An Ideological Trick-Bag

On Sunday, October 5, 1980 The New York Times Magazine devoted two articles to the topic: "The Black Plight: Race or Class?" which took the form of a debate between Kenneth Clark, a prominent Black psychologist and Carl Gershman, a former civil-rights activist.

Mr. Gershman argued that because the black leadership were preoccupied with a racial approach to the question of Black dispossession, it tended to ignore "the growing class divisions within the black community." He also argued that the Black bourgeoisie was inclined to use "racial myths" in an ideological manner to achieve racial entitlements from the society at the expense of the Black underclass.

This racial approach, Mr. Gershman concluded, "has benefited those (blacks) least in need and has perpetuated the dependency of the (black) underclass." Because of this failure, the Black leadership has lost "credibility in the eyes of many Americans."

Mr. Clark, argued that the condition of the black underclass springs primarily from continued racial oppression of white America. While he is cognizant of the fact that "broad urban economic forces...do affect the status of blacks," Mr. Clark believes that a new form of sophisticated racism which is practiced by Northern whites, has impeded the progress of Blacks.

Mr. Clark concludes his piece by accusing the Black intellectuals of "diversionary thinking," and the Black petti-bourgeoisie of deserting their brothers in the ghetto.

Both Mr. Clark and Mr. Gershman attack the "black middle-class leadership" for their inability to define the issue of Black dispossession in a clear and satisfactory manner and agree on the fact that the presence of a Black underclass bears ominous potentials for American democracy.

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The debate between Kenneth Clark and Carl Gershman demonstrated once more the manner in which the bourgeoisie and one of its state ideological apparatuses (i.e. the Press) seek to distort the objective nature of social processes and through its empty kind of polemics seek to make the natives fight among themselves. It is not only that they seek to obfuscate the nature of the Afro-American condition but, through a series of self-reflecting mirrors, they attempt to project themselves as the saviors of Black people, if only we can give them the solution to a problem which they created in the first place.

For the question must be asked: How can any honest dialogue about race and class be conducted in the most advanced capitalist country without so much as a single reference to the commodity-structure of production which generates these insane class conflicts and racial antagonisms? Therefore, to posit race and class as binary opposites defeats the whole purpose of trying to understand the present oppression of Afro-American people and fall into the ideological trick-bag of the dominant white society.

Mr. Clark in his discussion, however, seems to have captured the essence of the ideological game when he observed that "we would have made a major step towards racial justice in America when a Black social scientist would be invited by The New York Times to write his analysis of the aspirations, conflicts of one group or another group of white America." Edward Said, in his book, Orientalism, also picked up the tendency on the part of The New York Times to play this kind of ideological game when he documented the manner in which they presented the "objective" views of both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973. As he observed, "The Israeli side was presented by an Israeli lawyer; the Arab side, by an American ambassador to an Arab country who had no formal training in Oriental Studies."

The substantive question which arise from this debate was this: For whom does Mr. Gershman speak? Was he supposed to be more sympathetic of the Black underclass than the Black bourgeoisie? Or was he supposed to be the scholarly propagandist of the bourgeoisie class who clothed himself in the liberal veneer of bourgeoisie objectivity?

I will argue that Mr. Gershman's attack (like the Robert Klitgaard report now in preparation by Harvard University) is nothing more than another ideological onslaught which white America is now making against Black America, the activities of the Ku Klux Klan being the more vulgar manifestation of the same phenomenon. Such attacks, seek to pit Black people against other Black people (as the Klitgaard Report attempts to pit progressive Black people against progressive Jewish people) for the sake of the dominant white oppressor class.

For make no mistake about it, Mr. Gershman has gone to great lengths to depict the Black bourgeoisie as a parasitic and exploitative class and to argue that their racial approach to the analysis of the Black condition "has benefitted those least in need and has perpetuated the dependency of the underclass." Moreover, we are now to believe that to struggle against racism and class exploitation is to use the Black underclass as a political base from which to "threaten--and extract concessions from the society." Such analysis leads one to assume, that if we did not struggle for better jobs and more equality that the Black underclass would be in a much better condition today.

As a people we must reject such obvious ideological attacks for the fallacies which they are. Such attacks are meant to put in place a series of discourses and practices by which and through which the dominant white American bourgeois class can legitimize its own power over the powerless. We must insist that we are not the CAUSE OF nor do we accept the RESPONSIBILITY FOR the poverty of the black underclass. The black underclass is the creation of WHITE CAPITALIST AMERICA. End of dialogue.

