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The Concept of Black Power: Its Continued Relevance Author(s): Winston A. Van Horne Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, Sustaining Black Studies (Jan., 2007), pp. 365-

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THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER Its Continued Relevance

WINSTON A. VAN HORNE University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Black studies as an institutional discipline emerged out of the many sac- rifices of passionate, youthful advocates of Black power in the mid- to late 1960s. Today, the term Black power seems almost quaint, although such was assuredly not the case in the 1960s. Black power reverberated in a context of societal tremors as Black people assaulted the ramparts of de jure Jim Crow. De jure Jim Crow did crumble, and over the next two gen- erations, Blacks made considerable societal gains. Still, the scope of Black people's empowerment that Black power envisaged remains unre- alized. It is thus well to look again at the principles, objectives, resources, and strategies of Black power to call out its continued germaneness, and by extension Black studies, to the lives of Black people and others, as a disproportionately large Black underclass blurs a small but continually expanding Black middle class.

Keywords: Black power; Black studies; trans generationalism; Africology

The social law of unintended consequences is as invariant as the natural law of the conservation of matter. An unintended conse- quence of the civil rights movement of the mid-1950s through the early 1960s was the emergence of youthful advocates of Black power. Highly evocative was the term Black power, and intense were the passions that it engendered. Youthful, passionate advocates of Black power strived to translate its idea, which was polymorphic,

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author would like to thank his wife, Mary Ann, for reading and commenting on this article (written in 2004) as she has done with all of his written work over the 30-odd years that he has been in the professo- rate. He also would like to thank his colleague for more than a generation, Professor Osei-Mensah Aborampah, who has read and commented on a number of his manuscripts over the years. He truly appreciates Mensah's work.

JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 37 No. 3, January 2007 365-389 DOI: 10.1177/0021934706290079 © 2007 Sage Publications

365

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into its empirical substance, and from that striving emerged Black studies on largely all- White campuses in the American academy. In a historical context, then, Black studies as an institutional discipline was a derivative of polymorphic Black power, which in turn was an offshoot of the civil rights movement.

Empirically, Black studies instantiated Black power as an idea on college and university campuses. Conceptually, through Black studies, college and university campuses academized Black power. However after two generations, Black studies in the American academy still has not achieved the standing, stature, and promi- nence for which its youthful advocates, who selflessly sacrificed ever so much of themselves, had hoped, and Black power, the effi- cient cause of Black studies, has largely disappeared from the ordinary language of everyday discourse. If one believes, as I do, that Black studies (now more appropriately named Africology) continues to be indispensable to the integrity of the curricula on the campuses of the colleges and universities in the American academy, and increasingly so given the exponential demographic diversification of the American populace, it is well, from the van- tage point of Africology, for one to reflect on the matter of the continued relevance of Black power.

Today, it seems almost quaint to hear the term Black power. The symbol and substance of the black-gloved and tightly clenched fists of Tommy Smith and John Carlos, two Black athletes, that were held aloft on the victory stand during the playing of the National Anthem of the United States at the award ceremony for the 200- meter race at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City no longer animate the intense passions that they once did. The demand for Black power, largely by Black youths, in the mid- to late 1960s exacer- bated deep fissures in the political society of the United States. Many of those fissures persist at the outset of the 21st century. Still, by a variety of normative principles and empirical measures, Blacks have made noteworthy advances in society over the past two gen- erations. But over those very generations, many of the vexations that impelled young Black men and women to demand Black power have endured, even as new ones have been added.

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 367

It is thus well to revisit the concept of Black power at a time when a Black man, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and a Black woman, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are considered two of the most powerful people in the national gov- ernment, and three Black men, Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, Richard Parsons of AOL Time Warner, and Kenneth Chenault of American Express, are the chief executive officers of major cor- porations, at the very time that there are more Black men in the jails and prisons of the United States than in the nation's colleges and universities.1

In 1855, Frederick Douglass (1855/1966) published an article entitled, 'The Doom of Black Power." He began the article by observing,

The days of Black Power are numbered. Its course, indeed, is onward, but with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. - The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. Liberty must triumph, (p. 244)

By Black power, Douglass (1855/1966) did not mean the power of the nearly 4 million slaves, nor the roughly half a million free Blacks, all of whom he knew were largely powerless, but the power of slavocrats - what he termed "Slave Power" (p. 244). Douglass was convinced that Slave Power could not and would not endure, and he believed firmly that Black people would "yet witness the end of the Black Power in America" (p. 244).

In 1967, 112 years later, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Toure) and Charles Hamilton published a book entitled Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, which proffered

a political framework and ideology which represented] the last rea- sonable opportunity for this society to work out its racial problems short of prolonged destructive guerrilla warfare. That such violent warfare may be unavoidable is not herein denied. But if there is the slightest chance to avoid it, the politics of Black Power as described in this book is seen as the only viable hope, (back cover)

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Violent warfare ended chattel slavery. To Douglass, it was only through the destruction of Black power that American society could become what it could be and ought to be with regard to truth and human decency. Violent warfare (the Civil War) did not end racial oppression. And so, Carmichael and Hamilton perceive the construction of Black power as a means for avoiding another cat- aclysm of inherently disastrous proportions in American society.

Black power had to be destroyed that Black power might be created. The destruction of Black power and the construction of Black power in both symbol and substance have been a persistent undertow in American society ever since the days of chattel slav- ery. In this essay, I shall focus on the construction of Black power. And because there is no sound construction without prior con- ceptual clarification, it is well for me to concentrate on the con- cept of Black power. Accordingly, the principles, objectives, resources, and strategies of Black power will be presented.

