I, Too, Sing America
Discourses of Discontent During the Civil Rights Era
UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Faculty of Humanities
Lisanne Brans
6059546
mr. dr. George Blaustein
June 2014
1
2
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am America.
– Langston Hughes, 1926
3
4
Table of contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 6
1. The Racial Liberalism of Kenneth Clark ........................................................................ 12
1.1
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 12
1.2
Social Science Dealing with the American Dilemma ............................................... 13
1.3
Psychological Research ............................................................................................. 15
1.4
“Give me the doll that looks like you” ...................................................................... 18
1.5
Convergence of Academic and Political Paths ......................................................... 20
1.6
Kenneth Clark’s Racial Liberalism ........................................................................... 22
1.7
Brown vs. Board and its Aftermath ........................................................................... 25
1.8
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 29
2. The Black Nationalism of Malcolm X .............................................................................. 32
2.1
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 32
2.2
The Hypocrisy of Christianity ................................................................................... 33
2.3
Inverting the Logic of the Nation of Islam ................................................................ 36
2.4
Black Nationalism and Integration ............................................................................ 38
2.5
Malcolm’s Newfound Ideology ................................................................................ 41
2.6
Rhetoric: From Apocalyptical Paranoia to Government Shaming ........................... 44
2.7
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 49
3. The Democratically Inflected Discourse of James Baldwin ........................................... 50
3.1
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 50
3.2
Looking Through the Lens of Democracy ................................................................ 51
3.3
The Indispensable Medium of Language .................................................................. 54
3.4
The Psychology of the Individual ............................................................................. 56
3.5
Relation to the White Man ........................................................................................ 59
3.6
Brown vs. Board: American Democracy as a Burning House .................................. 62
3.7
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 65
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 68
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 72
5
6
Introduction
Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the second African
American Supreme Court Justice after Thurgood Marshall, made some comments about race
during a talk at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida. ‘The worst I
have ever been treated was by northern liberal elites,’ he told his audience, ‘not by the people
of Savannah, Georgia.’1 Quickly picked up as a controversial statement by media both left
and right, it spurred an ongoing debate about race consciousness.2 Thomas’s statement was
taken slightly out of context, but originally meant to raise questions about the existence of
and the necessity for race consciousness. Thomas’s main point was that the American society
today is just as race conscious and difference conscious as it was when he grew up in the Jim
Crow South during the 1960s – perhaps even more. Clarence Thomas firmly believes that in
order to eliminate racism, the American society has to quit thinking along color lines. He
regards any form of race consciousness, therefore, as inherently detrimental to achieving a
colorblind society.
In present-day form, questions about the need for race consciousness are often related
to discussions about affirmative action. Clarence Thomas repudiates any form of affirmative
action, arguing that the Constitution as well as its interpretation is and should be truly
colorblind. In April of this year, in a 6 to 2 ruling – Associate Justice Elena Kegan refrained
from voting – the Supreme Court backed a Michigan state amendment that prohibited
affirmative action, with Thomas concurring, revealing stark divisions within the judiciary
about the role the government should play in the protection of minorities.3 In 2007, Thomas
sided with Chief Justice John Roberts in a ruling that prohibited public schools in
Washington and Kentucky from applying racial classifications in order to achieve racial
diversity. ‘The dissent would give school boards a free hand to make decisions on the basis of
race – an approach reminiscent of that advocated by the segregationists in Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka,’ Thomas asserted.4 With this statement, Thomas referred back to the
1954 Supreme Court case that is often seen as the legal starting point of the Civil Rights
1. Chris Moody, “Clarence Thomas: Society is Overly Sensitive about Race”, February 11, 2014,
http://news.yahoo.com/clarence-thomas-on-race-194104252.html
2. Since the term ‘race consciousness’ is used many times throughout this thesis, I should give a clear definition
of its meaning as I employ it. Race consciousness is a neutral term, and it denotes the ways people, either black
or white, are aware of race (that is, of categories of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’) and notice race as a factor of
importance.
3. Schuette, Attorney General of Michigan vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and
Immigration Rights and Fight for Racial Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN) et al., 12-682 (2014).
4. Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007).
7
Movement. Questions about the necessity for affirmative action can be traced back to the
Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board which was meant to tackle de jure segregation,
but failed at battling de facto segregation.
Brown vs. Board also serves as the starting point for this thesis. Not only does the
case reflect – as Supreme Court cases often do – ongoing political, cultural and economic
struggles in American society, Brown vs. Board also signifies the high point of new
understandings of race, identity and rights that had come in to existence in the previous
decades. With the Brown case, these new understandings were projected onto constitutional
jurisprudence. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was the first major national case of
Civil Rights legislation, and it entailed an attack on the judicial underpinnings of racial
apartheid in the U.S., which were firmly established by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy
vs. Ferguson in 1896. The Brown vs. Board decision consisted of five different cases that
were combined and brought forward by the NAACP under the guidance of Thurgood
Marshall, who would later become the first African American Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Arguing that segregated facilities are inherently unequal, the Warren Court unanimously
declared racial segregation in public education to be in violation of the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As soon as the Supreme Court ordered desegregation
to be set in motion “with all deliberate speed”, white Southerners started to implement a
series of stalling tactics in order to prevent this from happening. The Brown vs. Board
decision was met with fierce white backlash in the South, and proved to be a disillusioning
process to those that supported the case and that had eagerly awaited the Warren Court’s
decision as a means to dismantle Jim Crow. Although today often remembered and celebrated
as a Supreme Court landmark case that exerted a strong influence on the African American
struggle for civil rights and racial equality, the aftermath of the decision in the decades that
followed turned out to be disappointing for black Americans.
The Civil Rights Era or its judicial starting point are not an unknown chapter in
American history: it goes without saying that the Civil Rights Era has been subject of an
abundance of scholarship. Harvard Sitkoff, in The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992,
provided a rather traditional narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, in which Brown vs.
Board served as starting point for all events that followed throughout the 1960s up until the
1990s. In his From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle For
Racial Equality, professor of law Michael Klarman endeavored to take stock of the events
following Brown vs. Board, also regarding this Supreme Court decision as a catalyst spurring
changes in the years to follow. Klarman analyzed the political, economic and cultural context
8
that the Supreme Court operated in at the time, and argued that Brown mostly mobilized
white Southern resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, rather than actively encourage the
struggle for civil rights itself. With his Black Is A Country, Nikhil Pal Singh countered
Sitkoff’s traditional narrative by tracing the Civil Rights Movement back to intellectual
forces and hopes earlier in the twentieth century, long before Brown vs. Board. Singh
essentially presented an alternative perspective on the Civil Rights Movement by envisioning
a ‘long civil rights era’, which was meant to challenge the ‘King-centric’ version of events.
Mary Dudziak, in her turn, placed the Civil Rights Movement in a larger framework of the
Cold War by explaining how international affairs affected racial domestic policy in the U.S.
and vice versa. All of these scholars have shown that the Civil Rights Movement was not by
any means an isolated movement, nor a monolithic one.
This thesis, therefore, is not an exhaustive overview of the Civil Rights Era. Rather, it
is an inquiry into three different discourses of discontent, their narrators and their
accompanying vocabularies. The three protagonists of this thesis are Kenneth Clark (19142005), Malcolm X (1925-1965) and James Baldwin (1924-1987). Kenneth Clark, a
psychologist who subscribed to the ideology of racial liberalism, attempted to reveal the
pernicious psychological effects of racial segregation on black children. The studies that he
and his wife Mamie Clark conducted were cited as proof of these effects by Chief Justice
Warren in the Brown vs. Board decision. Kenneth Clark used race consciousness as a tool in
spurring institutional change, which, he believed, would in turn fundamentally change
Americans’ perspective on race and racial identity. Malcolm X is often seen as one of the
most radical voices of the Civil Rights Era. He was a member of the Nation of Islam until
1964, and in the last year of his life he redefined the ideology of black nationalism in order to
be able to challenge the American government to fix its race problem on an international
level. Continually reinforcing categories of blackness and whiteness in American society,
Malcolm heavily relied on race consciousness in getting his message across to his audience.
James Baldwin, in his turn, regarded African Americans as victims of the failure of American
democracy, but at the same time he relied on democratic principles in order to challenge
racial inequality. Baldwin regarded race consciousness as a necessary evil that would have to
be employed in order to make Americans aware of a prevalent discourse of white hegemony.
In other words, all three narrators of the discourses discussed in this thesis used race
consciousness as a tool that would help them to articulate their discontent, in order to
eventually challenge racial inequity.
9
As the underpinnings of Jim Crow were struck down one by one by what are often
seen as executive, judicial and legislative triumphs in the struggle for racial equality, with
Executive Order 9981 ordering desegregation of the army in 1948, the 1954 Brown vs. Board
case ordering desegregation of public education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, racial
disparities continued to exist. Tearing down the formal remnants of racial inequalities turned
out to be insufficient in challenging deep-rooted racism, an ingrained discourse of white
hegemony and de facto segregation. This counters traditional national narratives that
underscore visions of racial unity that are traced back to the Civil Rights Movement up until
this day. Kenneth Clark, Malcolm X and James Baldwin all felt a strong sense of discontent,
which they attempted to translate into a meaningful vocabulary that would help them to
challenge the racial status quo. Starting from the notion that there is no such thing as a
monolithic Civil Rights Era discourse on the part of black Americans, each of these
discourses deals with interpreting matters of race and prejudice in its own way. The
protagonists of these discourses tried to make sense of an ongoing power imbalance in
American society, and they each employed a different discourse in order to restore the
balance. Each of these discourses evolved over time, all of them towards a standpoint that, in
one way or another, implied the need for more cooperation with white Americans.
All three narrators had experienced racism throughout their lives, and their ideologies
were therefore rooted in their personal experiences. All three of them were equally committed
to translating their discontent into a method that would be able to bring about real, structural
change with regard to America’s treatment of African Americans. The African American
poet Langston Hughes managed to effectively capture a common feeling of discontent in his
poem “I, Too”. The poem ends with the line “I, too, am America”. Its first sentence, however,
“I, too, sing America”, is much more applicable to the narrators of this thesis. They were not
just passively part of an America that refused to grant them their rights, rather, they actively
endeavored to force their country to recognize their existence and human rights. Their
discourses of discontent were not tacit, but loud and clear. The psychologist, the militant and
the artist this thesis deals with have each narrated Brown vs. Board and the ensuing events in
their own way. Their discourses of discontent are three different epistemologies of race, each
with their own discursive strategy, functioning against the backdrop of a highpoint in Civil
Rights legislation. I intend to analyze how these three, at some points ostensibly very
different, discourses stand in dialogue with each other. Each of the discourses pertains to
contrasting notions of the concepts of race and racial identity. Analyzing these three
narratives will shed light on a larger framework of questions about race consciousness and
10
colorblindness – matters that have been up for discussion until this day – and will prove that
race consciousness is both risky as well as necessary.
11
12
1. The Racial Liberalism of Kenneth Clark
“It is probably not enough to believe that racial prejudices, discrimination and segregation
are morally wrong. In order to become actively involved in the struggle to eradicate these
symptoms of social maladjustment and save our children from their harmful effects, it is
necessary to know why they are wrong.”5 – Kenneth B. Clark
1.1
Introduction
From the 1930s onwards, mainly in the decades following World War II, American
public policies with regard to race came under increasing public scrutiny, especially in light
of a war in which American soldiers were fighting for freedom in a racially segregated army.
According to Lee Baker, ‘perhaps more than any other event, World War II illuminated the
duplicity of state-sponsored racism. Allied rhetoric about the fight for the “four freedoms”
encouraged African Americans to fight for freedom at home.’6 As a consequence of this, not
only social but also psychological research on race and the effects of racial policies and
prejudice became more common, and self-esteem became a factor of increasing importance
in judging policies. In addition to this, uncovering which policies were inimical to selfesteem and why became more important as well. Social science, in the form of sociological,
psychological and anthropological research, provided an important tool in this process. The
kinds of studies conducted in these fields mostly focused on the nature of black personalities
in order to prove that racism had a negative influence on black personality development.
Social scientists endeavored to measure abstract concepts such as “identity”, “personality”
and “family relations” in an attempt to not only limit psychological damage for African
Americans, but to ultimately challenge institutional racism. The studies that were conducted
were highly interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of both anthropology, psychology and
sociology. These studies form part of an intellectual culture, slowly developing from the
1930s onwards, that attempted to put in motion social change. Intellectuals relied on a
discourse of expertise in order to challenge racial inequities and discussions about race and
race relations became ineluctably tied with psychology and psychoanalysis, as this was seen
5. Kenneth Clark in 1955, in Woody Klein, Toward Humanity and Justice: The Writings of Kenneth B. Clark,
Scholar of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Decision (Westport: Praeger, 2004): 15.
6. Lee Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998): 193.
13
as a valid tool to judge these matters. This chapter explores the racial liberalism of African
American psychologist Kenneth Clark, who grew up in Harlem and received his PhD in
psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie
Clark, who also obtained a PhD in psychology and worked together with her husband,
refused to be neutral or unbiased with regard to racial issues and they used racial liberalism in
order to change the status quo and challenge the destructive forces of racism. For their entire
lives, they were committed to peacefully bringing about radical social change and
overthrowing Jim Crow. This chapter analyzes Clark’s racial liberalism and his way of
dealing with the predicament of race consciousness.
1.2
Social Science Dealing with the American Dilemma
In order to gain a better understanding of Clark’s approach, I will first look at a
number of studies that he and his wife conducted during the years leading up to Brown. Then
I will look at how Clark, as the protagonist of a racial liberal discourse, narrated Brown and
the years to follow. First, however, it is important to note that the Clarks, of course, were not
by any means the first social scientists to explore American race relations. One of the most
well-known studies of race relations in America is that of Swedish sociologist Gunnar
Myrdal, who published his An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy in 1944. Gunnar Myrdal became a mentor and friend to Kenneth Clark, who also
helped gather data for Myrdal’s ambitious project. The study was conducted between 1938
and 1940 and essentially provided an indictment of American racial oppression. Myrdal
analyzed American race relations from a European perspective, at times comparing America
to his home country Sweden. He asserted that ‘the subordinate position of Negroes is perhaps
the most glaring conflict in the American conscience and the greatest unsolved task for
American democracy.’7 Myrdal’s work provides a large body of empirical data relating to
economy, politics, and culture in order to explain what this glaring conflict actually entailed
and how it could be discerned in American society. According to Myrdal, ‘the Negro
problem’ was a psychological problem in nature that burdened every American, black or
white, and perpetually weighed on their conscience.
Myrdal’s work can be seen as a call for radical social change, even though his
extensive body of statistics did not provide clear guidelines on how to achieve that change.
According to Myrdal, every American lives by a set of values called the American Creed.
7. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro in a White Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Company, 1944): 21.
14
These core premises are related to respecting the rule of law, but also to equality and
democracy. It is thus not surprising, according to Myrdal, that race relations and white racial
attitudes in the U.S. formed a huge threat to the American Creed. However, Myrdal strongly
believed, slightly naively, that the American Creed that held the American society together
and underpinned the American way of life was strong enough to prevail and restore social
justice. This belief was tied to a certain sense of trust in the psychological nature of
Americans, which Myrdal believed to be inherently morally just. According to Ellen Herman,
‘Myrdal was certain that psychology held the key to undoing racism.’8 Americans’
psychological commitment to the American Creed would eventually help the Creed to
prevail. As will become clear in this chapter, this conviction signifies an important difference
between Myrdal and Kenneth Clark. Myrdal’s An American Dilemma consisted of facts about
education, housing, health and other areas relating to African Americans, ultimately dealing
with the psychology of Americans. Its ultimate goal was to exert an influence on that
psychology by appealing to American moral values. Merely pointing out what the problem
entailed would, in Myrdal’s eyes, ‘awaken’ Americans, and in that way essentially strengthen
their commitment to the Creed. This increased commitment, in turn, would naturally solve
the race problem. Kenneth Clark, however, favored a much more psychologically active
approach than Myrdal, as will become clear in this chapter. That is not to say that Myrdal’s
work was of no value in making the American public aware of its race problem, since it was
most certainly not overlooked by policy makers at the time. An American Dilemma was
referred to in the Truman administration’s report To Secure These Rights, which was
published by Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights in 1947. Moreover, according to Lee
Baker, ‘the legal arm of the NAACP began to see it as solid and well-respected evidence for
overturning Plessy.’9 Eventually, the NAACP chose to use both Kenneth Clark’s work and
Myrdal’s work in their attempt to legally dismantle Jim Crow, as both were cited as proof in
the Brown case.
At the time it was first published, Myrdal’s study also had a huge influence on the
academic world. Herman asserts that Myrdal’s work stimulated a large amount of studies
about American race relations and their underlying psychology. The importance of An
American Dilemma in creating a subfield of psychological and sociological studies about race
relations should therefore not be underestimated. According to Herman, pre-World War II
8. Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 180.
9. Lee Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998): 195.
15
psychological research on race issues mostly dealt with differences in intelligence, whereas
post-war research tended to be broader, ‘grappling with new topics and promoting a
decidedly environmentalist approach (culture over nature) that toppled conventional
assumptions about the existence and permanence of white racial superiority.’10 Myrdal’s
work, even though he started assembling his data before World War II, can be placed in the
latter category. Despite the fact that Myrdal’s unwavering trust in the American Creed was
slightly naïve, he was definitely ahead of his time in this regard. After World War II,
behavioral scientists realized that they actually had a pivotal role to fulfill in creating a nonracist environment. This gave their work a particular task and it burdened them with a kind of
public obligation: research was not merely conducted to uncover certain facts, but also to
stimulate social change. This held particularly true from the 1950s onwards, when the Civil
Rights Movement gained influence in America and members of the movement expressed
concern with regard to the psychologically damaging effects of American race relations. By
the 1960s, self-esteem had become a solid factor in policy forming as policy makers realized
they would have to refrain from articulating policies that damaged self-esteem. According to
Herman, the fact that self-esteem became more and more important with regard to public
policy can be related to ‘the persuasiveness of the postwar experts’, ‘the progress of the Civil
Rights Movement, and a social context hospitable to turning psychology into public policy.’11
However, psychological research with regard to the effects of racial issues predates World
War II, and Myrdal was not the only social scientist concerned with the effects of American
race relations during the first decades of the twentieth century.
