The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

There are two reasons for discussing Professor Eric Foner’s highly polemical review of my book, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism [NYR, October 22]. One is that he has seriously misrepresented the book. The other is that he has curiously distorted the subject. In part the two cannot be disentangled, and I will deal with both of them together.

Professor Foner apparently assigned himself to play the dual role of prosecuting attorney and defense counsel. In the former part, he permitted himself some questionable liberties. In the latter, his self-chosen clients may not prove wholly happy with him.

For black nationalists want a nation, a separate, sovereign nation. This is what runs through and binds together their entire history. When they do not see how they can get it in the United States, they advocate emigrating elsewhere. When they do not see how they can get it by emigrating, they try to locate it somewhere within the boundaries of the United States. The Republic of New Africa wants five states for a new black nation. Eldridge Cleaver demands a “sovereignty” recognized by other nations of the world. When Malcolm X was still an orthodox black nationalist, he held: “Land is the basis of all independence.” Dr. James Turner, director of the African Studies program at Cornell University, maintains that “without control over land, resources and production, there can be no self-determination for a people.” Other black nationalists argue whether they should build on “city-states” or take total control of the United States, as proposed by James Forman’s “Black Manifesto.”

A real nationalism is based on the relationship of a people to a land. The historic inability of black nationalists in America to solve the land problem gave rise to what I have called a “quasi-nationalism.” It has produced substitutes for sovereignty, such as separate, autonomous, all-black Black Studies programs and departments. But however baffling the “land question” may be, authentic black nationalists cannot give up the struggle to find an answer for it, even if some answers take the form of escapism and fantasy.

Foner gives up this terrain without a struggle. Instead, he offers black nationalists three possible substitutes—black culture, black history, and “revolutionary nationalism.” Let us consider them in turn.

Black culture. According to Foner, I have limited myself to the land question and ignored these other possible definitions of “nationality” (his switch to this word, instead of “nationhood,” is most revealing, and I will come back to it). He claims that “Draper dismisses out of hand the notion of a separate black culture.”

This is simply untrue. I stated my position on this matter on pages 125-131, where I discuss the views of Julius Lester, LeRoi Jones, and Harold Cruse. I cited a statement by LeRoi Jones made in 1962: “The paradox of the Negro experience in America is that it is a separate experience, but inseparable from the complete fabric of American life.” Then I added:

Not only is the uniqueness of American Negro culture difficult to define but, wherever and whatever it is, it is still, as Jones persuasively put it, “inseparable from the complete fabric of American life.” In any event, culture should not be equated with nation; culture is a far less clearly defined and localized concept than nation. There can be a distinct culture without an independent nation, and an independent nation without a distinct culture. [pp. 127-28]

I made another point which takes us into the problem of terminology. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between nationhood, nationality, and ethnicity. Unless these terms are used with some care, the whole subject of black nationalism can be hopelessly muddled.

A nation is basically a sovereign, political organism with a definite territory and government. It is the “hardest” concept of the three. If the black nationalists give up the quest for a nation, they are really using “nationalism” to mean something else, and a good deal of trouble might be avoided by calling it by its right name.

Nationality, however, may have two meanings. It may denote membership in a particular nation. But it may also signify an ethnic group that is part of a nation. Nationality is a “softer” concept that needs a definition or a context to be perfectly clear and unambiguous.

Ethnic refers to people of a common culture, held together by mutual traits and customs. It is still “softer” and more inclusive. Thus black nationalists object to thinking of black Americans as an “ethnic group” because it would imply that they could be quite distinctive culturally and still form part of the American nation.

Now I took the position in my book that black nationalism cannot be satisfied by “cultural nationalism.” I put it this way:

Yet “cultural nationalism” by itself implies or requires little more than the status of an ethnic minority. Unless “cultural nationalism” is hinged to some form of separate nationhood, in or out of the present United States, it need never get beyond the ethnic status. [p. 131]

Whether the reader agrees with me is not now the point. What is indefensible is Foner’s assurance to his readers that “Draper ignores other possible definitions of nationality” and “Draper dismisses out of hand the notion of a separate black culture.” I gave this notion a great deal of thought and tried to state my view with some precision.

But what of the substance of the issue? Foner loftily advises that “Draper would have done well to consult” some articles on black dialect and black music, as if specialized studies on ethnic and social influences in these fields could demonstrate any more than that there are some distinctive features in American black culture. He also refers to a new book, Afro-American Anthropology, published in 1970, too late for me to consult it. This book contains an essay of a more general nature by Professor Robert Blauner, which I am sorry I did not have in time.