PRINCIPLES OF BLACK POWER

In Black Power, Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) write,

The racial and cultural personality of the black community must be preserved and that community must win its freedom while preserving its cultural integrity. Integrity includes a pride - in the sense of self- acceptance, not chauvinism - in being black, in historical attainments and contributions of black people? (p. 56)

No profound insight is articulated here. Indeed, Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) note that "the idea of cultural integrity is so obvious that it seems almost simple-minded" (p. 56), so that they only had to make as expansive a presentation on it as they found it necessary to do. Yet, the empirical reality of pervasive attitudes, beliefs, mores, and norms in society pertaining to race made it imperative for them to do much more than merely signal the importance of cultural integrity. And what does cultural integrity entail in relation to Black people in the United States?

First and foremost is the primacy of the autonomous will. Over nearly 12 generations of chattel slavery, followed by almost

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 369

5 generations of de jure Jim Crow, Black people were, for the most part, treated as objects rather than as subjects in society. Frameworks of state action - state-sanctioned oppression - fostered in them heteronomous wills, that is, wills animated by the appetites, passions, desires, preferences, dispositions, beliefs, and attitudes of others, Whites in particular. Heteronomous wills thus facili- tated the transgenerational consignment of Black people to a per- sistent state of less-than-ness in society. Black power is designed to sunder and erase transgenerational less-than-ness by trans- forming heteronomous Black wills into autonomous Black wills. Only autonomous wills - ones that are self-directing, well-balanced, well-grounded, finely attuned, independent, self-sufficient, and sound in judgment - open paths to, as well as preserve, the sorts of empirical conditions that nurture freedom and equality in both individual and collective contexts.

Autonomous wills fit Black people with the normative lens whereby they perceive the inherent value and worth of the selves that are clothed in Black skins, which become, as it were, coter- minous with Black selves. Put differently, autonomous wills draw out of Blacks the self-respect, self-esteem, and dignity that trans- form their intrinsic value and worth into extrinsic or empirical value and worth. Autonomous wills thus foster a recognition of worth and worthiness in Black people as Black people.

In his very sympathetic discussion of Blacks with regard to the savagery of chattel slavery, Kenneth Stampp, in the Preface to his The Peculiar Institution published in 1954 at the height of de jure Jim Crow in the 20th century, writes, "I have assumed that the slaves were merely ordinary human beings, that innately Negroes are, after all, only white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less" (pp. vii-viii). But Black men are not White men with Black skins, nor are Black women White women with Black skins. Black men and women have grown and developed in clearly identified and identifiable sociocultural contexts in colo- nial America/the United States, and regardless of how het- eronomous their wills might have been, both generationally and transgenerationally, they never could have been White men and White women with Black skins. And so, the normative lens with which autonomous wills equip Black people enables them to

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perceive themselves as they actually are in any given empirical reality and to also discern the imperative of continuous struggle to have others do likewise. Black power is thus grounded in the integrity of Black life, set in the context of the value and worth of all human life. (It is indeed farcical to hear or to read that Black power is separatist, isolationist, and racist, and that it values only the lives of Blacks.)

The imperative of continuous struggle emerges in a historical context of White power and Black powerlessness, and the empir- ical necessity of recalibrating the equation of power in society. Black power posits that Black people have a human right to frame both intermediate and ultimate ends with regard to their lives and to construct paths whereby those ends may best be realized. Accordingly, Black power rejects categorically all forms and sub- stances that occasion the subjugation, subordination, servitude, and subservience of Black people to White people, Black people, or any other people for that matter. Axiomatically, the sub- servience of Blacks is the antithesis of Black power. And so, Black power is in a perennial state of war (this does not mean that there is always physical fighting and physical death) with what- soever that fosters, preserves, expands, reproduces, and perpetu- ates a state of less-than-ness among Black people, thereby limiting unduly the full growth and development of their inherent capacities, capabilities, and potentialities.

Black power is thus open to whatever stimulates, encourages, nurtures, and undergirds the full growth and development of Blacks as individuals qua individuals, and as individuals qua collectives with robust autonomous wills. Openness is thus one of the essential defining attributes of Black power. Openness to new and different ideas and concepts; openness to new and different ways of doing things; openness to new and different forms of social interactions; openness to new and different forms of reciprocal relationships; and especially important, openness to criticism and self-criticism. The openness of Black power gives it a truly remarkable conceptual elasticity. But conceptual elasticity is not conceptual flaccidity, and the two should neither be confused nor conflated. Conceptual elasticity is grounded in permanent markers by which it may be

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 37 1

measured; conceptual flaccidity has no markers that allow for sound judgments to be made. A permanent marker of Black power is the robust autonomous will of Black people, against which all that has structured the life histories, and will structure the life prospects, of Black people is set.

The openness of Black power allows for a range of friendships to be formed. Long ago, Aristotle got it exactly right when he said that unequals cannot be friends. All sorts of relationships may obtain among unequals, but friendship is not one of them. Over historical time, all sorts of drivel have persisted concerning puta- tive friendships between masters and their slaves. But drivel is drivel: A slave and his master never can be friends. Black power is very cognizant of this empirical fact, and so in allowing for a range of friendships to be formed, it presumes an equality between those who either are, or become, friends. This does not mean that a state of arithmetic equality obtains between the ones who are friends. It does mean that criteria relevant to the logic of the situation at hand are used when valuables are to be produced, or burdens and benefits are to be allotted among friends. Accordingly, vituperation to the contrary notwithstanding, Black power never has been opposed to bona fide friendships between Blacks and Whites. It always has been hostile to putative friendships though, which merely mask relationships of White superordination and Black subordination.

