Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century (review)

Advancing race as a sociohistorical construction, Algernon Austin's Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century contributes to ongoing efforts to complicate Black Nationalism. Employing accessible and often contemporary examples, Austin presents the variance of the construction of race over time. Asserting that race is constructed through social relations rather than mere physical appearance, Austin supports the evolving meaning of "blackness" particularly during the Black Power era of the 1960s and 1970s and Afrocentric era of the 1980s and 1990s. Austin's data also reveal the evolving support and constituency of Black Nationalism from the Black Power era to the Afrocentric era and demonstrates the wider support Afrocentric-era Black Nationalism received among African Americans in general, but especially among the middle and upper classes, as Black Nationalism predominantly focused on culture and values.

Explaining this evolution, Austin similarly challenges narrow definitions popularly held of "culture" and "revolution," which consequently misrepresent "cultural" and "revolutionary" nationalism. According to Austin, these definitions have artificially, "arbitrarily," and inaccurately constructed two competing and seemingly antithetical ideologies, particularly during the Black Power era, as represented most notably by the Black Panthers and Us. Austin argues for an understanding of cultural nationalism based on a broader anthropological definition of culture to include more than just art, music, dress, language, and customs. This more comprehensive definition includes the economic and political "concerns" of "cultural" nationalists. Defining culture broadly to highlight the comprehensive agenda of Us, which included "political and economic concerns," while revealing the significant place of art as "revolutionary propaganda" with the Panthers, Austin recasts the Panther-Us conflict, emphasizing the similarities between the two organizations and artificial distinction made between "cultural" and "revolutionary" nationalism.

On the other hand, Austin highlights the fundamental differences between Black Power–era Black Nationalism and Afrocentric-era Black Nationalism. Austin suggests that nationalists of the Afrocentric era did not similarly develop comprehensive economic and political goals as the "cultural nationalists" of the Black Power era. In other words, "while the Black Power era was not 'essentially' cultural, the Afrocentric era was."¹ Afrocentrism was cultural in the narrow definition and thus did not include a comprehensive political and economic agenda as did the "cultural nationalists" of the Black Power era. According to Austin, this narrow agenda was evidenced in the largely symbolic displays of the Million Man and Million Woman marches. Moreover, Afrocentrists supported the "cultural continuity between ancient Egyptians and Black Americans" that, according to Afrocentrists, remained fixed and continuous through time and culturally distinct from whites.² Echoing recent scholars, Austin similarly discusses the conservative and masculine aspects of Black Power–era Black Nationalism and the conservatism of the culture and values of Afrocentric-era Black Nationalism.

Austin summarizes prescriptions for blackness or how blackness is "achieved" through "performance" during the Black Power era. Yet he points out that these norms are dynamic and fluid, as illustrated in the Nation of Islam's (NOI) rejection of many characteristics that defined blackness during the Black Power era such as "soul food" and African style dress. The NOI's identification as Asiatic illustrates Austin's argument that racial identities are social products rather than biologically determined. According to Austin, the failure of some scholars to understand the construction of racial identity and the NOI's Asiatic identity has led some to misrepresent the NOI as Pan-African. Austin illustrates how this prescription of blackness, the definition of Black Nationalism, and its constituency then evolved in the Afrocentric era.

Austin's generalization of the civil rights movement to only four organizations—the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality³ —and the movement's goal of "integration" oversimplify the political, cultural, self-defense, and economic concerns of decades of local grassroots organizing...