Foner quotes from Blauner’s essay to the effect that liberal social science has made almost a dogma of the view that “Negroes lack any characteristics of a distinctive nationality.” The essay is directed against this extreme view. The quotation, however, offers a striking example of the need to know in what context “nationality” is being used. Does it relate to “nationalism” or to “ethnicity”?

Blauner’s entire essay is cast in terms of culture. Its very title is “Black Culture: Myth or Reality?” He tells us that “the concept of culture—as well-taught undergraduates should know—is a very sticky and troubling concept.” In that case, well-taught undergraduates should also know that a nationalism based on cultural differences is an even stickier and more troubling concept. Blauner repeatedly refers to the Negroes’ “ethnic culture” and even “emerging ethnic culture.” He contends that this “ghetto sub-culture involves both lower class and ethnic characteristics” (italics in original). He apportions the “American” and “African” components in the following way: “Though this [Negro American] culture is overwhelmingly the product of American experience, the first contributing source is still African.” The first is not necessarily the most, and “nationality” here is clearly related to ethnicity, not to nationalism.

Blauner’s exposition is quite similar in essence to the view expressed by LeRoi Jones in 1962, before his black nationalist phase, that the American Negro experience is “separate” but “inseparable from the complete fabric of American life.” There is nothing in it to which I would take exception. In my book, I did not challenge the notion that there is some kind of distinctive Negro culture within the wider American culture. But a nationalism based exclusively or predominantly on cultural distinctions, which exist side by side with cultural similarities, and without territorial and political underpinnings, is doomed to frustration and misuse.

In the end, Foner is not even sure whether black nationalism has a sound basis. He settles for the soft line that the question of whether blacks constitute a “distinct nationality and culture” requires further study. Here again he studiously avoids the term “nation,” and one never knows whether he conceives of the American Negroes as finally constituting a distinct nationality or culture within the larger American nation or culture, or whether he thinks of them as a distinct nation. Moreover, if black nationality and culture require further study to find out whether they are really “distinct,” what kind of nationalism can be based on such intangible, uncertain, shifting ground? A “nationalism” based wholly or largely on a still indeterminate culture has far to go before it can produce anything more than another form of ethnicity.

“Cultural nationalism” per se is a faute de mieux position. It may be connected with or lead to political and territorial nationalism but it cannot take the latter’s place. If Foner had chosen to discuss these issues, he might have contributed something useful. Instead, he avoided them by misrepresenting what I wrote.

Black history. Foner complains that I should have cast my net wider to take in “cultural, economic, religious, and political nationalism” as well as “movements for physical separation.” He recommends the recent documentary collection, Black Nationalism in America, as a model.

This book, which also came out in 1970, too late for me to deal with the trend which it represents, virtually equates black nationalism with black history. Thus it includes, among others, T. Thomas Fortune, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Kelly Miller, and A. Philip Randolph. The editors in their Introduction include “bourgeois reformism” as the mildest political form of black nationalism. They disclaim the intention of suggesting that only black nationalism existed, and protest that their book is needed as a corrective to the more general view that “integration and assimilation” have reigned supreme. But they never explain how and why A. Philip Randolph, for one, belongs in such a collection—the same Randolph who, in the section allotted to him, disclaims that his movement should be linked with “Black Nationalism” and defines his purpose as the solution of the Negroes’ problems “within the framework for the larger social and economic problems of the American scene.”

T. Thomas Fortune was an enemy of colonizationism and emigrationism. Frederick Douglass said: “All this native land talk is nonsense. The native land of the American Negro is America.” Booker T. Washington taught that the Negroes would take their full and rightful place in American society when they were prepared for it economically and educationally. Kelly Miller sponsored the National Urban League. If they belong in an anthology of black nationalism, who does not?

In 1966, Professor Eugene D. Genovese proposed the thesis that Booker T. Washington was a forerunner of black nationalism. To which Professor C. Vann Woodward replied that this “picture of Booker Washington as a prophet of black nationalism sends involuntary shudders through my entire scholarly nervous system” and the lesson drawn from it almost “makes me despair of history as the path to wisdom.” It should be even more cause for shudders and despair that Washington has now found his place in a literary pantheon of black nationalism.