The principles that have been articulated lie at the very core of the concept of Black power. How do these principles play out in objective reality? It is to the objectives of Black power that I now turn my attention.

OBJECTIVES OF BLACK POWER

The fundamental objective of Black power is to consolidate the dissipated strength of Black people to the end of their survival as a people, whose capacities, capabilities, and potentialities are devel- oped to their fullest. In 1971, Samuel F. Yette, in The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America, raised the nightmarish specter that, as a people, Blacks may not survive. He called attention to

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what then-Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz termed "the human scrap heap," and wrote,

A people whom the society had always denied social value - personality - had also lost economic value. Theirs was the prob- lem of all black America: survival.

Examination of the problem must begin with a single, over- powering socioeconomic condition in the society: black Americans are obsolete people.

While this is certainly not accurate in a moral sense, nor, at the moment, biologically, it is true ... in the minds and schemes of those who, with inordinate power and authority, control the nation. While it may not be so true among the general population, mass sentiments against oppression and possible genocide are not suffi- ciently strong to cause these schemes to fail. Black Americans have outlived their usefulness. Their raison d'etre to this society has ceased to be a compelling issue. Once an economic asset, they are now considered an economic drag. . . .

Thanks to old black backs and newfangled machines, the sweat chores of the nation are done. Now . . . Blacks face a society that is brutally pragmatic, technologically accomplished, deeply racist, increasingly overcrowded, and surly. In such a society, the absence of social and economic value is a crucial factor in anyone's fight for a future, (pp. 14-15)

By consolidating the strength of Black people, Black power strives to falsify Yette's observation that "black Americans are obsolete people." There is considerable strength in the communi- ties that make up Black America, and in that strength lies enor- mous potential power. Regrettably, to date, a distressing imbalance between the potential power of Black communities and their actual power in the political economy of American society per- sists. Black power aims at a substantial and continuous transfor- mation of the potential power of Black people into actual power. Black people will then be positioned to ward off, stymie, limit, and confound behaviors and actions that would occasion the sort of outcome, that so alarms Yette. Black people also will be posi- tioned to conceive, initiate, construct, and implement plans, pro- jects, programs, and policies in both the public and the private spheres that expand exponentially the domain of Black participa- tion in the society. This is the surest means not only of assuring

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 373

the survival of Black people but also of ensuring that they never become obsolete people, insofar as their presence is essential to the very survival of society itself. Black power thus seeks to establish an empirically reciprocal relationship between the sur- vival of Blacks and the survival of society itself.

If Black people are to transform their potential power into actual power with any measure of effectiveness, they must first "consolidate behind their own, so that they can bargain from a position of strength [for] . . . group solidarity is necessary before a group can operate effectively from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic society" (pp. 44, 47), say Carmichael and Hamilton (1967). Group solidarity could well be the efficient cause of what Carmichael and Hamilton call the goal of Black power, namely, "full participation [by Blacks] in the decision- making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recog- nition [by Blacks] of virtues in themselves as black people" (p. 47). Through group solidarity, Blacks become conscious of the imperative of transforming their potential power into actual power, even as they become more attuned to their own self- respect, self-esteem, and dignity as Black people. In fostering and enhancing group solidarity among Black people, Black power taps into both the conscious and unconscious minds of Blacks concerning the dangers that confront them, the weaknesses that beset them as atomized individuals, as well as the possibilities that are open to them insofar as their behaviors are enlivened by shared collective purposes. And here, the matter of leadership becomes critically important.

Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) note correctly that "Black visibility is not Black power. . . . Merely putting black faces into office" (p. 46) is not a sufficient condition concerning the empir- ical reality of Black power. For Black power to materialize, a rec- iprocal relationship must obtain between Black leadership and the solidarity of Black communities. A reciprocal relationship entails mutual trust, respect, expectations, accountability, regard for one another's sensibilities, and a shared sense of honor and the hon- orable. Sound Black leadership recognizes the values that inhere in reciprocal relationships and make use of them in reinforcing and enhancing the solidarity of Black communities. Black power,

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then, aims at eliminating the fault lines that often separate Black leadership from Black communities. It draws Black leadership and Black communities together in a truly symbiotic relationship, the effect of which is to expand the domain of Black participation in the activities of the wider society and thereby open up to Black people a broader array of prospects concerning their freedom, good, and well-being.

A broader array of prospects for Black people enhances the pos- sibility of their participation in roles from which they were excluded heretofore or in which they participated only nominally. If such participation is to be realized, though, they must be pre- pared to participate. And so, Black power seeks to expand sub- stantially pools of Black individuals who by aptitude, education, and training are prepared to take full advantage of opportunities that it opens up. Black power is especially concerned with domains such as representation, education, finance, health care, housing, transportation, security, enforcement of due process and the equal protection of the laws, as well as justice and fairness writ large. What these domains signal clearly and distinctly is the con- flation by Black power of political power, economic power, and cultural identity and integrity into a motive force that impels Black people to ward off obsolescence, develop their potentialities, sat- isfy their highest aspirations, and in doing so, assure their survival.