1.3
Psychological Research
As with Myrdal’s study, the research that Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie
conducted also falls in the category of post-World War II research as described by Herman,
even though some of it was conducted before the war. Psychologist Kenneth Clark worked
with Gunnar Myrdal and his staff in obtaining the data that were used to write An American
Dilemma. Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie Clark explored the issues of racial
identification with relation to self-esteem on a scale that was much smaller than Myrdal’s
research, but certainly not less significant. Kenneth and Mamie Clark both received their PhD
at Howard University, and they were the first African American man and woman to do so at
this university. From the mid-1930s onwards, the Clarks published a number of studies on
10. Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 181.
11. Ibid., 193.
16
black children and their self-image. These studies originated from the research Mamie had
conducted while writing her master’s thesis at Howard University, titled “The Development
of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children”, which she completed in 1939.
According to Kenneth Clark, ‘as she [Mamie Clark] saw the larger implications of the first
stages of this work, she was kind enough to invite me to join her in a more probing empirical
and theoretical exploration of the nature and determinants of the self-image.’12 In that same
year, Kenneth and Mamie conducted a research at a nursery in New York and a nursery in
Washington, the results of which were published in The Journal of Experimental Education.
The New York nursery was partially mixed, the Washington nursery completely segregated.
They investigated the influence of segregation on the development of racial identification of
black pre-school children. The Clarks used what they called the ‘Horowitz picture technique’,
in which black children were shown different pictures of both black and white children,
different animals and a clown. The children were then asked to state with which picture they
identified themselves the most. A choice for either one of the animals or for the clown would
be regarded as an irrelevant choice. The Clarks concluded that
‘the tendency to identify with either the colored or the white boy seems to
approximate a chance frequency among those Negro children in nursery schools
where there are both white and colored children, while a trend toward identifying with
the colored boy is more pronounced in the Negro children in the semi-segregated
group and even more so in the all-Negro nursery schools.’13
Moreover, the Clarks identified a trend in the number of children identifying themselves with
irrelevant pictures of animals or clowns. They found that around the four year level, black
children from segregated nurseries stopped pointing out those pictures altogether, where
black children from non-segregated nurseries continued to identify themselves with irrelevant
pictures. This, according to the Clarks, suggested that children at segregated nurseries were
far more self-aware and identified themselves in respect to others much more than children
from non-segregated nurseries. The Clarks asserted that the most obvious reason for the fact
that children from non-segregated schools still identified themselves with irrelevant pictures
around age four, was the presence of white children of the same age in the nursery.
According to the Clarks, ‘this factor seems at present to be the determinant of the deviation in
12. Woody Klein, Toward Humanity and Justice: The Writings of Kenneth B. Clark, Scholar of the 1954 Brown
vs. Board of Education Decision (Westport: Praeger, 2004): 127.
13. Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark, “Segregation as a Factor in the Racial Identification of Negro PreSchool Children: A Preliminary Report.” The Journal of Experimental Education 2 (1939): 161.
17
responses of this mixed group from responses of the other two groups.’14 This, the Clarks
claimed, suggested that black children who go the same nursery as white children are less
burdened with race consciousness than black children from segregated nurseries. As will
become clear in this chapter, Kenneth Clark attempted to challenge the destructive forces of
this form of race consciousness by pointing out its existence and using it to reveal the
pervasiveness of racism.
Kenneth and Mamie Clark seemed to be aware of some of the problematic factors of
their research. The number of children that took part in the investigation was relatively small.
Moreover, the question remained whether or not the children who pointed to irrelevant
pictures fully understood the question they were asked. Therefore, the Clarks remarked that
intelligence was a factor that would have to be investigated as well before drawing definite
conclusions from the research. They seemed, however, certain that black children at
segregated nurseries were far more aware of their skin color and identified themselves much
more on the basis of their skin color than their counterparts at non-segregated nurseries. The
research method the Clarks used was borrowed from Ruth Horowitz, who had conducted a
similar type of research earlier that year. Horowitz was interested in the earliest stages of
what she called ‘attitude formation’ and the development of self-consciousness. Horowitz
thought that race was an important factor in this process and she set out to research the
consequences of that factor for children’s future attitude formation. Since she assumed that
the process of self-development and growing self-awareness takes place around the age of
three or four, Horowitz decided to investigate nursery children who were no older than four
years.
In order to be able to question the children without being dependent on the inherently
biased medium of language, she developed a picture technique. The children were asked to
identify themselves, their brother or a cousin from a number of different pictures depicting
white children, black children, animals and a clown. They were also shown pictures of black
and white children one by one and asked to answer whether or not the picture reflected them.
Where the research of the Clarks focused on different groups of black children from
segregated and non-segregated nurseries and did not include white children at all, the
Horowitz research focused on both groups of white children and groups of black children.
The Horowitz research only included 24 children, all from the same mixed nursery. Horowitz
concluded that the black children ‘seemed to have a more definite concept of their difference
14. Ibid., 163.
18
from one group and similarity with another than the white group.’15 Group consciousness and
group identification, Horowitz claimed, are ‘an intrinsic aspect of ego-development and basic
to the understanding of the dynamics of attitude function in the adult personality.’16 However,
Horowitz recognized that the research she had conducted was fairly small and that additional
research was needed in order to draw conclusions from the trend she had discerned in her
research.
1.4
“Give me the doll that looks like you”
The Clarks built on her research, as we have seen, by borrowing the picture technique
she had developed and they implemented it in the study they conducted in 1939. In 1940,
they conducted another more extensive research, which included 150 black children, using
the same technique. As a result of this study, the Clarks stated that ‘whatever the concepts of
self in relation to society as found in Negro adolescents and adults, whether they result in
adjustments or conflicts, they are certainly to be conceived as part of a total pattern of
development in which these findings are primordial.’17 They discerned patterns of race
consciousness in young black children that they believed would have a crucial impact on their
further lives and how they would perceive themselves in relations to others. In 1947, the
Clarks took on a different approach in order to investigate the effects of race consciousness in
young black children. In a study called “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro
Children”, the Clarks used a couple of different methods, one of which became known as the
‘dolls test’. Chief Justice Earl Warren, in the 1954 decision of Brown vs. Board, would refer
to evidence that was found in this study as proof of the detrimental psychological effects of
racial segregation on black children. The study was substantially larger than previous studies
the Clarks had conducted, with a total of 253 black children participating, both from Southern
segregated schools in Arkansas and from Northern non-segregated schools in Massachusetts.
Much like in the other studies, the Clarks were primarily interested in race consciousness,
which they described as ‘a consciousness of the self as belonging to a specific group which is
differentiated from other observable groups by obvious physical characteristics which are
generally accepted as racial characteristics.’18 Important to emphasize here, is that – as the
Clarks also state – the concept of race consciousness itself does not inherently carry a
15. Ruth Horowitz, “Racial Aspects of Self-Identification in Nursery School Children.” The Journal of
Psychology 7 (1939): 97.
16. Ibid., 99.
17. Kenneth Clark, “Skin Color as a Factor in Racial Identification of Negro Preschool Children.” The Journal
of Social Psychology 11 (1940): 168.
18. Kenneth Clark, “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children”, in Readings in Social Psychology,
ed. Gordon Allport et al. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947): 169.
19
negative connotation. Its effects, however, turned out to be detrimental to black children’s
developing sense of self-esteem. The Clarks set out to investigate how and to what extent this
consciousness affected young black children.
In the dolls test, the children were given four dolls, two of them brown with black hair
and the other two white with yellow hair. The children were asked a series of questions, such
as which doll they liked best and which doll they thought looked bad. These questions were
designed to reveal preferences for particular dolls, to reveal children’s knowledge of the
difference in race that the two different dolls were supposed to reflect, and to give more
insight into the process of racial self-identification. The latter part of the research was
investigated through the use of questions such as “Give me the doll that looks like a colored
child”, “Give me the doll that looks like a white child” and “Give me the doll that looks like
you”. The children included in the research were between three and seven years old and, both
male and female. Moreover, the Clarks made a distinction between ‘light’ skinned children,
‘medium’ and ‘dark’ skinned children (they made sure, however, to explicitly state that all
the children participating in the research were in fact ‘Negro children’). The Clarks found
that a majority of the children preferred the white dolls and rejected the brown dolls. One
could easily raise questions about the reliability of the conclusions the Clarks drew from
these results. The study is rather one-sided, as it does not include white children, but only
focuses on black children. Including an equally large group of white children (both from
segregated and non-segregated schools) would have provided more insight into the process of
racial identification. Moreover, the use of dolls (rather than pictures of actual children, as the
Clarks used in their previous research) is questionable as well. Boys are perhaps less likely to
identify with dolls than girls, therefore the use of dolls may not be an objective tool.
Interestingly enough, the Clarks did not perceive significant differences in results with
regard to segregated and non-segregated schools. Over all, the Southern children were a little
less pronounced in their preference for the white doll than the Northern children. Moreover,
Southern children were a little less likely to completely reject the brown doll than Northern
children:
‘In general, it may be stated that Northern and Southern children in these age groups
tend to be similar in the degree of their preference for the white doll – with the
Northern children tending to be somewhat more favorable to the white doll than are
the Southern children. The Southern children, however, in spite of their equal
20
favorableness toward the white doll, are significantly less likely to reject the brown
doll.’19
These results seem contrary to what the Clarks may have expected, and they are significant to
say the least. If children from segregated schools were less likely to reject the brown doll and
less pronounced in their preference for the white doll than the children from non-segregated
schools, one could argue that means that segregation has less negative consequences for black
children than the Clarks thought, and perhaps even positive consequences. Of course,
drawing such a conclusion would be premature. It is hard to isolate school segregation as the
main reason for black children’s preference for white dolls. There were, of course, other
forms of segregation in the South at the time, such as residential segregation and segregation
in public transport and public health facilities, that could perhaps influence black children’s
perception of themselves and of those around them. To the Clarks, however, school
segregation was part of a bigger problem, namely that of a segregated society. The Clarks
admitted that they could not isolate school segregation in order to judge its effects, but
studying one aspect of segregation in general did prove the detrimental effects of racial
segregation as a whole.
1.5
Convergence of Academic and Political Paths
The Clarks were looking to expose the negative influences of institutional racism on
black children’s self-esteem and they attempted to do so by pointing out the existence of race
consciousness and its effects. Drawing definite conclusions from the kind of research they
conducted, however, is rather difficult. The Clarks apparently thought that they were able to
objectively measure things that are inherently subjective. But this raises questions about what
they expected to find, and the significance they attached to these findings. What is the
significance of a black child identifying him or herself with a white doll rather than with a
brown doll? And what is the significance of asking a black child to point out the doll that he
or she thinks looks colored? Does pointing to a doll with a particular color mean that the
child identifies his or herself with the doll in question, and does a four year old even
understand the concept of “identifying yourself with something”? The point here, however, is
not to question the legitimacy of the Clarks’ tests in particular, but rather to understand them
in a larger framework of how the Clarks articulated their discourse of discontent. The dolls
test epitomizes the ultimate attempt to provide an intellectual framework that can be used to
understand and judge primary emotions. But more than that, the dolls test provides a
19. Ibid., 178.
21
particular kind of psychological discourse that is meant to spur social change. The Clarks
attempted to achieve institutional change so that eventually, they would be able to bring
about a change in Americans’ perception of and attitude about race. The Clarks’ research
reflects a broader trend to validate claims about the injustice of racial inequality by providing
empirical data to support such claims. Scientifically speaking, there is a danger inherent to
this method: the Clarks were politically committed to reforming race relations in America,
and were thus set on obtaining data that would prove their point. But that is beside the point,
as it goes without saying that the Clarks were biased. The question is, however, how this bias
affected their way of thinking and writing about the racist patterns in American society they
wished to challenge. As will become clear in this chapter, racial liberalism provided Kenneth
Clark with the opportunity to use his psychological discoveries about race consciousness as a
means to implement and eventually challenge that same race consciousness.
In the published version of the research, the Clarks seemed rather hesitant to state that
segregation in education was the single cause for the tendency among black children to prefer
the white dolls over the brown dolls. One of their findings, however, seems to be irrefutable
evidence to support their claims, namely that ‘the crucial period in the formation and
patterning of racial attitudes begins at around four and five years. At these ages these subjects
appear to be reacting more uncritically in a definite structuring of attitudes which conforms
with the accepted racial values and mores of the larger environment.’20 In other words, they
asserted, like Horowitz, that the process of self-identification in relation to race takes place at
a very young age: children start identifying themselves along publicly accepted racially
defined lines around the age of four or five. This suggests that the form of education black
children receive is of pivotal importance with regard to the development of their selfawareness: how they perceive themselves and how they perceive others. In the conclusions to
their earlier research, the Clarks provided a fairly subtle indictment of racial segregation in
public schools by linking segregation to personality damage. This message, however, became
stronger and stronger as they continued their research.
Even though they were sometimes hesitant to state it explicitly, the Clarks themselves
were convinced that the results provided irrefutable proof of the detrimental effects of
segregation. Kenneth Clark, in an interview with Lawrence Nyman, claimed that at the time,
he was shocked that the research they had conducted had given such clear insights into the
damaging effects of segregation. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘were these literally defenseless human
20. Ibid., 177.
22
beings required to incorporate into the developing sense of their own being their
consciousness of rejection; negative awareness of the fact that the society rejected [them].’21
Even though the Clarks were obviously both emotionally as well as politically engaged,
Kenneth Clark claimed that initially, they were hesitant to publish the results because they
found them so disturbing: ‘Mamie and I knew that it was important, but I think we tended to
assess its importance in terms of its effect upon us.’22 Before 1950, Kenneth Clark was first
and foremost an academic, or what he himself called a ‘pure psychologist, teaching and doing
research with Mamie.’23 This made him hesitant to publish research that was so politically
outspoken. It should be noted, however, that the Clarks were expanding their horizons outside
of merely academic work well before 1950, when they founded the Northside Testing and
Consultation Center in Harlem in 1946. The Northside Center offered psychological
treatment for children in racially segregated neighborhoods in Harlem. Mamie Clark was the
main director of the center, but Kenneth Clark was involved in the project as well. According
to Shafali Lal, ‘Mamie Clark conceptualized the work of the center as providing
compensatory doses of love and acceptance. If the Clarks’ psychological experiments
uncovered the psychological needs of African American children, the center catered to the
fulfillment of those needs.’24 The Northside Center gave Mamie the opportunity to combine
academics with groundwork in the form of providing service to those who needed it most.
1.6
Kenneth Clark’s Racial Liberalism
In other words, by starting the Northside Center, the Clarks had already found a way
to translate academics into something that was more practically useful, or at least responded
to a sense of urgency they both felt. Their efforts, both in the academic world and in the daily
life of Harlem, are part of a broader tradition that gained influence at the time, namely that of
racial liberalism. Lani Guinier has outlined the basic premises of post-World War II racial
liberalism – and what she perceives as its failures. According to Guinier, ‘racial liberalism
positioned the peculiarly American race “problem” as a psychological and interpersonal
challenge rather than a structural problem rooted in our economic and political system.’25
Guinier articulates racial liberalism as a rather naïve approach, implying that racial liberals,
21. Lawrence Nyman, “Documenting History: An Interview with Kenneth Bancroft Clark.” History of
Psychology 1 (2010): 76.
22. Ibid., 76.
23. Ibid., 78.
24. Shafali Lal, “Giving Children Security: Mamie Phipps Clark and the Racialization of Child Psychology.”
American Psychologist 1 (2002): 25.
25. Lani Guinier, “From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board and the Interest-Divergence
Dilemma.” The Journal of American History 1 (2004): 100.
23
by merely focusing on the psychological side of racism, failed to recognize the underlying
power structures of a racist society. Guinier asserts that, to racial liberals like the Clarks,
solving the American race problem was merely a matter of removing psychological and
interpersonal misunderstandings among black and whites. In other words, according to
Guinier, racial liberals underestimate the depth of American racism because they do not
comprehend that racism is a deep-rooted, structural problem that underlies the entire
American society and all of its institutions. Guinier argues that racial liberalism is a purely
top-down ideology, since racial liberals believe that obtaining legal equality for African
Americans will naturally lead to a better understanding of the effects of segregation and
prejudice. Since the immediate effects of Brown vs. Board on public education were limited
and the case was met with fierce white backlash, Guinier argues that racial liberalism has
failed.
This seems to me a simplification of the matter. Even though, as will become clear
later in this chapter, Kenneth Clark became increasingly frustrated with how slow progress
was taking place, his method of racial liberalism employed an instrument that Guinier does
not take into account – that of race consciousness. The Clarks were deeply aware of the
power structures that underlined racism in the American society. Kenneth Clark’s
contributions to Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma and his own work Dark Ghetto –
which will be discussed at the end of this chapter – serve to prove that point. Clark very well
understood that racism was not merely a matter of psychology, but that issues related to class,
economics and politics formed a society based on structuralized racism. With his racial
liberalism, Kenneth Clark did not mean to create a psychological version of events: rather, his
psychological analysis served as a method to observe structuralized racism pervading every
facet of American society, as Myrdal had laid bare in his An American Dilemma. Clark’s
method of racial liberalism essentially dealt with the predicament of race consciousness.
