Civil Rights
Kimara1995
civilrights.pdf
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2963600
ARTICLE
CLASS CONTRADICTIONS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT:
THE POLITICS OF RESPECTABILITY, DISRESPECT, AND SELF-
RESPECT
Harold A. McDougall*
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................45
I. THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE IN HUMAN HISTORY .............................46
II. RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES: NARRATIVE AND COUNTER-
NARRATIVE ...................................................................................49
III. THE POLITICS OF RESPECTABILITY ................................................50
IV. THE POLITICS OF DISRESPECT .......................................................56
V. THE POLITICS OF SELF-RESPECT ...................................................60
A. The Black Nationalist Project ...........................................61 B. Stories of Self-Respect ........................................................64
VI. FACING THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN NARRATIVE DILEMMA:
CONVERSATIONS WITH HOWARD LAW STUDENTS ........................67
A. Black Lives Matter ............................................................69
B. The National Association of the Southern Poor ................75
CONCLUSION .........................................................................................80
INTRODUCTION
In 2014, nationwide protests over police harassment and
brutality towards African-Americans surprised many, not only with
their passion and broad base, but also by their general disconnection
from the civil rights establishment. Similar to the student sit-ins of the
1960s, bright and passionate young people surged forward without the
sanction—or even the knowledge—of established leaders. Much as
their predecessors fifty years before,1 the establishment in 2014 sought
* Professor of Law, Howard University. BA magna cum laude, Harvard, 1967; J.D. Yale, 1971. I presented
an outline of this paper at the Duke Law School conference on the Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements in November 2015, and received welcome research supported from my Dean, Danielle Holley-
Walker. Special thanks to Profs. Anthony Alfieri, John Brittain, Kevin Johnson, Gerald Lopez, and Shauna
Marshall for helpful comments, and to my research assistants Monique Peterkin, Tabias Wilson, Ebony Johnson, and Brooke Oki, who did most of the heavy lifting.
1 See Harold McDougall, I Have A Dream: Bring Back SNCC, HUFFINGTON POST (Aug. 28, 2013, 2:12 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/sncc-civil-rights-movement_b_3828787.html.
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HOWARD HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS LAW REVIEW
to get out in front of these young protesters, channel them into approved
and controlled activities, minimize any damage to the establishment
donor/patronage base, and exploit their energy to advance the
establishment agenda.2
However, there has been pushback. These young people see
their constituency as the poor and working class of the African-
American community, the ghetto dwellers who occupy ground zero in
conflicts with police, rather than the more affluent classes from which
so many of them come.3 Moreover, a significantly larger number of
today’s protesters and protest organizers are from the affected
communities themselves.4 These latter participants are often suspicious
of established civil rights leadership as well.5
This paper will explore class tensions that have bedeviled the
civil rights movement since its very beginning, yielding conflicting
narratives and patterns of activity, and ultimately resulting in the
disorder we see today. This paper will also address how we might
identify the best these narratives and patterns of activity have to offer,
marshalling, and synthesizing them into a more productive approach.
I believe the key is to develop “civic infrastructure” in the
African-American community, so the raw energy of today’s protests
does not ebb and disappear, leaving behind no fundamental
improvement. The National Association of the Southern Poor (NASP),
discussed in the final section of the paper, provides an example of the
kind of civic infrastructure I have in mind.
I. THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE IN HUMAN HISTORY
Human beings of various species have been on the planet for
approximately 2.5 million years. Our own species, Homo sapiens, has
been here for only 200,000 years. All previous species, and our own
until just 12,000 years ago, lived as hunter-gatherers. Our biological
2 See Harold McDougall, ‘American Spring’? HUFFINGTON POST (Dec. 10, 2014, 9:57 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/american-spring_b_6292942.html. 3 My research assistant Tabias Wilson provides an example. Tabias was one of the founders of Occupy
Boston, and went on to help start various antiracist offshoots, such as Occupy the Hood. See Stacey Patton,
Black Youth Respond to the Occupy Movement, BLACK YOUTH PROJECT, (Nov. 25, 2011), http://research.blackyouthproject.com/byp-presents/black-youth-respond-to-occupy-movement/. 4 See, e.g., Kellan Howell, Baltimore Riots Sparked not by Race but by Class Tensions Between Police,
Poor, WASH. TIMES (Apr. 29, 2015), http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/29/baltimore-riots- sparked-not-by-race-but-by-class-t/?page=all. 5 Describing his work in Boston, Tabias Wilson experienced the “establishment, full-integrationist” civil
rights leaders as overly concerned that the youth not “squander the moment” by their lack of “respect” and
“respectability” vis-à-vis the white majority establishment.
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
makeup, our DNA, evolved in congruence with this lifestyle6—few
possessions, high levels of mobility, a spare diet, and living in small
bands of about two dozen, bound together by empathic connection.7
This means our DNA programs us to trust people whom we
know personally.8 The emergence of fictive language, of “narrative,”
about 70,000 years ago (the “Cognitive Revolution”) made it possible
for us to work together on slightly less intimate terms, knitted together
by gossip into bands of about 150 people.9 This diminished our
empathic connections somewhat,10 but our small-group DNA remained
relatively undisturbed.
Twelve thousand years ago, an even more radical change
occurred in human society, the “Agricultural Revolution.”11 Humans
domesticated animals and plants12 and narratives emerged rationalizing
human dominance over nature.13 Interestingly, these narratives also
rationalized the dominance of some human beings over others,
dwindling empathic connection even more.14
These new narratives enabled us to work together in groups of
thousands, and eventually millions. They also assigned specific roles to
their adherents, dividing them by gender and work function. Typically,
these assigned roles formed a hierarchy, pyramidal in character, with a
large number of people at the bottom doing the “grunt” work and the
small elite at the top doing the planning, thinking, and relaxing.15 First
6 PAUL SHEPARD, COMING HOME TO THE PLEISTOCENE (2004), http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Home- Pleistocene-Paul-Shepard/dp/1559635908 (“[O]ur essential human nature is a product of our genetic
heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and . . . the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of today’s ecological and social ills . . . .”). 7 Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization: Rethinking Human Nature in the Biosphere Era, HUFFINGTON
POST (Mar. 18, 2010), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/the-empathic- civilization_b_416589.html. 8 Id. 9 YUVAL NOAH HARARI, SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND 133 (2015) (Sapiens are distinguished by our ability to believe in fictions. The cognitive revolutions starts with the first set of hypothetical stories
we allow ourselves to believe in whether they are true or not . . . Our fictions allow us to cooperate. They
give us the imaginary order that is necessary for societies to act together. Amazon Customer Reviews: By Gary on Feb. 25, 2015). 10 HARARI, supra note 9, at 105 (“All these cooperation networks . . . were ‘imagined orders.’ The social
norms that sustained them were neither based in ingrained instincts nor on personal acquaintances, but rather on belief in shared myths.”). 11 HARARI, supra note 9, at 48. 12 See JARED DIAMOND, GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL (1997), http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel.html. 13 HARARI, supra note 9, at 92-93 (describing means of subordinating and controlling animals, eerily
reminiscent of later techniques for controlling slaves: “In order to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression and
sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed.”). 14 HARARI, supra note 9, at 102. 15 See HARARI, supra note 9, at 81 (asserting that sedentary living begets cruelty and empathy issues).
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came the theocracies,16 monarchies and patriarchy of early agricultural
society.17 As time went on, feudalism, capitalism,18 nationalism,
slavery, colonialism, racism,19 imperialism, and many others emerged.
Whatever the prevailing narrative, our physiologically based
empathic impulses20 must be suppressed by education, training or a
force to support it.21 We are not allowed to feel empathy for those lower
on the ladder in our own social narrative, or for adherents to a social
narrative that rivals our own. This compromises our ability to find our
way through personal association, or even gossip, so more and more, we
take the word of our leaders in the social narrative—priests, kings, and
eventually politicians—instead of relying on empathic connection. This
makes us even easier to manipulate, as suppressed empathy creates
social and human space for violence and mistrust.22
These narratives objectify us—by race, gender, class, sexual
orientation, national origin, religion, and so forth.23 This objectification
prompts us to ask our fellow human beings what they are rather than
who they are, marking the objectification of us all.
There is more. Not only must we ask “what meta-narrative
describes you,” but also “where do you fit in the hierarchy it
establishes?” Are you manly enough, womanly enough, black enough,
white enough, rich enough, devout enough to stand at the top of the
heap? If not, what lesser position do you occupy?24 What is your role in
driving the social, political, and economic machinery—beliefs, customs
and practices, institutions, organizations, laws—the narrative coheres?25
16 Id. at 218-19. 17 Id. at 172. 18 Id. at 352-53. 19
Id. at 134. 20 See, e.g., Harold McDougall, Empathy Depletion: An Environmental Hazard, HUFFINGTON POST (June 17, 2014, 2:53 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/empathy-depletion-an-
envi_2_b_5436807.html. (citing JEREMY RIFKIN, THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL
CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISIS (2009)). 21 HARARI, supra note 9, at 111 (violence needed to maintain the existing order). 22 Indeed, our biologically based empathic impulses can atrophy without real ties to others; their suppression
by “imagined” narratives that privilege elites can lead to violence. See, e.g., Empathy Depletion, supra note 20. 23 Note the grounding of narrative classification in the first written languages, developed to count and
classify in sedentary agricultural societies, about 12,000 years ago. 24 With real human connection, at the genetically appropriate scale—a dozen or two—we can still ask
questions, but they are relevant to real life. What are your likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses?
How can your particular talents be of help to me and to the ones I love? Can I trust you? (Note that 80% of human communication is still nonverbal, seriously handicapping us in age of increasing electronic
communication. See Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, THE
DIANE REHM SHOW (Oct. 19, 2015, 11:00 AM), http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-10-19/sherry- turkle-reclaiming-conversation-the-power-of-talk-in-a-digital-age). 25 See Harold McDougall, For Critical Race Practitioners: Race, Racism and American Law (4th ed.) by
Derrick A. Bell, Jr., 46 HOW. L.J. 1 (2002) (citing Paul Costello, Racism and Black Oppression in the United States: A Beginning Analysis, 24 THEORETICAL REV. 11 (1981)).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
Such is the nature of the narrative about race, particularly in the
United States, with its foundations in the slave south.26 Despite the
narrative’s southern origins, the institution of slavery and the narrative
that rationalized it was so central to the political economy and social life
of all Thirteen Colonies27 that they broke away from England rather than
risk the abolitionism that was on the rise in the mother country.28
II. RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES: NARRATIVE AND COUNTER-
NARRATIVE
Race, class and gender narratives emerging in the ante-bellum
slave south operated not only to support the institution of slavery itself,
but also to rationalize the race, class, and gender hierarchies incidental
to it.29 Characters in these narratives included the white southern
gentleman and the white southern belle, the subservient and
emasculated “Uncle Tom,” the “black mammy,” the “bad Negro,” the
“black Jezebel,”30 and “white trash.”31
These characters and narratives assumed an importance beyond
the Southern region. The South contributed a gendered and classed
ideology of whiteness to the nation after slavery ended,32 becoming
“ideologically dominant in shaping the narrative of national selfhood,”33
providing a Rosetta Stone for American racism nationwide. The Great
Migration spurred the nationalization of the black characters and the
narratives they occupy, bringing large numbers of blacks to Northern,
Midwestern, and eventually Far Western cities as well.34 The
26 Cf. HARARI, supra note 9, at 140-43 (race divisions in the Americas). 27 Email from Professor Gerald Horne, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History, Univ. of Houston,
Texas to Professor Harold (Sept. 15, 2015) (on file with author). (“The US was a step forward from the religious axis of society that had bedeviled Europe but this was replaced with a different axis, ‘white’ vs.
