Black Power and White Reactions: The Revitalization of Race-thinking in the United States

• Published date: 01 March 1981
• Date: 01 March 1981
• DOI: 10.1177/000271628145400105
• Author: Lewis M. Killian
• Subject Matter: Articles

Black Power and White Reactions: The
Revitalization of Race-thinking in
the United States
By LEWIS M. KILLIAN
ABSTRACT: The Black Power movement emerged as a
reaction to lagging, uneven progress toward equality and as a
challenge to the assimilationist theme of the Civil Rights
movement. The current controversy over affirmative action
and the revitalization of what Jacques Barzun called "race-
thinking" stem from white reactions to both movements.
Black Power leaders introduced the theme of group rights,
demanding reparations for black slave labor. The demand was
for compensation to Blacks as a community, not to individuals
as members of a genetically defined category. Affirmative
action as protective or remedial discrimination deviates from
both the notion of community reparations and proposals such
as the Domestic Marshall Plan for eliminating poverty among
all groups. The emergent governmental policy of collecting
statistics based on descent as a means of identifying the
"victims" in the society constitutes both a revival of race-
thinking and a simplistic solution to the question of who are
the deserving have-nots. The choice of currently "protected
categories" can be explained only in terms of an implicit rule
of non-European descent.
Lewis M. Killian is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. A native of Georgia, he received his B.A. at the University of Georgia and
his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1949. He has held Phelps-Stokes, Julius
Rosenwald, and Sigmund Livingston fellowships for study in race relations. In
1975-76, he studied ethnic relations in England under a Guggenheim Fellowship.
His publications include Racial Crisis in America (1964), The Impossible Rev-
olution ? Black Power and the American Dream (1968,1974), and White Southerners
(1970). He has taught at the University of Oklahoma, Florida State University,
UCLA, and the University of Connecticut.
42

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43
ALTHOUGH it has been 25 selves to think of human groups without
the vivid
years since the United States
sense that groups consist of
Supreme Court declared segregation
individuals and that individuals display
the full range of human differences, the
on
the basis of race unconstitutional,
tendency which twenty-eight
and whereas almost nobody has
years ago
a
I named &dquo;race-thinking&dquo; will persist.4
good word to say for racism, the idea
of race has as secure a place on the
It is one of the great ironies of
cognitive map of the average citizen
recent history that the current re-
as it has ever had. Color conscious-
vitalization of this pseudoscientific
ness and what the philosopher and
yet politically potent fallacy comes
historian Jacques Barzun labeled
in the wake of a major assault on
&dquo;race-thinking&dquo;1 are not only evi-
racial discrimination. The two de-
dent in the discussions and debates
cades between 1950 and 1970 were
of lay people, liberal and conserva-
marked by not one but two social
tive, but also in the language of the
movements which made lip service
law in this nation.
to racial equality the norm and, for
In 1942, the anthropologist M. F.
better or worse, drastically altered
Ashley Montague called the fallacy
patterns of intergroup relations in
of race &dquo;man’s most dangerous myth&dquo;
this country.
and appealed to scientists to stop
The Civil Rights movement en-
using the term at a11.2 Even earlier, in
dured longer both in time and in the
1937, Barzun had declared, &dquo;Among
attention of historians than did the
the words that can be all things to all
Black Power movement. The latter
men, the word ’race’ has a fair claim
is often treated as merely a fugue
to being the most common, the most
around the main theme of civil
ambiguous, and the most explo-
rights, if not as an unfortunate aber-
sive.&dquo;3 In warning against what he
ration. Yet it was actually a con-
called race-thinking, he was not
flicting movement which stood in a
speaking just against theories of
dialectical relationship to the earlier
racial superiority-the many varie-
crusade. Hence the contemporary
ties of racism. He was condemning
issues and trends in race relations,
the very concept of race as a false
including the current revitalization
abstraction, as &dquo;bad thinking.&dquo;
of race-thinking, can best be under-
When in 1965, Barzun wrote a new
stood through an analysis of the
preface to the second edition of his
thrusts of these competing move-
book Race: A Study in Superstition,
ments, the tension between them,
he again made clear what it was he
and the reaction of white Americans
feared earlier and still feared:
to both.
This book is coming back into print
THEMES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
because the idea it treats of, although
MOVEMENT
repeatedly killed, is nevertheless un-
dying. As long as people permit them-
From its inception, the Civil Rights
movement was fundamentally and
unrelentingly assimilationist. &dquo;Into
1. Jacques Barzun,
Race :
A Study in Super-
the mainstream&dquo;5 and &dquo;Black and
stition (New York: Harper and Row, 1937,
1965).
2. M. F. Ashley Montague, Man’s Most Dan-
4. Ibid, p. ix.
gerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (New York:
5. The title of a book edited by Charles S.
Columbia University, 1942).
Johnson (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
3. Barzun, p. 1.
North Carolina Press, 1947).