As Black people strive to satisfy their highest aspirations, they position themselves to stand toe-to-toe with their White counter- parts, and others, in the many competitive spheres of life that mark society. Black power is thus a most beautiful concept. It is not zero sum. It neither entails nor implies that each gain that Blacks make is accompanied by a corresponding loss for Whites or others. It is neither expansive at the cost of Whites nor con- tractive at the expense of Whites. Rather, it frames contexts wherein Blacks may realize the ancient maxim of a striving pur- pose in their daily lives, even as Whites and others do likewise.

Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) are thus on the mark when they observe that "the ultimate values and goals [of Black power] are not domination or exploitation of other groups, but rather an effective share in the total power of the society [since] . . . there can be no social order without social justice" (pp. 47, 53). Black

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 375

power strives for social justice in the ways that Blacks treat others and rightfully expects Whites and others to act similarly in their treatment of Blacks. There is no zero-sum game here, just common human decency. And social justice with regard to human decency requires that at particular times, those who have benefited most from a society generationally and transgenerationally receive smaller shares of given valuables than they otherwise might have, in order that the ones who have benefited least might receive larger shares than they might have otherwise. This sort of allotment is not zero sum, for all sorts of relevant criteria come into play before it is made. The critical point that is being called out is that Black power is not destructive of social order. Instead, it is both con- structive and preservative of social order by undergirding that order with social justice.

In striving for social justice and the concomitant social order that attends it, Black power is highly robust. It makes use of all means that are fitting, proper, necessary, efficient, and sufficient to give empirical substance to its objectives, especially the creation of strong, vibrant, resourceful, forward-looking communities of Black people who can truly face White people as free wo 'men3 and equals. Black power dissolves traditional tensions between the concepts of freedom and equality by making equality an empirical extension of freedom. Current upscale, all-Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, instantiate this point exquisitely. From across neighborhood lines, free Black doctors, lawyers, corporate execu- tives, accountants, professors, engineers, and so on face their White counterparts in adjoining neighborhoods as equals in wealth, income, status, and prestige in virtue of the roles that they occupy. This is Black power made manifest in objective reality.

Black power, though, is very cognizant of neighborhoods that are starkly different from the sort just mentioned. In 1962, Scott Greer noted, in The Emerging City: Myth and Reality, that "people [were] segregated in neighborhoods among others of the same designated social rank and ethnic identity" (p. 126). Today, this observation still resonates loudly, despite the dismantling of de jure segregation and a substantial breaching of racial-ethnic barriers through intermarriage and other forms of social and cul- tural interaction.

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Indeed, persistent patterns of neighborhood and residential community segregation are a defining attribute of the life chances of the underclass in the contemporary United States. For spatial isolation, accompanied by the loss of what William Julius Wilson (1987) calls the

" 'social buffer' ... of middle- and working-class families" (p. 56), a concentration of those who are most disad- vantaged have conjoined to foster "the creation of patterns of behavior that, in [Kenneth B.] Clark's words, 'frequently amounted to [a] "self-perpetuating pathology"

' (pp. 56, 149). With regard to

what he terms the "concentration effects" of the social isolation of the underclass, Wilson (1987) writes,

The communities of the underclass are plagued by massive job- lessness, flagrant and open lawlessness, and low-achieving schools, and therefore tend to be avoided by outsiders. Consequently, the residents of these areas, whether women and children of welfare families or aggressive street criminals, have become increasingly socially isolated from mainstream patterns of behavior, (p. 58)

These are neighborhoods that wall in those whose behaviors concentrate what El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) called "sociological dynamite" in the city. In passages most prescient concerning anxieties, insecurities, uncertainties, and fears that continue to pervade American cities, El-Shabazz (cited in Haley, 1965) made the following observation:

Because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black "leaders" knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler.

Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear - nothing. To survive, he is out there con- stantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anx- ious for some "action." . . .

What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his "glamor" image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto. These ghetto teenagers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the

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prejudiced, intolerant white man's world. The ghetto teenagers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed "sharp" and flashing money and display- ing no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitu- tion, and general crime and immorality.

It scared me the first time I really saw the danger of these ghetto teenagers if they are ever sparked to violence, (pp. 310-311)

The youths of whom El-Shabazz spoke were sparked to vio- lence in the 1980s and 1990s, but not the sort of violence that he envisaged. He saw in them the rage of revolutionary, political vio- lence; from them has issued, rather, the torment of common crim- inal violence. He would have been most distressed by this development, perhaps saying that the neighborhood implosions that have beset many a city are but the fusing of "the sociological dynamite that stems from the unemployment, bad housing, and inferior education already in the ghettos" (pp. 310-311).

To shut themselves off from an array of social pathologies that they discern all around them, more and more neighborhoods have strived to erect all sorts of walls around them. But the modern wall, whether as material object or as social metaphor, cannot and will not save a neighborhood, city, or society, for that matter. There are just too many means by which it may be pierced, to the torment of those behind it. Black power knows this all too well. And so it strives to ameliorate, if not wholly eliminate, the mate- rial conditions and psychological states that occasion the kinds of behaviors that so troubled El-Shabazz.

