Black and Multiracial Politics in America

Chapter 13. War, Political Cycles, and the Pendulum Thesis: Explaining the Rise of Black Nationalism, 1840–1996

Chapter 13 War, Political Cycles, and the Pendulum Thesis Explaining the Rise of Black Nationalism, 1840–1996 Errol A. Henderson Nationalism has always been a part of the American psyche. It was a nascent form of nationalism that led the American colonist to rebel against the British, declare their independence, and form their own government. The bitterness of the anticolonial nationalists stemmed from various acts of injustice to which they had been subjected, including taxation without representation. In the 1920s, it was nationalism that spurred the Jamaica-born leader Marcus Garvey to create his “Back to Africa” movement. In the late 1960s, nationalism served as a framework for Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) and others to call for an end to black subjugation and for what they described as “Black Power.” More recently, a particularly virulent strain of nationalism has reared its ugly head among American white extremist groups. While there exists a vast literature on the subject of nationalism, only recently have scholars focused their attention on the rise and decline of black nationalism. Enlisting a series of logistic regression models, Errol Henderson here assesses the role of war, a backlash against black civil rights, economic factors, and the effect of political cycles on the rise of black nationalism from 1840 to 1996. Placing his findings in the current sociopolitical context, as defined by various threads of white nationalism, black nationalism, and a recurring Latino 337 nationalism, the author predicts that the American political landscape will be a volatile one in the time ahead. In his seminal work, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1968), Harold Cruse noted that “American Negro history is basically a history of the conflict between integrationist and nationalist forces in politics, economics, and culture, no matter what leaders are involved and what slogans are used. The pendulum swings back and forth, but the men who swing with it always fail to synthesize composite trends” (p. 564). While Cruse relies on historical anecdote to make his point, it is important for scholars to systematically examine the correlates of the putative shifts that Cruse describes. The most challenging aspect of Cruse’s thesis is that it requires an explication of the correlates of black nationalism . While quite a few studies have been devoted to analyses of integration , few scholars have devoted much time to the analysis of black nationalism. This intellectual myopia has led Walton (1985: 29) to conclude that black nationalism is among the most misunderstood concepts in American politics. In this study, I examine some of the factors associated with the rise of black nationalism in order to account for the pendulum shifts in black leadership strategies suggested by Cruse. First, I review Cruse’s thesis and delineate the black leadership phases suggested by his analysis. Second, I provide a theoretical rationale for Cruse’s pendulum shifts and devolve testable propositions on the factors that give rise to black nationalism. Third, I evaluate the propositions through logistic regression analysis for the period 1840–1996. Fourth, I examine the findings from the data analyses and briefly discuss their implications for policy and further research. Cruse’s Pendulum Thesis In its simplest form, Cruse’s pendulum thesis suggests that since the mid-1800s national black leadership has vacillated between advocacy of nationalism and of integration.1 Nationalism is the belief that the cultural and political unit should be congruent (Gellner 1983). Black nationalists insist that African Americans as a distinct people should pursue collective political action rooted in their common history and their ostensibly common interests. Politically, black nationalists largely 338 e r r o l a . h e n d e r s o n pursue racially exclusive political organizations; economically, they advocate for black economic self-sufficiency; and culturally, they emphasize their black and primarily pan-Africanist identity. Black integrationists , on the other hand, emphasize the “Americanness” of their identity and they largely embrace the melting pot notion of U.S. society . They view their political interests and objectives as consistent with, if not identical to, those of Americans in general and European Americans in particular. Therefore, “black” organizations, economic self-sufficiency , and political ends that suggest racial exclusivity are eschewed for interracial organizations, noneconomic liberalism,2 and cultural assimilation —primarily with respect to Whites. Cruse’s pendulum thesis implies an ambivalence among black leadership toward a unified strategy for liberation and social justice. This ambivalence may be rooted, on the...