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44
White together&dquo; reflect the values of
the theme &dquo;law and order&dquo; was
integration, brotherhood, and color-
heard in the land. Then, Wilson
blind democracy which sustained
says, &dquo;the Black Power Movement
King’s philosophy of love and strat-
crystallized, cultural nationalism flour-
egy of nonviolence even in the face
ished, and racial solidarity as a theme
of challenges from reactionary
reached unprecedented heights.&dquo;&dquo;
Whites and impatient Blacks. The
That this movement was a chal-
movement’s ideologists, black and
lenge to the Civil Rights movement
white, justified it in terms of both
was symbolized by the confronta-
democratic and Judaeo-Christian
tion between Stokely Carmichael,
principles enshrined in what Gun-
shouting &dquo;Black Power,&dquo; and Martin
nar Myrdal called &dquo;The American
Luther King, Jr., during the &dquo;Mere-
Creed.&dquo;6
dith March&dquo; through Mississippi in
The passage of the 1964 Civil
1965. The Black Power movement
Rights Act after President Johnson
encompassed the angry rhetoric of
had electrified the nation by de-
Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, El-
claring to Congress in his Texas
dridge Cleaver, and others like them;
drawl, &dquo;We shall overcome,&dquo; seemed
the highly disciplined revolutionary
to signify the victory of the Civil
forces of the Black Panther party
Rights movement and the institu-
and similar organizations; and the
tionalization of its values in the law
loosely organized, impulsive ghetto
of the land. Immediately the John-
insurrectionists. It was denounced
son administration began to con-
by civil rights leaders, many of
struct the civil rights bureaucracy-
whom found themselves dubbed
the &dquo;race relations industry&dquo;’-which
&dquo;moderates&dquo; when the meaning
would take up where the marchers
of the term &dquo;black militant&dquo; was
in the streets had left off.
stretched beyond the limits of non-
violent civil disobedience. Although
they felt impelled to justify the vio-
THE CHALLENGE OF BLACK POWER
lence, rhetorical and physical, of the
The sociologist William J. Wilson
new &dquo;extremists&dquo;-King said, &dquo;A
has postulated that in
riot is the
a social order
language of the unheard&dquo;9
where an interdependent relation-
-they still deplored it as retreatist
ship exists between racial
and suicidal.
groups,
nationalistic sentiment is likely to be
Well they might have, for the
high
themes of black
among members of the sub-
power represented
ordinate
a
group when
they experience
rejection of them, of their non-
intense disillusionment and frustra-
violent strategy, and of their as-
tion after
similationist
a period of heightened
philosphy. By the very
expectations. Such
&dquo;blackness&dquo; of its
a
period, he
language-&dquo;I am
points out,
black and I
was the late 1960s when
am
beautiful&dquo;-the new
the promise of the Civil Rights
movement symbolized rejection of
movement appeared unfulfilled and
the Western European, Anglo-Amer-
ican, Judeao-Christian values which
6. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. 3.
7. See Lewis M. Killian, &dquo; ’The Race Re-
8. William J. Wilson, Power, Racism, and
lations Industry’ as A Sensitizing Concept,&dquo;
Privilege (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p.
in Research in Social Problems and Social
200.
Policy, Michael Lewis, ed. (Greenwich, CT:
9. Television program, &dquo;Black Power, White
JAI Press, 1979), pp. 113-37.
Backlash,&dquo; CBS Reports, 27 Sept. 1966.

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45
were integral to the assimilationist
to have been, at long last, replaced
ideology of the Civil Rights move-
by Justice John Harlan’s dissenting
ment. It emphasized black power,
opinion of 1896 that the Constitu-
not interracial love; black accom-
tion of the United States was color-
plishments and pride, not cultural
blind.10 The...