Clark’s research had shown that race consciousness had detrimental effects on black people’s
self-esteem. The abolition of racial segregation would, in Clark’s eyes, eliminate these effects
– but in order to achieve this, the American population would first have to become more
aware of categories of race and how these categories pervaded American culture and society.
Race consciousness was a necessary evil that had to be employed in order to eventually
achieve the goal of an equal society. This means that, in Clark’s approach, race consciousness
functioned not merely top-down, but the other way around as well.
Kenneth Clark’s form of racial liberalism undoubtedly implied, as Guinier articulated,
an attempt to remove psychological misunderstandings, and Clark’s research serves to prove
24
that point. But more than that, Clark’s approach was based on a rejection of scientific racism:
race consciousness served to replace scientific racism. Categories of race, according to Clark,
existed in people’s minds – and consequently in American society – but they were not truly
or inherently meaningful as scientific racism had suggested. Clark’s rejection of scientific
racism is in line with Herman’s suggestion of a post-World War II shift from a focus on
differences in intelligence to a ‘culture over nature’ approach – which can essentially be
characterized as a shift from nature to nurture. Clark’s approach was meant to function not
merely top-down, but both ways. By investigating the psychological effects of America’s
racially defined society, social and institutional change could be spurred with help of the
legislative branch, which would in turn again increase awareness of the psychological effects
of racism. Thus, race consciousness serves both ways here and in this way, Kenneth Clark’s
racial liberalism was meant to deal with both the cause and the effects of racism.
Clark’s approach, therefore, was much more active than that of his friend and mentor
Myrdal, who had also tried to make sense of the depth of the American race problem, but
who seemed to have an unwavering faith in the conviction that the American Creed would
naturally prevail eventually. But Clark himself was not entirely devoid of naiveté either.
Unlike Guinier suggested, Clark was aware of underlying power structures of racism.
However, one important effect of employing race consciousness as a means to eventually
challenge it, Clark seems to have failed to anticipate. He underestimated that his actions
would increase white racial consciousness in the form of strong white resistance to any form
of integration. He had hoped that attacking state-sponsored racism, in the form of de jure
segregation, would be sufficient in countering the racism that pervaded every aspect of
society – whether it be issues related to economics, politics or class. Attacking de jure
segregation, however, would not be sufficient in order to also destroy de facto segregation.
Clark’s racial liberalism not only pointed out black racial consciousness, it (re)energized
white racial consciousness, which, especially in the South, would serve as a strong
counterforce to racial liberalism and its attempts to change American society.
In 1950, academics and politics became inextricably linked for the Clarks when
Kenneth Clark was approached by the NAACP Legal Defense Team. He and Mamie were
asked to work with them in order to prove that segregation was inherently damaging to young
black children’s self-esteem and to bring this case to court. Thrilled at the opportunity to
effectively challenge institutional racism in America, Clark agreed to work with the NAACP.
‘I was full of optimism at the time of the Brown decision,’ Clark said decades later, in 1992,
‘Thurgood Marshall and the other lawyers, and my social science colleagues, whom I
25
involved in working with me, thought this was going to be a turning point. How naïve I
was!’26 Clark initially underestimated this effect of his method of racial liberalism, but
ultimately, as will become clear in the next part of this chapter, it proved to him the necessity
of black and whites working together in finding a solution.
1.7
Brown vs. Board and its Aftermath
The Clarks testified in the Briggs vs. Elliott case of 1952, using their psychological
research as evidence for the detrimental effects of school segregation on black children.
Briggs vs. Elliott was later combined, with four other cases, into the Brown vs. Board case of
1954. The NAACP Legal Defense Team, who sponsored the case, asked the Clarks to
compile a Brandeis brief in order to support the case and help the defense in convincing the
Supreme Court and Kenneth Clark agreed to this.27 The brief was titled “The Effects of
Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation: A Social Science Statement”, or simply
“Social Science Statement”, and filed as an appendix to the appellants’ brief in September
1952, when the Supreme Court first came together to discuss the Brown vs. Board case.
Kenneth Clark was the principal author, along with psychologists Isidor Chein and Stuart W.
Cook, and the statement was signed by thirty-five psychologists and doctors. By relying on
psychological evidence, the defense was hoping to stimulate racial progress by challenging
de jure segregation, and eventually de facto segregation. Kenneth Clark used evidence
gathered in the dolls test and other studies he had conducted with his wife while writing the
brief, and explicitly referred to these studies.
The use of the Clarks’ research in the Brown vs. Board case was, however, most
certainly not uncontested. After the case was decided in 1954, critics mostly focused on the
seemingly contradictory findings of the dolls test, namely that Southern children were less
pronounced in their preference for white dolls and less likely to reject the brown dolls than
Northern children. They claimed that this particular finding seemed to plead for segregation
rather than against segregation. However, critical remarks were not just made by those who
26. Woody Klein, Toward Humanity and Justice: The Writings of Kenneth B. Clark, Scholar of the 1954 Brown
vs. Board of Education Decision (Westport: Praeger, 2004): 79.
27. In 1908, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Muller vs. Oregon. The Court
unanimously upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law passed five years earlier, thereby affirming the
opinion of the Supreme Court of Oregon. The law in question set a maximum amount of ten working hours a
day for women in factories, mechanical establishment or laundries in order to protect women, their health and
public welfare. In order to support the case, the defense submitted a brief containing socially scientific data in
order to prove that long working hours had detrimental effects on women. This 113 page brief became known as
the Brandeis brief. The Brandeis brief is significant because it signifies the first time that the Supreme Court
relied on extralegal evidence in order to prove their argument. In this sense, Brown vs. Board was not the first
case that took into account scientific evidence.
26
opposed segregation. Some of the lawyers of the NAACP felt ambiguous about these results
as well, even before they decided to use them. Thurgood Marshall, who would later become
Chief Justice, represented the plaintiffs in Brown vs. Board and was hesitant to use the
Clarks’ research as evidence in the case because he doubted whether it was convincing
enough. Kenneth Clark was aware of this, but he justified the rather controversial findings in
a manner that eventually persuaded Marshall to use their research after all. According to
Clark, the findings showed
‘that black children of the South were more adjusted to the feeling that they were not
as good as whites and, because they felt defeated at an early age, did not bother using
the devices of denial. But that’s not health. Adjusting to a pathology is not health. The
way the Northern kids were fighting it should be seen as a better sign. The little
Southern children would point to the black doll and say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s me there –
that’s a nigger – I’m a nigger,’ and they said it almost cheerfully. In the Northern
cities, the question clearly threw the kids into much more emotional state and often
they’d point to the white doll.’28
The fact that children in the South displayed no sense of discomfort with regard to identifying
themselves as black led the Clarks to conclude that these children were deeply
psychologically damaged – perhaps even beyond repair – by racial segregation. The black
children in the North did display discomfort with racial identification and, which, according
to the Clarks, was much healthier: at least they showed signs of resistance. It seemed that
children in the South were experiencing a subdued form of race consciousness, which was
perhaps even more detrimental than active race consciousness. The harsh realities of
segregation in the South had led Southern children to meekly accept racial stigmas, which to
the Clarks only proved the pernicious effects of segregation. By explaining this, the Clarks
managed to convince the hesitating members of the NAACP Legal Defense Team of the
importance of including the socially scientific evidence they had gathered over the years in
the Brandeis brief. Apparently, the defense thought that merely providing a judicial
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to challenge segregation would not
suffice. In this sense, Brown vs. Board reflects a broader cultural need for a certain kind of
scientific certitude with regard to race and the effects of race relations in America.
Brown vs. Board was argued on May 17, 1954 and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who
had been appointed by Eisenhower a year earlier when Chief Justice Fred Vinson died,
28. John Monahan and Laurens Walker, Social Science in Law: Cases and Materials (New York: The
Foundation Press Inc., 1985): 93.
27
managed to deliver a unanimous opinion, in which he ordered that desegregation be set in
motion “with all deliberate speed”. The decision did not explicitly reject the Plessy vs.
Ferguson decision of 1896, but rather stated that scientific knowledge that proved the
harmful effects of segregation was not available at the end of the nineteenth century.
However, in the 1950s, the evidence was overwhelming. ‘Whatever may have been the extent
of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy vs. Ferguson,’ Warren stated, ‘this finding
[that segregation is harmful] is amply supported by modern authority.’29 This sentence is
followed by footnote 11, in which the Supreme Court refers to both the brief Kenneth Clark
helped to compile and Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma. Even though the NAACP
Legal Defense Team had pressed for direct integration, the Supreme Court did not
immediately formulate decrees with regard to setting desegregation in motion, and did not
reconvene until April 1955 in order to discuss the practical side of the matter. In Brown vs.
Board, the Court was mainly concerned with invalidating segregation itself, rather than with
providing specific guidelines to push for desegregation. Much to the relief and joy of the
Clarks, however, Warren stated: ‘We conclude that, in the field of public education, the
doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal. (…) We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal
protection of the laws.’30
Brown vs. Board led to outbursts of violence and met with huge resistance, mostly in
the South. The amount of resistance dismayed the Clarks, who were convinced that the
Supreme Court decision would be the first step in dismantling Jim Crow. They had hoped
that the Supreme Court decision would play a catalyst role in challenging race relations in
America. However, desegregation turned out to be a painfully slow process. 31 In other words,
the immediate effects of Brown vs. Board were disappointing to the Clarks. As time
progressed, Kenneth Clark became more and more politically engaged, while Mamie
remained in the background. In 1963, Kenneth Clark, along with other prominent African
American activists, was invited by James Baldwin to discuss the state of race relations with
Attorney General Robert Kennedy. This meeting will be discussed in more detail in chapter 3
29. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
30. Ibid.
31. Michael Klarman writes extensively about this fierce white backlash. See: Michael Klarman, From Jim
Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004): 349. According to Klarman, in 1960 only ‘98 of Arkansas’s 104,000 black school students
attended desegregated schools; 34 of North Carolina’s 302,000; 169 of Tennessee’s 146,000; and 103 of
Virginia’s 203,000. In the five Deep South states, not one of the 1.4 million black children attended a racially
mixed school until the fall of 1960.’
28
of this thesis. In 1965, a little over a decade after the Brown vs. Board decision was handed
down, Kenneth Clark published Dark Ghetto, a study that was, contrary to the studies Clark
had published with his wife in the 1940s and 1950s, more in line with the type of research
that Gunnar Myrdal had conducted in the late 1930s. Dark Ghetto, sketching a rather bleak
image, epitomizes the pessimism that had come to take a hold of Kenneth Clark after Brown
vs. Board failed to set in motion the radical change in American society that he and his wife
had hoped for. Myrdal wrote a foreword to the book, claiming that Clark ‘is tired of the false
objectivity, the “balanced view” of many of his liberal white friends on the other side of the
horribly tangible plate glass, which is philosophically made possible by the inherited AngloSaxon naiveté and lack of clarity regarding the value problem.’32 This implies that Kenneth
Clark, unlike Lani Guinier suggests, was most certainly aware of the depth of the American
race problem as a structure underlining the entire American society: however, he was mostly
disillusioned with white American’s failure to cooperate in solving the problem.
Dark Ghetto relies in part on data gathered by Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited
(Haryou), a social activist organization founded by Kenneth Clark in order to increase
economic and educational opportunities for young black people in Harlem. Dark Ghetto
sketches the social dynamics and power structures of the ghetto in order to gain a better
understanding of slum problems. Kenneth Clark, who himself had lived in Harlem for a large
part of his life, was chief project consultant and chairman of the board of directors of the
Harlem program that was designed to study black youth in Harlem and to develop concrete
plans that would help to improve the situation. In 1964, Haryou published a 620 page report
titled Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness and a Blueprint for
Change. The report served as a departure point for Clark’s next work Dark Ghetto, in which
he also reflects on the American ghetto, its conditions and its effect on American black youth.
According to Clark, ‘the pathologies of the ghetto community perpetuate themselves through
cumulative ugliness, deterioration, and isolation and strengthen the Negro’s sense of
worthlessness, giving testimony to his impotence.’33 The project seems to be another of
Clark’s attempts to make quantifiable matters that are inherently unquantifiable, such as
emotions and self-esteem. However, the project also proves that Clark’s racial liberalism did
not merely rely on psychological evidence in order to solve America’s race problem, but that
he was aware that racism was a deeper, structural problem that had to be tackled on different
levels. Clark ends his Dark Ghetto asserting that ‘the poetic irony of American race relations
32. Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965): x.
33. Ibid., 12.
29
is that the rejected Negro must somehow also find the strength to free the privileged white.’34
With this statement, Clark implicitly refers back to the work that his mentor and friend
Myrdal published more than two decades before, by claiming that American whites feel
highly ambivalent about what Myrdal had dubbed ‘the Negro problem’. Like Myrdal, Clark
explained that American whites have grown up to embrace and celebrate American ideals of
equality and democracy but are now faced with a glaring discrepancy between ideals and
reality since the American Creed does not hold true for African Americans. Unlike Myrdal,
however, Clark better grasped the depth of this problem and he understood that it would not
be solved naturally over time. White Southern resistance to desegregation served to prove
this. Caught in the disillusioning aftermath of Brown, Clark realized that white cooperation
was of pivotal importance. He concluded his Dark Ghetto by stating that the main question
America had to face was ‘whether the relationship between the white liberal and the Negro,
who have needed each other in the past, will survive the test of transformation of roles from
the dependence of the advantaged and disadvantaged upon each other to a common
commitment to mutually desired goals of justice and social good.’35
1.8
Conclusion
Kenneth and Mamie Clark played an important role in shaping the American
discourse on race and racial issues in the decades leading up to Brown vs. Board and the
decades following the landmark decision. Even though Mamie was just as politically engaged
as her husband, she remained a little more in the background than Kenneth, in a way fulfilling
the role of the more quiet accomplice. Kenneth received much more attention for his efforts,
even though he always made sure to underscore the important role his wife played in their
research. The Clarks clung to racial liberalism as a means to challenge institutional racism.
They had a strong desire to achieve their goal, and the psychological research they conducted
from the mid-1930s onwards provided a first step in the right direction. They were
determined in their belief that racism is not an inherent given for white Americans but rather
something that they have come to accept as normal because it is embedded in American
institutional life. Their approach therefore, is in line with the shift Herman has perceived in
the way in which social science approached the race problem before and after World War II.
The Clarks were eager to participate in the Brown vs. Board case in order to stimulate change
from top to bottom, but also the other way around by continuing to implement race
34. Ibid., 240.
35. Ibid., 237.
30
consciousness as a means to reveal structuralized white hegemony. Heavily disappointed with
the results of Brown vs. Board case, the Clarks eventually started to doubt whether or not the
change they had hoped for all their lives was even possible because racism was so very much
ingrained in the American culture. In May and June 1963, Kenneth Clark interviewed James
Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. The three interviews were recorded for a
television program titled “The Negro and the American Promise” and the transcriptions of the
interviews were bundled in a book titled The Negro Protest. The television program was
meant to take stock of different approaches to the race problem and Clark chose his three
interview subjects because, to him, each of them represented a different style of ‘Negro
protest’. Clark’s interviews will be discussed in more detail in the ensuing chapters and they
will shed light on how the other two narrators of the discourses discussed in this thesis
approached the American race problem. In the last decades of his life, Kenneth Clark seems
to have become more and more pessimistic and more unsure of his own tactics. The fierce
resistance to desegregation had proven to him how very much the discourse of white
hegemony was ingrained in American society. He would persist in his belief that the
necessary evil of race consciousness was an essential tool in making the American public
aware of that, but he seemed less sure as to what would really be needed to bring about
meaningful change on an institutional level. Almost twenty years after Brown, a rather bitter
sounding Kenneth Clark tells us the following:
‘…if one changed the institutional patterns, this would in turn affect the attitudes. I
still believe that theoretically, but what’s worrying me is what triggers [a] genuine
attempt at institutional change? And when I have to focus on that question, then I
don’t see any other out other than attitudinal changes as they are operative in the
decision-makers; these people have been socialized in a racist society. They control
the direction and the rate of institutional change so you are not going to get
institutional changes through generosity, and clearly you don’t get it by court
decisions and I’m stuck. I am a much sadder, no wiser person in ’75 than I was in
’55.’36
Clark admitted that he had been naïve and that he had grossly underestimated the depth of
American racism. Two decades later, in a 1995 New York Times interview, a reporter asked
36. Lawrence Nyman, “Documenting History: An Interview with Kenneth Bancroft Clark.” History of
Psychology 1 (2010): 80.
31
Kenneth Clark: ‘You’ve seen the evolution from Negro to black to African-American. What
is the best thing for blacks to call themselves?’ To which Clark answered: ‘White.’37
37. Sam Roberts, “Conversations: Kenneth B. Clark; An Integrationist to This Day, Believing All Else Has
Failed,” New York Times, May 7, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/07/weekinreview/conversationskenneth-b-clark-integrationist-this-day-believing-all-else-has.html
32
2. The Black Nationalism of Malcolm X
“I’m telling it like it is! You never have to worry about me biting my tongue if something I
know as truth is on my mind. Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the
white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country – to clear the air of the racial
mirages, clichés, and lies that this country’s very atmosphere has been filled with for four
hundred years.”38 – Malcolm X
2.1
Introduction
This chapter will be concerned with Malcolm X’s ideology of black nationalism as a
counter-narrative to the discourse of racial liberalism as employed by Kenneth Clark. As will
become clear in this chapter, prison served as a recurring theme throughout Malcolm X’s life.
