rebels express their resentment of the white Academy (including its subtle racism) by reproducing similar hierarchies headed by themselves, within a black context. They rightly rebel against the tribal insularity and snobbish civility of the white academy (and the first type of black scholars), yet, unlike Du Bois, their rebellion tends to delimit their literary productivity and sap their intellectual creativity. Hence, rhetoric becomes a substitute for analysis, stimulatory rapping a replacement for serious reading, and uncreative publications an expression of existential catharsis. Much, though not all, of Afrocentric thought fits this bill.
There are few race-transcending prophets on the current black intellectual scene. James Baldwin was one. He was self-taught and self-styled, hence beholden to no white academic patronage system. He was courageous and prolific, a political intellectual when the engaged leftist Amiri Baraka was a petit bourgeois Bohemian poet named Leroi Jones and the former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver became a right-wing Republican. He was unswerving in his commitment to fusing the life of the mind (including the craft of writing) with the struggle for justice and human dignity regardless of the fashions of the day or the price he had to pay. With the exception of Toni Morrison, the present generation has yet to produce such a figure. We have neither an Oliver Cox nor a St. Claire Drake. This vacuum continues to aggravate the crisis of black leadershipâand the plight of the wretched of the earth deteriorates.
What Is to Be Done?
The nihilistic threat to black America is inseparable from a crisis in black leadership. This crisis is threefold. First, at the national level, the courageous yet problematic example of Jesse Jackson looms large. On the one hand, his presidential campaigns based on a progressive multiracial coalition were the major left-liberal response to Reaganâs conservative policies. For the first time since the last days of Martin Luther King, Jr.âwith the grand exception of Harold Washingtonâthe nearly de facto segregation in U.S. progressive politics was confronted and surmounted. On the other hand, Jacksonâs televisual style resists grassroots organizing and, most important, democratic accountability. His brilliance, energy, and charisma sustain his public visibilityâbut at the expense of programmatic follow-through. We are approaching the moment in which this style exhausts its progressive potential.
Other national nonelectoral black leadersâlike Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP and John Jacobs of the National Urban Leagueârightly highlight the traditional problems of racial discrimination, racial violence, and slow racial progress. Yet their preoccupation with raceâthe mandate from their organizationsâdownplays the crucial class, environmental, patriarchal, and homophobic determinants of black life changes. Black politiciansâespecially new victors like Mayor David Dinkins of New York City and Governor Douglas Wilder of Virginiaâare participants in a larger, lethargic electoral system riddled with decreasing revenues, loss of public confidence, self-perpetuating mediocrity, and pervasive corruption. Like most American elected officials, few black politicians can sidestep these seductive traps. For all of these reasons, black leadership at the national level tends to lack a moral vision that can organize (not just periodically energize), subtle analyses that enlighten (not simply intermittently awaken), and exemplary practices that uplift (not merely convey status that awes) black people.
Second, this relative failure creates vacuums to be filled by bold and defiant black nationalist figures with even narrower visions, one-note racial analyses, and sensationalist practices. Louis Farrakhan, the early Al Sharpton (prior to 1991), and others vigorously attempt to be protest leaders in this myopic modeâa mode often, though
There are few race-transcending prophets on the current black intellectual scene. James Baldwin was one. He was self-taught and self-styled, hence beholden to no white academic patronage system. He was courageous and prolific, a political intellectual when the engaged leftist Amiri Baraka was a petit bourgeois Bohemian poet named Leroi Jones and the former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver became a right-wing Republican. He was unswerving in his commitment to fusing the life of the mind (including the craft of writing) with the struggle for justice and human dignity regardless of the fashions of the day or the price he had to pay. With the exception of Toni Morrison, the present generation has yet to produce such a figure. We have neither an Oliver Cox nor a St. Claire Drake. This vacuum continues to aggravate the crisis of black leadershipâand the plight of the wretched of the earth deteriorates.
What Is to Be Done?
The nihilistic threat to black America is inseparable from a crisis in black leadership. This crisis is threefold. First, at the national level, the courageous yet problematic example of Jesse Jackson looms large. On the one hand, his presidential campaigns based on a progressive multiracial coalition were the major left-liberal response to Reaganâs conservative policies. For the first time since the last days of Martin Luther King, Jr.âwith the grand exception of Harold Washingtonâthe nearly de facto segregation in U.S. progressive politics was confronted and surmounted. On the other hand, Jacksonâs televisual style resists grassroots organizing and, most important, democratic accountability. His brilliance, energy, and charisma sustain his public visibilityâbut at the expense of programmatic follow-through. We are approaching the moment in which this style exhausts its progressive potential.
Other national nonelectoral black leadersâlike Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP and John Jacobs of the National Urban Leagueârightly highlight the traditional problems of racial discrimination, racial violence, and slow racial progress. Yet their preoccupation with raceâthe mandate from their organizationsâdownplays the crucial class, environmental, patriarchal, and homophobic determinants of black life changes. Black politiciansâespecially new victors like Mayor David Dinkins of New York City and Governor Douglas Wilder of Virginiaâare participants in a larger, lethargic electoral system riddled with decreasing revenues, loss of public confidence, self-perpetuating mediocrity, and pervasive corruption. Like most American elected officials, few black politicians can sidestep these seductive traps. For all of these reasons, black leadership at the national level tends to lack a moral vision that can organize (not just periodically energize), subtle analyses that enlighten (not simply intermittently awaken), and exemplary practices that uplift (not merely convey status that awes) black people.
Second, this relative failure creates vacuums to be filled by bold and defiant black nationalist figures with even narrower visions, one-note racial analyses, and sensationalist practices. Louis Farrakhan, the early Al Sharpton (prior to 1991), and others vigorously attempt to be protest leaders in this myopic modeâa mode often, though
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