The Ivy League Negro: Black Nationalist?

A Negro participant in a House seminar on civil rights surprised the whites at one session last spring by announcing suddenly, "The trouble with you people working in the movement was that you can't hate whites the way a Negro can." What had been a free-wheeling, anecdotal discussion of the ethics of arbitrary reprisals for lynchings lapsed into silence.

The dozen white students stopped to consider the statement. Finally one with long experience in civil rights groups looked up and said that it was not true. He had hated whites at times himself, he said. The Negro was not impressed; "at times," he echoed. "You see, it isn't automatic."

Soon others spoke, suggesting that a capacity for hatred should be no pre-requisite to service in the movement. But the Negro was not convinced--and neither, to a certain extent, were the whites.

The Negro had played his trump card: he had reminded this group of white liberals that he is black, and has had experiences they can never know without changing their color. There was nothing the whites could say. For most Harvard undergraduates argue from emotion: they base their judgments about things moral and political on their own feelings--and by asserting his emotional uniqueness, the Negro had deprived the whites of any grounds for refutation.

Interviews conducted last spring indicate that many Harvard Negroes are "black nationalists." They are concerned with the development of racial pride and of a self-conscious cultural tradition among Negroes the world over--often more than with the integration of Mississippi's public schools or the success of a rent strike in Chicago. Few advocate physical separation from white society, as do the Black Muslims, but few find the idea totally ridiculous. And many will tell you that the former Muslim, Malcolm X, is "a fine, brilliant man."

To a certain extent such sentiments result from impatience with the rate of social change in America. Harvard Negroes were saying quite blunty last spring that they were "losing the battle for civil rights," or at least that the movement had "reached an impasse." And many regard the "Negro Revolution," which is another name for the spread of nationalism in its milder forms, as a necessary precursor to any real victory in the fight for equality.

But the nationalism popular at Harvard has its most significant roots in emotional needs--and often these are needs produced by the Harvard environment itself. "Many students who accept black nationalism," said Archie C. Epps, teaching fellow in Middle Eastern Studies, "do so because of their experience at Ivy League schools. They go to the same classes with you, they dress the same. But Negroes feel they cannot become part of the life at Harvard on the weekends or even at night. Some of them don't think they can have friends here. Maybe they go down to Elsie's and get a roast beef special--something a Negro has never heard of--but that's all."

"Black is Good"

Nationalism puts an end to the traditional dilemma of the Ivy League Negro, caught between a color he cannot live down and a white culture he cannot become a part of. As one junior expressel it, "A man realizes that he's black and that's good. It's good to be black; black is good. He realizes that he has been denied things because he is black."

"What you are fighting at Harvard," said another Negro student, "is liberal paternalism. You get admitted to the college because you are a Negro. You get a scholarship because you are a Negro. Everyone wants to be nice to you. Run for class marshal--no one can afford to vote against you."

Escape from this "debilitating" paternalism and from the futile struggle for total acceptance involves separation, self-assertion, sometimes arrogance. Negroes who had been good friends in prep school consequently often become aloof. Those who are particularly active in civil rights groups sometimes refuse to discuss that subject in the dining room. Perhaps the best example was the formation in 1963 of the Association of African and Afro-American Students, with its "by-invitation-only" membership clause.

None of these actions is specifically nationalistic, and most Harvard Negroes find it hard to follow through completely, to reject acceptance by whites. As one student observed "to go along with Malcolm is to give up your dreams of getting into the mainstream of American life." But though few embrace black nationalism as a doctrine, many accept it as a useful concept, an intellectual focus for their feelings.

The thinking of many Negroes who are active in civil rights reflects this interest in, or emotional response to, nationalism. According to one, Negroes must develop an ethnic identity of their own, such as the Jews, Irish, and Italians had when they arrived in this country, before they became full-fledged Americans. He wants Negroes to withdraw as much as possible from white society, and thereby develop a degree of self-confidence and self-assertiveness that is impossible within the present framework.

American Negroes will then have the choice, he says, of reentering American society or withdrawing from it--to one section of the country, to certain parts of each city, or to Africa. "We don't necessarily want to be part of American society; we just don't want to be systematically excluded."

Basically a Definition

A nationalistic orientation does not necessarily involve radical approaches to problems, however. Often it helps in defining goals, and in avoiding what many Negroes consider to be defeatist attitudes. This statement, made by the student who proposed the plan above, is a good example:

"Roxbury Negroes, the people who go to BAG [Boston Action Group] meetings are not for integration. They're identity-conscious. If they could get as good or better education without whites in the school, they would prefer it. I think it contributes to the myth of white superiority to say you can't get a good education without having whites going to school with you. It's just that you can't get the white officials to improve the schools cnless there are whites attending them."

Many young Negroes in the civil rights movement are frustrated with Martin Luther King's patience and Roy Wilkin's caution, and nationalism is not necessarily the reason for similar feelings among Negroes at Harvard. But nationalism is certainly evident in such statements as "The blacks have to be able to run their organizations--why is the president of NAACP white?"