Malcolm’s way of approaching the American race problem was essentially rooted in his
prison experiences. While he was in prison, serving a seven year sentence for larceny,
Malcolm first became acquainted with the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad’s
preaching. Staunchly opposed against the notion of turning the other cheek, Malcolm was
often accused of being prone to violence, but also of black supremacy and racism. Critics
regarded Malcolm as dangerously extremist and were wary of his influence on young black
people. Malcolm’s position in the field of black Americans’ struggle for civil rights,
therefore, is controversial to say the least and the path he followed until his untimely death in
1965 is far from clear-cut, his statements often being unclear or even contradictory.
Malcolm’s beliefs, though ever evolving, form a point of convergence for convictions that all
spring from the same source: that is, a strong feeling of rage about black people’s inferior
status in America. Malcolm left the Nation of Islam in 1964, after which he started his own
movement. By reversing the logic of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm created his own discourse
which combined both black nationalist and integrationist elements and equated the struggle of
African Americans to the struggle that Africans were facing all over the world. He used this
discourse, which was rooted in the traditional beliefs of the Nation of Islam and heavily relied
on race consciousness, as a revolutionary counter voice in order to radically change the status
quo and to confront white hegemony. Malcolm’s rhetoric, which was highly religiously
inflected, challenged the prevalent discourse of Christianity and was meant to unveil white
38. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964): 276.
33
American hypocrisy. Malcolm continually reinforced categories of blackness and whiteness
rather than try to eliminate them and in this way, he perpetuated and increased race
consciousness on the part of both black and white Americans. Race consciousness, in
Malcolm’s eyes, was of pivotal importance in the process of making white Americans aware
of their hypocrisy. However, unlike Kenneth Clark, Malcolm did not regard race
consciousness as a necessary evil and to Malcolm, categories of race were not redundant or
meaningless.
2.2
The Hypocrisy of Christianity
In order to analyze the approach that Malcolm took on after his split from the Nation
of Islam in 1964, it is integral to define some of the basic tenets of black nationalism as put
forward by the Nation, since Malcolm transferred and internalized some of these tenets to
form the basis of his own ideology. The Nation of Islam, for a large part, focused on the
hypocrisy of Christianity. Malcolm fiercely opposed the Christian notion of turning the other
cheek, insisting that any form of violence would nullify his non-violence, and would grant
him permission to act the same way. Christianity, to Malcolm, signified white oppression and
nourished a climate of hate and injustice. Moreover, he regarded Christian discourse as an
inherent celebration of whiteness and a repudiation of blackness, unjustly being imposed on
African Americans by their white oppressors. The Nation of Islam relied on a counternarrative to the traditional narrative of white Christianity in America. According to Eric
Sundquist, the Nation of Islam provided an interpretation of the Exodus in which ‘America
was now plotting the destruction of blacks, much as Nazis dreamed of an empire without
Jews.’39 Thus, this interpretation revealed the inherent hypocrisy of the pernicious discourse
as put forward by Christianity. As will become clear in this chapter, Malcolm would translate
the Nation’s religious narrative in a call for change on not just the national level, but on the
international level as well. A revolution, Malcolm argued, would be impossible within the
mechanisms of American law and would require a translation from a struggle for civil rights
into a struggle for human rights.
The Nation of Islam was founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad, who disappeared in
1934 after which Elijah Muhammad took over his role as the Nation of Islam’s religious
leader until his death in 1975. According to members of the Nation of Islam, blacks are the
original inhabitants of the earth and their history dates back trillions of years. As Fard
39. Eric Sundquist, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2005): 128.
34
Muhammad explained, an evil scientist called Yakub created the white race as a result of a
genetic experiment six thousand years ago in order to annihilate the black race. Yakub’s
offspring murdered and enslaved countless black people and wrongfully brought millions of
them to the American shores. Fard Muhammad, and later Elijah Muhammad, preached that
the end of the white race was near, and that the day of redemption would soon arrive. As
Sundquist explains, ‘in the apocalyptic salvation of blackness prophesied by Muhammad, the
internalization of the Exodus and chosenness was complete: white supremacy was replaced
by black, one vision of genocide answered by another.’40 This means that the Nation of
Islam’s underlying ideology and the rhetoric it accompanied was inherently and undeniably
racist: in fact, it needed racism in order to exist. The Nation of Islam accepted racism as not
only purely logical, but as essential to its understanding of the world and the upside-down
version of the Exodus it had created. Race consciousness, therefore, formed a defining aspect
of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm’s own sense of race consciousness strongly increased after
joining the Nation, and he would transfer this aspect to his own ideology. Elijah Muhammad
inculcated his followers with the notion that Christianity should be equated to evilness, and
that the Islam would be able to counter that evilness. In this way, the Nation of Islam
seamlessly combined religion and race. The Nation regarded separation as a solution to the
American race problem. With regard to this notion, Sundquist draws a parallel between the
founding of Israel in 1948, and the Nation of Islam’s conviction that African Americans, too,
should be allowed to found a country of their own. This did not necessarily imply a return to
Africa: the members of the Nation of Islam had come to regard America as their homeland,
and however disillusioned they were with the treatment their country had accorded them over
the past centuries, they seemed to favor a ‘nation within a nation’ rather than a return to
Africa. Moreover, a return to the African shores would be impractical and virtually
impossible to achieve – if anything, this was a long-term project. By emphasizing their
African roots, the members of the Nation of Islam first and foremost tried to rid themselves
of any form of white oppression by underscoring visions of black racial unity, black
heterogeneity and a shared history of injustice.
Christianity performed a pivotal function in this culture of white oppression. Malcolm
believed that Christianity was unnatural for African Americans, and that it had been imposed
on them over the past centuries by their white oppressors. In this view, Christianity was
nothing more than part of the heritage of slavery that had been passed on to African
40. Ibid., 132.
35
Americans. Malcolm’s parents, Earl and Louise Little, were Christian. Malcolm’s conversion
to the Islam while he was in prison, therefore, signifies his first escape from what he regarded
as a prison of white oppression. ‘After getting into prison and having time to think, I could
see the hypocrisy of Christianity,’ Malcolm told Kenneth Clark in 1963 during
aforementioned ‘Negro protest’ interview, ‘None of them really practiced what they
preached.’41 Not long after, Malcolm would be released after serving seven years in prison,
signifying his second escape from prison, this time a literal one. He came to regard his
Christian heritage, that which his parents had imposed on him as a result of their own slave
heritage, as inherently sinful.42 It appears that, despite the depravity that had come to take a
hold of him during his adolescent years (in the form of robbery and other criminal activities),
Malcolm remained in some form susceptible to moral teachings – albeit not the ones that his
parents had subscribed to. His parents’ Christian beliefs had paved the way for Malcolm to
eventually replace them with other beliefs. This means that Malcolm’s fierce rejection of
Christianity sprung from his strong aversion to what his parents had tried to teach him, but
simultaneously these teachings had made him receptive to the religious thought of Elijah
Muhammad.
Not by any means do I mean to imply, however, that Malcolm’s beliefs were
interchangeable with any other religious beliefs or moral values and therefore meaningless.
Rather, Malcolm’s life up to that point had proven to him that Christianity was unable to
offer a real solution: his father was a Christian minister, who was murdered by whites
nonetheless and he himself had fallen in a trap of criminal activities. Malcolm’s
disillusionment with Christianity, therefore, had made him more susceptible to other forms of
spiritual and religious thought. The Nation of Islam’s explanation for the American race
problem and its indictment of Christianity resonated more with Malcolm exactly because of
this disillusionment. In this sense, converting to the Nation of Islam also symbolized an
escape from his earlier, criminal years. According to Louis DeCaro, throughout his life
Malcolm would focus on things ‘that could be generalized, inflated or simply taken out of
41. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 21.
42. Ironically, while Malcolm regarded his parents’ Christian morals as a virtual prison that he had managed to
escape, the later life of Malcolm’s mother Louise would be characterized by prison as well, but one that she
could not escape from. Seven years after Malcolm’s father Earl was killed – allegedly by the Ku Klux Klan –
Louise was placed in a mental institution, leaving Malcolm essentially orphaned. She would remain
institutionalized for a large part of her life, mostly unaware of what was happening in the life of her son
Malcolm.
36
context to the detriment of Christianity.’43 Heavily criticizing Christian mythology, which
Malcolm regarded as a cover for a prevalent discourse of white hegemony, he mostly focused
on urging other African Americans to convert to the Islam. Malcolm, as a Muslim with
Christian heritage, served as a case in point: Christianity had led to nothing but depravity in
his life, but the Islam had released him from this figurative prison – and a literal prison as
well. In this sense, Malcolm differed from his leader Elijah Muhammad’s discourse. As
DeCaro argues, ‘Malcolm’s public discourse on Christianity was by far more carefully
crafted toward persuasion, while Muhammad’s was essentially polemical.’44 This should be
interpreted as a sign of a structural difference between Muhammad and Malcolm: Malcolm
favored an active approach, while Muhammad was much more passive in his teachings.
Interestingly enough, a parallel can be drawn here with regard to Gunnar Myrdal and
Kenneth Clark (despite obvious differences in approach between Malcolm and Kenneth
Clark): Myrdal was also much more passive in his approach than Kenneth Clark, who
regarded him as his mentor for a large part of his life.
2.3
Inverting the Logic of the Nation of Islam
Malcolm’s most important prison escape, however, occurred in 1964, when he
officially left the Nation of Islam. This proved to be a pivotal turning point in his life. Even
though, as stated before, differences in their approach could be discerned earlier in time, the
first public sign of a rift between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm became visible at the end
of 1963, after Muhammad silenced Malcolm for ninety days because of Malcolm’s remark
about President Kennedy’s assassination (Malcolm had stated that “chickens coming home to
roost never did make me sad”). As it turned out, Malcolm’s suspension was for an indefinite
amount of time, and Malcolm found Muhammad’s treatment humiliating. The disagreement
between Muhammad and Malcolm on the latter’s statement about the Kennedy assassination
is emblematic of a deeper, structural difference in ideology between the two that became
more and more visible to Malcolm, and eventually proved to be untenable. Malcolm
represented the more activist and radical tendencies of the Nation of Islam, while Muhammad
was much more conservative. In March 1964, Malcolm officially announced his split from
the Nation of Islam and he founded both the Muslim Mosque, Inc., a religious organization,
and the more politically oriented Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm realized
that America was at crossroads, and the religious thought as put forward by the Nation of
43. Louis DeCaro, Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity (New York: New
York University Press): 68.
44. Ibid., 106.
37
Islam had reached a dead end and was unable to further the cause of America’s black
population. However, Malcolm still considered black nationalism as the economic, social and
political philosophy that would help African Americans to challenge their status as citizens of
secondary rank. Moreover, he perceived the non-violent movement as put forward by Martin
Luther King as inherently futile.
Malcolm regarded Elijah Muhammad’s non-engagement policy, which entailed that
members of the Nation of Islam were not to engage in any form of political or social
activism, as severely restricting. On Muhammad’s orders, any form of preaching would only
serve to promote the Nation of Islam and to increase its influence among the American black
population. In this sense, the Nation of Islam was a truly apolitical institute. After officially
leaving the Nation of Islam in 1964, Malcolm was able to reverse the religious thought as put
forward by the Nation in a way that Muhammad had prevented him from doing. As stated
before, the Nation of Islam sprung from the belief that the black population’s history was
characterized by unjust white oppression. The white population, as reflected in the hypocrisy
of Christianity, formed an insoluble problem that the Nation of Islam sought to escape from
by ways of separation and by condemning the white population for its sins. In this way, the
Nation of Islam did not seek to confront the problem head-on, but rather tried to – quite
literally – escape it. However, after leaving the Nation, Malcolm would use the Islam to
counter the oppression the Nation had sprung from by combining religious thought with
political activism. Malcolm’s new approach, therefore, in remarkable ways paralleled that of
King’s, even though they would fiercely criticize throughout their careers: both combined
religion and politics in an attempt to arrive at a solution for the American race problem.
Malcolm’s founding of both a political organization and a religious organization is
emblematic of this dual approach in challenging white hegemony.
Malcolm claimed that black Americans were essentially born in prison. As he told
Kenneth Clark, ‘the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our
plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate. And when they refer to the
President, he’s just another warden to whom they open the cell door, but it’s no different.’45
In the 1963 ‘Negro protest’ interview, Kenneth Clark invited Malcolm to speak candidly
about his approach and methods and despite their differences and Malcolm’s indictment of
Clark’s integrationist approach, both remained friendly and calm throughout the interview.
During the interview with Clark, Malcolm was still a member of the Nation of Islam and his
45. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 24.
38
words often seem rehearsed and carefully planned. Malcolm told Clark that he regarded the
American race problem as a prison, and as would become clear a year after the interview, he
had encountered another prison while trying to escape it: the prison of the Nation of Islam.
Even though the Nation, under the watchful eye of Elijah Muhammad, had provided him with
the necessary insights in the history of African Americans and their destiny, Malcolm now
had to escape its prison in order to come closer to attaining his goal. Exactly that which the
teachings of Muhammad had made so poignantly clear to Malcolm, he now wished to
challenge. In the chaotic twelve months that followed, Malcolm endeavored to find a way to
politicize the religious thought that Muhammad had passed on to him and to translate it into
an effective form of non-violent mass militancy. Unlike Kenneth Clark’s discourse, which
revolved around the individual psychological experience and effects of racism, Malcolm’s
approach resembles that of a group effort. In what follows, I will analyze what Malcolm’s
newfound ideology entailed, what its core tenets were and how Malcolm tried to effectively
use the tool of race consciousness in mobilizing large groups of people.
2.4
Black Nationalism and Integration
The contrast between Clark’s individual-centered approach and Malcolm’s mass-
centered approach is not the only difference between their discourses that can be discerned.
Throughout his life, Malcolm clearly stated his opposition to integration, something that
Kenneth Clark obviously attempted to achieve. ‘No sane black man really wants integration!’
he wrote in his autobiography, ‘No sane white man really wants integration!’46 Moreover,
Malcolm often ridiculed blacks who approved of integration, calling them mad ‘black bodies
with white heads’ – referring for example to African Americans who believed that the
NAACP would help them in reaching their goals – or ‘black PhD puppets’, ultimately
considering them as anti-black and pro-white.47 The latter statement downplays the efforts
made by the Clarks and other academics such as Gunnar Myrdal in order to solve the
American race problem. In his famous “Message to the Grassroots” speech from 1963, which
was Malcolm’s answer to Martin Luther King’s March on Washington earlier that year
(which he strongly denounced because he believed the March to be infiltrated and led by
whites), Malcolm offered black nationalism as the only viable alternative to integration in
order to challenge black’s inferior position in America. He claimed that revolutionaries, those
who endeavor to change racial inequities, are inherently black nationalists. This implied, in
46. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964): 248.
47. Ibid., 246-247.
39
Malcolm’s eyes, that African Americans who do not support black nationalism are not truly
striving for change. According to Kristopher Burrell, ‘Malcolm’s proposals for the future
direction of the black freedom struggle reflected a black nationalist ideological perspective,
even as he was employing the term less at the end of his life.’48 However, even after leaving
the Nation of Islam, Malcolm repeatedly declared his continuing allegiance to black
nationalism, albeit in a different form than the Nation had put forward. Black nationalism, to
Malcolm, constituted a political philosophy that allowed black people to form and control
their own destiny. However, after leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm redefined the
ideology of black nationalism. Malcolm’s newfound ideology – which was, admittedly, still
evolving and not devoid of paradoxes when his life was cut short because of his assassination
early 1965 – counters the traditional narrative of black nationalism. In order to understand
this, we must first look at what are believed to be the defining features of black nationalism.
One of the core tenets of black nationalism is the repudiation of any form of integration.
Malcolm himself also claimed that integration was futile and even detrimental, because it
would weaken the black people: he believed that class mobility was virtually impossible for
the black man because of white restrictions, and if black people were to participate in a
‘white society’ through integration, their best option would be to enter the lowest ranks of
society. In other words, integration provided an utterly hopeless perspective to black people.
To make this more clear, Malcolm’s rejection of integration should be seen as
twofold. On the one hand, as already stated, Malcolm asserted that integration would simply
not work due to white people’s stubbornness and fierce repudiation of it. Black people would
be doomed to participate in the American working class and they would not be able to climb
the societal ladder. This form of rejecting integration is based on purely practical grounds:
integration requires some form of action from white people and if they do not participate,
integration becomes virtually impossible. As became clear in the previous chapter, Kenneth
Clark had also come to realize this in the decades after Brown vs. Board. To Malcolm, Brown
was a case in point: almost ten years after the decision was handed down by the Supreme
Court, over ninety percent of schools and universities in the South was still segregated.
Malcolm regarded Brown vs. Board as tokenism, the white man’s way to soothe black
Americans’ conscience and to convince himself that he has at least made an effort to find a
solution to the American race problem. To Malcolm, the black people who participated in the
case, ‘which was written in such tricky language that every crook in the country could
48. Kristopher Burrell, “Where from Here? Ideological Perspectives on the Future of the Civil Rights
Movement, 1964-1966.” (The Western Journal of Black Studies 2, 2012): 144.
40
sidestep it’, were white-minded blacks that misunderstood the needs of the black
population.49 This, again, is a clear indictment of Clark’s efforts. To Malcolm, the Brown vs.
Board decision reflected what integration actually entailed: a failed attempt, organized and
coordinated by whites, to bring black and white people together. Malcolm regarded Brown vs.
Board as inauthentic and hypocritical because it had not lived up to what it had promised.
This belief also seems to be rooted in Malcolm’s experience of growing up in the Midwest.