‘non-white’—but more than this, perpetual punishment of the descendants of mainland enslaved
Africans.”). 28 See Interview with Gerald Horne, “Counter-Revolution of 1776”: Was U.S. Independence War a
Conservative Revolt in Favor of Slavery? Democracy Now, June 17, 2014,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/27/counter_revolution_of_1776_was_us (discussing Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, (2014);
see also Somerset v. Stewart, 98 ER 499 (1772)). 29 See generally RICHÉ RICHARDSON, BLACK MASCULINITY AND THE U.S. SOUTH: FROM UNCLE TOM TO GANGSTA 232 (2007) (Kindle version). 30 See RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 59-60, 71; see also Taylor Gordon, Black Women in the Media:
Mammy, Jezebel, or Angry, ATLANTA BLACK STAR (Mar. 4, 2013), http://atlantablackstar.com/2013/03/04/black-women-in-the-media-mammy-jezebel-or-angry/. 31 No matter how low on the social scale they might be, they were still superior to every black person in the
Southern narrative, now nationalized to the entire U.S. See RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 125. 32 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 10, 67, 75. 33 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 56; see also id. at 232-33. 34 See generally Isabel Wilkerson, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA’S GREAT MIGRATION (2010); cf. RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 220.
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nationalization of the white characters and their supporting narratives is
more complex; in this paper, we will touch on that phenomenon only
lightly.35 In short, Whiteness became a prized club to which only people
of European descent could belong (if they played by the rules).36
III. THE POLITICS OF RESPECTABILITY
Some years after emancipation, middle-class black males began
striving to create a “gentleman” persona,37 a counter-narrative to the
prevailing slave stereotypes. Black women could not be “belles,” but
they tried to be “ladies.” Elite black men and women thus sought to
adhere to the rules of the “whiteness” club38 as closely as possible (or
rather, as closely as they were permitted). Herein, the politics of
respectability was born.39
Prof. Frederick C. Harris, Director of the Center on African-
American Politics and Society at Columbia University, describes the
politics of respectability as a philosophy first promulgated by “black
elites to ‘uplift the race’ by correcting the ‘bad’ traits of the black
poor.”40 Indeed, as early as the beginnings of the Great Migration,
middle-class black organizations, such as the National Urban League,
distributed pamphlets to poor and new arrivals instructing them on
“respectable” behavior. They were not to use profanity or talk loudly in
public, for example.41 “Respectability” role-players invented a model
black citizen/class, but they required no concessions from the white
ruling class. Indeed, they often played their roles in the shadow of white
intemperance and violence.42
For black males, attempting to conform to the white narrative,
despite this imbalance, meant “manliness” often had to take a back seat,
35 See. e.g., RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 9-10 (Birth of a Nation); see also id. at 74-75 (Southern “manly”
military tradition incorporated into US Army). 36 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 69. Cf. Karen Grigsby Bates, The Whiteness Project: Facing Race In A
Changing America, NAT’L PUB. RADIO (Dec. 21, 2014), http://www.npr.org/2014/12/21/371679777/the-
whiteness-project-facing-race-in-a-changing-america. 37 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 75 (“[t]he class and cultural ambitions of some elite black men” were
shaped by the ideology of white maleness, “even if it was premised on their very exclusion.”). 38 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 69. 39 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 28. 40 Frederick C. Harris, Rise of Respectability Politics, DISSENT, (Winter 2014), at 2,
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-rise-of-respectability-politics. 41 See RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 77; see also id. at 144 (citing Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to similar
affect.). Such approaches continued at least until the 1960s. See John McWhorter, It’s About Time Obama
Stuck up for His ‘Respectability Politics’, WASH. POST (May 14, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/14/its-about-time-obama-stuck-up-for-his-
respectability-politics/. 42 Leland Ware and Theodore Davis, Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Time: The Black Middle Class in the Age of Obama, 55 HOW. L.J. 533, 535 (2012).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
suggesting a certain level of weakness.43 The politics of respectability
thus brought male practitioners dangerously close to the “Uncle Tom”
stereotype,44 a stereotype many black men take pains to avoid.45 Black
militants of the 1960s often perceived middle-class, “respectable” male
civil rights leaders as “Uncle Toms” for precisely this reason.46
Today, practitioners of the politics of respectability seek
advancement through communion with prevailing majority group
structures of political, economic, and social power.47 They seek upper-
middle class status within those structures by approximating white
dialect, dress, profession and physical space.48 “Respectability”
practitioners who succeed in these endeavors gain access to mainstream
“sociopolitical capital”—the ability to infiltrate “institutions,
government and other organizations.”49
Though respectability practitioners today have muted their
overtly submissive response to white dominance, they continue to
preach assimilation to white culture, apparently their only marker for
true success. Blackness, on the other hand, is associated with laziness,
with financially well-off black folks the exception to the rule.50
Respectability politics seems quite comfortable with the idea that
“problems for [unsuccessful] African-Americans are rooted in absent
black fathers and failures of blacks to do enough to help themselves.”51
Bill Cosby’s diatribes against the black poor provided a
particularly unfortunate example of respectability practitioners seeking
to find “interest convergence” with upper-middle-class whites.52 In his
43
RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 6 (citing PHILLIP BRIAN HARPER, ARE WE NOT MEN: MASCULINE
ANXIETY AND THE PROBLEM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY ix (1996)). 44 Harold McDougall, Guns, Machismo, Martin and Zimmerman, HUFFINGTON POST (July 17, 2013, 12:43 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/george-zimmerman-guns
masculinity_b_3600456.html. 45 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 6 (citing HARPER, supra note 43, at ix). 46 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 49-52. 47 Ware and Davis, supra note 43, at 537-38. 48 Memorandum from Tabias Wilson for Professor Harold McDougall (Aug. 1, 2015) (on file with author); Ware and Davis, supra note 42, at 536-39. 49 Tabias Wilson cites black entrepreneurs, HBCU leadership, and federal political leaders as examples.
Memorandum from Tabias Wilson for Professor Harold McDougall (June 30, 2015) (on file with author). 50 Memorandum from Tabias Wilson reflecting on Chapter 1 of BLACK BALTIMORE for Professor Harold
McDougall, (July 8, 2015) (on file with author). 51 Jessica Washington & Perry Bacon Jr., How ‘Black Lives Matter’ Activists Are Shaping the 2016 Campaign, NBC NEWS (July 31, 2015, 5:00 AM), http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/how-black-lives-
matter-activists-are-shaping-2016-campaign-n401146. 52 Cf. Prof. Derrick Bell’s “interest convergence theory,” which “holds that whites will support minority rights only when it’s in their interest as well. For example, [Bell] saw the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954
school-desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education, as a part of a Cold War effort to improve
America’s standing among Third World countries.” Will Oremus, Did Obama Hug a Radical?, SLATE (Mar. 9 2012),
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May 2004 speech at an NAACP event celebrating the fiftieth
anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Cosby
characterized poor black males as “knuckleheads [who are] walking
around [not wanting to] learn English.”53 He scorned black vernacular
speech as less than “respectable.”54 Michael Eric Dyson, one of Cosby’s
critics and a person with working-class origins, identified Cosby’s
screed as especially dangerous because it “aggressively ignore[d]
[w]hite society’s responsibility in creating the problems he want[ed] the
poor to fix on their own.”55
An important by-product of the politics of respectability is the
spatial segregation of the black community by class.56 The 1968 Fair
Housing Act allowed Blacks to access white suburban neighborhoods
for the first time.57 “Black flight” ensued, as the black middle-class
moved from the inner cities into suburban neighborhoods that better
reflected their class position.58
Since this transition, the proportion of Blacks in the middle class
has more than doubled.59 However, the number of poor Blacks living in
extremely poor inner-city neighborhoods has also doubled.60 In fact, the
disparity between the top and bottom fifth of the Black population in
terms of income, education, victimization by violence, and job status is
now greater than the disparity between the top and bottom fifth of the
white population.61
A class divide has thus emerged, with poor and working-class
Blacks on one side, and the Black middle-class on the other. William
Julius Wilson, for example, argues that “[t]he economic advancement
of the most privileged members of the black community and the
ongoing subordination of economically disadvantaged blacks means
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/03/derrick_bell_controversy_what_s_crit
ical_race_theory_and_is_it_radical_.html. 53 Steven King, Bill Cosby on Civil Rights, WASH. POST (May 23, 2004), www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/audio/2005/05/02/AU2005050201059.html. 54 Ms. Peterkin notes the irony of Cosby’s present crucifixion by the white media, exploiting the stereotype of the hyper-sexualized black male, placing Cosby outside the respectability politics he once preached.
Memorandum from Monique Peterkin for Professor Harold McDougall (July 16, 2015) (on file with author). 55 Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, HARV. EDUC. REV., http://hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-76-issue-2/herbooknote/is-bill-
cosby-right-_11. 56 Ware and Davis, supra note 42, at 562-67. 57 Karyn Lacy, Race, Privilege and the Growing Class Divide, 38 ETHNIC & RACIAL STUD. REV. 1246,
1247 (2015). 58 Id. at 1248. 59 See generally Zoltan L. Hajnal, Black Class Exceptionalism: Insights from Direct Democracy on the Race
Versus Class Debate, 71 PUB. OPINION Q. 560 (2007); see Ware and Davis, supra note 42, at 533-35. 60 Hajnal, supra note 59, at 560. 61 Id. at 561.
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that it no longer makes sense to think of blacks as one homogenous
group.”62
Low income and working class Blacks often have conflicting
objectives with middle and upper class Black Americans, despite
middle-class, “respectable” black organizations’ claims to speak for all.
Many middle-class Blacks are “[h]omeowners, concentrated in suburbia
and financially stable, allowing them to provide their children with
luxuries such as their own car when they turn sixteen and a prestigious
private school education.”63 Middle-class Blacks who never resided in
poor neighborhoods may not appreciate the experiences of poor and
working-class Blacks.64 Poor and working-class Blacks face issues such
as lack of educational resources, employment opportunities, and
neighborhood violence, for example.
Black flight from segregated, inner-city neighborhoods may
have been a “necessary survival act for middle and upper class
blacks.”65 At the same time, the Black elite’s increasing stake in
American capitalism has prompted its “most vocal leaders to [take] up
the role of policing the majority of Blacks left behind,”66 causing one
author to postulate a “Black silent majority.”67 Another author calls
those left behind “the Abandoned,” referring to them as “a large and
growing underclass concentrated in the inner cities and depressed
pockets of the rural South . . . [in danger of] permanent pathology and
underclass status . . . .”68
In the wake of the “American Spring” protests around police
violence toward members of the black community, “respectable” groups
responded with myriad conferences, attended almost exclusively by
establishment types.69 Their primary approach is to appeal to the moral
62 Lacy, supra note 57, at 1248. 63 Lacy, supra note 57, at 1249. 64 Susan Welch & Lorn Foster, Class and Conservatism in the Black Community, 15 AM. POL. Q. 445 (1987)
(suggesting middle-class Blacks are more conservative in their views compared with poor-working class
Blacks). 65 Wilson, supra note 50. 66 Petersen-Smith, infra note 72. 67 Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Punitive Aspirations, N.Y. TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW (Sept. 27, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/books/review/black-silent-majority-by-michael-javen-fortner.html
(reviewing Michael Javen Fortner, BLACK SILENT MAJORITY: THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS AND THE
POLITICS OF PUNISHMENT (2015) (stating “Choosing ‘class-based values’ over racial solidarity [in the War on Drugs, the middle-class Black Silent Majority] cast their lot with cops and white suburbanites.”). 68 Raymond Arsenault, The Great Unraveling, N.Y. TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW (Dec. 29, 2010)
(reviewing Eugene Robinson, DISINTEGRATION: THE SPLINTERING OF BLACK AMERICA (2011)), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/books/review/Arsenault-t.html?_r=0. 69 See CBCF ALC Town Hall 2014, YOUTUBE (Sept. 25, 2014),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TDjhdsHPIs&feature=youtu.be&t=1h13m54s; see also Washington and Bacon, supra note 51.
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character of society’s power brokers70 and to stress voter participation
and policy-making reforms.71 Many Black leaders “are more interested
in folding any energy toward racial justice into electoral support for the
Democratic Party, and shaming Blacks for failing to succeed . . . a
perverse politics that blames most Blacks for their own condition.”72
African American youth are finding it increasingly difficult to
conform to respectability politics, because of its basic premise that a
black person is not permitted to behave spontaneously or authentically,
but must always take time to consider what white people will think.73
As my research assistant, Monique Peterkin, put it, “We must constantly
monitor ourselves, our dialect, and our behavior to . . . quell whites’ fear
of [black rebellion],” and so whites can live their lives as if we black
people weren’t there.74 One middle-class, “respectable” black man
described the code of conduct he has prescribed for his “elite children,”
for example:
• Never run while in the view of a police officer or security person unless it is apparent that you are
jogging for exercise, because a cynical observer
might think you are fleeing a crime or about to
assault someone.
