Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (review)

Disciplines disagree on whether to leave theoretical frameworks in place. Most social scientists leave the theoretical scaffolding in place so their readers can evaluate not only their conclusions but the means by which they arrived at them. On the other hand, humanists in general and historians in particular usually tear down the scaffolding—many of them denying that they use a theoretical framework at all.

Unfortunately, Rael has adopted the no-scaffolding approach in a well-written, original, information-laden book that very much needs a theoretical framework. He examines the political strategies adopted by African-Americans in the antebellum north, carefully linking them with black participation in the political debates of the new nation, and systematically explaining the relationship between the black elites who participated in these debates and the masses of blacks. He writes about society, culture, and ideology, and although as he has chosen not to use a theoretical structure, re-reading is often necessary to understand just which of these themes is being discussed at any given time.

The re-reading, however, is well worth it. Rael provides much information and considerable insight into black nationalism, gender roles, colonization, social class, black unity (and disunity), respectability, and black self-definition. He recognizes that none of these concepts and characteristics was static, and he examines the changes in these and other issues on the African-American ideological agenda as well. Rael usefully places these new perspectives in the context of developments in other parts of the African diaspora in the Americas.

Rael argues that Afro-American protest ideology in the antebellum era was a top-down phenomenon; northern black elites both drew on Euro-American ideology and helped shape it. On that score, Rael places himself squarely in conflict with Sterling Stuckey who, in Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York, 1987), maintains that black nationalism grew from the bottom up. It had its origins in the social experiences of slaves, moved to the culture that they created, and finally settled into a formal ideology. But as Rael sees it, the southern slaves, isolated from the political debates among northern elites—both white and black—had no ideology, though they had a culture. This position would be well and good if Rael sought only to examine ideology, but as the title of his book indicates, he is also interested in identity and, hence, in society. Lacking the overt theoretical framework that would make this range of interests clear, Rael continually shuttles among society, culture, and ideology, repeatedly reminding the reader that some folk had no ideology, and therefore were not participants in the race debates around which his important book is centered.