Unlike Kenneth Clark and James Baldwin, who grew up on the racially segregated streets of
Harlem, Malcolm spent his younger years in integrated neighborhoods in Wisconsin and
Michigan. Being confronted with white violence and white supremacist groups on more than
one occasion, Malcolm had experienced these neighborhoods as restricting. Clark and
Baldwin, in their turn, had found the segregated neighborhoods in Harlem demoralizing and
suffocating, while Malcolm, when he moved to Harlem in 1943, perceived them as liberating
and stimulating.
On the other hand, Malcolm’s rejection of integration was rooted in his extreme
suspicion of interracial mixing and he seemed to believe that integration would inevitably
lead to intermarriage. Intermarriage, in Malcolm’s eyes, would create even more misfits and
simultaneously destroy both the white population and the black population. According to
Malcolm, history had already proven the detrimental effects of intermarriage: he called
German Jews ‘the most tragic result of a mixed, therefore diluted and weakened, ethnic
identity.’50 With this (strongly anti-Semitic) statement, Malcolm warned for what he believed
would happen to the black population if they were to mingle with the white population. With
regard to this point of view, Malcolm softened his stance after he left the Nation of Islam. In
1964, he pointed out that America was hostile to colored people to such an extent that the
children of interracial marriages would struggle to find their place in America. This statement
should be seen as a reflection of Malcolm’s fear that white people would never cooperate in
granting black people equal rights, and thus ties in with Malcolm’s first reason to reject
integration.
Malcolm’s fierce opposition to integration (which I have described as twofold) and
his acceptance of black nationalism as the only solution to the black American’s woes, seem
to suggest that integration and black nationalism are inherently incompatible. This conviction
is echoed in most research on black nationalism. Jason Shelton and Michael Emerson posit
49. Malcolm X, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1968):
170.
50. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964): 280.
41
integrationists as diametrically opposed to nationalists. According to them, integration and
black nationalism are on two very different ends at the spectrum and therefore they are
naturally at odds with each other. According to Shelton and Emerson, ‘integrationists are
considered “reformists” since they do not believe that American society is inherently racist;
to the contrary, they believe that whites must come to recognize blacks as equal citizens’,
while black nationalists, on the other hand, believe that ‘the American liberal tradition
contains an implicit racial contract that privileges whites over members of all other racial
and ethnic groups.’51 This means that black nationalists and integrationists will never see eye
to eye simply because they differ on what they deem white Americans capable of, which
creates an insurmountable gap between them. In their turn, Robert Brown and Todd Shaw
differentiate between two distinct ideologies underlying the ideology of black nationalism,
namely that of community nationalism and separatist nationalism.52 The former signifies the
belief that black people should be able to regulate their own communities and institutions
without encountering white interference, while the latter denotes the conviction that black
people should physically separate from white people in order to gain true autonomy. Both
represent a form of separatism, the one being more extreme than the other. By pointing out
the separatist tendencies of black nationalism, Brown and Shaw reiterate the incompatibility
of black nationalism and integration.
2.5
Malcolm’s Newfound Ideology
However, the convictions and beliefs of Malcolm X defy easy definition and
incorporate elements from both sides of the spectrum – that is, both black nationalism and
integrationist tendencies – as delineated by Shelton, Emerson, Brown and Shaw. Throughout
his life, even after he left the Nation of Islam in 1964, Malcolm remained convinced that
black nationalism was the only ideology that would provide a way out of the race problem for
African Americans. But the form of black nationalism that Malcolm seemed to be in favor of,
also condoned some elements of integration, even though he seemed to reject it so forcefully.
In 1963, during the ‘Negro protest’ interview, Clark asked Malcolm if he disagreed with the
integrationist policies of the NAACP, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), Martin Luther
King and the student non-violent movement. ‘You don’t integrate with a sinking ship,’
51. Jason Shelton and Michael Emerson, “Extending the Debate over Nationalism Versus Integration: How
Cultural Commitments and Assimilation Trajectories Influence Beliefs About Black Power.” (Journal of
African American Studies 3, 2010): 314-315.
52. Robert Brown and Todd Shaw, “Separate Nations: Two Attitudinal Dimensions of Black Nationalism.” (The
Journal of Politics, 2002): 25-27.
42
Malcolm answered.53 On more than one occasion, Malcolm seemed to favor a separationist
attitude. Before leaving the Nation of Islam, he repeatedly articulated the need for white
people to give African Americans a portion of the country that they could call their own. This
undoubtedly implied seeking physical removal from the American white population in order
to be able to establish a black identity, which seems irreconcilable with integration. After
leaving the Nation, Malcolm realized that to a certain extent, fulfilling the African American
wish to come to terms with their own identity seemed to require something from whites: even
if this ‘something’ was for black people to be left alone by white people. A certain form of
cooperation was needed, which inherently makes for a dual effort of white and black
Americans. More importantly, this kind of cooperation should not merely be led by whites:
blacks should have an equal say in the matter. Moreover, Malcolm implied that separation
was only a realistic solution since ‘you [white Americans] won’t give them [African
Americans] equal justice among your kind.’54 This, again, seems to imply that Malcolm’s
fierce rejection of integration is mostly based on the belief that integration is simply doomed
to fail because white people have failed (and perhaps will continue to fail) to cooperate. This
means that integration was mostly problematic because Malcolm deemed it virtually
impossible to accomplish, not because it was inherently undesirable – rather, an incomplete
form of integration led and controlled by whites was undesirable, a farce even. In other
words, complete integration, allowing African Americans to be truly integrated in American
society so that they could take part in every economic, political and cultural facet of
American life, would be desirable – this implies a form of integration that would happen on
Malcolm’s terms, not on the white man’s terms. Rejecting incomplete integration cannot be
equated to rejecting integration altogether.
As we have seen, in Malcolm’s eyes, two things stood in the way of true integration.
Firstly, as already discussed, white people’s continuing refusal to accept black people as
equal. This reminds us of the implicit racial contract that Shelton and Emerson regarded as
characteristic of black nationalism, namely a tendency in the American society that favors
whites over blacks. However, Malcolm urged blacks to participate in the (white) American
society for example by voting and by making black people aware of how American politics
work. This implies that Malcolm believed that there was at least some chance of African
Americans being able to exert an influence on American society. Moreover, it implies a,
53. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 31.
54. Malcolm X, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1968):
126.
43
perhaps rather implicit, endorsement of integration, since taking part in American politics
(rather than fiercely rejecting any involvement in politics) requires some cooperation with
whites. In 1964, Malcolm stated: ‘Let the black man speak his mind so that the white man
really knows how he feels. At the same time, let the white man speak his mind. Let everyone
put his facts on the table. Once you put the facts on the table, it’s possible to arrive at a
solution.’55 This statement shows that throughout the years, and especially after he left the
Nation of Islam, Malcolm became more open to engaging in a form of dialogue with white
Americans. Secondly, Malcolm’s extreme suspicion of interracial mixing provided a barrier
to complete integration. With regard to this, Malcolm softened his stance over the years and
as it turned out, Malcolm merely rejected interracial marriage because he believed that it
would create a mixed race that would receive the same treatment in America as black people.
Cooperating with white people, rather than completely separating from them, seemed to
become more and more of an option to Malcolm. In other words, the ideology as articulated
by Malcolm after he left the Nation of Islam in 1964 combined elements of two seemingly
contradictory viewpoints. Much like Kenneth Clark, Malcolm believed that institutional
racism could be challenged as long as white people would truly cooperate. This suggests that
Malcolm denied the existence of an implicit racial contract, as articulated by Shelton and
Emerson.
It is important to note that after leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm did not become
any less committed to Islam. Even though he sought to combine his religious thought with a
more incisive form of political criticism, Malcolm still clung to the Islam. In 1964, he went
on a pilgrimage to Mecca. This trip strengthened his belief that the Islam would eventually
help African Americans in tackling the American race problem, since it would make them
aware of their shared history of injustice – a history that was characterized by unjust white
oppression. This means that the Islam, to Malcolm, explained the roots of the American race
problem. Malcolm also visited a couple of African countries and met with different African
leaders, revealing an increased interest in and a stronger emphasis on Pan-Africanism. As
will become clear later in this chapter, Malcolm’s shift in perspective from the United States
to the entire world can be equated to his shift in focus on not just the white American
individual, but on the (white) American government as being guilty of transgressing
boundaries.
55. Ibid., 160.
44
The next section will deal with Malcolm’s rhetoric as a tool he employed to increase
both black and white racial consciousness. A documentary that was broadcast years before
Malcolm’s split from the Nation is, interestingly enough, illustrative of the rhetoric that
Malcolm would employ from 1964 onwards. In 1959, five years before Malcolm announced
his split from Muhammad, the activities of the Nation of Islam were covered in a
documentary titled “The Hate that Hate Produced”, produced by Mike Wallace. Claiming to
be an objective study of the rise of black nationalism, the documentary depicts the Nation of
Islam as an inherently hateful cult. Throughout the one hour long documentary, this message
is reinforced by how Wallace articulates his questions and how the entire debate concerning
the Nation of Islam is framed. ‘As you see it, Lou, why is it,’ Mike Wallace asks his
colleague Louis Lomax, ‘that some Negroes, these Negroes we have been talking about
tonight, have returned hate for hate, while others have not?’ To which Lomax responds that
‘America was born with a race problem’, which is the white man’s nor the black man’s fault,
but that recent events have sparked the hope in many black Americans that things are looking
up and that, unlike the members of the Nation of Islam, most black Americans see no point in
turning their backs on America while events are unfolding in their favor. “The Hate that Hate
Produced”, rather subtly but undoubtedly so, provided a strong indictment of the Nation of
Islam by framing its members as black devils that were punishing white people for crimes
that they had not committed while, clearly, as Lomax pointed out, they had a viable
alternative. The pernicious discourse used by the makers reveals that the documentary is
highly subjective, a smartly rhetorically constructed representation of the members of the
Nation of Islam in order to shed light on what the makers perceived as its radical threats,
rather than being the objective study it claimed to. Interestingly enough, the rhetoric
employed by Mike Wallace strongly resembles the rhetoric that Malcolm himself used in
order to appeal to his own audience: both Wallace and Malcolm tried to shame the other party
for its actions. This means that the same rhetoric Wallace used in order to condemn the
Nation of Islam, was employed by Malcolm in order to confront his audience with the
American race problem. In what follows, I will analyze Malcolm’s rhetoric in order to gain a
better understanding of how he adapted his style after leaving the Nation and how this
rhetoric fits with Malcolm’s form of black nationalism.
2.6
Rhetoric: From Apocalyptical Paranoia to Government Shaming
When analyzing Malcolm’s rhetoric, it is easy to perceive a difference between his
rhetoric before leaving the Nation and his rhetoric after starting his own movement. This
45
should come as no surprise, since Malcolm’s ideology also significantly differed from what
the Nation of Islam had put forward. Malcolm was a talented speaker with a forceful tone,
delivering a trenchant criticism of white oppression and he continued doing so after leaving
the Nation. His rhetoric can be characterized by duality as it combined both religious and
secular elements: his words were on the one hand heavily politically charged, but also
contained strong religious imagery. Before leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm’s rhetoric
was reminiscent of the paranoid style as described by Richard Hofstadter and it mirrored that
of his leader Elijah Muhammad: Malcolm repeatedly delineated white people as the enemy,
an enemy incapable of doing good.56 Malcolm constantly spoke in dichotomies – of black
and white and of good and evil. Moreover, much like the paranoid style as described by
Hofstadter, Malcolm’s rhetoric heavily relied on apocalyptic terms. The Nation of Islam had
taught Malcolm that the demise of the white population was imminent and that very soon,
white people would have to pay for the crimes committed against black people. Before
leaving the Nation, therefore, Malcolm’s rhetoric mostly dealt with religious imagery in order
to convey his message – after all, Muhammad prohibited his members from participating in
any form of political or social activism.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rhetoric Malcolm employed after leaving the Nation was
not as heavily religiously charged as before. After all, Malcolm was struggling to find a way
to combine his religious background with political activism. About a month after leaving the
Nation, Malcolm gave his famous “The Bullet or the Ballot” speech in Detroit. This speech is
emblematic of Malcolm’s attempt to place a stronger emphasis on political activism rather
than on religion. ‘If we bring up religion, we’ll be in an argument,’ Malcolm asserted, ‘And
the best way to keep away from arguments and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion
at home, in the closet, keep it between you and your God.’57 After leaving the Nation,
Malcolm endeavored to make his audience more politically active, and he urged his audience
to take part in the presidential elections that would take place later that year by casting their
vote. Malcolm explicitly stated that he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but he did
stress the importance of African Americans using their vote in order to send a message to the
American government. Malcolm’s had little trust in the American government, as will
56. In 1964, the year Malcolm left the Nation, Richard Hofstadter published an article in Harper Magazine,
titled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, in which he explores the widely used “paranoid” rhetoric in
American politics. According to Hofstadter, this style is characterized by a strong sense of paranoia, the use of
dichotomies, a fear of conspiracies, and apocalyptic thinking. Hofstadter’s article is essentially aimed at
American politicians, for example at the extreme right as embodied by Joseph McCarty and Barry Goldwater.
57. Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (speech, Detroit, April 12, 1964), American Radio Works,
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html
46
become clear later in this chapter, therefore voting mostly served a symbolic act of defiance.
Malcolm’s attempt to urge African Americans to use their vote, however, is exemplary of his
softening stance on integration, since going out to vote means that African Americans would
take part in the American (white) society.
Malcolm also used his words to provoke a feeling of shame and guilt among the white
population. He employed this kind of shame inducing rhetoric both before and after leaving
the Nation. More often than not, in order to rhetorically create consensus among African
Americans, Malcolm referred to the black population as ex-slaves, thereby calling the
attention to a shared history of injustice and oppression. Moreover, he labeled white people
‘former slave masters’. With this kind of imagery, Malcolm created a dichotomy of innocent
versus guilty. Malcolm portrayed black people as innocent victims of the brutal and evil
white oppressor: ‘Such a faithful, loyal non-white as this,’ Malcolm wrote in his
autobiography, ‘and still America bombs him, and sets dogs on him, and turns fire hoses on
him, and jails him by the thousands, and beats him bloody, and inflicts upon him all manner
of other crimes.’58 By framing African Americans as victims of senseless and unjustifiable
crimes, Malcolm attempted to provoke a feeling of shame among white Americans.
According to Mark McPhail, the rhetoric of shame provocation ‘is a rhetoric that is premised
upon the assumption that racism is a white pathology that has so infected the body politic that
no amount of integration or assimilation can heal it.’59 This kind of rhetoric appeals to the
emotions of both black and white people and it provides legitimacy for Malcolm’s actions.
Malcolm did not merely aim his shame inducing rhetoric at white people, he also
provided rather fierce indictments of non-Muslim blacks that were committed to the Civil
Rights Movement, such as Martin Luther King. He strongly believed that the efforts from
King and the NAACP were led and controlled by whites, and thus would only lead to
incomplete and false integration. In the interview with Kenneth Clark in 1963, he stated: ‘As
long as they have interview with the Attorney General and take Negroes to pose as leaders,
all of whom are married either to white men or white women, you’ll always have a race
problem.’60 Framing black non-Muslims as partly responsible for the problem, Malcolm also
tried to induce a feeling of guilt among them. Malcolm’s rhetoric provided a poignant
diagnosis of the American race problem, in which he provoked feelings of shame among
58. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964): 278.
59. Mark Lawrence McPhail, The Rhetoric of Racism Revisited (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002):
176.
60. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 32.
47
white Americans and black non-Muslims. His rhetoric allowed him to channel his anger and
resentment towards those who thought differently, or those that he believed were not truly
committed to solving the problem. His rhetoric was targeted at and appealed to the
conscience of many.
In line with McPhail’s definition of shame provocation, Malcolm also wrapped his
rejection of integration (or what, as argued before, should actually be seen as a rejection of
incomplete, white-coordinated integration, rather than as a rejection of integration as a whole)
in a cloak of shame and guilt inducing rhetoric. As we have seen, Malcolm argued that
integration would never be fully accepted by whites, and was therefore only a matter of
tokenism and a way to lull black people into thinking that the white people were open for
change. Therefore, the inherently phony concept of integration as put forward by white
Americans would hardly be able to repair the damage that white people’s treatment of blacks
had caused. ‘A cup of tea in a white restaurant,’ Malcolm asserted in 1961, three years before
leaving the Nation, ‘is not sufficient compensation for three hundred ten years of free slave
labor.’61 After leaving the Nation, however, Malcolm’s shame inducing rhetoric slightly
deviated from McPhail’s definition as Malcolm started to aim his rhetoric more at the
American government rather than at the white American individual, as it was before.
Malcolm intended to show that there was a possibility of true integration, as long as the
government would truly cooperate. The failure of integration so far, which was proven by the
fierce opposition to Brown vs. Board in the South and the slow rate at which desegregation
was actually taking place across the country, formed proof of a government conspiracy that
resisted any form of meaningful change with regard to race relations. Malcolm framed the
government as white criminals, again creating a dichotomy of innocent versus guilty. The
American government, Malcolm asserted, should be ashamed of itself for failing to provide
redress for wrongs it had done to black people for centuries. As stated before, participating in
the presidential elections by casting their vote, would help African Americans to get a
message of defiance across to their government.
But, Malcolm argued, this would not be sufficient in effectively addressing and
solving racial disparities. After leaving the Nation, Malcolm took his shame inducing rhetoric
to a higher platform: by shaming the American government, Malcolm intended to prove to
the rest of the world that his country was partaking in criminal activities and, more
importantly, that it should be held accountable for those activities. In this sense, Malcolm
61. Malcolm X, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc.,
1968):127.