• When you are the driver or passenger in a car (even in the back seat) and the vehicle has been stopped by
the police, keep your hands high where they can be
seen, and maintain a friendly and non-questioning
demeanor.
• Always zip your backpack firmly closed or leave it in the car or with the cashier so that you will not be
suspected of shoplifting.
• Never leave a shop without a receipt, no matter how small the purchase, so that you can’t be accused
unfairly of theft.
70 Wilson, supra note 49, at 9. 71 Id. 72 See Khury Petersen-Smith, Black Lives Matter: A New Movement Takes Shape, 96 INT’L SOCIALIST
REVIEW, http://isreview.org/issue/96/black-lives-matter (citing Ahmed Shawki, BLACK LIBERATION AND SOCIALISM 238 (2006)). 73 See Wilson, supra note 48. Tabias Wilson observes that the resources accessed by respectability
practitioners “are available and dependent on the whims of the white gaze and its reading of whiteness, blackness and individual costs of recognizing a particular black body as ‘whitened.’ We must also think
about the psycho-social costs of becoming ‘whitened.’ What community has been lost? What family? What
culture? Safety net? Home? Where can the battered spirit return to, to be healed?” 74 Cf. Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN (1952).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
• If going separate ways after a get-together with friends and you are using taxis, ask your white friend
to hail your cab first, so that you will not be left
stranded without transportation.
• When unsure about the proper attire for a play date or party, err on the side of being more formal in your
clothing selection.
• Do not go for pleasure walks in any residential neighborhood after sundown, and never carry any
dark-colored or metallic object that could be
mistaken as a weapon, even a non-illuminated
flashlight.
• If you must wear a T-shirt to an outdoor play event or on a public street, it should have the name of a
respected and recognizable school emblazoned on its
front.
• When entering a small store of any type, immediately make friendly eye contact with the shopkeeper or
cashier, smile, and say “good morning” or “good
afternoon.”75
Monique observed that respectability politics could go so far as
to “promote submissiveness as an ideal response to police misconduct.”
As I suggested in a Huffington Post blog, that is too close to the behavior
expected of slaves and is simply unacceptable.76
The class dimensions of the politics of respectability have only
deepened over time.77 Indeed, an “elite self-image” designed in an
attempt to overcome racial stigma might even have “required the
“displacement of feelings of anger and shame” onto lower-class
blacks.78 Members of the middle class who thought putting the “best
foot forward for purposes of racial uplift” meant emulating the speech,
thinking and lifestyles of “white folks” would eventually—and
inevitably—clash with the descendants of the anti-Uncle Tom, the “bad
75 Lawrence Otis Graham, I taught my black kids that their elite upbringing would protect them from discrimination. I was wrong, WASH. POST, Nov. 6, 2014 (discussing the limitations of “respectability”
politics, and the rules he must now impose on his children after the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael
Brown). 76 American Spring, supra note 2. 77 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 78. 78 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 95 (quoting KEVIN K. GAINES, UPLIFTING THE RACE: BLACK LEADERSHIP, POLITICS, AND CULTURE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 6 (1996)).
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HOWARD HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS LAW REVIEW
Negro,”79 whose first impulse was to “disrespect” whiteness and the
white man. I call this the politics of disrespect.
IV. THE POLITICS OF DISRESPECT 80
The “bad Negro” evolves from African folkloric images of the
trickster, who at first subverted slave codes by wiles.81 Later,
emboldened by the uprisings in Haiti and Jamaica, these subversives
organized slave rebellions (which usually failed due to the intervention
of Uncle Toms).82 With organized resistance no longer possible, the
“bad niggers” who faced white men individually paid a heavy price.83
They were “shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded
until they were dead or their spirits broken.”84
With little room for badness in the South, the bad Negro re-
emerged in segregated Northern ghettoes during and after the Great
Migration. Spatially separated from whites, they had little to fear from
white retaliation.85 Rejecting the ties of family, community, and
religion, abusing drugs, alcohol, and women, they began to visit their
badness on other blacks, eventually emerging as modern-day “thugs”
and “gangstas”86 who drive up the statistics of “black-on-black crime.”87
This strain resonates powerfully with those “proximate to poverty,” who
regularly experience violence88 without “positive state-intervention,”89
79 RICHARDSON, supra note, at 29, 195. 80 Cf. Anthony L. Brown, Jamel K. Donno, THE EDUCATION OF BLACK MALES IN A ‘POST-RACIAL’ WORLD,
at 23 (2013). 81 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 189 (citing JOHN W. ROBERTS, FROM TRICKSTER TO BADMAN: THE
BLACK FOLK HERO IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM (1990)). 82 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 31-32 (Sam Sharpe’s rebellion in Jamaica, on the other hand, though ultimately quashed, displayed such solidarity that it led to the abolition of slavery throughout the British
Commonwealth just seven years later. see Jamaica Information Servs., SAMUEL SHARPE,
http://jis.gov.jm/heroes/samuel-sharpe/). 83 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 34 (Bad Negroes were envied because they refused to submit to Jim Crow,
were utterly fearless in the face of white intimidation, and generally rejected the ties of family, community,
and religion.) (citing RICHARD WRIGHT, NATIVE SON ix (1940)). 84 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 34 (citing RICHARD WRIGHT, NATIVE SON ix (1940)). 85 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 35 (citing RICHARD WRIGHT, NATIVE SON xv (1940)). 86 Todd Boyd, AM I BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?: POPULAR CULTURE FROM THE ‘HOOD AND BEYOND 74 (1997). 87 A student in my Civil Rights Planning course, Bertram Lee, argued that the term “black-on-black crime”
should no longer be used. Instead, he recommends the term “intra-communal violence,” supporting the assertion that people of color do not actively try to harm each other because the violence is a matter of
proximity. See Edward Conlon, The Racial Reality of Policing, WALL ST. J. (Sept. 4, 2015). Contrast his
stance with voices from the ‘hood asserting that black-on-black crime is real, “doing the work of the KKK.” See, e.g., Interview with Kin Killin Kin artist James Pate, YOUTUBE, https://youtu.be/FOgEAQdvv5o (Oct.
14, 2013); Kin Killin’ Kin James Pate Interview, YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/HPA2gnlfe8Y (Apr. 21, 2015);
see also KKK – KIN KILLIN’ KIN, http://blackartistnews.blogspot.com/2013/07/chicago-james- pate.html?m=1; see also the MILLION YOUTH PEACE MARCH,
http://www.millionyouthpeacemarch.org/about-us.html (against gun violence in the inner city). 88 See Wilson, supra note 49. 89 Id.
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
making them “less likely to have faith in the ability and willingness of
institutions, organizations and the state apparatus to safeguard their
humanity and increase their sociopolitical power.”90
The “Blaxploitation” films of the 1970s celebrated such
characters, ultimately playing a “decisive role in fashioning popular
notions of black masculinity.”91 These stereotypes were consolidated
during the 1990s, a time of heightened discussion of “black male
homicide and incarceration owing to drug and gang-related violence,” a
time when “the posturing of rappers [as] ‘gangstas’ reinforced the media
view” of black men as violent and dangerous.92
“Gangstas” and their predecessors—“cool” blacks, actual gang
members, many jazz musicians, etc.—began to dress and behave in a
way intentionally departing from white standards of respectability to
establish a narrative (if not the reality) of independence. This narrative
intersected powerfully with suppressed white narratives of slave
uprisings by physically powerful blacks bent on revenge for the
atrocities committed against black people. Today, these young men are
identified as “thugs,” whom frightened police officers are urged to whip,
maim, or shoot into submission.
Ironically, at the same time that gangsta posturing evokes a
frightening narrative of black insurgency, it also plays into a narrative
of wider insurgency against a suffocating, “respectable” capitalist
culture. It thus attracts the attention of young people of all races and
nationalities who wish to rebel. In an ironic twist, capitalist consumer
culture exploits these “dangerous” black stereotypes, marketing
gangsta-like confidence and demeanor in the media for emulation by
their target audiences: middle class black and white boys capable of
purchasing such products.93 To these young men who are not able to
physically and spatially access this lifestyle, it is glamourized as cool
and rebellious, while the poor blacks – and middle class blacks as well
– who wear hoodies and white t-shirts are blamed for their injuries or
death for dressing like “thugs.”94
Hip-hop and rap—“gangsta” music—are “both an artistic
response to and imitation and reflection of postindustrial conditions of
90 See Malik Nashad Sharpe, White Fragility Silence & Supremacy: Why All White Hands Are Bloody,
BLACK GIRL DANGEROUS (June 19, 2015), http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2015/06/white-fragility-
silence-and-supremacy-why-all-of-your-hands-are-bloody/. 91 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 54-55. 92 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 64. 93 Peterkin, supra note 54. 94 Peterkin, supra note 54.
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the city such as gangs, drugs, and violence.”95 Dr. Riche Richardson
celebrates Southern rappers for reclaiming the “quintessence of folk and
vernacular aesthetics in the African-American context”96 from Northern
urban ideologues.97 Yet the goal of Southern rap, according to
Richardson, seems to be “to assert that Southern men can do all the
criminal things that men in other regions are reputed to do,”98 including
“black-on-black crime,” “drastically [undercutting] the subversive
potential of their agenda.”99
Richardson herself concedes she is “troubled” by the “hegemony
of hip-hop as a paradigm in contemporary African American music
[and] culture,”100 particularly because of its misogyny, violence,101 and
materialism.102 This hegemony becomes even more troubling as hip-hop
is commodified103 by the industry that markets these objectionable
features104 globally and in “African diasporic contexts.” All the while,
global consumer capitalism prunes the music’s “original subversive and
oppositional content,”105 so that all that remains is a process of rappers
“showing the world their asses,” “defiantly parading their . . . crudeness
as a sign of freedom . . . .”106 (Ironically, this process is eminently
attractive to rebellious white youth.)107 There is hardly a more clear
95 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 211 (citing KELLEY, RACE REBELS: CULTURE, POLITICS, AND THE
BLACK WORKING CLASS 183-237 (1996)); see also id. at 226 (citing TRICIA ROSE, BLACK NOISE: RAP
MUSIC AND BLACK CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA 2 (1994) (rap music a “black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America.”)). 96 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 201. 97 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 226. 98 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 218, 236-37 (“[M]any African American men in and beyond the music
world are posturing as gangstas . . . for purposes of black masculine validation and affirmation . . . [But the] gangsta is a very limited and questionable formula . . . [indeed] quite regressive . . . [for] it forecloses a
broader and more diverse spectrum of black masculine representations.”). See also id. at 237 (gangsta artists
perform ‘[an intensely fetishized and commercialized violent bravado within an entertainment-dominated culture . . . .”). 99 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 220. 100 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 202. 101 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 216 (“Southern guys, the song [Way Down South] suggests, carry
weapons and are not afraid to fight or die.”). 102 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 202, 206, 212 (the theme of rap music generally includes “boasts related to money and other material possessions such as cars, jewelry, and drugs or to the sexual conquest of
women.” [Note the narrative connection to the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s]). 103 At least one rap mogul has been called the “ghetto Bill Gates” for marketing clothing, films, sports, toys and technology. RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 204-06 (citing Tariq Muhammad, Hip Hop Moguls: Beyond
the Hype, BLACK ENTERPRISE (Dec. 1999), at 78g). 104 Rappers ironically recast the “historically raced and gendered pathologies of black men as criminal, violent, and overly sexualized that have roots in southern [slave/racist] history.” RICHARDSON, supra note
29, at 202. 105 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 202. 106 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 207-08 (quoting Toure, Juvenile, P and Biggie Rule Hardcore from the
South and from the Beyond, ROLLING STONE (Jan. 2000), at 59. 107 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 262 n.23 (“[W]hite teenagers . . . represent 80% of gangsta rap’s consumers”).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
metaphor for disrespect than “showing your ass.”108 In West Africa,
where I believe the term originates, it compares the practitioner to a
baboon that literally presents its hindquarters—hemorrhoids and all—
to onlookers whom it seeks to “diss.”
