Crisis at 40
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/29/mclemee
40 Years of ‘The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual’
By Scott McLemee
Polemics seldom age well. But when Harold Cruse published The Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual during the fall of 1967, he aimed his
verbal artillery in so many directions that it seems as if some of
the missiles are still landing four decades later. (At the time of
his death in 2005, Cruse was professor emeritus of African-American
studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.)
Crisis was certainly a product of its time – a moment when the
alliances of the Civil Rights movement were disintegrating fast, and
arguments over the direction of African-American politics and culture
filled the air. Cruse took the measure of various ideologies and
found them wanting. He had no use for what he saw as the illusions of
the integrationist agenda. He was a black nationalist, yet quite
pointed in criticizing the influence of Marcus Garvey and other pan-
Africanists from the Caribbean. It was obvious that Cruse owed a lot
to Marxist theory — but he complained about the blind spots of
radicals spreading the gospel of proletarian revolution to the
ghetto. At the same time, he was critical of leading figures within
the African-American arts.
At just about the time Cruse was finishing work on his manuscript,
the call for “Black Power” began to be heard among younger activists.
But he kept a distance from that slogan, too: “In effect,” he wrote,
“it covers up a defeat without having to explain either the basic
reasons for it or the flaws in the original strategy; it suggests the
dimensions of a future victory in the attainment of goals while, at
the same time, dispelling the fears of more defeats in the pursuit of
such goals.”
It was a cantankerous book, then. But there was more to it than that.
In arguing with everybody, the author was also, doubtless arguing
with himself — for along the way he must have adopted at least some
of the positions under attack in its pages. Rereading The Crisis of
the Negro Intellectual not long ago, I came away convinced that is
one of the classic works of American cultural criticism. If the
author seems cranky at times … well, so does Thorstein Veblen.
Rather than devoting this column to celebration of The Crisis of the
Negro Intellectual on its 40th anniversary, however, I thought it
would be more interesting to discuss Cruse’s work with a young
historian who is by no means uncritical of the book.
Peniel E. Joseph, an assistant professor of Africana studies at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook, is the author of Waiting
’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
(Henry Holt) and the editor of The Black Power Movement: Rethinking
the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (Routledge), both published last
year. I have not seen the latter volume, but can attest that Midnight
Hour deserved being named one of the best books of 2006 by The
Washington Post.
Joseph answered some questions by e-mail about Harold Cruse and his
legacy. A transcript of the discussion follows.
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