And it is present, too, in the recent attempts of William Stickland '58, head of the Northern Student Movement, to bar white volunteers from work in the ghettos--an attempt with which many Harvard Negroes are in essential sympathy.

Harvard Negroes talk very little of brotherhood; they speak in terms of color. For some the central fact of their existence seems to be not their humanity but their blackness. They are losing their faith in the good will of whites, even in the existence of altruism. Some consider that "a polarization of blacks and whites is coming--and is necessary."

"Good vs. Bad"

Although few are thoroughly pessimistic, many are "realistic." They find the naivete of most white students amusing at best: "Liberals at Harvard tend to think in terms of good vs. bad. Every Negro at Harvard thinks in terms of power." And those who avoid such statements do so not because they disagree, but, generally, "because they think the whole thing is so futile."

Most of those who do not belong to AAAAS reportedly stay out for the same reason, and not because they disapprove. (Just as many spurn civil rights groups because they are "disillusioned," and not because they are satisfied with the rate of social change.)

Even the most ardent black nationalists at Harvard deny that they are racists. As one active member of AAAAS put it, "I will stand on the firing line with anyone who will stand on the firing line with me." But again, few believe that any white person really will stand on the firing line. And if he will, they distrust his motives. Whites, they say, are attracted to the civil rights movement because they feel guilty, and will leave when that sense of guilt is alleviated.

This distrust of white motives is behind statements like that of the Negro at the House seminar. What he was saying, in part, was that whites have no real stake in the movement, and so will not go beyond the "obviously moral" methods of non-violent protest. But there was more to his statement. There was also a deep-seated suspicion of paternalism on the part of many white volunteers.

At another time this particular student described what he called the "white liberal syndrome." Many white liberals, he said, tend to suggest academic solutions to complex problems, and so make the Negroes they are working with, who feel the problems more acutely, feel inferior. They also have a tendency, he said, to see Negroes not as people, but as problems. And he suggested that some enter the movement because "they cannot come to grips with white society. They go where their color makes them naturally superior."

Emotional Basis

The desire to be left alone with one's problems is the reason for the AAAAS membership clause. Originally the Association wanted to specify that only blacks would be admitted, but the University refused to officially recognize the group on those terms. The by-invitation-only clause that was eventually substituted allows the Association to discriminate against whites just as do the final clubs against Negroes.

White students have occasionally indicated interest in attending AAAAS meetings. A standard response is that the personal and particular difficulties of Negroes are under discussion and that whites would be in the way. To most members this seems a reasonable answer--and perhaps it is. But it does reveal the emotional basis of black nationalism at Harvard. The AAAAS was formed, whether or not rightly so, for more than intellectual reasons. One member explained it by quoting James Badwin: "I'm not just interested. I'm hung up."

Like the white undergraduates who argue on the basis of their own feelings, Harvard Negroes have embraced nationalism not because they think it is necessarily right, not because they think it is good policy, but because it is emotionally satisfying. "When Malcolm X cusses out white people you feel relieved. You can identify with him."

Whether or not nationalism is good policy is another question. According to Epps, who served this summer as special assistant to Thomas Atkins, executive secretary of the Boston branch of NAACP, nationalism is "a luxury" Negroes cannot afford. He stressed the importance of strategy, of using what volunteers one had, regardless of their motives.

"I flirted with nationalism last year," he said, "with the founding of AAAAS, but I've become disenchanted, because nationalists--like King and other Christian leaders who direct the attention of Negroes to heaven--direct the energy and attention of Negroes to Africa, separate states, and exclusively Negro organizations, which by their very nature cannot come to grips with the society in which they exist. Malcolm, like Muhammed, is likely to attract followers who, like the Black Muslims, will remain in their temples while other Negroes face police dogs and jail cells. . . . You cannot work institutional change while being a nationalist."

Numerous Inconsistencies

There are numerous inconsistencies in the thinking of Harvard's black nationalists. If Negroes here really do think in terms of power, and not in terms of good and bad, as they claim the white liberals do, why do the motives of the whites in the movement matter? A true Machiavellian would use his flatterers. And if these young Negroes are as independent as they sometime suggest, why are they so bothered by "paternalism?"

The answer is, of course, that they do not really think in terms of power--though they are learning to. And they are not so independent as they would have whites believe, though they are becoming more so. One student explained that he had spent the first 18 years of his life trying to be such a "good Negro" that whites would accept him. This pattern is hard to break, and the dream of entering the "mainstream" is hard to give up--particularly when one is at Harvard and the dream seems at times attainable.

It is easy to criticize Harvard's black nationalists--to find an element of self-pity in their talk of being "hung up," to suggest that they are really racists, or to say that for all their claims of "realism" they are still hunting for emotional solutions to socio-economic problems. But many are faced with quite genuine "intellectual despair." Basically many have little reason to trust whites. And perhaps most significantly, they know full well what roles they are playing. As one active member of AAAAS pointed out, "There are very few Negroes at Harvard who have half the answers the liberals do.