taking place classic sense is not going to occur. But perhaps the greatest
throughout the United States - the Mau-Mau and the film, The obstacle to the establishment of a black state lies beyond the
Battle of Algiers, are the putative models here - until America, physical, in the psychological realm that has historically pre-
despairing of achieving domestic tranquillity in any other way, vented the success of separatist movements. That is the fact
cedes the states and arranges the transfer of populations. In that the vast majority of black Americans have no interest
other words, the Civil War is to be refought, this time as a whatsoever in a separate state.
series of inner-city shoot-outs, and this time with success to the This determination to stay in the United States, come what
secessionists. may, has been a continuous source of irritation to separatist
What is most remarkable about these schemata is that they leaders as well as the subject for some of their best lines.
rest on basic assumptions that are totally contradictory. Those Malcolm X, before his own abandonment of separatism, used to
putting them forth claim: (a) that the United States as a whole say, "These Negroes don't want no nation; they're trying to
is beyond redemption in its commitment to racism and so no crawl back on the plantation!" It was a good quip; except for
possibility of justice may be looked forward to in this country; the loaded terms "crawl back" and "plantation," it was totally
at the same time, that the United States will, at enormous accurate. For the black American, by and large, has been given
cost to itself and out of pure altruism, divest itself of part of no model to suggest that his welfare would be bettered in a
its territory; or (b) that the United States is beyond civilized separate state.
restraint in its treatment of black people and will eventually For those who see themselves as leaders of the state,
commit genocide on all of us; at the same time, that the United certainly, the rewards are many; even the poorest of states can
States would hesitate to use the full arsenal of its power to be manipulated to produce a cornucopia of honors, power,
destroy or intimidate every black in the country before it wealth; one need look no further than the Caribbean for
would cede a single square mile of land. To accept either the examples. But independent states have certainly not always
peaceful or warlike argument for partition requires having it served to improve the welfare of their ordinary citizens, and
both ways at once. black Americans, made hard-headed and pragmatic by long
The Mau-Mau and Algerian revolts as patterns for military experience, have asked questions of the separatists that have
success are simple romanticism. In both Kenya and Algeria the not been answered; questions which one feels, at times, the
revolutionists, though outgunned, had an enormous edge in separatists have not yet asked themselves.
population, and could absorb ten to one and one hundred to Precisely how, for instance, does one aid the massive un-
one losses and still succeed. What might work for such a employment problem of blacks by moving all of them into
majority is useless for a minority. Further, in both African states that are already among the most depressed in the nation?
situations, the insurgents had the benefit of friendly neighbors, Precisely how does one improve the health services of blacks by
of borders over which arms and supplies could be smuggled and removing them from the reach of those white medical facilities
hard-pressed insurgents could retreat. Neither Mexico nor to which they presently have access? Would the independent
Canada would seem to fill that condition for black America, state be, in fact, self-sufficient in the production of food and in
even were there any center of black population, with the basic industries, or would it, in order to survive, become the
exception of Detroit, within easy striking distance of either client of one of the great powers? Does black America
country. The People's Republic of North Korea may occasion- presently wield the technical know-how, does it possess the
ally send fraternal greetings to the Black Panther newspaper, capital for independence, or would it find itself obligated to
but the People's Republic of North Korea would be able to some kind of technical peace corps and to the investments of
send little other than sympathy in a fight. other nations to keep its economy running? In the 1950s and
And, finally, neither Britain nor France was as emotionally '60s, the United States attempted to strangle Cuba, not through
involved in Kenya or Algeria as the United States would be in military might but through the simple and quite legal expedient
GAMAL. For all the loud talk of Algeria being "part of Metro- of refusing to trade with it. The Castro regime was saved
politan France" and the slogans of "Algeria c'est Francais," the through massive infusions of Soviet aid, roughly one million
average Frenchman never seems to have believed for a moment dollars a day. What does an increasing climate of detente have
that the North African state was anything other than a colony to say about the ability of small states today to play one great
— or at least not to the point of willingness to die to keep it. nation off against the other?
The United States, for its part, has expressed a willingness — at But of course man does not live by bread alone. It is quite
times, one feels, an eagerness — to grant independence to possible that black Americans would accept a lessened standard