In his speech, Cosby attacked black “thugs,” and criticized poor
black mothers for not keeping a close enough eye on their sons, then
crying when they are “standing there in an orange jumpsuit.”109 Yet
“Gangsta” blacks might deride Cosby as ultimately subservient to
whites, when defiance is the proper response. It is important to consider,
in this context, the processes by which poor, low-income and working-
poor folks are “othered” and to consider ways in which they might find
their paths back to the center and humanization,110 other than “the
corner.”111
In that regard, rappers and gangstas, from whatever region, still
lack the material opposition to the racist, capitalist system and a defense
of the community that are essential elements of what I call self-respect.
Indeed, southern rappers, like their East and West Coast colleagues,
have cultivated the image of the “bad nigger,”112 who has little or no
concern for family or community. In this sense, they are practitioners of
the politics of disrespect, not of self-respect.113 (The role of the female
practitioners of the politics of disrespect is beyond the scope of this
article.)114
Ironically, it was not always that way. Before its absorption into
neoliberal capitalism, rap and hip-hop focused much more closely on
the social, political, and economic subordination of the African-
American community, and called for resistance. My student, Vianca
Simpson, has completed a paper detailing the shift from lyrics with
108 See Red Ass Baboons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi9TThwlyT4; see also RICHARDSON, supra
note 29, at 211 (quoting RICK KOSTER. LOUISIANA MUSIC: A JOURNEY FROM R&B TO ZYDECO, JAZZ TO COUNTRY, BLUES TO GOSPEL, CAJUN MUSIC TO SWAMP POP TO CARNIVAL MUSIC AND BEYOND 293
(2002)). 109 Peterkin, supra note 54. 110 Memorandum from Tabias Wilson (July 2015) (on file with author) (citing John A. Powell, Poverty and
Race Through a Belongingness Lens, POLICY MATTERS, Apr. 2012,
http://www.nwaf.org/content/uploads/oldsite/FileCabinet/DocumentCatalogFiles/Other/PMpowell.pdf). 111 Conlon, supra note 87. 112 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 221 (“[T]he gangsta recuperates the outlaw sensibility associated with
the ‘bad Negro’ in African American cultural history.”). 113 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 200 (suggesting that their posturing as “gangstas” and “playas” was a
means to secure entrance into the lucrative rap industry). 114 Cf. Cinnamon Williams, Examining Amber Rose: How Respectability Still Influences Black Feminism, FORHARRIET (Sept. 20, 2015), http://www.forharriet.com/2015/09/examining-amber-rose-how-
respectability.html?m=1#axzz3mOjYYw9G (noting hip-hop artists such as Amber Rose, Blac Chyna, and
Nicki Minaj, who counter the “thorns of respectability politics [that] have flourished alongside the roses of Black feminism.”).
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“uplifting, encouraging undertones of black love, hard work, and
overcoming hardships to achieve success” to lyrics that “glorif[y]
criminal behavior, promiscuity, misogyny, drug use, and promote black
stereotypes to the detriment of black youth.”115 Far from its 1970s
beginnings in the underground music world of the South Bronx, where
it expressed the collective voice of the black community, hip-hop has
since become a commodified product of major corporations and
mainstream pop culture.116 “The formula that is used in making movies
successful has been applied to hip-hop music and videos: urban black
life for white audiences.”117
On the other hand, Vianca has some very good suggestions on
how to “redeem” rap, and rappers, such as “roots rap” focusing on the
political, social and cultural issues that characterized the original
form.118 Vianca also mentions Hip Hop Caucus (connecting hip-hop to
civil rights advocacy)119 and Rap Rehab, which shares news in the rap
world and highlights socially conscious artists.120
V. THE POLITICS OF SELF-RESPECT
The politics of self-respect bases itself in the African-American
minority community, its culture and social relations, and looks to the
welfare of the poor, the working class, and the lower middle class. In its
earliest incarnations, it took the form of “black nationalism.”
115 Vianca Simpson, Commercialized Hip Hop as a Form of Predatory Advertising, Nov. 30, 2015
(unpublished paper on file with author) (citing What’s Wrong with Rap and Hip Hop, http://www.newafricaradio.com/hip-hop.htm). 116 Dr. Boyce Watkins, Why Black People Must Take Commercialized Hip-Hop to Task,
http://newsone.com/1895975/why-black-people-must-take-commercialized-hip-hop-to-task/ (2012) (last visited Nov. 2015); Dir. Byron Hurt, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (2006) (last visited Oct. 2015)
(describing the beginnings of commercialized hip-hop); Rosalia Malvasi, Is the “commercialization of hip-
hop a positive or negative?, https://prezi.com/ub1ljco3acqe/is-the-commercialization-of-hip-hop-a- positive-or-negative/ (describes the beginnings of commercialized hip-hop); What Went Wrong With… Hip-
Hop And Rap? (A Timeline), http://whatwentwrongwith.com/2014/02/23/what-went-wrong-with-hip-hop-
and-rap-a-timeline/?. 117 Simpson, supra note 115. 118 Id. (noting Bree Newsome’s “#Stay Strong,” a “love song to freedom fighters.”); Bree Newsome,
#StayStrong:_A_Love_Song_To_Freedom_Fighters, https://breenewsome.bandcamp.com/track/staystrong-a-love-song-to-freedom-fighters); see also FED.
TRADE. COMM’N, MARKETING VIOLENT ENTERTAINMENT TO CHILDREN: A SIXTH FOLLOW-UP REVIEW OF
INDUSTRY PRACTICES IN THE MOTION PICTURE, MUSIC RECORDING & ELECTRONIC GAME INDUSTRIES (2009), https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/marketing-violent-entertainment-
children-sixth-follow-review-industry-practices-motion-picture-music/p994511violententertainment.pdf. 119 See HIP HOP CAUCUS, http://www.hiphopcaucus.org/our-story/ (last visited Oct. 2015). 120 Simpson, supra note 115 (citing GEORGE LIPSITZ, FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF
POPULAR MUSIC (2007); The Hip Hop Hearings, at 158 (discussing Music Lyrics and Commerce, Hearing
Before the H. Subcomm. on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Competitiveness of the H. Comm. on
Energy and Commerce, 103rd Cong. 6 (1994).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
A. The Black Nationalist Project
Howard Law student Leon Humphry, who has studied Black
Nationalism extensively, believes this strain of “self-respect” has been
part of Black sensibilities since “the very moment when European
Americans introduced Blacks to American shores.”121 This discourse
expresses “a property dispute with their European counterparts firstly
for the right to own their own bodies and then the right to own without
condition the environment in which they lived.”122 In this dispute,
Blacks have sought autonomy (“the ability to be the masters of their own
political and socioeconomic affairs”); a discernible geographic sphere
from which to exercise this autonomy; and freedom from white influence
(“the ability to exclude white influence from this geographic
sphere.”)123 Leon’s formulation makes a clear connection between
Black Nationalism in the United States and the strivings of Pan
Africanism worldwide. Each of these objectives have had their
advocates among African-Americans, who formed groups to advance
one or more of them.
The Black struggle for land (in Leon’s terms, “space; a
discernible geographic sphere from which to exercise . . . autonomy”
and from which to “exclude white influence”) is deep-seated.124 Marcus
Garvey eloquently addressed this yearning with his “Back to Africa”
movement in the early 1900s.125 In the 1930s, the American Communist
Party (CPUSA) translated Garvey’s idea of land for black people in
Africa into a demand for land, confiscated from white landowners in the
rural South, where most black people still lived, to create a “Nation
within a Nation.”126
The CPUSA did not gain much purchase in the South, but the
“Nation within a Nation” idea soon re-surfaced as a central platform of
121 Email from Leon Humphrey to Professor Harold McDougall (Aug. 26, 2015) (on file with author). 122 Humphrey, supra note 121. 123 Id. 124 See generally Harold McDougall, Land Reform and the Struggle for Black Liberation, LAND REFORM
AMERICAN STYLE (Charles Geisler & Frank Popper eds., 1984). 125 Land Reform and the Struggle for Black Liberation, supra note 124, at 176-77 (UNIA founded in Jamaica
in 1914, launched in the U.S. in 1917). See also Bianca Bell, The Failure of Reparations in America and
the Need for Black Sovereignty in the 21st Century (unpublished paper on file with author) (citing Lee A. Harris, Political Autonomy as a Form of Reparations to African-Americans, 29 S.U. L. REV. 25, 32 (2001)
(“At its peak, UNIA boasted a membership of at least a million members, and Garvey is still recognized as
the leader of the largest secular organization in black history.”). 126 This land reform was not to serve the Radical Republican idea of reparations, but rather Garvey’s notion
of black self-determination. The CPUSA believed this demand would facilitate organizing among black
agricultural workers and tenant farmers, whom they considered a “revolutionary vanguard” in the struggle against American capitalism. Land Reform and the Struggle for Black Liberation, supra note 124, at 178.
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the emerging Nation of Islam in the North, organizing among black
urban migrants in Detroit in the 1930s.127 When the U.S. government
ignored their proposal, the Nation began buying land on its own. Within
thirty years, they had acquired large farms in Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi, despite court actions to nullify purchases by a “dangerous
foreign nation.” With this land base, and aided by financing from Libya,
the Nation created a robust agricultural development program,
marketing their produce in the urban North along with fresh fish and
copies of Muhammad Speaks, the organization’s newspaper.
Muhammad Speaks was widely read by black intellectuals, especially
for its coverage of foreign affairs—a bit like Al Jazeera today.128
When Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad died on
February 25, 1975, his son Wallace, taking a “faith only,” anti-
commercial posture, sold most of the Nation’s businesses and land
holdings. The next contender for self-determination in the Black Belt
South, also originating in Detroit, was the Republic of New Africa
(RNA), founded by black labor organizers in that city.129
The RNA was even more insistent on the idea of self-
determination than the Muslims were; in turn, local government
authorities and the FBI offered even greater resistance. In 1969, RNA
President, Imari Obadele, a Yale Law University PhD, opened the fray
with a diplomatic note to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The note
declared the RNA’s intention to found an independent black nation in
the rural South. It called for a plebiscite to allow local blacks to
renounce U.S. citizenship in favor of citizenship in the Republic of New
Africa.130
The resistance to the Muslims, who sought land only for
commercial purposes, took place in state courts. In contrast, the RNA
faced police and FBI raids after the Mississippi State Attorney General
interpreted their presence in the state as an “armed invasion.”131 The
RNA deployed its armed military wing, the “Malcolmites,” in the state
to protect RNA organizers, much as the Deacons for Defense and Justice
had protected civil rights marchers and demonstrators a decade before.
127 It is important to note that a large number of Marcus Garvey’s former followers joined the Nation after his downfall. Id. at 184 128 See generally Land Reform and the Struggle for Black Liberation, supra note 124, at 184-85 129 See Raymond L. Hall, BLACK SEPARATISM AND SOCIAL REALITY: RHETORIC AND REASON ix (1977); see also Imari Obadele, Republic of New Africa: The Struggle For Land In Mississippi, BLACK WORLD,
Feb. 1973, 66-68. 130Bell, supra note 125 (citing Imari Obadele, What is the Republic of New Africa, MISSISSIPPI DIGITAL LIBRARY, (Jan. 1976), http://collections.msdiglib.org/cdm/ref/collection/tougaloo/id/364) (unpublished
2014 student essay on file with author). 131 Nicholas Kimble, Republic of New Africa, BROWN-TOUGALOO EXCHANGE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM PROJECT, (Dec. 3, 2014), http://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/themes/blkpower/.
