In the twenty-nine years since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., which marked the end of the Civil Rights Movement and the
ascendancy of conservatism as the dominant force in national politics,
many scholars and intellectuals have struggled mightily to explain
“what has happened” to Black people. As the millennium approaches,
academia, and we as a society, have been confronted with the issue of
racism and have sought to re-examine those public policies which have
directly impacted the quality of the Black American experience.
What works and what doesn’t work in this context largely depends on
whose ideology or social/political perspective is applied. The
conservatives feel that affirmative action, welfare and “big
government” don’t work. But the liberals argue that welfare prevents
children from starving, affirmative action provides opportunity and the
government is just as large as is necessary to finance all the claims
for federal services and subsidies. Even among the Black
intelligentsia, there are ideological schisms and conflict in the
establishment of a national agenda for African Americans.
In his new book, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African
American Politics, Dr. Manning Marable provides only a glimpse into the
struggle for “the souls of black folk.” Marable, in the first sentence
of the preface, cautions the reader that the book is only a collection
of political and social essays written between 1991-95. This may
account for two major flaws in the book: one, that some of the
political analysis is overcome by events; and two, the serious lack of
any thematic cohesion in the overall work.
The book is divided into three broad categories: Politics of Race
and Class; African American Leadership; and Beyond Black and White, a
term which the author never fully explains. As the reader moves from
one essay to another, one gets the sense of a lack of a compelling or
unifying theme that would tie the various chapters together into a
single vision of the Black experience. What the book does provide is
more like a snap shot of various aspects of race, history and politics,
along with some intellectual musings on Black leadership in the
Post-Civil Rights era.
Marable begins with a number of sociopolitical observations of the
ramifications of Reaganism and of the conservative realignment which
occurred in the 1980s. The most interesting of these is Marable’s
assertion that Reaganism has provided cover for reactionary and fascist
elements within our society.
“Reaganism has permitted and encourage[s] the involvement of
blatantly racist and anti-Semitic forces in the electoral arena…the
ideological ‘glue’ in the appeals of these formations to low to
middle-income whites is racism and…the inevitable social by-product
of the ultra-right’s mass political mobilization is terrorism and
increases violence.”
The unleashing of these forces have given rise to increased racial
hostility, “angry white men,” retrenchment on affirmative action,
journalist Pat Buchanan’s “cultural wars,” attacks on all immigrant
policies, the militia movement, and bombings or the threat of bombing
of federal property.