48
managed to place the struggle racial equality in a larger framework of the Cold War, drawing
on anti-imperialist arguments that gained influence on an international level. ‘So our next
move is to take the entire civil rights struggle – problem – into the United Nations,’ Malcolm
declared in 1964, ‘and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating human rights of
twenty-two million Afro-Americans right down to the year 1964 and still has the audacity or
the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world. Not only is he a
crook, he’s a hypocrite.’62 By shaming the American government for not just violating civil
rights, but human rights, Malcolm equated the struggle of African Americans to that of
Africans around the globe. In this sense, Malcolm significantly differed from Kenneth Clark
in his approach: both were disillusioned with white American’s refusal to cooperate, but
Clark remained focused on the national level with regard to tackling the problem. Malcolm,
however, shifted his perspective to the international level.
Clark and Malcolm do, however, show similarities in their denouncements of Gunnar
Myrdal’s approach. Much like Clark, Malcolm refused to believe in Gunnar Myrdal’s
conviction that America would naturally meet the demands of the American Creed over time
– in Malcolm’s (and Clark’s, and as will become clear in the next chapter, Baldwin’s) eyes,
America would have to be pushed in that direction. Using a shame inducing rhetoric formed
part of Malcolm’s strategy. In an attempt to increase race consciousness throughout the world
by framing the American government as a true convict, Malcolm recognized that the solution
to the American race problem could not be found on a national level. ‘As long as you fight it
on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam jurisdiction. You’re going to his court
expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal! You don’t
take your case to the criminal, you take your criminal to court,’ Malcolm asserted.63 Ten
years after Brown vs. Board, Malcolm seemed to regard the Supreme Court case as a futile
attempt to set change in motion. As long as the American government would not face its own
hypocrisy, it would not be able to truly challenge racial inequities. The struggle, in
Malcolm’s eyes, should therefore be taken to the international arena. Thus, Malcolm’s
revolutionized form of black nationalism relied on the narrative of the Nation of Islam (which
provided an explanation for America’s race problem and relied on the inherent meaning of
categories of blackness and whiteness) and made an attempt to shame the American
government on an international level. This approach was meant to both point out the futility
62. Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (speech, Detroit, April 12, 1964), American Radio Works,
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html
63. Ibid.
49
of white-controlled integration as well as the need for true integration that would function
both ways.
2.7
Conclusion
The time period between March 1964 and February 1965 was one of abrupt and rapid
transition for Malcolm. Much like his rise to fame in the Nation of Islam had happened
quickly, Malcolm was forced to completely redefine his discourse of discontent after leaving
the Nation of Islam – which was undoubtedly an earth shattering experience for what used to
be Elijah Muhammad’s most loyal and avid follower. Some of his statements from the time
are contradictory, and evidently Malcolm was struggling to find a way to articulate his
newfound beliefs and his own ideology after leaving the Nation. At the time of his
assassination, in February 1965 in Manhattan, Malcolm was undoubtedly still trying to come
to terms with what the members of the Nation of Islam regarded as his betrayal of
Muhammad. After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm changed his focus in a number of
ways: from being fiercely opposed to any form of cooperation with whites and providing a
strong indictment of every white man, he went to urging blacks to vote and he realized that
‘some white people are truly sincere, that some are truly capable of being brotherly toward a
black man.’64 Moreover, by framing the American government as guilty of standing idly by
while boundaries of human rights were being crossed left and right, Malcolm shifted his
perspective from rhetorically attacking not just the single American white individual, but the
American government in its entirety. Malcolm increased race consciousness in order to be
able to point out the hypocrisy of the American government. As long as white people and the
government would truly cooperate, however, a solution could be reached. This could only
happen if the American government would be confronted with its own hypocrisy on an
international level. ‘I believe in brotherhood of all men,’ Malcolm stated, ‘but I don’t believe
in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a
two-way street.’65
64. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964): 368.
65. Malcolm X, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1968):
164.
50
3. The Democratically Inflected Discourse of James Baldwin
“White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love
themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this – which will not be tomorrow
and may very well be never – the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will be no longer
needed.”66 – James Baldwin
3.1
Introduction
The Great Migration between 1916 and 1918 marked the move of millions of African
Americans from the rural South to urban areas in the West, Midwest and Northeast of the
United States. As a result of this enormous number of people migrating to the North, large
African American neighborhoods developed in major American cities such as Chicago,
Detroit, Cleveland and New York. These kinds of areas, for example Harlem in New York
and the South Side of Chicago, became culturally thriving neighborhoods inhabited by
African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and its Chicagoan counterpart, the
Chicago Black Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, marked an increase in African American
cultural expression. James Baldwin, African American novelist, poet and literary critic, was
born in Harlem in 1924, during the Harlem Renaissance heyday. His stepfather David
Baldwin, whom his mother had married in 1927 after the death of his biological father, had
taken part in the exodus of black Americans from the South to the North when he moved
from New Orleans to New York. Because both his mother and his stepfather were born in the
South – David Baldwin’s mother had been enslaved in Louisiana for years and David
Baldwin belonged to first free generation of black people – James Baldwin regarded himself
as a Southerner as well, having been raised by two people with Southern roots. James
Baldwin, like Kenneth Clark, grew up in Harlem, surrounded by Africans Americans who
had migrated to the North in the previous decades. The African American neighborhoods in
large cities proved to be centers of interesting cultural and intellectual developments.
According to Lawrence Jackson, the Great Migration helped generate the highest number in
black college graduates ever between 1936 and 1942: nearly twenty-four thousand.67 James
Baldwin was part of this generation, a product of the culturally challenging New York
66. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Johnson, 1963): 33.
67. Lawrence Jackson, The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics,
1934-1960. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011): 33.
51
neighborhood of Harlem, and he was provided with the opportunity to intellectually
challenge himself from the 1940s onwards. As time progressed, Baldwin became increasingly
politically engaged, and in his own way he made fervent attempts to change the face of
American race relations. In 1963, James Baldwin crossed paths with Kenneth Clark, when
both of them, along with a couple of other African Americans that were influential during the
Civil Rights Movement, were invited to Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s apartment in
Manhattan to discuss the current state of race relations in America. Immediately after the
meeting, Clark sat down with Baldwin to interview him for the ‘Negro protest’ documentary.
This chapter will investigate Baldwin’s democratically inflected discourse as a counter voice
to Clark’s discourse of racial liberalism and Malcolm X’s discourse of black nationalism. I
will first explain Baldwin’s focus on the vague concept of democracy, after which I will
investigate how Baldwin used the medium of language in order to perpetually question those
around him about the racial status quo.
3.2
Looking Through the Lens of Democracy
In order to challenge white hegemony, Baldwin looked at the American race problem
through a democratic lens. Baldwin regarded himself and other African Americans as victims
of American democracy (much like Malcolm regarded African Americans as victims of the
hypocrisy of whites and white Christianity), but living in this democracy simultaneously
provided him with the right to challenge the status quo and to perpetually question white
people. This approach should be seen as a dual endeavor: Baldwin both regarded American
democracy through the lens of race, and he regarded the American race problem through the
lens of democracy. Baldwin considered the position of African Americans as citizens of
secondary rank as a consequence of white supremacy being ingrained in American
democracy. As will become clear later in this chapter, democracy was a hugely individual
and personal concept to Baldwin, but also a rather vague and strangely undefined concept
(not unlike Myrdal’s definition of the American Creed). Democracy would allow every
American citizen, black or white, to flourish and to use their potential to the fullest. The
American race problem, therefore, could be seen as a failure of democracy and American
white hegemony could be seen as proof of this failure.
Baldwin’s focus on the concept of democracy is reminiscent of Gunnar Myrdal’s An
American Dilemma, while Baldwin’s work simultaneously counters Myrdal’s unwavering
trust in the American Creed (much like Clark and Malcolm did, albeit in different ways).
Both Baldwin and Gunnar Myrdal recognized that there was a dissonance between America’s
52
promise of democracy and the daily practice of racial oppression. However, agreeing on the
fact that the position of African Americans in American society showed that American
democracy had failed, they wildly differed on how the problem could or should be solved. As
stated before, Myrdal’s work provided an exhaustive overview of the state of American race
relations, but did not offer a concrete solution. With his An American Dilemma, Gunnar
Myrdal had provided a fairly positive outlook on the future of American race relations by
predicting that democracy, in the form of the American Creed, would eventually naturally
prevail in American society. Much like Baldwin, Myrdal regarded the American race
problem as one of the great failures of American democracy, but to Myrdal, the race problem
simultaneously represented hope for the future. As democracy would naturally prevail,
America would be able to show the world that it could truly live up to its promises. Myrdal,
therefore, in a way that is reminiscent of millennialism, believed that American democracy,
even though it had failed African Americans in the past, would provide the key to solve the
American race problem: America’s greatest downfall would naturally also provide its
uplifting. In this sense, the term ‘democracy’ was strangely vague and apolitical – even a
little mystical.
Baldwin, in his turn, was much more pessimistic than Myrdal. Ralph Ellison wrote a
review of An American Dilemma in which he asserted that Myrdal’s study was heavily antidemocratic and he regarded Myrdal’s unwavering trust in the American Creed as a scientific
form of myth-making: ‘The limitations of Myrdal’s vision of American democracy do not lie
vaguely and misty beyond the horizon of history. They can be easily discerned through the
Negro perspective.’68 In a similar vein, Baldwin argued that Myrdal did not comprehend that
exactly because democracy and democratic principles had failed to eliminate racism and
racial prejudice in the past, passively relying on those principles in the future would not
naturally solve the American race problem. Myrdal’s faith in democracy signified, to
Baldwin, a kind of white elitist liberalism, lacking any reflection of knowledge or
understanding about the race problem beyond figures, data and symbols, but rather
dehumanizing all African Americans to one single victim group. According to Baldwin, this
perception on the future of American democracy mirrored merely obtuseness. A true
understanding of the race problem and an effort to fix it, to Baldwin, would involve a much
more active approach which, as will become clear in this chapter, employed the medium of
language in order to urge white and black Americans alike to subject themselves to constant
68. Ralph Ellison, “An American Dilemma: A Review”, 1944,
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/an-american-dilemma-a-review/
53
examination instead of closing their eyes and passively waiting, in a Myrdallenialist way, for
change to take place.
‘Democracy and the Negro have yet to meet,’ Baldwin declared in 1967, undoubtedly
caught in the disillusioning aftermath of Brown vs. Board.69 Baldwin, however, refused to
admit defeat. Even though Baldwin was much more pessimistic than Myrdal, democracy still
held a certain promise for him. His entire life, Baldwin would cling to what could be seen as
his faith in the power of democratic principles in order to achieve true democracy – not in the
redemptive manner that Myrdal articulated, but rather in a matter that implied a renewal of
these principles. In his writings, therefore, he sought to achieve a revival of democratic
principles that would cure American democracy as a whole. Fixing American democracy and
making sure that its promises would come to hold true for every American citizen, not merely
for white citizens, would provide the solution to the American race problem. Despite being
disillusioned with the failure of American democracy in the past, Baldwin remained
committed to democratic ideals throughout his life. His every action was targeted at repairing
the damage that American democracy had done and making sure that democracy would
refrain from damaging African Americans in the future. According to Cornel West, Baldwin
was able to do so effectively because he ‘spoke from the position of the oppressed “other” in
our culture – as both a black and a gay man – and remade himself out of the wretched poverty
to become the most wrenching and penetrating critic of the transgressions of imperial and
racist America.’70
In an attempt to change the fundamentals of American democracy, Baldwin
endeavored to make people – both black and white – aware of how race and racial differences
are ubiquitous in American society. In other words, he attempted to increase race
consciousness for both black and white Americans. At first glance, this mission seems
inherently paradoxical. On the one hand, Baldwin regarded race as a redundant category, and
he strove to eliminate its presence. On the other hand, he attempted to point out how
categories of blackness and whiteness permeate American society and how American
democracy is defined along the lines of these racially delineated categories. In this sense,
Baldwin tried to show how the concept of race frames American identity. This makes
Baldwin’s mission not paradoxical, but twofold: by revealing that American democracy and
society are saturated with assumptions about race, he eventually aimed to eliminate them in
69. Fred Standley and Louis Pratt, Conversations with James Baldwin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
1989): 63.
70. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin Group): 79.
54
order to cure American democracy. In other words, by pointing out that racial categories were
real, Baldwin attempted to prove that they were, in fact, unreal. In this way, Baldwin’s
approach resembles that of Clark’s. Immediately after Baldwin and Clark met with Attorney
General Robert Kennedy in 1963, which will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter,
Clark sat down with Baldwin to question him about the state of American race relations in the
‘Negro protest’ interview. During this completely unrehearsed interview, Clark asked
Baldwin what he thought could be done in order to solve the American race problem. ‘I think
that one has got to find some way of putting the present administration of this country on the
spot,’ Baldwin answered, ‘One has got to force, somehow, from Washington, a moral
commitment, not to the Negro people, but to the life of this country.’71 Unlike Malcolm, as
became clear in the previous chapter, Baldwin still had faith in the American government to
solve the problem (which is reflected his faith in democratic principles). Baldwin regarded
‘the life of this country’ as democracy: democracy was America’s promise and only hope,
much like Myrdal had stated a decade earlier. This meant that the future of America was
inextricably linked with the future of the African American. ‘The future of the Negro in this
country,’ Baldwin told Clark, ‘is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.’72
Baldwin realized, however, unlike Myrdal, that it would take great commitment from the
American people to revive that promise.
3.3
The Indispensable Medium of Language
Unsurprisingly, being a writer, Baldwin regarded language as an instrument with
political power. As discussed in the previous chapter, Malcolm also placed a strong emphasis
on the power of language: Malcolm used the spoken word, while Baldwin relied on the
written word. The difference between them resides in their forcefulness: Baldwin was more
subtle than Malcolm in his indictments of white people and the American government. He
used the medium of language as a tool to perpetually confront white people with the failure of
American democracy, but also to urge both black and white people to keep asking questions.
The latter, to Baldwin, entailed a constant endeavor to critically examine and reexamine
oneself in order to rid oneself of preconceived notions about race. Cornel West called
Baldwin a ‘black American Socrates’, referring to Baldwin’s tendency to continually perform
a kind of Socratic dialogue and to urge others to do the same. Thus, in order to realize true
American democracy, Baldwin used language to interrogate himself and the world around
71. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 8.
72. Ibid., 13.
55
him. According to Bruce Lapenson, Baldwin ‘emphasized individual and national selfexamination as the vital necessity regarding any resolution of the problem of race in America
and the Western world.’73 As stated before, this essential form of self-examination would
lead to an awakening of American democracy, and language was an indispensable tool in
performing self-examination. According to Ulf Schulenberg, Baldwin constantly longed to
reinvent language, and during the process ‘he vehemently underscores the particularity of his
independent black self and voice.’74 Furthermore, Schulenburg asserts that Baldwin’s
perpetuate self-redefining and self-recreating ‘is primarily part of a political endeavor, a
cultural criticism which critiques U.S. society and white supremacy.’75 Baldwin used
language to inspire African Americans in order to increase their self-confidence, and
simultaneously, as will become clear later in this chapter, language allowed him to reveal the
hypocrisy of American democracy to whites.
This means that not only the instrument of language that Baldwin held at his disposal,
and which he managed to use so eloquently, was political: the realities he meant to describe
with it were political as well. Baldwin asserted that ‘color is not a human or a personal
reality; it is a political reality.’76 In other words, Baldwin believed that Americans, whether
black or white, are not inherently racist: rather, racism is a product of America’s failing
democracy. As a consequence, racism and prejudice are so prevalent in American society that
white Americans simply have come to accept them as fact. Moreover, it has led them to the
false assumption that categories of blackness and whiteness carry true meaning with them.
This, to Baldwin, makes racism a political reality, and not a personal reality. This seems
rather contradictory, given the fact that Baldwin had struggled and was still struggling with
the personal reality of racism for so many years, which seems to prove that there is definitely
such a thing as a personal reality of color. The existence of racism and prejudice may be
merely political, but the consequences of it are most certainly personal. Desperately seeking a
practical tool to challenge political realities in order to diminish their detrimental effects on
the black human experience, Baldwin clung to language – much like Clark had clung to
psychoanalysis and Malcolm had clung to religion.
According to Baldwin, the political reality of African Americans is inextricably linked
with their sociological reality, the reality that Myrdal had sketched as well. Baldwin asserted
73. Bruce Lapenson, “Race and Exisential Commitment in James Baldwin” Philosophy and Literature 1 (2013):
205.
74. Ulf Schulenberg, “‘Speaking Out of the Most Passionate Love’ – James Baldwin and Pragmatism.”
(European Journal of American Studies 2, 2007): 12.
75. Ibid., 12.
76. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Johnson, 1963): 110.
56
that ‘to think of him [the black man] is to think of statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, remote
violence; it is to be confronted with an endless cataloguing of losses, gains, skirmishes.’77 In
other words, a sociological reality, conjured up of statistics and data, is used to describe and
make sense of the political reality of race relations in America. Baldwin was critical of using
social data in order to gain a better understanding of the American problem of race, and he
argued that this way of thinking dehumanizes African Americans to a matter of numbers and
figures. According to Baldwin, sociology was mostly used by white Americans – or white
Europeans, such as Myrdal – to make sense of a problem they find hard to grasp. When
African Americans break ‘our sociological and sentimental image of him we are panicstricken and we feel ourselves betrayed.’78 Baldwin used “we” here, by which he referred to
the entire American population, implying that African Americans themselves were also
trapped in a certain image of themselves that merely mirrors numbers and figures. This
explains the necessity for artists, in particular writers. American society and the people it
contained could only be truly captured by writers, according to Baldwin.