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
In 1971, a gun battle between RNA members, FBI agents, and local
police left one Jackson police officer dead at the RNA headquarters in
Jackson, Mississippi. Eleven RNA leaders got prison terms, five for
life.132 The RNA cadre joined a number of local organizations, focusing
their attention on protecting the existing black-owned land base in the
rural South (at the time, six million acres,133 but the RNA itself
disbanded.134
There have been many efforts to achieve political and
socioeconomic autonomy without a land base.135 Leon cites “enslaved
Blacks removing themselves from their bondage via Petit Marronage,”
and the words of Fredrick Douglass in 1865 stating that Black people
simply wanted to be left alone. Booker T. Washington’s creation of the
Tuskegee Institute, and “Black settlements from Seneca Village to
Rosewood, to Black enclaves from Harlem, New York to Tulsa,
Oklahoma”136 exemplify this trend. To Leon, this history, “clearly
highlights the fact that the traditional aim of many blacks was never
inclusion but unconditional, unqualified and absolute freedom from
their European counterparts.”137
“Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, to which Leon refers, is an
example of a purely economic strategy.138 A good example of a purely
political strategy would be the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom
Organization (LCFO). LCFO, organized in 1965 by Stokely Carmichael
and other SNCC members,139 originated the concept of a Black Panther
Party140 and the lunging Black Panther logo.141 The famous Oakland-
based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) that followed,
appropriating the symbol,142 aimed at both political and social
autonomy.143 Because none of these organizations could be completely
132 Id. 133 Harold McDougall, Black Landowners Beware: A Proposal For Statutory Reform, 9 N.Y.U. REV. L. &
SOC. CHANGE 127 (1979-80). 134 Land Reform and the Struggle for Black Liberation, supra note 124. 135 Bell, supra note 125. 136 Humphrey, supra note 121. 137 Id. 138 Josie Pickens, The Destruction of Black Wall Street, EBONY MAGAZINE, May 31, 2013,
http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405#axzz4J1JmO4Kh. 139 Social Activism Sound Project: Black Panther Party, UC BERKELEY PUB. LIBRARY (July 13, 2011),
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificapanthers.html#1965. 140 Benjamin Hedin, From Selma to Black Power, THE ATLANTIC, (Mar. 6, 2015), http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/03/from-selma-to-black-power/386989/. 141 Dorothy Zellner et. al., The Black Panther Symbol: An Email Discussion, (May-June 2006),
http://www.crmvet.org/disc/panther.htm. 142 See Joshua Bloom & Waldo Martin, BLACK AGAINST THE EMPIRE: THE HISTORY AND POLITICS OF THE
BLACK PANTHER PARTY 39-44 (2014). 143 The Oakland-based BPP engaged not only in gun-toting swagger and in campaigns against police harassment and brutality, but also provided free breakfasts for inner-city community children, medical
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separate from white America, I see this strain of Black Nationalism as
seeking “relative” socioeconomic and/or political autonomy.144
One variant remains: attempts to achieve freedom from white
influence without a land base, political autonomy, or socioeconomic
autonomy. These are more recent. The activities of the “cultural
nationalists” of the 1970s provide examples—Amiri Baraka’s Congress
of African People145 and Ron Karenga’s146 “US” organization.147 The
aim here was to promote a set of cultural practices, shared throughout
the black community that would engender a sense of self-worth and
pride in being black.148 In some sense, this amounted to an attempt to
subvert or replace the prevailing white racist narrative regarding the
identity and worth of African Americans.149
B. Stories of Self-Respect
Practitioners of self-respect politics combine a “respectable”
commitment to family, community, and even religion, with the original
Southern “bad Negro’s” refusal to submit to white intimidation, or even
cater to white fears or needs for reassurance. The practitioners I found
most impressive in my time were Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael
(Kwame Ture), at the height of their maturity and development.150 (Both
Stokely and Malcolm were of Caribbean heritage; Stokely first-
generation from Trinidad, and Malcolm second-generation from
Grenada.).151
Confident and self-assured, the “self-respecting” black person
does what is right, not to please, emulate, or even to infuriate white
people, but to build the black community. For most of my student
clinics, and a Bobby Seale run for mayor of Oakland. See, e.g., PBS, A Huey P. Newton Story, https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_platform.html) (citing the Black Panther’s Ten Point
Program). 144 An unusual variant is “revolutionary” Black Nationalism, which targeted capitalism as well as racism. The Panthers dabbled in this, but the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and the All-African People’s
Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) are better examples. See, e.g., The Malcolm X Project at Columbia
University, Max Stanford, (RNA founder), http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/stanford.html, and the AARP website at http://www.aaprp-intl.org/. 145 See generally MICHAEL SIMANGA, AMIRI BARAKA AND THE CONGRESS OF AFRICAN PEOPLE: HISTORY
AND MEMORY (2015). 146 Dr. Maulana Karenga, The Official Website of Dr. Maulana Karenga, http://www.maulanakarenga.org/. 147 THE ORGANIZATION US (2015), http://www.us-organization.org/. 148 Id. 149 Richardson critiques the Northern, urban aesthetic of “cultural” nationalism. RICHARDSON, supra note
29, at 272. 150 Bell, supra note 125, at 9 (citing Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions 95 (2001)). 151 Stokely Carmichael was born in Trinidad, immigrating to the U.S. with his parents when he was in middle
school. STOKELY CARMICHAEL, READY FOR REVOLUTION: THE LIFE AND STRUGGLES OF STOKELEY
CARMICHAEL (2003), at 12. Malcolm’s mother was born in Grenada. MALCOLM X AND ALEX HALEY, THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X 8 (1964).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
researchers, Black Nationalism is only a concept from history; while I
actually met Malcolm X, he was assassinated fifty years ago. Minister
Louis Farrakhan is still around, but he has not made the impression that
Malcolm did, despite such achievements as the Million Man March.152
Before his induction into the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, who
grew up in a poor family with seven siblings, supported himself by
stealing and gambling. His was the true “thug life,” and as “Detroit
Red,” he made quite a name for himself before he wound up in prison.
Emerging from there as a leader in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm carried
his “thug” street confidence into the intellectual and political arena and
began to confront the white establishment at every turn.153 In this regard,
he and his mentor Elijah Muhammad soon parted ways, as Elijah was
not interested in confrontation. He felt Malcolm had become
unnecessarily “disrespectful,” and went so far as to forbid him from
making public statements after Malcolm’s famous “chickens coming
home to roost” remark made in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s
assassination.154
Malcolm X did not have to operate in a postindustrial society,
one in which police and FBI agents made war on gangs by introducing
drugs to pacify and divert them, following with a war on drugs that
placed them in prison. (The number of black prisoners in U.S. jails now
exceeds the numbers of Africans enslaved during the height of the Ante
bellum period.)
Still, Malcolm’s nationalist and radical rhetoric inspired a
generation to recognize the limitations of “respectability” expressed
only in white terms,155 and to resist continued social, economic, political
and cultural oppression by the white majority.156 He also gave life to
the Black Power and black cultural movements, grounded in the
struggles of the black poor and working class.157 Malcolm “decisively
shaped a nationalist project of black uplift in the mid-twentieth century
that prioritized [the] grassroots community.”158
152 The Million Man March was an impressive demonstration of self-respect and community uplift, but
failed to invest in the long-term community-building necessary to see its high ideals put into practice. See, e.g., Tom Rowley, The Million Man March, revisited: Three stories, WASH. POST, (Oct. 10, 2015). 153 See John J. Simon, The Achievement of Malcolm X, MONTHLY REVIEW 2 (2005). 154 Bell, supra note 125 (citing WILLIAM SALES, FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO BLACK LIBERATION: MALCOLM X AND THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRO- AMERICAN UNITY (1994)). 155 As I. F. Stone wrote in his review of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “The sickness of the Negro in
America is that he has been made to feel a nigger; the genocide is psychic.” See I. F. Stone, The Pilgrimage of Malcolm X, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Nov. 11, 1965. 156 See generally MALCOLM X & ALEX HAILEY, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X (1965). 157 See generally John J. Simon, The Achievement of Malcolm X, MONTHLY REVIEW (2005). 158 Id.
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Martin Luther King was eminently “respectable.” His “speaking
style and charisma” led him to prominence, not his ability to organize
the black community in a lasting way, or his overt confrontation of white
power.
Malcolm X was different. Richardson comments on the
“upright” and “sober” manner of members of the Nation of Islam
observed by onlookers, even in such cases as Malcolm’s “charismatic
confrontation of police in Harlem on behalf of a police brutality
victim.”159 Richardson believes, however, that the “Euro-American
style of suit” worn by Malcolm and other members of the Nation of
Islam was meant to “evoke the manner and respectability
conventionally associated with white men of the white-collar class.”160
This strikes me as an erroneous conflation of self-respect with
“respectability.” What she says may have been true for the Northern
urban black bourgeoisie, but what is evoked by a suit has a lot to do with
who is wearing it and how.
Miles Davis wore “Euro-American” styled suits for much of his
career. Members of the Mafia wore such suits all the time. Black athletes
wear such suits today. In none of these cases are the wearers seeking to
emulate white-collar white men, nor do they give that impression.
Anyone facing members of Elijah Muhammad’s security team, the Fruit
of Islam (FOI), knew they were not dealing with white-collar white men,
regardless of the suits they wore.
Malcolm, “Euro-American style of suit” and all, embodied a
black man “whose disenfranchisement, invisibility, and poverty might
[someday] erupt into violent revolutionary action against the dominant
social order.”161 To be open to this possibility of reacting to oppression
as any normal human would, is in my view the essence of self-respect.162
Today, however, my students are concerned that the “relatively
autonomous” and “cultural nationalist” strains of Black Nationalism,
not having a land base, have only limited “avenues to economic comfort,
largess and stability” and must ultimately engage with “white
supremacists and/or anti-black spaces, politics and systems.”163
Moreover, when they do so engage, they do not receive a warm
159 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 163. 160
RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 162. 161 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 163. 162 Such ventures surfaced a shift from “‘genteel’ models of black masculine leadership,” (i.e.,
“respectable”) to models that were more militant and vocal, (I would say, “self-respecting”), RICHARDSON,
supra note 29, at 195. 163 Wilson, supra note 49.
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
welcome. While “respectability” practitioners may encounter bemused
contempt from whites, Black Nationalists are hated and feared.164
At the same time, “self-respecting” blacks are unwilling to
accept the cabined life of the “respectable” black. Instead, they are
closer to Ta-Nahesi Coates’ worldview, expressed in the following
advice to his young son165 (sharply contrasted with that of the elite
lawyer discussed earlier).166
• You are human and you will make mistakes. • You will misjudge. • You will yell. • You will drink too much. • You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. • You should feel no need to constrict yourself to make
other people feel comfortable.
• Caution is futile, because there is no secure refuge from racism in America.
VI. FACING THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN NARRATIVE DILEMMA:
CONVERSATIONS WITH HOWARD LAW STUDENTS
As we have seen, the African-American community contains
conflicting narratives on how to resist continuing race and class
oppression, as well as how to mitigate damage already done.167 Each
narrative is grounded in different definitions, different tactics, different
present and future aspirations, historical recollections and hopes for
“blackness.”168 These conflicts have undermined the community’s
overall effectiveness.169 My students find the absence of grass roots
community voices in the civil rights discourse, the absence of the voices
of “little people,” particularly troubling.
164 See, e.g., Stan. Univ. King Encyclopedia, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_federal_bureau_of_investigation_fbi
/. 165 See Randall Kennedy, A Caricature of Black Reality, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 88 (2015) (quoting Ta-
Nahesi Coates, as he criticizes Coates for repudiating the “perfectionist strand in black respectability
politics” in advising his teen-aged son in Coates best-selling book, BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME). 166 See Graham, supra note 75. 167 See generally, McDougall, BLACK BALTIMORE: A NEW THEORY OF COMMUNITY (1992). 168 Wilson, supra note 49. 169 Ironically, then, Uncle Tom and the gangsta, the politics of respectability and the politics of disrespect,
are mirror images of one another. Both use white sensibilities and reactions as the cornerstone of their
effectiveness, cf. RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 222 (“the ‘Uncle Tom’ and the ‘gangsta’ [are] two sides of the same coin.”).
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Tabias Wilson observes that black leaders, especially on the
national scale, seem to “just emerge,” without a clear mandate and with
little or no means of holding them accountable.170 “Who,” Tabias asks,
“in theory and practice, is given the franchise and the power to
validate/authenticate these leaders? Does the franchise include the
working poor, youth, LGBTQ, women, the college-educated, felons, the
disenchanted?”171 If not, and the franchise for choosing black leaders is
given only to “professionals and/or establishment types,” this shrinks
the actual base of such leaders dramatically, making it difficult to
engage the full power of the black community.172
Even worse, the existing process seems to select “leaders for
life.”173 “For more than 40 years our community has either been
represented or guided from the grave by the Kings, Sharptons,
Farrakhans and Jacksons,” Tabias observes.174 Young people who
identify with a “collective, systemic struggle against poverty and white
supremacy” see this “unchanging, dynastic [black] leadership”175 as part
of the problem rather than part of the solution, and head out on their
own, further weakening the community’s ability to cohere.