Whatever is made manifest in objective reality can be transient or enduring. Black power aims at making both tangible and intan- gible gains by Blacks enduring. To this end, it seeks to institution- alize gains that have been made. Being mindful of the fact that over historical time, gains made by Blacks have emerged largely in the context of individuals who lack institutional frameworks whereby those gains may persist long after the particular individ- uals who made them have disappeared from the scene, Black power places considerable emphasis of institution building in Black communities, as well as substantial participation by Black people in a range of institutions throughout society. Institutional

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concerns of Black power are grounded in the knowledge that insti- tutions are frameworks of rules that structure patterns of behavior that are replicated, as well as adjusted to fit the logics of new situ- ations, across many cross-sections of historical time. Black power is well attuned to the role that a variety of institutions have played in the persistence of racism in American society.

Institutional racism has been a bane of society. To erode the present and future effects of institutional racism, Black power strives both to reconstruct frameworks of rules that have had severe and adverse consequences concerning the freedom, good, and well-being of Blacks, and to construct new frameworks of rules where none currently exists that foster behaviors that are consistent with the greatest possible development of the innate capacities, capabilities, and potentialities of Black people. Black power is intractably hostile to institutional racism and all those attendant benefits and advantages that it accrues to its beneficia- ries. And so, inescapable and enduring strains, tensions, conflicts, and struggles mark the interaction of Black power and institu- tional racism, for Black power seeks to destroy institutional racism, and institutional racism strives to persist.4

Having called attention to critical objectives of Black power, I should now like to turn my attention to the resources of Black power.

THE RESOURCES OF BLACK POWER

The fundamental resource of Black power is the human capital of Black people and both the idea-power and labor-power that attend that capital. For nearly 12 generations of chattel slavery, the idea-power and the labor-power of Black people were put to work in the creation of income and wealth for slaveowners. Judge Thomas Ruffin of North Carolina (cited in Patterson, 1982) said it well, concerning the interest of slavocrats, when he posited that

with slavery ... the end is the profit of the master, his security and the public safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 379

to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap his fruits, (pp. 3-4)

Black peonage, sharecropping, the convict lease system, and Jim Crow that developed after the legal end of chattel slavery served to occasion an array of benefits to White people at the expense of Black people. Black power seeks to undo long-established pat- terns of Whites benefiting inordinately from the idea-power and labor-power of Blacks. From agriculture to industry to technol- ogy, from medicine to law to education, from literature to art to music, from mathematics to science to religion, from entertain- ment to sports to business, Blacks have evinced considerable idea-power and generated enormous labor-power without having gained commensurate benefits.

Black power seeks to alter this state of affairs by encouraging and impelling Black people to create networks of mutually rein- forcing relationships that foster their autonomous wills, within the context of the cultural identity and integrity of their communities. Black professors and teachers, doctors and dentists, nurses and midwives, lawyers and judges, businesswo'men and corporate executives, soldiers, sailors, and airwo'men, police officers and cor- rectional officers, ballplayers and referees, politicians and diplo- mats, bureaucrats and technocrats, on and on, all provide the resource base that Black power strives to tap and consolidate in order to position Black people, both as individuals and as collec- tives, to maximize their opportunity structure in the pluralistic society of the United States. In a very real sense, Black power affords a conceptual framework for spotlighting and harnessing the very considerable idea-power and labor-power of Black people that for all too long have remained fragmented, dissipated, individual- ized, undervalued, and misdirected with regard to advancing the freedom, good, and well-being of Black people qua Black people.

A corollary resource that Black power strives to tap is the tens of thousands of Black wo'men whose lives are circumscribed by the criminal justice system, most of whom are in the prime years of their lives. Black power takes seriously the admonition that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste."5 Accordingly, it seeks to occa- sion profound changes in the criminal justice system so that

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380 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2007

young Black wo 'men do not become a part of the human scrap heap mentioned by Willard Writz but instead are brought into the productive processes of Black communities, in particular, and society, in general. Black power observes the use that state action has made of this resource to produce a variety of goods and services - goods and services that, for the most part, have not empowered Black communities nor fostered their cultural integrity. And so it arouses the consciousness of those who are under, or just left, the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system to an array of available resources that, when tapped, enhance substantially their prospects for producing goods and services that enhance the standing of themselves, as well as their communities, in society.

Another resource that is critical to Black power is the imma- nence of Blacks in society. American society cannot be disjoined from Black people. Blacks are a prime and necessary, although not sufficient, defining attribute of American society. There just is no American society qua American society absent Black people. The many deportation schemes pertaining to free Blacks in the 19th century that came to naught are vivid historical testimony to the immanence of Blacks in American society. At the outset of the Civil War, there were roughly half a million free Blacks (and almost 4 million slaves) in the United States; as of July 1, 2002, the Black population was estimated to be 38.3 million. There simply are too many Black people for them either to become obsolete en masse or to be liquidated through genocide, if society is to persist. Black power is cognizant of this empirical fact and makes use of the objective reality of sheer numbers to press hard for the betterment of Black people. This does not mean that portions of the Black pop- ulation could not still suffer the sort of obsolescence that Yette fears. What it does mean is that a large-scale obsolescence of the Black population is not a viable option open to the ones with inor- dinate power and authority, their own predilections and racial pref- erences notwithstanding, as long as they value their own well-being and survival. And because Black power does not renounce the use of violence but retains it as an essential defensive instrument, were genocidal violence to be unleashed against Blacks, they would fight back (Carmichael & Hamilton, 1967, p. 53), which would be just in an Augustinian construction of the use of violence.