At the same time, interestingly enough, Baldwin realized that even though language
was the only tool that could truly capture American society and the status of African
Americans in that society, language was limiting as well. Language, after all, consists of
presumptions and is permeated with labels – much like the American society language it is
meant to describe. This makes the English language inherently flawed. For example, Baldwin
argued that a term like “Civil Rights Movement” is odd because it suggests that African
Americans are not citizens: after all, if they were, they would not have to fight for civil rights.
Instead, Baldwin preferred calling the Civil Rights Movement “the last slave rebellion”, or
“an insurrection”. Baldwin was critical of language, and determined to remain vigilant with
regard to language, but he still believed that the English language was indispensable in the
process of making sense of American race relations and ultimately challenging them. In fact,
Baldwin argued, the English language revealed a great deal about these matters.
3.4
The Psychology of the Individual
Baldwin’s focus on the pivotal importance of constant (re)examination overlaps with
Kenneth Clark’s method of challenging race relations, but simultaneously diverges from it.
Both Baldwin and Clark heavily focused on the human experience in an attempt to reveal the
pervasiveness of racial categories in order to eliminate them. As we have seen, Kenneth Clark
77. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (London: Michael Johnson, 1964): 30.
78. Ibid., 30.
57
used a racial liberal discourse in the form of psychoanalytical research to make sense of how
African Americans experience racism and the effects racism has on them. Jay Garcia argues
that Baldwin fully grasped the importance of understanding the psychological underpinnings
of race and racial categories and its effects: ‘Baldwin presents the psychological meanings of
racial categories as a crucial area of exploration for a process of intellectual renewal that
might transform the logic of American innocence from a set of representations and
commonplaces into a cultural problem.’79 Garcia claims that Baldwin’s way of approaching
the American race problem can be characterized as a psychological inquiry, but there seems
to be a paradox here. Baldwin undoubtedly recognized the importance of psychoanalytical
research in order to gain a better understanding of the position of the African American – the
failure of American democracy. After all, Baldwin realized, the effects of racism on African
Americans were psychological in nature and they had a structural impact on black people’s
sense of self-worth: his own experience of growing up in Harlem had proven just that. But on
the other hand, Baldwin also implicitly warned of the danger inherent to psychological
inquiry, namely that of generalizing.
This warning can be traced back to an essay titled “Everybody’s Protest Novel”, in
which Baldwin explained what he perceived as the failure of the American protest novel,
calling Richard Wright’s Native Son an example of a bad protest novel. Wright, in Baldwin’s
eyes, practically piled every black stereotype on top of his main character, eventually
reaffirming racist categories the novel was supposed to reject. This way of stereotyping,
Baldwin argued, sentimentalizes and ultimately dehumanizes African Americans. Baldwin
warned of the ‘insistence that it is his categorization alone which is real and which cannot be
transcended.’80 The Clarks, however, with their psychological research on the effects of racial
segregation, had made use of the categorizations that Baldwin was suspicious of. Making
distinctions between ‘light’, ‘medium’ and ‘dark’ skinned children, the Clarks had used the
exact categories that Baldwin so fiercely rejected. Categories of race were redundant, in
Baldwin’s eyes, and the American society would have to realize that. Pointing these racial
categories out would be useful to reveal their inherent meaninglessness – creating even more
of these categories, would be harmful. After all, these categories were not different from the
sociological categories that Myrdal used in order to sketch an image of the position of the
African American, and which, as we have seen, Baldwin condemned.
In an attempt to not fall in the trap of generalizing, Baldwin himself mostly focused
79. Jay Garcia, Psychology Comes to Harlem (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2012): 160.
80. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (London: Michael Johnson, 1964): 28.
58
on the more individual psychological experience of racism. He did not necessarily regard
himself as a spokesman for every African American, but rather attempted to show how his
own experiences had shaped his identity. By recounting these experiences, Baldwin
attempted to make covert racial lines overt. Baldwin regarded himself as a witness critic,
assessing the situation from first-hand experience. This made examining, defining – and
perhaps, ultimately curing – American race relations a hugely personal matter to Baldwin.
Whereas the Clarks (and it must be stated that they were undoubtedly equally committed to
challenging Jim Crow as Baldwin was) endeavored to objectively measure the cold, hard
facts of American daily life with regard to racial problems, Baldwin approached the matter on
a much more personal basis, from the conviction that it is impossible to make sweeping
assumptions about the consequences of racism. This is perhaps not surprising, because
Baldwin, after all, was a writer. And according to Baldwin, ‘one writes out of one thing only
– one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this
experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.’81 In this sense, Baldwin
adhered to some form of psychological realism, which allowed him to reveal the persistence
of racial categories in order to ultimately transcend them.
Baldwin’s focus on the human experience, and his own experiences in particular, led
him to be suspicious of any type of rational theory. Baldwin attempted to capture human
pain, suffering, and uncertainty with language, and seemed to defy any kind of overarching
political or social theory. ‘I think all theories are suspect,’ he wrote, ‘that the finest principles
may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one
must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this
center will guide one alright.’82 Baldwin’s rejection of theories seems to stem from an
inherent suspicion of political indoctrination. This suspicion is exactly what made Baldwin
wary of Malcolm’s commitment to the ideology of black nationalism. Baldwin feared
Malcolm’s potential to indoctrinate his followers with a particular ideology rather than letting
them think for themselves. Moreover, this fear should be seen as a reaffirmation of Baldwin’s
focus on the individual experience. It seems that Baldwin did not seek to offer an exhaustive
overview or judgment of American race relations, like Myrdal had done, but rather he
attempted to describe realities and disprove existing false realities insofar as he had
experienced these realities himself, growing up in Harlem and developing himself as a writer.
Baldwin understood the depth and the complexity of the American race problem, which made
81. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (London: Michael Johnson, 1964): 15.
82. Ibid., 16.
59
him all the more suspicious of political theories: most of all, he endeavored to prove that
most views on African Americans and their situation were over-simplified and prone to
categorization and generalization. Baldwin regarded Richard Wright’s character in Native
Son as an example of such a view.
3.5
Relation to the White Man
In order to challenge white hegemony and cure American democracy, Baldwin
attempted to force white Americans to face the fact that America is hypocrisy inflected.
Baldwin perceived the pervasive discourse of white supremacy as predicated on white selfdeception. This self-deception, he believed, was nothing more than an odd self-celebratory
framework which allowed white Americans to resist changing the status quo. Baldwin urged
white Americans to rid themselves of this self-deception. Articulating circumstances of the
daily practice of racism laid bare these circumstances, which would eventually uncover the
discourse of white supremacy that was so ingrained in American society. This would be the
first step towards dismantling it. Baldwin’s commitment to a democratic solution, after all,
required black and white people to work together in curing American democracy. ‘In short,
we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we really are to become a nation –
if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women,’ he claimed,
‘To create one nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need
now to create two, one black and one white.’83 Unlike Malcolm, Baldwin did not necessarily
perceive the white man as prone to mendacity and deceitfulness. According to Baldwin, the
white man in America was mostly guilt-ridden.
In a special issue of Ebony Magazine which came out in August 1965 and was titled
The White Problem in America, Baldwin published an article called “The White Man’s
Guilt”. In this article, Baldwin wondered what white people talk about among each other,
because he felt that they acted differently whenever they were around him. This difference,
according to Baldwin, could only be attributed to the color of his skin. Baldwin asserted that
white people are constantly being nagged by a strange sense of guilt towards black
Americans, but at the same time they also feel the need to defend themselves against
accusations from African Americans about not being treated equally. According to Baldwin,
statements from white people can be reduced to a single plea:
‘Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with
history or the slave trade. Anyway, it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not
83. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Johnson, 1963): 104.
60
present on the middle passage. I am not responsible for the textile mills of
Manchester, or the cotton fields of Mississippi. (…) I have nothing against you,
nothing! What have you got against me? What do you want?’84
Becoming increasingly desperate and self-defensive, the white man urges the African
American to not hold him accountable for crimes he did not commit. However, Baldwin
claimed, white people continue to declare their unwavering pride of their history and their
ancestors. This paradox, of being plagued by a sense of dreadful guilt but at the same time
having the feeling that this guilt is unnecessary and that his history is something to be proud
of, characterized the American white man in Baldwin’s eyes. It is exactly this paradox that
seemed to inflict a certain feeling of contempt for white people in Baldwin. The danger
inherent to this paradox, according to Baldwin, is that it gives the white man the feeling that
everyone deserves their fate as it is, which in turn implies that black people deserve less than
white people. Moreover, it reenergizes categories of blackness and whiteness and suggests
that there is a meaning to these categories, while according to Baldwin, there is none.
Therefore, Baldwin urged white Americans to reevaluate their past and their history
and to subject themselves to perpetual reexamination, much like he encouraged black
Americans to do, which he admitted would be a challenging endeavor. Challenging, but
necessary. ‘White man, hear me!’ Baldwin wrote, ‘A man is a man, a woman is a woman, a
child is a child. To deny these facts is to open the doors of a chaos deeper and deadlier, and,
within the space of a man’s lifetime, more timeless, more eternal, than the medieval version
of Hell.’85 Not only a reevaluation of the past was necessary for white Americans, according
to Baldwin. Current state of affairs were in desperate need of reassessment as well, thus
Baldwin urged – even begged – white Americans to be critical of American race relations.
Much like Baldwin had been a witness critic throughout his life, and had used his experience
in order to convincingly criticize the state of race relations in America, he urged his white
readers to do the same. White people’s proclivity to perceive themselves as innocent
bystanders, Baldwin argued, had proven to be highly inimical. Only by critically evaluating
the nation’s history of injustice, white Americans could be a helpful force in curing American
democracy. By claiming this, Baldwin formulated the responsibility of challenging racial
inequities as a task of white Americans just as much as it was a task of black Americans.
History, Baldwin claimed, does not belong to the past only: history controls everyone, every
American citizen, black or white, to this day. Baldwin regarded the history of African
84. James Baldwin, “The White Man’s Guilt.” Ebony Magazine (1965): 47.
85. Ibid., 48.
61
Americans as ineluctably tied with American history: one simply does not exist without the
other – much like he regarded the future of African Americans as ineluctably tied with the
future of America as a nation.
Baldwin’s democratically inflected discourse implies that a certain form of
cooperation between black and whites is necessary. Therefore, Baldwin condemned Malcolm
for instilling a sense of what he believed to be superiority in black people. According to
Baldwin, black supremacy is equally detrimental to the American society as white
supremacy. ‘What Malcolm tells them in effect,’ Baldwin told Kenneth Clark in 1963 during
the ‘Negro protest’ interview, ‘is “You’re better because you’re black.” Well, of course that
isn’t true.’86 But even though Baldwin rejected what he perceived to be Malcolm’s contempt
for white people, it must be stated that he was not unfamiliar with it himself. Baldwin
regarded identity as a malleable concept, something that is not fixed and that can be changed
constantly. He made sure never to simplify things, whether it be his own identity, that of the
people surrounding him or the political and social realities of American race relations.
Precisely for this reason, and because of his commitment to a discourse of democracy,
Baldwin struggled with his feeling of hatred for white people. Having grown up in a black
neighborhood which, although very poor, was rather sheltered from racial segregation simply
because there were no white people around, Baldwin first experienced the daily reality of Jim
Crow after he left Harlem in 1942 and moved to New Jersey. There he was confronted with
racial segregation, America’s failure of the promise of democracy, every day, everywhere. A
year of living in New Jersey left Baldwin feeling as if he had contracted a disease, ‘the
unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the
bowels.’87 Baldwin described this disease as a kind of rage that every African American feels
inside of him. The daily practice of racial segregation filled Baldwin with anger on more than
one occasion, and in Notes of a Native Son he describes an encounter with a white waitress in
a New Jersey restaurant who refused to serve him, after which he threw a glass of water in
her face. ‘I hated her for her white face,’ Baldwin tells us, ‘and for her great, astounded,
frightened eyes. I felt that if she found a black man so frightening I would make her fright
worthwhile.’88 However, Baldwin’s commitment to American democracy made him realize
that black and white people would have to work together in order to make its promise come
true. He knew that the support of white Americans was indispensable in the process of
86. Kenneth Clark, The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B.
Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963): 11.
87. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (London: Michael Johnson, 1964): 92.
88. Ibid., 93.
62
fundamentally changing the status quo. Coming to terms with hatred and eventually ridding
himself of this hatred, was therefore of pivotal importance.
3.6
Brown vs. Board: American Democracy as a Burning House
In the year Baldwin turned thirty, the Supreme Court handed down the landmark
decision of Brown vs. Board. Throughout his life, Baldwin had come to realize that there was
no possibility of bringing about a real, structural change in American society without making
radical changes in American politics. A commitment to American democracy on the part of
the American government was in order, according to Baldwin. The Supreme Court, in this
regard, presents a dilemma: as an unelected institution, the Supreme Court is inherently
undemocratic. Baldwin’s commitment to a democratic awakening, therefore, seems to be at
odds with any Supreme Court decision. Baldwin’s wholehearted approval of the Brown vs.
Board case suggests that Baldwin regarded the Supreme Court in the position to change
American society, and to pursue racial justice and social equality. Apparently, the Supreme
Court, to Baldwin, was capable of bringing about structural, meaningful change. The Brown
decision, therefore, signified a hopeful step in the right direction to Baldwin, despite the fact
that the decision was handed down by an undemocratic institution. Since Brown vs. Board
was concerned with education, Baldwin regarded the decision of paramount importance. He
stated that educated people were rare in America, which he thought of as unworthy of his
country. Baldwin claimed that the level of American education in general was low compared
to other countries because Americans did not really value intellectual effort. The level of the
education that black people received, Baldwin asserted, was even lower. According to
Baldwin, racial segregation was to blame for this, since it had a demoralizing effect on black
children – much like the Clarks had also argued. Because education has such a profound
impact on children’s lives and their future self-development, Baldwin regarded desegregation
of public schools as one of the first steps in the direction of curing American democracy.
Moreover, Baldwin also regarded proper education as a valuable tool in altering race
relations: education would provide children, both black and white, with skills that would
eventually help them in abolishing Jim Crow, simply because education would make them
realize that racial segregation had nothing to do with common sense and was unworthy of a
nation that preached freedom as much as America did. Education would help children to
develop into witness critics themselves, and in Baldwin’s eyes, any properly educated witness
critic would denounce racial segregation.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Baldwin welcomed the Brown vs. Board case with
63
open arms. Brown vs. Board was the first sign of structural change taking place in America,
and Baldwin seized the opportunity to state his case and to support the Civil Rights
Movement that was slowly developing and gaining influence. Baldwin felt he had a certain
responsibility in the process, since he as a writer and an artist was able to articulate the
necessity for radical social change. Speaking as a witness critic, Baldwin regarded bringing
about change as a two way street (which is reminiscent of Clark’s racial liberal approach,
which also functioned both ways): artists fulfilled the pivotal role of capturing a certain sense
of urgency and their audience would then have to respond to that urgency. Writers would
have to spark a sense of recognition in the American people: they had to recreate a common
experience that would appeal to every American. Fully grasping the essential role that writers
played in the process, Baldwin decided to do everything in his power to support the Civil
Rights Movement. He regarded desegregation – or “integration” as he preferred calling it – as
very important. He mostly thought of it in terms of finding a certain kind of mutual love
between white and black Americans and of being embraced by his country and its people.
Integration, to Baldwin, meant that America would recognize that African Americans helped
build the country. In other words, integration meant a shift in perspective: black people would
have to be regarded as human beings, not as rarities. Moreover, integration meant a first step
towards respecting your fellow countrymen and being proud of them for their actions and not
for their color – and ultimately, a first step in recognizing that racial categories are inherently
meaningless. Integration, to Baldwin, was not a matter of switching places, but rather of
building mutual respect. Not unlike the concept of ‘democracy’, the term ‘integration’ also
had a connotation of vagueness to it. As a writer, Baldwin would be able to articulate his
thoughts about the importance of integration and make them accessible to every American.
This conviction is emblematic of the Baldwinian democratic discourse.
However, Brown vs. Board and the ensuing development of the Civil Rights
Movement proved to be disillusioning process to Baldwin. Being confronted with fierce
opposition to desegregation throughout the country, Baldwin regarded white people’s
hostility as completely dishonest, insane and utterly incomprehensible. As he tried to
understand why white people – and especially white Southerners – so strongly resisted
desegregation, Baldwin came to the conclusion that they were clinging to their old way of life
and way of thinking simply because they were being stubborn – but more importantly, the
discourse of white supremacy was ingrained in the American society to such an extent that it
resisted any form of change. This realization, and the ensuing disillusionment, made Baldwin
more militant in his approach. More importantly, it made him cling to race consciousness as
64
means to reveal the futility of racial categories.
In 1963, having been painfully confronted with the pervasiveness of racial segregation
in his country, Baldwin started to wonder: ‘Do I really want to be integrated into a burning
house?’89 Baldwin’s remark is reminiscent of Malcolm’s analogy of America as a sinking
ship. Referring to the American country, which was quite literally burning in some places,
Baldwin started to become increasingly concerned about white people’s commitment to
abolishing racial segregation. A decade after Brown vs. Board, Baldwin would describe the
decision as “tokenism”. In line with Malcolm’s critique of Brown, Baldwin argued that the
case had not led to true integration. Baldwin recognized that Brown vs. Board was more a
showcase than an actual form of change:
‘For hard example, white Americans congratulate themselves on the 1954 Supreme
Court decision outlawing segregation in the schools; they suppose, in spite of the
mountain of evidence that has since accumulated to the contrary, that this was proof
of a change of heart – or, as they like to say, progress. Perhaps. It all depends on how
one reads the word “progress”. Most of the Negroes I know do not believe that this
immense concession would ever have been made if it had not been for the competition
of the Cold War, and the fact that Africa was clearly liberating herself and therefore
had, for political reasons, to be wooed by the descendants of her former masters.’90
Brown vs. Board, to Baldwin, had come to epitomize America’s attempt to show to the world
that it actually lived up to its democratic principles in order to create good propaganda. As a
matter of fact, Baldwin felt that his nation was more concerned with showing the world that it
was fulfilling the promise of American democracy, than with actually fulfilling this promise.