Ebony Johnson sees a similar outcome. Today’s youth do not
respect leaders with whom they cannot identify—“they do not want
someone from the suburbs to come fix ‘the hood’s’ problems.” Instead,
they want “someone who can identify with their lives to fight for their
lives.” Because “no one else in their community has stepped up to take
the lead, they have decided to lead themselves.”176
What to do? Tabias is concerned that “our movements seem to
be more messages to white people than to ourselves.” Even Black Lives
Matter seems focused on a white audience. “We seem unable, unwilling
or afraid to think of a Blackness that has value on its own.”177
170 Wilson, supra note 50. 171 Id. 172 Such a narrow base of connection means, among other things, very low voter participation among the
“little people” come election time. This might actually be acceptable for black incumbents in Congress, or state legislatures and/or local elections, who actually depend on low voter turnout to stay in office. However,
this means very bad news in national elections where these same pols promise to “deliver” the black vote.
Memorandum from Wilson, supra note 50. 173 Argued by Tabias Wilson, supra note 50. I responded that in Africa, this is called the “big man”
syndrome. Throughout the Diaspora and the Continent, we see this, arising as a function of civic/citizen
underdevelopment, class-biased political processes, active suppression of the little people’s participation, and leadership alliance with the oppressor, or at least with the oppressor’s money. 174 Wilson, supra note 50. 175 Id. 176 Memorandum from Ebony Johnson for Professor Harold McDougall (July 4, 2015) (on file with author). 177 Wilson, supra note 48 (“This lends credence to Bell’s assertion that racism and white supremacy are
permanent, they have become so part of our cultural DNA, that we understand ourselves in essentialist terms
defined by white supremacy.”).
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A. Black Lives Matter
#BlackLivesMatter began soon after a Florida jury acquitted
George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin, in 2013. Alicia
Garza,178 a labor and community activist from Oakland, California,
initiated a Facebook conversation “to express her anger and sadness.”179
Garza joined forces with two friends, Patrisse Cullors and Opal
Tometi,180 to “spark nationwide discussion,”181 to respond to “the anti-
Black racism that permeates our society,”182 and to “the way black lives
are consistently undervalued in America.”183 They issued a “call to
action”184 for people to work together to figure out how to change
things.185
A Wikipedia editor observes that, although all three run a stable
website and organization, “the overall Black Lives Matter movement is
a decentralized network, and has no formal hierarchy or
structure.”186 The movement reached national awareness with
the protests and unrest in Ferguson in August 2014, although Garza,
Cullors and Tometi were not initially involved in those events.”187
Originally avoiding the limelight, the three have been encouraged,
particularly by older people, to “own” and “step into” leadership
roles.188 This is how we are now able to piece together a picture of what
#BlackLivesMatter is, how it formed, and where it may be going.
All three were involved in Black Organizing for Leadership and
Dignity (BOLD). “Access to that national network helped their message
178 Liz Pleasant, Meet the Woman Behind #BlackLivesMatter—The Hashtag That Became a Civil Rights Movement, YES! MAGAZINE (May 1, 2015), http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/meet-the-
woman-behind-black-lives-matter-the-hashtag-that-became-a-civil-rights-movement. 179 Liz Pleasant, supra note 178. 180 Tometi remembers walking out of a screening of Fruitvale Station in Brooklyn when she heard of George
Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin; Mychal Denzel Smith, A Q&A With Opal Tometi,
Co-Founder of #BlackLivesMatter, THE NATION (June 2, 2015). 181 See, e.g., Janell Ross, How Black Lives Matter Moved from a Hashtag to a Real Political Force, WASH.
POST (Aug. 19, 2015); Elizabeth Day, #BlackLivesMatter: The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement, THE
GUARDIAN (July 2015); Gene Demby, The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement, POLITICO, (Dec. 31, 2014). 182 Alicia Garza, A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, THE FEMINIST WIRE, (Oct. 7, 2014),
http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/. 183 Liz Pleasant, supra note 178. 184 Garza, supra note 182. 185 Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180. 186 Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter (citing Ben Collins
and Tim Mack, Who Really Runs #BlackLivesMatter?, DAILY BEAST (Aug. 15, 2015)),
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/15/who-really-runs-blacklivesmatter.html. 187 Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 184 (citing Shannon Luibrand, How the Events in Ferguson
Sparked a Movement in America, CBS NEWS (Aug. 7, 2015, 5:39 AM),
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-black-lives-matter-movement-changed-america-one-year-later/. 188 Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180.
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spread quickly.”189Activists and organizations nationwide were soon
using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to “shine light on underreported
incidents of black people being attacked or killed by police.”190 Cullers
observes,
Rosa Parks was not just a woman who sat at the front of
the bus. She was a strategist; she was a tactician. I think
what we are trying to push, because we have social
media and they didn’t, is a new narrative. And we get to
do that in this generation.191
Garza feels that BLM’s appeal is much broader than that of
mainstream civil rights organizations because their leadership is
diverse, unlike the prevailing model of charismatic leadership by
straight males. Garza strongly believes in an approach that “goes
beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black
communities, which merely calls on Black people to love Black, live
Black and buy Black,” keeping “respectable” Black men in the
forefront.192 In order to “(re)build” the Black liberation movement,
Garza insists, it must include “queer and trans and disabled folk . . .
Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black
lives along the gender spectrum” who in the past have been ignored, if
not shoved aside.193 Needless to say, “respectability” politics is not on
the agenda.194
When we discuss Black Lives Matter, Garza urges us to “credit
[its] lineage,” “talk about its inception and political framing,” and “[l]ift
up Black lives as an opportunity to connect struggles across race, class,
gender, nationality, sexuality and disability.”195 She and her co-founders
are “looking to grow a movement that ensures liberation across sexual,
gender, and class identity.”196
For Opal Tometi,197 it was “very important to have something
that was broad enough [to] capture the state of black life” and the
189 Liz Pleasant, supra note 178. 190 Id. 191 Jane Little, They Started a Hashtag and a Civil Rights Movement, PRI’S THE WORLD (July 17, 2015,
6:45 PM), http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-17/they-started-hashtag-and-civil-rights-movement. 192 Garza, supra note 182. 193 Id. 194 Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 184 (citing Raven Rakia); see also Tod Seelie, The Fight for
the Soul of the Black Lives Matter Movement, GOTHAMIST (Apr. 7, 2015, 1:55 PM), http://gothamist.com/2015/04/07/black_lives_matter_movement.php. 195 Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180. 196 Id. 197 Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (See Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180).
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
violence all black people faced.198 Of Nigerian heritage, Tometi
particularly notes the diversity of Black immigrant experience she
encounters in her BLM work.199 She speaks to the increasing role of
black immigrants in American society and in the social justice
movement.200
Cullors, the third in the trio, focuses on “the roots of white
supremacy and racism, in which black people become the face for all of
the atrocities here in this country and [around] the globe . . . [We’re]
asking to be able to live our lives with dignity, to live our lives without
fear.”201
BLM also struggles with attempts by straight, white, patriarchal
and/or corporate actors to appropriate or co-opt their work and their
symbols with watered-down slogans. Even progressive movements and
actors sometimes “push for unity at the expense of really understanding
the concrete differences in context, experience and oppression.”202 It is
not that “Black lives are more important than other lives,” Garza insists.
BLM expresses and pursues “active solidarity with all oppressed people
who are fighting for their liberation . . . [O]ur destinies are
intertwined.”203
“[T]o keep it real,” Garza insists, “when Black people in this
country get free, the benefits will be wide reaching and transformative
for society as a whole,”204 because Black lives are at the core of the
198 Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180. 199 Id. (“When I speak at events these days and share that I have Nigerian roots. I will automatically have
fifteen people come up to me after the talk and share with me, ‘I’m this. I’m actually from this. I’m from Ghana. I’m from Jamaica.’ These incidents “add . . . to . . . the broader community understanding of who is
black and what is actually happening to them . . . .”). 200 See Eugene Robinson, DISINTEGRATION: THE SPLINTERING OF BLACK AMERICA (2011) (discussing an “Emergent community . . . of mixed-race families and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean . . .
.” A noted young immigrant leader in the movement is Rahiel Tesfamariam, a female Ethiopian minister
from Yale Divinity School, the subject of a viral photograph of her arrest at a Ferguson, Missouri demonstration while wearing a Hands Up United t-shirt, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-
black-activism-lost-its-religion/2015/09/18/2f56fc00-5d6b-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html. 201 Little, supra note 191. 202 See Tometi, in Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 178 (“We still experience resistance against including
these [diverse] stories in the broader narrative. Black Lives Matter has been viral and people are taking it,
appropriating it, and using it however they see fit. That’s part of the challenge in being able to shape the narrative when we are not necessarily around or when leaders from our network aren’t the ones sharing the
stories.”). 203 Garza, supra note 182. 204 Id.
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White supremacist205/neoliberal capitalist narrative.206 It is therefore
“appropriate and necessary to have strategy and action centered around
Blackness without other . . . communities [of color, or White] needing
to find a place and a way to center themselves within it.”207 “[W]e need
less watered down unity and more active solidarities with us, Black
people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective
futures depend on it.”208
Thus far, the three co-founders have organized a bus ride to
Ferguson to support the St. Louis movement after Michael Brown’s
murder,209 hosted national conference calls connecting activists around
the country, and organized a national conference.210 There are already
at least two dozen chapters of BLM in the U.S. and Canada.211 “Activists
in dozens of cities have marched onto highways to disrupt traffic; linked
arms across railroad tracks to stop trains; sat down in urban
intersections; delayed sporting events; and temporarily occupied
shopping malls, major retail stores, police departments, and city
halls.”212 A march in Seattle exceeded ten thousand people.213 As BLM
and their allies broaden the movement to go “beyond extrajudicial
killings of Black people by police and vigilantes,”214 new protests, from
marches of a few dozen to several thousand have emerged, calling “for
an end to stop-and-frisk, for more public school funding, and for an
increase in the minimum wage . . . .”215
BLM and their allies are now investigating the ways in which
anti-Black racism manifests in individual communities. The BLM
movement is in the process of holding “one-on-one or small
community/town halls and panels to . . . engage . . . people in a deeper
205 Id. (“When we deploy ‘All Lives Matter’…to correct an intervention specifically created to address anti-
blackness, we lose the ways in which the state apparatus has built a program of genocide and repression mostly on the backs of Black people—beginning with the theft of millions of people for free labor—and
then adapted it to control, murder, and profit off of other communities of color and immigrant communities.
We perpetuate a level of White supremacist domination by reproducing a tired trope that we are all the same . . . .”). 206 Id. 207 Op.cit. 208 Op.cit. 209 More than 500 people participated, Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 182 (citing Solomon,
Akiba, Get on the Bus: Inside the Black Lives Matter “Freedom Ride” to Ferguson, COLORLINES. (Sep. 5, 2014), Retrieved Feb. 5, 2015). 210 Mark Winston Griffith, Black Love Matters, THE NATION (July 28, 2015) (“The original projections
declared that ‘Hundreds of Black Freedom Fighters’ would attend, but final estimates put the gathering at well above a thousand people.”). 211 Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 187 (citing Segalov, Michael, We Spoke to the Activist
Behind #BlackLivesMatter About Racism in Britain and America, VICE, Retrieved Feb. 5, 2015). 212 Petersen-Smith, supra note 72. 213 Id. 214 Garza, supra note 182. 215 Petersen-Smith, supra note 72.