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 38 1

But cataclysmic violence would destroy the economic founda- tions of American society, and it is in the sphere of economics that an enormous resource is open to be tapped by Black power. The gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States is roughly 12 trillion dollars, and it has been estimated that Blacks contribute in excess of three quarters of a trillion dollars to the GDP. That is an enormous sum, representing considerable potential power, which, were it translated into actual power, could advance significantly the standing of Blacks in society. Black power aims at effecting such a translation by arousing the consciousness of Black people to the relation between the individual and the communal value of their income and wealth.

A persistent problem in Black America pertains to the circula- tion and reproduction of the Black dollar. For the most part, the Black dollar circulates away from Black communities and repro- duces itself in ways that produce wealth for others, not Black folk. Black power strives to alter this state of affairs by encouraging the creation of a variety of structures in Black communities whereby the Black dollar may circulate repeatedly in those communities and thereby produce not just income but, more important, wealth for Black people. Black power is not autarchic economically, but it does call out a relation between a substantial measure of eco- nomic independence and the exercise of autonomous wills by Black people.

In the exercise of their autonomous wills, Black people open to Black power a critical resource, namely, the exercise of the fran- chise, given the size of the Black electorate. Moreover, exercise of the franchise is a crucial means of building coalitions - the build- ing of coalitions is foundational to Black power. But coalitions only work well when each party to them has something of a com- pelling interest to put on the table. Black power eschews coali- tions that are entered into from positions of weakness. Thus, it strives to develop the strength of the Black franchise and pushes hard to make the Black vote a compelling interest, both to the ones who exercise it and to those on whose behalf it is exercised. Black power recognizes that this is a resource that has been underused in Black communities and works to structure contexts that optimize its use. Electoral politics are thus of importance to

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Black power, but only insofar as they serve to wo'man institutions with individuals who use the power, authority, and resources of their respective roles to advance the freedom, good, and well- being of Blacks individually and communally.

The securing of the franchise by Black people came as a result of long and difficult struggles. Struggle has been the twin of Blacks in colonial America/the United States.

Wherever there is struggle, there is privation, and so Black people are well acquainted with survival in the face of privation. Black people are not soft. They have learned generationally and transgenerationally how to endure hardships and to increase their stock in spite of severe privations. This is a resource of incalcula- ble value for Black power.

It enables Black leadership to ask much of Black people with regard to sacrifices, insofar as that leadership is perceived to be in tune with the interest and good of Black communities. It enables communities to mobilize even where material resources are scarce, for the spirit of doing much with little still animates Black communities across the land. Given that Black power abhors self- aggrandizement, leadership that shares in the sacrifices that are made by the ones who are led finds a repository of good will and tolerance, which enables it to make bold moves on behalf of its constituents' interests, if it but wills to do so. This resource of Black power, then, stiffens the spine of Black leadership and posi- tions it to engage in fights that it might otherwise eschew.

Of the many resources available to Black power, one of the most critical but underused is the individual and collective memory and wisdom of Black elders. In traditional African soci- eties, two forms of respect were commonplace: earned respect and ascribed respect. As the term implies, earned respect was acquired in the context of one's work and behaviors. Ascribed respect accrued with aging. The most respected individuals, then, were those who had aged substantially and had done superb work and evinced exemplary behaviors over the course of a lifetime. These were the elders whose memory and wisdom were tapped by their communities to foster the good and well-being of each indi- vidually and of all collectively. Black power draws on this ele- ment of the transgenerational memories of Black people to

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 383

structure frameworks in Black communities whereby young, mid- dle-aged, and elderly Black people are brought together for the pur- pose of using the memory and wisdom of elders to construct and effect solutions to a variety of community-based problems. This is indeed one of the seminal, but often underappreciated, attributes of Black power in regard to the fostering of cohesion and solidarity of Black communities.

The resources, objectives, and principles of Black power that have been called out all point in one critical direction, namely, appropriate strategies whereby they become empirically real in the everyday lives of Black people. Thus, it is to strategies of Black power that my attention is now turned.

STRATEGIES OF BLACK POWER

Black power is not grounded in dogma. It does not rigidly and inflexibly prescribe that there is one, and only one, set of fitting and proper means by which its principles and objectives can acquire empirical form and substance in the lives of Black people. There is an inherent live-and-let-live substratum in Black power, which implies that Blacks seek to live and live well and are will- ing to have others do likewise, as long as the others do not con- found their (Blacks) prospects for doing so. Black power is thus highly other-regarding insofar as others evince behaviors that conform to norms of human decency. Where the behavior of oth- ers do not conform to such norms, Black power takes the sorts of actions necessary either to induce or to compel such behavior. Accordingly, Black power uses nonviolent means wherever possi- ble, as a first and second choice, and violent means only when absolutely necessary, to procure and secure that which elevates the autonomous wills of Black people and enhances the cultural integrity of their communities.

Recognizing the value of coalitions but cognizant of the sorts of costs that the weaker party in a coalition is often forced to bear, Black power strives to strengthen Black communities before entering into coalitions with groupings in the wider society. Institution building and nurturing are thus crucial to Black power.

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384 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2007

Schools, churches, clubs, banks, stores, and so on and the indi- viduals who wo 'man them are seen as targets of opportunity con- cerning the messages that Black power conveys.

