One
of our great ancestors, Harold Cruse, wrote a book, The
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis
of the Failure of Black Leadership
,
which was published in 1967, at the height of the Black
Power Movement. This insightful book stirred up a spirited
conversation in the African Liberation Movement. That
conversation revolves around the weaknesses of our movement,
the direction of our movement, and the inability of some
of the leaders and thinkers of our movement to understand
what Brother Cruse calls �The Great American Ideal.� This
problem continues to linger with us today.
Brother
Cruse spent most of his activist and organizing days in
Harlem, New York from the 1940s until he accepted a professorship at the University
of Michigan and helped develop
their Black Studies Program in 1967. In Harlem, Brother
Cruse was an active participant in most of the major organizing
activities that swept through New
York for over twenty years. The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual is a summation of those experiences as
it related to the literature and history of the African
Liberation Movement.
This
year, 2012 marks the forty-fifth year of the publication of The Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual. Its importance to our movement
has still not received the attention it deserves,
primarily because Brother Cruse was so honest in his criticisms
of our movement and many of its well-known leaders. Therefore,
the book was blocked in many circles from receiving the
kind of legitimacy its substance deserved.
However, a small group of scholar/activists have discussed and debated Brother
Cruse�s ideas during this forty-four year period and have
organized study groups form time to time that have aided
in understanding the ideas that Cruse presents in his
book.
When
we use the term intellectual we are talking about people
who struggle around ideas - writers, poets, scholars,
researchers, teachers, students, and activists. Intellectuals
are people who grapple with ideas and who function in
the cultural, political, educational, and economic domains
of the society. As Dr. Anderson Thompson always says,
�Ideas are weapons of war.�
With
this definition, let us review briefly some of the ideas
and concepts that Brother Cruse presented in The Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual. One of the major points
Cruse makes is the African American intellectuals are
pathological in their approach to the choices available
to them. It is Cruse�s observation that they appear to
adopt the values of the dominant group, which he describes
as the white Anglo Saxon Protestant.
It
was in the first chapter of The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual that Cruse raised this question of the
problem of identity of the African in America people. The question
of our identity still remains a fundamental problem with
the African in America Community today. There is a tendency
in the African in America Community to identify with,
emulate, and support other races and ethnic groups at
the expense of our own race.
Cruse
illustrated this in his book when he described the following:
�In 1940, as one of my first acts in the pursuit of becoming
a more social being, I joined a YMCA amateur drama group
in Harlem. I wanted to learn about
theater so I became a stage technician - meaning a handyman
for all backstage chores. But the first thing about this
drama group that struck me as highly curious was the fact
that all the members were overwhelmingly in favor of doing
white plays with Negro casts.�
Cruse
continued on this point. �I wondered why and very naively
expressed my sentiments about it. The replies that I got
clearly indicated these amateur actors were not very favorable
to the play about Negro life, although they would not
plainly say so. Despite the fact that this question of
identity was first presented to me within the context
of the program of a small, insignificant amateur drama
group, its implications ranged far beyond.�
Another
problem Cruse addresses is that the African in America
intellectual�s conceptualization of our condition is not
based on the ethnic reality of America.
The American Ideal espouses one set of principles through
the Constitution, but the basis of reality of this society
is founded on ethnic and religious pluralism not individualism,
according to Brother Cruse.
From
the point of view of Brother Cruse, the African in America
intellectual is not accepted by whites and does not identify
with their own racial group. Cruse concludes that the
crisis of the African in America intellectual is an
identity crisis and misunderstanding of the false postulation
of the American Ideal.
For
Brother Cruse, the crisis was whether the African in America
intellectual will accept the challenge of being the spokesman
or spokeswoman of the African in America
masses in terms of setting guidelines for our movement
and of understanding the issues of our race, making proper
analyses, and proceeding to help build our movement. This
is still the crisis we face today.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus
of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click
here
to contact Dr. Worrill.