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CLASS CONTRADICTIONS
conversation” about “[living] in a world where we are not murdered,”
but also to raise questions about the structural oppression and
subordination black people face.216 “[I]t’s actually a lot of freaking
work,” says Tometi. “Our days are 16-18 hours. We are barely getting
any sleep because we are building out this political project and social
movement network.”217
More recent publicity, such as the protest at a Bernie Sanders
rally218 and a Twitter feed of BLM protesters chanting, “Pigs in a
blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” at the Minnesota State Fair, have drawn
attention and energy away from needed community organizing, and
occasionally put BLM on the defensive.219 Fox News has launched a
campaign against them, calling them a “hate group.”220 As one article
put it, the Black Lives Matter movement is “experiencing growing pains
as it steps into national spotlight.”221
The challenge now is to avoid media distractions and build
capacity in black communities instead. This is what I call civic
infrastructure, so that what the white and/or right wing media say about
your movement or your work does not matter, or matters less. Social
media alone cannot do that. As Robin Kelley, author of Hammer and
Hoe, a history of black communists in Depression-era Alabama said in
the Nation recently, “[s]trong community-based organizing really
matters. Nowadays there’s so much mobility, so much displacement that
[what takes its place is] [v]irtual organizing.” Social media has been
“able to mobilize huge numbers of people,” but with virtual organizing
alone, “it’s very hard to sustain the day-to-day organizational structure
that is required for long-term struggles.”222
216 Mychal Denzel Smith, supra note 180. (“Police are only one aspect,” [Tometti] says, pointing to “things
like the immigration system . . . the education system . . . health care . . . the attacks on labor unions and
what that has done to the standard of living, the employability of our people, the kind of wages that we are making, and the benefits. That to me is actually violence that’s sanctioned by the state . . . [We must]
continue to rise up and fight back.”). 217 Id. 218 See John Wagner, Protesters drove Bernie Sanders from one Seattle stage. At his next stop, 15,000 people
showed, WASH. POST (Aug. 8, 2015); cf. Sameer Rao, Black Lives Matter Refuses Democratic National
Committee Endorsement, COLORLINES (Sept. 1, 2015). 219 Black Lives Matter, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 187 (citing Gottfried, Mara. [1], ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS,
Aug. 31, 2015. Retrieved Aug. 31, 2015). 220 Danielle C. Belton, Black Lives Matter Backlash Gets Real, THE ROOT (Sept. 4 2015, 3:00 AM), http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/09/black_lives_matter_backlash_gets_real.html (“Bill
O’Reilly is calling the movement a “hate group.”); Shantell E. Jamison, Black Lives Matter Members
Respond to FOX, JET MAGAZINE (Sept. 3, 2015). 221 Jesse J. Holland, Black Lives Matter skipping 2016 endorsement, USA TODAY, Sept. 1, 2015. 222 See Sarah Jaffe, What a Band of 20th-Century Alabama Communists Can Teach Black Lives Matter and
the Offspring of Occupy, THE NATION (Aug. 31, 2015); Adrian Florido, Black Lives Matter Activists Meet in Cleveland to Plot Movement’s Future, NPR (July 23, 2015, 4:39 PM),
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The BLM Movement is the first mass protest to emerge on black
issues since “the decades-long racist backlash against the Black revolt
of the 1960s.”223 It operates in a backlashed terrain of racial re-
segregation, an eviscerated Voting Rights Act, a “so-called War on
Drugs” and the “criminalization of . . . Black people.224 Prominent
individuals populating this terrain, ranging from conservative media
pundits to prominent Black figures like Bill Cosby and President
Obama, promote the view that Black people cause their own failure to
succeed in US society.225
Police brutality in this terrain has had a “cross-class impact,”
driving African Americans “into each other’s arms across class
lines,”226 and producing a new cadre of young, African American
activists, militant and antiracist.227 These new organizers are
encountering unexpected “raw and amazing” energy in inner-city
communities.228 However, the community itself needs to channel this
energy.229 To achieve this goal, Ebony argues for more community-
specific approaches that engage the broad base of the population. She
cites a recent Black Entertainment Television (BET) special called
“Baltimore Speaks,”230 that included citizens and activists from the
community who were involved in the Baltimore protests. They debated
police brutality, violent protests, and a lack of leadership within their
communities. “Now that people in Black communities are willing to
lead themselves, we need community based organizations . . . to
empower them,” she says. In this regard, Ebony wants to know the
specific goals of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. “[A]t what point do
we stop having conversations, and start making long term and
sustainable change in our communities? Action is what’s required, and
it is long overdue.”231
I believe the key is to give this new energy a chrysalis in which
to develop, so “respectable” politicians and leaders do not exploit it, but
neither does it deteriorate into chaos, or simply wane. Civic
infrastructure is that chrysalis. Otherwise, we could wind up right here
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425654428/black-lives-matter-activists-meet-in-cleveland-to-plot-
movements-future. 223 Petersen-Smith, supra note 72. 224 Id. 225 Op.cit. 226 Horne, supra note 28. 227 Petersen-Smith, supra note 72. 228 Wilson, supra note 50. 229 Id. 230 Ebony Johnson, supra note 176, (citing BET’s News Special: Baltimore Speaks, BET,
http://www.bet.com/video/news/national/2015/baltimore-speaks-a-bet-special-live.html). 231 Id.; Cf. Washington and Bacon, supra note 51.
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in another generation, wondering what happened, how the raw energy
of today’s protests ebbed and disappeared, leaving behind no
fundamental improvement. The National Association of the Southern
Poor (NASP), organized by Donald Anderson, provides an early
example of the kind of civic infrastructure I have in mind.
B. The National Association of the Southern Poor
“[I]n order for masses of people to enter into collective decision-
making they must be organized prior to any decisions having been
made. [O]therwise it is likely that [any program that emerges] will be
designed and controlled by persons outside the community.”—Don
Anderson.232
Anderson was the first black graduate of the University of
Michigan Law School, and the architect of the War on Poverty
Legislation that came out of Adam Clayton Powell’s House Education
and Labor Committee in the 1960s.233 He became dissatisfied with the
community action concept in the legislation,234 and was concerned that
“the community action . . . programs [in the legislation] . . . lacked the
structure to keep them in touch with and accountable to their
constituents.”235
Anderson thought a solution might lie in Thomas Jefferson’s
“Assembly” model, founded on the notion that “grass roots democracy
[can] only function in small units” that foster “communication and
accountability between leaders and constituents.”236 The Assembly, a
coalition of small decision-making caucuses, meets individually and
collectively to solve individual and communal problems.237 Anderson
had studied the model earlier during a stint at the London School of
Economics.238
232 Donald L. Anderson, The Assembly: A Tool for Transforming Communities, SCHUMACHER CENTER FOR A NEW ECONOMICS, (Oct. 1996),
http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/publications/lectures/anderson/donald/the-assembly. 233 Patricia Sullivan, Donald Anderson Dies, WASH. POST (Jan. 20, 2004) (“Mr. Anderson helped draft the initial anti-poverty legislation passed by Congress.”). 234 Anderson, supra note 232. 235 Elliott Lee, Power Begins Down Home, BLACK ENTERPRISE, Sept. 1982 at 44. 236 Id. 237 Donald Anderson, Letter to the Editor: Assemblies That Help the Southern Poor Help Themselves, N.Y.
TIMES, July 3, 1984, (Thomas Jefferson recommended [the Assembly model to the Virginia Legislature June 5, 1821, stating: “Among other improvements, I hope they will adopt the subdivision of our counties
into wards. Each ward would thus be a small republic within itself. And every man in the state would thus
become an active member of the common government.”). 238 Lee, supra note 235, at 46.
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Following Jefferson’s model, Anderson began organizing in
predominantly black, rural counties in Virginia and North Carolina in
1968,239 in order to “strengthen neighborhood institutions and
leadership at the grassroots level.”240 Thus, NASP was born.
Anderson divided NASP counties and small cities in his
catchment area into units of fifty people, called “conferences.” Each
conference selected seven representatives to a conference committee
that caucused with the other forty-three conference members, in
caucuses of six or seven, to identify problems and work on possible
solutions.241
Most problems were settled at the conference level, while
remaining issues were addressed in an Assembly that was comprised of
one conference committee member from each of the conferences in the
jurisdiction. A Speaker elected by the Assembly presided over
deliberations. The Assembly members also formed committees on
matters such as housing, economic development, and education. At its
apex, NASP oversaw thirty assemblies, and sought to expand into South
Carolina and Georgia, and eventually, the rest of the Black belt.
In 1982, the Assembly was one of the most promising models
for increasing black economic and political power, providing a means
by which large numbers of people could engage in a common effort.
According to Anderson, “[e]ach Representative is in touch with fifty
members through seven committee-persons, each of whom, in turn,
communicates with six other members. And it works! What we have
done is transform entire communities.”242
The NASP pilot program in southeastern Virginia’s Surry
County improved public schools and promoted the construction of a
family health clinic, recreation center and library.243 One of the Surry
County Assembly’s first acts was to organize a voter registration drive,
in 1971, to take advantage of the county’s forty to sixty percent black
majority.244 Within eleven years, the majority of officeholders in the
county were black, and a new school and medical center had been
239 Id. 240 Anderson, supra note 232. 241 Wendell Rawls Jr., Southern Blacks Fight Rural Poverty, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 31, 1982) (“A member of
the community fills out a ‘problem sheet’ provided by a conference committee member and gives it to his
conference representative. If the representative cannot resolve the problem, it goes before the assembly’s executive council, which is made up of a dozen chairmen assigned to problems in such areas as employment,
[education], agriculture, housing, health and social services. According to Mr. Anderson, ninety percent of
the problems are solved by the assembly. Often the solution involves directing the citizen to the correct Government agency, staying with him and making sure that action is taken.”). 242 Anderson, supra note 232. 243 Sullivan, supra note 233. 244 Lee, supra note 235, at 48.
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erected. Three hundred homes received weatherization, and social
services delivery had dramatically improved.245
In 1984, Anderson offered the NASP model as a step toward
filling the nation’s need for more participatory institutions, envisioning
a “nationwide system of neighborhood assemblies that would convert
citizens from ‘passive spectators’ into active participants in their own
government.”246 By 2004, NASP operated in more than seventy
counties in Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia.247
Focused on the “quarter-moon sweep of Southern counties in Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas, where blacks make up
at least thirty percent of the population,”248 the heart of Southern
slavery, Anderson’s project fell clearly into the “political and
socioeconomic autonomy” genre of Black nationalism.
Anderson followed Jefferson’s model closely, except that
Jefferson would have had the conferences themselves built from the
ground up. Each of seven families would select a representative to sit
on a seven-person “council.” One of the council’s functions, but not the
only one, would be to select a representative who would sit on a seven-
person “conference” panel. Thus, the conferences were meetings of
seven people, not fifty, and they represented fifty families, not fifty
people. Finally, each conference selected a delegate to the Assembly,
which functioned similarly to Anderson’s NASP Assembly.
The Assembly “addresses some of the problems that have
plagued other grass-roots groups, such as weak structure and a lack of
accountability.”249 Nevertheless, the model does require training and
community buy-in.250 As Anderson himself put it,
Community . . . is more than a collection of people such
as you might find in a shopping mall, more than
members of the same audience, and even more than
people who live near one another. [It is constituted by]
people who have a particular sort of relationship: who
are committed to common purposes, and people who
245 Id. 246 Anderson, supra note 232. 247 Sullivan, supra note 233. 248 Rawls, supra note 241 (quoting Anderson: “Those were the slave counties . . . In those counties, 44
percent of the black people live below the poverty level, and the number of black farmers has declined from 270,000 to 98,000 in the last decade.”). 249 Lee, supra note 235, at 46 (quoting UNC anthropologist, Tony Whitehead, a program evaluator for the
Ford foundation). 250 Id.
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know they need one another even when they might not
particularly like one another . . . These relationships lead
to a distinctive kind of action, to cooperative civic action,
that is complementary and mutually reinforcing . . . It is
unlikely that [social problems will be addressed] unless
communities change, and unless citizens increase their
capacity to band together and act together . . . .251
Considering this, Tabias asked, “I wonder how we access that
large group of black people who were never church-goers, [are not]
affiliated with civic [organizations] and exist in small social islands?
How do we touch those black men whose closest black institution is the
barbershop?”252 “Barbershops could work,” I responded.
Tabias then recalled that a very promising initiative had just
emerged from the White House National Planning Committee for
HIV/AIDS, of which he is a member, engaging barbers to talk to their
customers about sex, have condoms accessible, and school them on
HIV/AIDS. “The barbers loved it,” he said. “It gave them a sense of
community leadership and it provided multiple educational and health
benefits across the community . . . .” 253
I added that a good format through which to provide the training
and buy-in Anderson discussed is the “study circle” (a small-group
discussion and deliberation format pioneered in Sweden).254 Study
circles build civic capacity, increase autonomy and encourage ideas and
strategies. Using this format, organizers could vet the Neighborhood
Assembly concept during traditional meeting rituals such as Sunday
dinner, family reunions, barbecues, birthdays, and Sunday football, as
well as in “free spaces” such as barbershops, beauty parlors, and bible
study groups. Meeting in such settings respects people’s time and trust.