Black power is not designed to frighten anyone. It is empow- ering, though. By making Black people, both as individuals and as collectives, conscious of their potential power and the empiri- cal imperative of transforming potential power into actual power, Black power - through lectures and seminars in classrooms, ser- mons from pulpits, speeches in public and private places, articles and letters in newspapers and magazines, books in libraries, dis- cussions on television, exchanges on the Internet, patterns of con- sumption in the marketplace, and so on - adds weight to the agency of Black people in society. There is no doubt that there are those who find the value-added weight of Black agency in the society that accompanies Black power to be unsettling, even frightening, and inviting resistance. Where resistance does occur, the greater the weight of Black agency, the more Black power is positioned to offer counterresistance and, through strength, obtain outcomes that serve the individual and communal interest, good, and well-being of Black people.

Black power employs a well-known but often misunderstood and derided metaphor of Niccolo Machiavelli, namely, a prince acting as a lion and a fox. A prince must have the strength, dar- ing, endurance, grace, power, fearlessness, and forcefulness of a lion to destroy with a single blow if need be, but also the stealth, cunning, dexterity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and wit of a fox to survive the assaults of a stronger foe and at the same time obtain a desired outcome. Like a prince, Black power employs the attrib- utes of a lion and a fox to foster the freedom, interest, good, and well-being of Black people. Accordingly, it relies primarily on the strength and resources of Black people but, wherever necessary, taps into corresponding or even greater strengths of Whites and others in ways that advance its particular agenda. Black power is thus highly adaptive, and its adaptations are framed by the given logics of the situations that it confronts.

The logic of a particular situation may necessitate the use of violence by Black power. Such violence is never cathartic. It is highly purposive. Its aim is to alter and transform the logic of a

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 385

given situation to the advantage and good of Black people. And it is for this reason that Black power never condones a mindless and indiscriminate use of violence against individuals, groups, or property. Lions do not kill indiscriminately, yet kill they must. Foxes also do not kill indiscriminately, although they too must kill. The crucial point here is that acts of violence that emanate from Black power have as their intended consequence outcomes that will be beneficial to Black people qua Black people. They never seek to advance the interest of this or that individual or group. The term Black power has all too often been appropriated by individualists to conceal their individual agenda, as well as by common criminals to mask the criminality of their conduct behind some putative greater good for Black people.

Black power is collective power. There is no one-to-one corre- spondence between this collective power and acts of violence. Still, acts of violence may at times be necessary for the persis- tence of this power. An analogy may be well here. Conceive of Black power as a large reservoir filled to the brim with water. The reservoir springs a leak. A sealant is necessary to preserve the integrity of the reservoir. Acts of violence are that sealant that is at times necessary to preserve the integrity of Black power. A sealant is not applied to a reservoir unless there is a clear and compelling need. Likewise, acts of violence are not employed by Black power unless there is a clear and compelling need concern- ing the advancement and preservation of the freedom, good, and well-being of Black people in the context of the exercise of their autonomous wills as individuals and the maintenance of the cul- tural integrity of their communities.

Black power is not one-dimensional but multidimensional con- cerning the ways in which it exerts pressure on the social order. At times, the use of violence is fitting and proper; at other times, it is not, and nonviolent means are fitting and proper. Such means may be used to foster intense social disorder, short of the destruc- tion of lives or property, to create a compelling sense of urgency that impels a society to formulate, implement, and enforce public policies that maximize the life chances of Black people and enhance the decency of their lives. Violence and nonviolence are thus complementary arrows in the quiver of Black power. Their

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386 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2007

use is guided by one ultimate and overriding purpose, to wit, the good, wholesome, productive, satisfying, and decent lives of Black people.

In sum, the strategies of Black power do not emerge a priori. They develop contingently and are grounded in an enduring com- mitment to the underlying principles and objectives of Black power, a deep suspicion and wariness of dogma, flexibility, con- sciousness of purpose, carefully calibrated but robust actions, and the realization of empirical outcomes that enable Black people not just to secure the most tolerable lives they can but to actually enjoy happy and satisfying lives.

CONCLUSION

Black power is a concept for all seasons in the lives of Black people. It permeates geographic boundaries, transcends cross sec- tions of historical time, unites the living with ancestors and unborn progeny, and spreads out transgenerationally to animate the autonomous wills of Black people as individuals and enliven the cultural integrity of their communities as collectives. Black power makes Black individuals whole - whole in their individu- ality and their communality. As such, it always will be of com- pelling relevance to the lives of Blacks, although its perennial value is not always recognized, as it waxes and wanes in the con- sciousness of Black people.

Black power is life nurturing, life sustaining, and life enhanc- ing. By its principles, it nurtures the lives of Blacks; by its objec- tives, it sustains the lives of Black people; and by its resources and strategies, it enhances the lives of Blacks. In nurturing, sustaining, and enhancing the lives of Black people, Black power cannot but in some measure also nurture, sustain, and enhance the lives of Whites and others who interact with Blacks, for they all partici- pate in, and share, the human condition. Put differently, all of humanity is interlaced in a common web, and whatsoever affects one part of the web ramifies throughout the web as a whole. Black power cannot, and does not, advance the freedom, good, and well- being of Blacks by being unmindful of, indifferent to, or wantonly

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 387

and mindlessly vitiating the freedom, good, and well-being of others. What it does do, and rightfully so, is to frame contexts whereby others cannot advance their freedom, good, and well- being at the expense of Black people without suffering severe short-term and inordinate long-term costs.