Just as importantly, we must insist that we are not members of the bourgeois class because we do not control any of the means of production in this country. After all, as Mary Ann Berry, the former U.S. Commissioner of Health, Welfare, and Education, pointed out in her address at Harvard University on Martin Luther King's birthday, all those so-called Black bourgeoisie are only two pay-checks away from the now exalted Black underclass.

Yet, such a denial of the external responsibility of the Black underclass should not blind us to our internal responsibility towards our group. Our function as petty bourgeoisie elements within the society is to continue to struggle to structure enabling discourses and practices which will subvert and destroy the white bourgeoisie system of class exploitation and racial opression. Such at any rate is the manner in which Paulo Freire defines the function of education in his work, Pedagogy of the Opressed. Secondly, we should make the so-called Black underclass aware of our mutual opression and the necessity to unite and to struggle against the beast which creates such an underclass and overclass in the first place.

Any such discourse, however, must proceed from two basic assumptions on the part of the Black intellectual. First, we must strive to become the revolutionary ideologist of our people. To disagree with Dr. Clark, no white American could ever structure any dialogue or practice whereby we can begin to come to terms with our own enslavement. The oppressor has never taught the oppressed a liberating ideology or education nor will he ever do so in any class society. While progressive whites may assist in the structuring of such discourses and practices the essential responsibility must remain within the group that is oppressed.

Secondly, before the Black intellectual can begin to structure any revolutionary discourse, we have to carry out "a radical revolution in...(our)...ideas; a long, painful and difficult re-education. An endless external and internal struggle." (Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, P.12) The African revolutionary theorist, Amilcar Cabral puts it this way: "In order to fulfull the role in the national liberation struggle, the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie must be capable of committing suicide as a class in order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong." (Revolution in Guinea, p. 110)

While there are many Black intellectuals who, in the words of Brother Walter Rodney, "will make conscious choices to be reactionary," those of us who choose to serve our, people have no choice but to carry on the ideological struggle so that our people may understand the magnitude of our oppression. For those of us who wish to continue the struggle our choice must be clear: revolutionary discourse; revolutionary practice.

The issues must also be made very clear to the underclass. Like the intellectual, they must be made to understand that for the oppressed to be oppressed, they must participate in their own enslavement. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE BLACK BOURGEOISIE. This is the main objective of a society which boasts of the "survival of the fittest," "the nobility of competition and the sanctity of the free market place," the "elimination of ghettos" (that is, people rather than social structures), "the redundancy of people," and the creation of weapons that will wipe out people and leave cities intact. This is the legacy (and burden) of white capitalist America.

Together, we must seek a better overstandingof our oppressed condition. We must recognize that the chief weapon in the hands of the white bourgeois class is that of its ideology which is used to control and to manipulate our people. The trick of the ruling white class, however, is to make these ideas appear as though they were as natural as any law of physical nature. Therefore, if the Black underclass can't make it in the country, it is the Black bourgeoisie who is responsible for their failure.

However, in spite of what the dominant white bourgeoisie press says, the Black underclass is organizing itself to confront the dominant white class of exploiters. In the summer of 1980, over 1,000 delegates from all over the country went to the Brooklyn Armoury to from the Black United Front.

It was not in the interest of the white press to cover this important convention since it was important to prevent other Black and progressive white people from knowing what was happening. There were many progressive Black intellectuals at this conference and we did help to structure the discourses which took place.

Yet, there remains the persistent tendency of the white dominant class to want to structure the nature of our discourses and the attempt of the Klitgaards to delegitimize the value of the achievements of young Black scholars. Revolutionary Black scholars, however, must not be bound by these limits nor should we be persuaded by their demagogy. Our responsibility must be determined by the internal rather than the external demands of our situation. As Minister Louis Farrakhan warned a group of Black scholars at Cornell University on September 28, 1980, "the black intellectual is being set up by the white American power structure to be scapegoats of the country's failure to deal with black America. If we allow this to happen, we will be doomed by history forever."

The question of the self-accountability of the Black intellectual remains the predominant concern. We must structure our discourses and practices in such a manner that we assist in the liberation of our group. But to accept the burden of white America's failure is something we must never do. Mr. Gershman and Mr. Robert Klitgaard (as spokesmen for the dominant white class) will always try to put us into an ideological trick-bag. It is important that we never fall prey to such pseudo-intellectualism and militant racist assumptions.

Selwyn R. Cudjoe, an assistant professor in the Afro-American Studies Department, is the author of Resistance and Caribbean Literature.