Social media can help, but it does not easily communicate
nuance across space and time. Some level of face-to-face interaction—
like in a barbershop— is necessary to build the trust needed to support
real social change.255 In the Feminist Movement, for example, “second
wave” (1960s and 70s) feminists were known for their grassroots, face-
251Anderson, supra note 232. 252 Wilson, supra note 50. 253 Wilson, supra note 50. 254 See, e.g., Tore Persson, “The Swedish study circle,” https://webb.folkbildning.net/~tore.persson/tore- english-adult1. 255 See Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted, THE NEW YORKER (Oct.
4, 2010), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell; see also McDougall, supra note 2.
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to-face advocacy while most contemporary “third wave” feminist
activists do their work from behind a computer screen.256
Similar generational distinctions have appeared in the Black
Movement. Perhaps the Black Movement’s “second wave” (my
generation) can share their participatory, accessible decision-making
models with the Black Movement’s third wave (the Black Lives Matter
generation). These young people may well find such models more
attractive than the bureaucratic, top-down organizational styles of our
first-wave, the “respectable” Black organizations that still dominate
national policy discourse. Similarly, the third wave can school us on the
use of social media and remind us of what enthusiasm looks like.
A key “second wave” element is a cell structure, comprised of
intermediate spaces like the Assembly’s family councils and
conferences, linked concentrically. Thus, ideas and strategies generated
in each space can be shared broadly in face-to-face discussion
throughout the network. This is “small-d” democratic deliberation,
allowing for nonverbal communication as well as verbal and
electronic.257 (Note, the family, the basic unit of hunter-gatherer society,
is also the basic unit of the Assembly.)
Might Anderson’s prototype re-emerge as a “Neighborhood
Assembly” in some of the locations in which Black Lives Matter
chapters have developed? In Freddie Gray’s West Baltimore
neighborhood of Sandtown, for example, numbering about 7,000
people, an Assembly would contain about thirty representatives. They
would appoint specialized committees to see to the concerns of the
community, which came to them by face-to-face discussion, up through
the ranks. Bottom-up. Not top-down. In addition, to make it even more
interesting, everybody in this system has term limits, so that everyone
in the neighborhood eventually takes part.
The Assembly model executed on the neighborhood level is a
horizontal structure, peer-to-peer, in which “leadership” is not
charismatic or electoral, but built on cascading personal relationships,
consensus, and rotation of responsibility. The purpose of jury service,
according to Professor Ferguson,258 was to “serve as a place of
continuing education about legal and constitutional matters . . . Citizens
256 Cf. Harold McDougall, What Feminism Can Teach the Black Movement (And Vice Versa), HUFFINGTON
POST (Sept. 16, 2013, 3:16 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/what-feminism-can-
teach-t_b_3890460.html. 257 Cf. Turkle, supra note 24. 258 This notion of citizen participation is consistent with the views of the Framers of the U.S Constitution.
See, e.g., Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, The Jury As Constitutional Identity, 47 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1105, 1121 (2014).
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would bring differing understandings about law, share it with other
citizens, learn more, and then bring that enriched legal and
constitutional knowledge back to their communities.”259 Their learning
“would not all take place in the courthouse building, but would provide
the lessons for a lifetime of civic participation.”260 The cells of
Jefferson’s Assembly operate in a similar fashion regarding local
affairs.
Such strategies are essential to enable black communities to
quickly and efficiently deal with issues that are particular to black
realities, providing a safe and familiar, equipped space to deal with
them. Assembly councils and conferences could thus become
laboratories and launching places for civic and social power.
CONCLUSION
Narrative and practice conflicts in the African American social
movement continue today. Wilson argues that Black people have two
choices. A “race-conscious society that allows for black pride, black
difference and positive racialization—enabling the ability of full
grappling with racial realities.” Alternatively, an imagined “colorblind
or post-racial world, where race has no sociocultural, political,
economic or legal meaning or ramifications, where black, brown and
white are as meaningless as blonde, brunette and red.”261
Respectability politics adheres to the “colorblind” view.
Preached by conservative leaders, it leaves little or no room for one’s
natural reaction to racism.262 After the shooting at the South Carolina
AME church, Fox News interviewed a Black pastor who stated that he
did not know “why race was even in the conversation,” even though the
shooter made postings online about starting a race war. After the uproar
in Baltimore, many elders in the black community stated their disdain
for the kids who burned down a CVS and ruined people’s cars, but one
teenager said the protest did not get violent until whites in their cars
called them “niggers” and tried to hit them for marching across the
street. Monique strongly believes that respectability politics “cedes
control over our own movement, allowing whites to characterize the
ways in which blacks are supposed to behave when their own people are
murdered for wearing hoodies, walking through middle class
259 The Jury As Constitutional Identity, supra note 258. 260 Id. 261 Wilson, supra note 50. 262 Peterkin, supra note 54.
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neighborhoods, selling loose cigarettes, walking in the street, and the
list goes on.”263
Disrespectful, “gangsta” politics, on the other hand, is definitely
not colorblind. However, it has been captured by the capitalist consumer
machine, which exploits color for its own self-aggrandizing purposes.
Ironically, the gangsta-consumerist machine directs its followers to
some of the same material symbols of status pursued by the disciples of
“respectability” –cars, money, Eurocentric females, even corporate
influence.264
How might we synthesize the best of the conflicting approaches
we have discussed into present practice?265 I answer that the politics of
self-respect both selects from and departs from the other narratives. It
rejects white culture and approval as a measure of success, but accepts
that both black and white may share some values—care for family and
community, a commitment to democracy, the importance of individual
and community development and achievement. It rejects thuggish
posturing for its own sake, or for individual advancement, but
recognizes that the struggle against cultural appropriation, assimilation,
and annihilation is a real one, and requires directness and force in
response. It requires that we tell our stories to our children and teach
them their history, and correct false and misleading narratives when
they appear, regardless of the sponsor. It further recognizes that people
of African descent have their own way of solving problems, rooted in
their history and culture, and have the human right to assert them.266
The politics of self-respect has traditionally had strong adherents
in the black working class and among black immigrants, who seek
solidarity and autonomy without reference to what white people think
or what they want. For the self-respecters, the reference point is African
culture and its memes—the ideas, behavior, and style that spread from
person to person within that culture—expressing themselves in mores,
cuisine, music, styles of work, and approaches to solving problems. This
is culture, not color. While colorblindness is not the way of self-respect,
263 Id. 264 RICHARDSON, supra note 29, at 227 (stating that the rap industry repackages and restores forms of
corporate dominance “in blackface”). 265 See, e.g., BLACK BALTIMORE, supra note 167, at 22-24; see also Harold McDougall, What Happens When the Protests Are Over? HUFFINGTON POST (June 1, 2015, 5:41 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-a-mcdougall/what-happens-when-the-protests-are-
over_b_7222548.html. 266 As I found when writing Black Baltimore, the black poor viewed welfare bureaucrats and judges as
instruments of social control, but developed important networking skills while trying to get welfare workers
to do their jobs. BLACK BALTIMORE, supra note 167, at 18. Black men used similar networking techniques to speed their release from prison. Id.
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neither is a “skin nationalism” that could trump progressive choices for
social change, such as the Bernie Sanders campaign.
The dream of a separate nation in the Black South, or of massive
migration back to Africa, has proven elusive for African Americans.
Nevertheless, it may be possible to achieve a kind of relative solidarity
and autonomy through some simple mechanisms.
The National Association of the Southern Poor experimented
with local citizens’ assemblies, for example. CopWatch is doing some
amazing work, already supplementing their police surveillance with
community organizing and empowerment.267 Community Mediation
provides a form of alternative dispute resolution that can rebuild a
community’s social capital.268 The Sharing Economy already exists in
inner-city neighborhoods: it could use a boost.269 African cultural
leaders are eager to reconnect.270
The Sharing Economy is a “third way,” exemplified by
community-based organizations that not only build up the African-
American community but also protect it from interference. In the
process, individual rights vis-à-vis the state can be asserted, including
the right to public benefits and public protections.271 At the same time,
these organizations can encourage, support, and sustain needed
community-based economic, social, and cultural innovation and
development.
What motivates individuals and sub-communities to come
together and begin this process of rebuilding (or imagining, for those
who have never seen a strong black community)?272 It starts in the free
spaces, which are glowing embers in the community, which
occasionally flare up, as in Ferguson and Baltimore. Waltrina
Middleton, one of the Cleveland BLM conference organizers, called
these free spaces “brush arbors, those places where slaves held secret
meetings to organize, pray and express emotions. That’s what this gives
us, a brush arbor experience to come together in love and support of one
another.” 273 “Middleton says even today these safe spaces can be
267 Muna Mire, Here’s How to Cop Watch, THE NATION, Sept. 23, 2015,
http://www.thenation.com/article/heres-how-to-cop-watch/. 268 See generally, Barbara J. Nelson, et al., The Concord Handbook: How to Build Social Capital Across Communities, THE CONCORD PROJECT: UCLA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH (2003). 269 Malcolm X linked political and economic autonomy. Bell, supra note 125, at 9 (citing Michael C.
Dawson, Black Visions at 108 (2001). 270 See, e.g., AFRICAN UNION, The AU ECHO, Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance, Jan. 27, 2013,
http://summits.au.int/en/sites/default/files/AUEcho_27012013_v2.pdf. 271 BLACK BALTIMORE, supra note 167, at 21. 272 Wilson, supra note 50. 273 Adrian Florido, Black Lives Matter Activists Meet in Cleveland to Plot Movement’s Future, NPR NEWS,
(July 23, 2015), http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425654428/black-lives-matter-activists-meet-in-
cleveland-to-plot-movements-future.
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elusive for black people.”274 The task is to link these brush arbors and
concentrate their power.
What is the incentive for the activists who take up these tasks?275
Part of the answer is who they are, and how they derive meaning in their
lives. They are generally willing to do it without financial
compensation, it comes so naturally. They are the community’s
informal leaders and generally appear as networkers, “go-to” people,
and “boundary crossers” (particularly adept at code switching). They
are also many of my students, drawn into this kind of struggle for the
first time in their lives.
The trick is to protect these new activists from exploitation by
the established leadership class, because they are often naïve, or at least
unfamiliar with the cutthroat tactics from behind the “lack of
transparency” curtain that has unfortunately come to be associated with
the politics of respectability. They also must be protected from “burn
out” as they are so connected to community that they care less about
being used, and more about saving the lives of the folks they care about.
The prevention of exploitation and burnout is best accomplished
by sharing the load, through the civic infrastructure we have already
discussed, especially Jefferson’s “sortition”276 mechanism of rotating
leadership responsibility throughout the entire community. This not
only conserves those most engaged, but also helps develop new talent
and capabilities, for a “beautiful” struggle277 that might take
generations.
This means an ever-increasing engagement by the broad base of
the community, sharing the responsibility, sharing the joy, avoiding
burn out and developing new (and younger) leadership all the time, in
an organic and rejuvenating process. I do not think it can be done full-
time, or for pay, other than expenses. I think it always has to be
volunteered, which means you need many people involved.
It is possible that even those who continue to adhere to the other
two narrative/practice streams will find something in this third way that
they can support. Ebony Johnson observes that such a development
274 Id. (Waltrina Middleton’s cousin was DePayne Middleton, a doctor. She was one of the nine people
killed during a prayer meeting at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.). 275 Wilson, supra note 50. 276 Michael Schulson, Is It Time to Take a Chance on Random Representatives? Selecting legislators by
lottery was good enough for the ancient Athenians. Why not good enough for Congress? The DAILY BEAST,
Nov. 8, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/08/is-it-time-to-take-a-chance-on-random- representatives.html (last visited Oct. 4, 2016). 277 Cf. Ta-Nehisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE: A MEMOIR (2009); see also the “Leaders of a
Beautiful struggle” group in Baltimore, emerging in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots, “transforming Baltimore through policy action,” http://lbsbaltimore.com/.
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would require, among other things, a path for black middle class people
to re-connect with their former communities and earn the trust and
respect of those left behind. Perhaps community organizations such as
the Neighborhood Assembly can act as mediators to aid this process.278
278 Ebony Johnson, supra note 176.
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Committees are organized into Conferences of 50 people each. Each
Conference elects one representative who stays in touch with the
Conference through seven committee members—each of whom stays in
contact with six other members. Representatives meet at a community-
wide assembly to discuss problems.
NASP ASSEMBLY STRUCTURE: Source: Donald L. Anderson, The Assembly: A Tool
for Transforming Communities, Sixteenth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, Oct. 1996,
Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
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