Black power is thus ennobling of the spirits of Black people through sacrifice and initiative. It makes them acutely conscious of the need to make sacrifices and take initiative - individually and collectively, generationally and transgenerationally - not only to ward off and undo outcomes that are injurious, harmful, and dam- aging to the autonomy of their wills and the integrity of their com- munities but also to engage in behaviors that renew and refresh their lives. In the renewal and refreshment of their lives, Black people build, for it is through building that the creativity of enno- bled spirits is made manifest. Black power thus impels Blacks to build their communities ceaselessly and eschew whatever would fracture, taint, enervate, and destroy those communities.

By drawing out of Black people the very best that inheres in them, Black power positions Blacks to hold their own in a highly compet- itive world. It spurns ossified "we/they" and "us/them" constructions of the empirical world. Rather, it strives to create environments in which "we together" and "us writ large" may participate in shared purposes that give substance to the common good of all. Black power, instantiated in Black studies (Africology), frames a universe that affords Blacks the wherewithal to succeed, not by devouring oth- ers in zero-sum games but by putting in play concepts, constructs, hypotheses, theories, empirical generalizations, laws, goods, and services that foster and encourage reciprocity. Through reciprocity, Black power strives to shield Blacks and others from the social car- nage of zero-sum games. However, if for whatever reasons reciproc- ity cannot obtain in the relations between Blacks and others, Black power works hard to assure that Black people not only survive but also are not taken advantage of. Normatively, empirically, and his- torically, Black power, and by extension Black studies, always has had and continues to have one fundamental and overriding purpose: the advancement of human decency to the end that no one should, by empirical circumstances, be condemned to live shabbily, and each objectively should have a fair and honorable chance to live well.

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388 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2007

NOTES

1. Concerning the often contentious matter of the number of Black males in jails and pris- ons in comparison with those in colleges and universities, I should like to note that the Bureau of Justice Statistics (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p01.pdf) observes that as of midyear 2001, there were 803,400 Black males and 69,500 Black females in federal and state prisons as well as local jails, whereas the Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003) shows that there were 781,000 Black males and 1,449,000 Black females in colleges and universities at midyear 2001. Bureau of Justice Statistics figures show that at midyear 2002, there were 818,900 Black males and 65,600 Black females in the prisons and jails of the country; the U.S. Census Bureau (2002) indicates that as of October 2002, there were 802,000 Black males and 1,476,000 Black females in colleges and univer- sities. These figures are distressing. They make plain that there were 12 times as many Black males in jails and prisons as Black females (a 12:1 ratio), and almost twice as many Black females as Black males in colleges and universities (a 2:1 ratio). Given the socially additive value of colleges and universities, and the socially subtractive value of jails and prisons, should the ratios just presented persist for, say, another generation or two, Black males will stand at an alarming disadvantage socially in relation to Black females. One can readily envi- sion university-educated Black females in very substantial numbers looking away from prison-trained Black males as mates and sources of support for their future children, espe- cially as race and the color line continue to decline in significance (see Wilson, 1978) and Black males have little social attractiveness for females from other racial-ethnic groupings. Such a development would be most portentous for the social peace and good order of the society. Black power embraces a coequality between Black males and Black females and is thus critical to the future of the Black male, as well as society as a whole.

2. All cultures are composites of seven defining attributes: species being, species life, lan- guage, religion, food-literature-music-art-science-technology, institutions, and transgenerational memory. Cultural integrity pertains to the soundness of the interactions of these attributes in the creation, alteration, and preservation of milieux, marked by distinctive patterns of behavior, that foster the survival, growth, and development of particular groupings of Homo sapiens sapiens.

3. The term wo'men is used here to mean both men and women. 4. One of the really perverse assaults that has been made on Black power over time is

that it frames all White people as enemies, seeks their destruction, and is implacably racist at its core. Black power strives to alter behaviors; it does not aim at destroying persons. It seeks to occasion a truly humane, open, and pluralistic society; it does not attempt to bring into being a closed, inhumane, racially autarkic society.

5. For many years, the United Negro College Fund used this phrase in its television commercials.

REFERENCES

Carmichael, S., & Hamilton, C. V. (1967). Black power: The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books.

Douglass, F. (1966). The doom of Black power. In H. Brotz (Ed.), Negro social and polit- ical thought. New York: Basic Books. (Original work published 1855)

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Van Home / THE CONCEPT OF BLACK POWER 389

Greer, S. (1962). The emerging city: Myth and reality. New York: The Free Press. Haley, A. (1965). The autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press. Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and social death: A comparative study. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press. Stampp, K. (1954). The peculiar institution. New York: Vintage Books. U.S. Census Bureau. (2002). Current population survey. Retrieved from http://www

.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2002/tab01-4.pdf U.S. Census Bureau. (2003). Statistical abstract of the United States (No. 280). Retrieved

from http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-03.html Wilson, W. J. (1978). The declining significance of race: Blacks and changing American

institutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public

policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Yette, S. F. (1971). The choice: The issue of Black survival in America. New York: Berkley

Medallion Books.

Winston A. Van Home is a professor in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He served two tenures as the department's chair, covering 12 years. For 8 years, he was the chair of the University of Wisconsin System 's American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee, and for 7 years, the (first) director of the University of Wisconsin System's Institute on Race and Ethnicity. He was the editor of eight volumes in the Institute 's Ethnicity and Public Policy series. He also is the editor of Global Convulsions: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism at the end of the Twentieth Century (SUNY Press). He is credited with conceptualizing the term Africology to name the discipline in which he teaches and does research.

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