Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics

"To the extent that I focus on the sources of radical decline, this study is written against the grain of the prevailing vindicationist trend in the literature on Black Power radicalism."

Reading Cedric Johnson's Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics reminds one of Adolph Reed. Both Johnson and Reed share a leftist perspective, both scholars are critical of racial identity politics, and last, but certainly not least, both lament the decline of practical, everyday relevance of the sectarian leftists to the "masses." In fact, Johnson's Revolutionaries to Race Leaders is quite similar to Adolph Reed's Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, and the two texts complement the other. Johnson and Reed persuasively connect the Jim Crow past, civil rights advances, and the post-segregation era of black politics in a direction that reveals the limitations of Black Power discourse and "unity without uniformity" thinking. For that reason, in an age when popular black memory of Black Power often obscures the shortcomings of black nationalism, and a current wave of identity politics has resurfaced, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders is an important, but challenging read for those in my generation who have lionized the activists and intellectuals of the zenith of Black Power in the late 1960s and 1970s, from Baraka and Carmichael to Malcolm or Newton.

If "Black America" is not a real corporate entity, and the divergent interests of African Americans could not be silenced or cast aside in the name of "black unity" or black nationalism, due to class, regional, gender, and political differences, then why continue to pursue a race-first agenda that falls apart? Johnson's critical overview of Harold Cruse's work on black nationalism, Amiri Baraka's significant work as a proponent of Black Power, and the various Black Power conventions and organizations, such as the African Liberation Support Committee or the 1972 Gary convention, analyzes how each failed, in part, for reasons described by Adolph Reed as Black Power embraced ethnic politics and elite brokerage instead of retaining a democratic base and practical relevance. The sectarianism of the "scientific socialists" described by both scholars, for example, Marxist-Leninists wings of the ALD, and the cultural nationalists, too, were vanguardist, elitist despite democratic rhetoric, and unable to challenge the New Right, the transition to the Corporate City, or the inherent restrictions of organizing based on race alone. 

Particularly relevant to today is the peril of sectarianism and racial essentialism among cultural nationalists, rooted in prewar notions of race as culture and a poor understanding of culture, often leading to a fictitious "blackness" to organize around. Some of this disturbing essentialism is common among certain identitarian circles and organizations, leading to poor understanding of race, culture, identity, and building practical coalitions. Some, despite the not-so-recent past, for instance, still prefer to organize based on explicitly racial lines because multiracial coalitions or alliances or ideas and theories from "whites" are considered unacceptable, or they seek to ignore class differences in the name of a presumably homogeneous "blackness." As a casual observer of the Left, the vanguardist strain remains ever-present, too, often culminating in minor organizations vying for influence and recruitment but mired in arguments over the Russian Revolution, Castroist Cuba, petty ideological differences as a premise for engagement, as well as a failure to collaborate or form alliances. 

As for black politics today, we are still plagued by these lingering ideologies from the Black Power era, and the current movements and campaigns based on race leave me uncertain yet optimistic at heart. I see disturbing trends among overt identitarians that leave one wondering if it is 1968 instead of 2015. That said, surveys and other evidence on political behavior of 'Black America' does suggest some general, progressive hope which means black 'nationalism' can remain useful. Glen Ford from the Black Agenda Report has talked about Black America as the most left-leaning group in the US, the most "Scandinavia-like." Johnson's commentary on the 1972 Black Agenda from Gary and subsequent convention agendas or programs belie this point, which suggests, to some extent, race-based politics and bringing together the mostly progressive, left social democratic orientation of most African-Americans may be politically useful, particularly in the labor movement or anti-imperialism. One can also see, maybe light at the end of the tunnel in aspects of  'Black Lives Matter,' the Fight for Fifteen, and other struggles connected to the daily, lived experience and practical needs of people.