Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic

2. Radical Chic: Affiliation, Identification, and the Black Panther Party

2 Radical Chic affiliaTion, idenTifiCaTion, and The BlaCk PanTher ParTy i could only place myself among the oppressed people of color and among the oppressed revolting against whites. Perhaps i’m a black whose color is white or pink, but a black. i don’t know my family. —Jean Genet, on his involvement with the Black Panther Party Prisoners of love Understanding white Affiliation for Radical African American causes In 1970, Tom Wolfe published two short accounts of the exchange between black radical politics and its white supporters that would become foundational to the ways in which that interaction would come to be defined. The cover of Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers sports a satirical photograph of a well-coifed white woman on the lap of an African American man in an army fatigue jacket, both with black-gloved fists upraised. The caption is “BLACK RAGE AND WHITE GUILT.” Both essays in the book, “Radical Chic” and “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers,” traded on and helped create the popular representation of the Black Panthers as scheming , cynical manipulators of post–civil rights racial politics who willingly and shamelessly traded in white stereotypes and guilt for selfish economic gain. “Radical Chic,” the first essay, purports to tell the story of a fundraising party held in honor of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party in the Manhattan home of the conductor Leonard Bernstein, while the second, “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers,” concerns the attempts by individual action groups to get funding from federal Poverty Program agencies. Radical Chic stands not only as a hallmark of the New Journal- RAdIcAl chIc 59 ism movement but was also foundational for the understanding it provided of the cultural politics of radical black activism and the way it came to be understood in mainstream U.S. culture. Michael E. Staub argues, “Its contents arguably shaped the historical memory of the Panthers and their white supporters—and indeed the memory of the sixties generally—more than any other single journalistic piece from the era.”1 While “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” does not specifically name the Black Panther Party in its indictment of white funding of black radical causes, the entire text of “Radical Chic” revolves around the awkward interactions supposedly occurring between wealthy, status-conscious socialites and members of the Black Panther Party, who are portrayed as uncomfortably out of place, rigid, uncreative, and dogmatic. In characterizing the guests at the event, Wolfe claims that their motivation for supporting Black radicalism stems mainly from the fact that “most of the people in this room have had a problem being unwanted,” a quote he directly attributes to Leonard Bernstein. Wolfe also quoted in its entirety a New York Times editorial characterizing the Bernstein event as “group therapy plus fundraising,” “guilt-relieving fun spiked with social consciousness,” and “elegant slumming that degrades patrons and patronized alike” (95). Most of “Radical Chic” focuses on the confrontation that supposedly occurred between the party member Donald Cox, the party’s host, Leonard Bernstein, and the filmmaker Otto Preminger as they argued about the efficacy of armed struggle and the possibility of positive social reform in the United States. Though Wolfe was critical of the Black Panther Party for claiming to represent the disenfranchised while actively courting the cultural elite, he also argued that the party presented the perfect model for political change among not only African Americans but mainstream whites as well. He labeled this interaction between advocates for the disenfranchised and the elite “radical chic” and wrote: “If there was ever a group that embodied the romance and excitement of which Radical Chic is made, it was the Panthers” (63). Though Wolfe’s notion of radical chic is removed from the Black Panthers ’ concept of vanguardism by its reliance on primitivism and its preoccupation with white subjectivity, it uses a similar model of the group as a vector for intense identification and affiliation. In Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution, Jerry Rubin would claim: “The Man tried to execute Huey. But millions of people—black people, white people, liberals, radicals, revolutionaries , housewives, doctors, students, professors—identified with Huey. 60 sPectAcUlAR BlAckness They said black people should arm themselves against the violence of the pigs. Huey’s action redefined the situation for all of us” (142). Like vanguardism , white affiliation with radical African American causes had the power to change the apolitical and...