A parallel can be drawn here between Baldwin and Malcolm: Baldwin came to regard Brown
as the American government’s way to soothe the conscience of the outside world, while
Malcolm viewed Brown as the white man’s way to soothe their own conscience.
Baldwin must have been pleased and hopeful when he was invited by Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy in May 1963, almost a decade after Brown, to an informal talk in
New York. Baldwin had met Kennedy before at the White House, and Baldwin had stated
that he wished for Kennedy to call a formal investigation into the role of the FBI in the
Southern states. The meeting in May was initiated by Kennedy himself, shortly after the crisis
in Birmingham, Alabama which left Kennedy increasingly worried about the state of the
country. Kennedy was afraid the violence that had come to take a hold of the South would
89. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Johnson, 1963): 101
90. Ibid., 95.
65
spread to the Northern cities, and the Birmingham crisis had convinced him of the necessity
of taking immediate action. He told Baldwin to form a delegation of people that Baldwin
regarded as the most important activists of the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin chose to
bring, among others, his brother, Kenneth Clark, Jerome Smith and Lorraine Hansberry, and
on May 24, the group met in New York City.91 The meeting turned out to be hugely
disappointing. Baldwin and the group he had assembled were eager to explain to Kennedy
how bad the situation really was. Kennedy, in his turn, attempted to warn the group of what
he perceived to be extremists such as Malcolm X. Jerome Smith, who grew up in the Deep
South and who was a member of New Orleans CORE, was participating in sit-ins and the
Freedom Riders movement. Kennedy was baffled by Smith’s so-called lack of patriotism
when Smith stated that he refused to defend or fight for his country. Kennedy referred to his
Irish heritage and pointed out how his ancestors had struggled as well to find their place in
American society when they arrived at American shores. Kennedy claimed that in forty
years’ time the nation could very well be led by a black President. The group of activists
found Kennedy insensitive and truly naïve, and they pointed out that black people had arrived
in America long before the Kennedy family. Hansberry stated that she would like Kennedy to
convince his brother to personally escort a black girl into her new school the next day, which
Kennedy regarded as a meaningless gesture. All in all, the meeting left Baldwin feeling
deeply disappointed and devastated. In Baldwin’s eyes, the Attorney General had not taken
them seriously and had refused to commit to taking any kind of meaningful action. The
meeting had proven, to Baldwin, that his nation was still far from reaching an inclusive
democracy. The executive branch was no more able to offer a real solution than the judiciary
branch, with Brown vs. Board, had been able to do.
3.7
Conclusion
It is safe to assume that in 1963, after his meeting with Attorney General Kennedy,
Baldwin felt just as disillusioned with the state of American race relations as he had felt two
decades earlier, when he graduated from high school in Harlem. The disappointing results of
Brown vs. Board and the 1963 meeting showed that the legislative branch nor the executive
branch were able to cure American democracy and satisfactorily challenge American race
relations. If anything, these two events left Baldwin’s trust in American democracy shaken to
the core. Another ten years later, Baldwin would be even more disillusioned – the murders of
91. James Baldwin, “Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit.” (Freedomways 19, 1979): 269-272. Baldwin recalled
the meeting in this article.
66
Malcolm and King undoubtedly left their mark on Baldwin’s life and suggested, once more,
that American democracy would not naturally change for the better, as Myrdal had suggested.
According to Cornel West, ‘even democratic intellectuals can bear only so much. The time
was so out of joint – cursed with spite – that he [Baldwin] began to wonder whether it could
ever be set right.’92 From the onset of his career, it was clear that Baldwin favored an active
approach to challenge white hegemony and change the status quo. This approach took the
form of a Baldwinian democratic discourse, in which the medium of language was used to
perpetually examine himself and others, both to reveal the personal psychological effects of
racial categories and to simultaneously disprove their legitimacy. In the closing paragraph of
The Fire Next Time, Baldwin stated: ‘If we – and now I mean the relatively conscious whites
and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the
consciousness of others – do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are,
to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.’93
Race consciousness, therefore, denoted an active approach in challenging the race problem.
According to Baldwin, the inability to talk with honesty about the American race problem
detrimentally affected race consciousness and undermined its value. The difference between
Clark and Baldwin in their attempt to employ race consciousness in a useful way by pointing
out its existence, was that Baldwin attempted to avoid dehumanizing the African American to
figures and symbols, or reduce the African American to a single ‘oppressed figure’, by using
language as his medium as opposed to data and statistics like Clark did. This meant that
Baldwin, as a writer, functioned as both translator and mediator in order to bring the
American people together. Love played a pivotal role in this process. Baldwin loved his
country so much that he would insist on perpetually criticizing it and he urged everyone to do
the same. Because to Baldwin, to love meant to be able to criticize and be criticized.
92. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin Group): 85.
93. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Johnson, 1963):112.
67
68
Conclusion
From 1954 onwards, it became clear that a Supreme Court decision implicitly
overruling Plessy in order to abolish racial segregation would be complicated to implement,
and would have difficulty in setting effective change in motion with regard to truly
challenging the position of African Americans as citizens of secondary rank. The struggle to
eliminate de facto segregation laid bare a discourse of white hegemony ingrained in
American society. Ever since Brown, the Supreme Court has repeatedly dealt with cases
about the constitutionality of affirmative action as a means to challenge de facto segregation.
The Supreme Court decisions of Milliken vs. Bradley (1974), Regents of the University of
California vs. Bakke (1978), Mobile vs. Bolden (1980) and, more recently, Gratz vs.
Bollinger (2003) serve to prove that battling de facto segregation is a tricky endeavor.94 Each
of these cases essentially rejected race conscious government policies from the standpoint
that affirmative action is in violation with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment – in the same way that the Supreme Court argued racial segregation in public
education to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause in 1954. The underlying claim is
that American government policies, and consequently American society, should be truly
colorblind, and that race consciousness functions as a barrier in achieving this goal – not
unlike Clarence Thomas has argued over the past years.
This thesis has dealt with three different discourses of discontent that all sprung from
the Civil Rights Era. Each of these discourses has proven that white hegemony is ingrained in
American society to such an extent that a colorblind approach is futile in achieving racial
equality. With his psychological research, conducted with his wife Mamie, Kenneth Clark
focused on the inimical psychological effects of segregation. Clark rejected the form of
scientific racism that had been common before World War II, and instead attempted to prove
that racial segregation had devastating effects on black children’s self-esteem. Clark’s racial
liberalism heavily relied on the concept of race consciousness. With his studies, Clark
attempted to point out that race consciousness existed and that it was detrimental to selfesteem, in order to be able to eventually challenge it. His racial liberalism entailed an attempt
to reveal race consciousness in order to spur institutional change, which would in turn
eliminate the negative effects of race consciousness. In the decade that followed Brown vs.
94. Milliken vs. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265
(1978), Mobile vs. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), Gratz vs. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
69
Board, Clark pursued a geographically oriented epistemology of racism by pointing out how
slums and ghettoes served as proof of existing racial inequities. Becoming increasingly
disillusioned with continuing racial disparities throughout the country, Clark started to doubt
whether or not racial liberalism would be able to spur institutional change – and if not, what
else would. If anything, his experiences had proven to him that America was far from being a
colorblind society, and that the American public would have to face the fact that racial
inequities persisted.
Malcolm focused, with his religious narrative, more on mass militancy than Clark and
Baldwin. His form of black nationalism internalized elements of an integrationist approach
and attempted to shame the American government on an international level for failing to
make an end to the continuing racial apartheid. To Malcolm, integration as proposed by for
example Brown vs. Board signified a white man’s farce which would allow African
Americans into the American society, but would not let them profit from social upward
mobility. True recognition of civil rights could not be expected from the American
government – rather, the struggle should be taken to the arena of international politics.
Malcolm’s fierce indictments spurred white racial consciousness because of what seemed like
fierce indictments and demands. He attempted to lay bare the white hypocrisy that served to
perpetuate an ingrained discourse of white hegemony in American society. Up until this day,
Malcolm is often seen as a black radical – he himself would have preferred the term
revolutionary. In Malcolm’s perspective, his demands were not outrageous: he was fighting
for human rights.
Baldwin’s approach was the most personal out of the three. As we have seen, he
regarded the American race problem as a failure of American democracy and he intended to
fix that problem by subjecting both black and white Americans to perpetual self-examination
– his own experiences functioned as a background to this self-examination. Baldwin’s
discourse served to increase race consciousness in order to prove that essentially, categories
of race were redundant. Thus, in order to eliminate categories of race, Baldwin attempted to
show how they in fact permeated American society. Baldwin’s personal experiences of
growing up in Harlem and travelling through the South served to prove that point. Baldwin
regarded language as an indispensable medium in the process of translating personal
experiences into an increased form of both black and white race consciousness. The concept
of race framed American identity and in order to reverse this process, this had to be pointed
out.
Analyzing three different discourses of discontent will undoubtedly raise the question
70
of whose approach was most effective. Effectiveness, however, is hard to measure. Of course,
Malcolm’s life was cut short by his assassination, and suggesting where his life would have
taken him and how the ensuing years and events would have affected him or vice versa, is
mere speculation. Without a doubt, each of these three discourses enriched the Civil Rights
Era and reached a large audience of both black and white Americans. It goes without saying
that the racial inequities Clark, Malcolm and Baldwin were facing to a large extent have been
resolved (in the sense that de jure racial segregation has been abolished, and African
Americans have been granted civil rights). However, in an America in which racial
disparities continue to exist, each of these discourses reflect on a struggle that, to a certain
extent, America is still grappling with: dealing with the concepts of racial identity and race
consciousness in a society that on paper, no longer uses categories of blackness or whiteness
with regard to formulating its treatments but in practice, is still faced with racism and
discrimination on a daily basis. Clark’s, Malcolm’s and Baldwin’s discourses shed light on
this ongoing debate about race consciousness versus color-blindness.
Each of these three narrators realized that that the discourse of white hegemony is
ingrained in American society so such an extent that it was virtually impossible to tackle the
problem. Brown vs. Board and the ensuing years of fierce white resistance serve to prove that
point. Race consciousness operates as a human predicament on the background of each of
their discourses: it functions as a mirror in which racial inequalities can be discerned. To
Clark and Baldwin, categories of blackness and whiteness held no intrinsic value, and were
merely empty vessels. In other words, they regarded categories of race as redundant, and they
strove to eliminate them in order to achieve racial equality and a society in which race is no
longer a defining factor. But in order to do so, they argued, the American society first had to
face the pervasiveness of these useless categories. Race consciousness was a helpful tool in
this process: it allowed them to point out racial inequalities in American society, which in
turn laid bare a omnipresent discourse of white hegemony. Clark and Baldwin, in other
words, regarded their way of implementing race consciousness as a necessary evil. Their
reliance on race consciousness did not serve to reaffirm a sense of ‘distinctiveness’ or
‘otherness’, nor to reaffirm the necessity for categories of blackness and whiteness – rather,
their race consciousness served to prove that these categories were redundant and should hold
no place in any facet of American society.
Malcolm, in this sense, is the odd one out. His approach relied on the religious
narrative of the Nation of Islam, which was based on the existence of racial categories and
their alleged inherent value. To Malcolm, therefore, categories of blackness and whiteness
71
did have an intrinsic meaning. Malcolm’s black nationalism with its guilt inducing rhetoric
undoubtedly increased race consciousness for both black and white Americans to such an
extent that his discourse turned out to have a polarizing effect. Race consciousness is
therefore both risky and necessary: risky because of the trap of being oversensitive,
generalizing or polarizing, or recognizing patterns related to race where there are none,
reducing African Americans to mere victims of oppression; and necessary because a
colorblind approach removes the factor of racism and therefore denies that racial inequity is
still a persisting problem. Ignoring the barriers to racial equality is of no help in the process
of ultimately achieving a truly colorblind society.
In the 2007 Supreme Court case that prohibited affirmative action as a means to
achieve racial diversity, Chief Justice Roberts stated that ‘the way to stop discrimination on
the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’95 Roberts’ and Clarence
Thomas’ pleas for a colorblind society undermine the fact that in order to achieve this goal,
one first has to become fully aware of how racial inequities persist in American society –
adopting a color-aware perspective, that is, in the form of recognizing covert racial categories
as they still define and frame society, rather than tacitly approving racial hierarchies by
looking the other way. Colorblindness as a method of condemning racial inequities and
categories of race implicitly takes for granted these racial hierarchies. In the Supreme Court
decision earlier this year, which upheld a Michigan state law that prohibited affirmative
action, Associate Justice Sotomayor’s dissent read: ‘The way to stop discrimination on the
basis of race, is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the
Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.’96
Each in their own way, Clark, Malcolm and Baldwin endeavored to speak candidly about
race: they attempted to confront the American society head-on – with their racial liberal,
black nationalist or democratically inflected discourses – and race consciousness served as a
valuable tool in this process. Their narratives, therefore, should not merely be read as stories
of disillusionment – rather, they should be read as stories that can have a valuable impact on a
debate that divides the United States up until this day.
95. Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007).
96. Schuette, Attorney General of Michigan vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and
Immigration Rights and Fight for Racial Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN) et al., 12-682 (2014).
72
Bibliography
Baker, Lee. From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Baldwin, James. “Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit.” Freedomways 19 (1979): 269-272.
---. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. London: Michael Joseph, 1961.
---. Notes of a Native Son. London: Michael Joseph, 1964.
---. The Fire Next Time. London: Michael Johnson, 1963.
---. “The Black Scholar Interviews: James Baldwin.” The Black Scholar 4 (1973): 33-42.
---. “The White Man’s Guilt.” Ebony Magazine (1965): 47-48.
Breitman, George. The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary. New
York: Schocken Books, 1967.
Brown, Robert and Todd Shaw. “Separate Nations: Two Attitudinal Dimensions of Black
Nationalism.” The Journal of Politics 1 (2002): 22-44.
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US. 483 (1954).
Burrell, Kristopher. “Where from Here? Ideological Perspectives on the Future of the Civil
Rights Movement, 1964-1966.” The Western Journal of Black Studies 2 (2012): 137148.
Clark, Kenneth B., and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro
Children”, in Readings in Social Psychology, ed. Gordon Allport et al, 169-178. New
York: Henry Holt and Company: 1947.
---. “Segregation as a Factor in the Racial Identification of Negro Pre-School Children: A
Preliminary Report.” The Journal of Experimental Education 2 (1939): 161-163.
---. “Skin Color as a Factor in Racial Identification of Negro Preschool Children.” The
Journal of Social Psychology 11 (1940): 159-169.
Clark, Kenneth. Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1965.
---. The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with
Kenneth B. Clark. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.
DeCaro, Louis. Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity.
New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Dudziak, Mary. Cold War Civil Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Garcia, Jay. Psychology Comes to Harlem. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press,
2012.
73
Gratz vs. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
Guinier, Lani. “From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board and the InterestDivergence Dilemma.” The Journal of American History 1 (2004): 92-118.
Herman, Ellen. The Romance of American Psychology. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995.
Hochschild, Jennifer. Facing Up To the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the
Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Horowitz, Ruth. “Racial Aspects of Self-Identification in Nursery School Children.” The
Journal of Psychology 7 (1939): 91-99.
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Jackson, Lawrence. The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American
Writers and Critics, 1934-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Klarman, Michael. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for
Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Klein, Woody. Toward Humanity and Justice: The Writings of Kenneth B. Clark, Scholar of
the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Decision. Westport: Praeger, 2004.
Lal, Shafali. “Giving Children Security: Mamie Phipps Clark and the Racialization of Child
Psychology.” American Psychologist 1 (2002): 20-28.
Lapenson, Bruce. “Race and Existential Commitment in James Baldwin.” Philosophy and
Literature 1 (2013): 199-209.
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964.
---. The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc.,
1968.
McPhail, Mark Lawrence. The Rhetoric of Racism Revisited: Reparations or Separation?
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.
Milliken vs. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).
Mobile vs. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980).
Monahan, John, and Laurens Walker. Social Science in Law: Cases and Materials. New
York: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1985.
Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: The Negro in a White Nation. New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1944.
Nyman, Lawrence. “Documenting History: An Interview with Kenneth Bancroft Clark.”
History of Psychology 1 (2010): 74-88.
Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701
74
(2007).
Plessy vs. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
Schuette, Attorney General of Michigan vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action,
Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Racial Equality by Any Means
Necessary (BAMN) et al., 12-682 (2014).
Schulenberg, Ulf. “‘Speaking Out of the Most Passionate Love’ – James Baldwin and
Pragmatism.” European Journal of American Studies 2 (2007): 2-16.
Shelton, Jason and Michael Emerson. “Extending the Debate over Nationalism Versus
Integration: How Cultural Commitments and Assimilation Trajectories Influence
Beliefs About Black Power.” Journal of African American Studies 3 (2010): 312-336.
Singh, Nikhil Pal. Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992. New York: Hill and Wang,
1993.
Standley, Fred and Louis Pratt. Conversations with James Baldwin. Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1989.
Sundquist, Eric. Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America. Cambridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
West, Cornel. Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. New York:
Penguin Group, 204.