Reflections On Horace Campbell’s Progressive View Of Barack Obama’s 2008 Election

“…[The] history of the Black Panther Party, and of revolutionaries such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King ensured that revolutionary ideas in society had a firm base. In this sense, I would differ with those journalists who had declared the death of revolutionary traditions in the United States.” (p. 241)

Here I think Campbell indulges in “rhetorical or cathartic radicalism” – a kind of romantic element in the radical-progressive analyst’s mindset, I would say. As a pragmatic-progressive analyst on the other hand, I prefer to indulge a “communitarian radicalism” mindset – let’s call it. Why do I say this? Because the “communitarian-radicalism mindset” isn’t romantic, but rather it is what might be called a “hands-on problem-solving progressive ethos”. So from this kind of progressive analytical vantage point, I sensed something quite curious in Horace Campbell’s discussion in his concluding chapters: In Chapter 8 (titled “Beyond Messiahs: Networks for Peace and Transformation in the Twenty-First Century”), and Chapter 9 (titled “Unbuntu and Twenty-First Century Revolution”).

I thought there were two things analytically curious about Campbell’s concluding discussion. One curious thing was a kind of analytical pretense that the radicalism and progressivism associated with “The history of the Black Panther Party and of revolutionaries such as Malcolm X…” was operationally applicable among African-Americans today, here in the early 21st century. I think Campbell’s analysis is quite mistaken on this important matter. Why? Because different types of radicalism might be appropriate or effective in one developmental or historical period but not in another. Thus while the Black Panther Party guys and gals were crucial in challenging what were nakedly fascist-type White police system’s assaults against the urban Black working class from the late 1960s through the 1970s, large segments of the urban Black working class has faced – since the late 1980s into the early 2000s – a quite different type of social crises.

From the late 1980s onward, large sectors of our urban Black working class were engulfed by a three-pronged “crisis-of-systemic-decay”, let’s call it. First, were the tailwinds of the national-level crisis of “systemic-deindustrialization of American cities”, with capitalist firms investing in either suburbs (around cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Gary, Chester, PA, etc. where few Black folks reside) or in low-wage and often authoritarian countries overseas, China being the major one of course. This caused massive joblessness in cities where most working-class Blacks reside. A second “crisis-of-systemic-decay” involved the downward plunge of urban public school systems into performance chaos. This has been a devastating “crisis-of-systemic-decay” that’s disproportionately affected Black working-class children and youth right into the first decade of the 21st century. Today some 37% of Black children are poverty-ridden!

And, of course, the third “crisis-of-systemic decay” affecting our urban Black working-class involves what might be called “Black societal decay”. This has multi-layered features: 1) Runaway unwed births (now 70% of Black children born to unwed females). 2) Black family disintegration. 3) The notorious spread of Black-on-Black violence and mayhem, with a situation here in the early 21st century where – in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Charlotte, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. – thousands of working-class Black males perish at the hands of other Black males more than at the hands of racist-minded White police. 4) The death of what might be called “Black-folks uplift proletarian culture”, which has been displaced by a capitalist-commodified Hip Hop Entertainment Culture that celebrates Black-male Machismo and Black-male Misogyny against our Black girls and women. I might note here that my critical outlook on Hip Hop Culture differs from a rather friendly outlook on Hip Hop expressed by Horace Campbell at several places in Barack Obama and Twenty-First Century Politics. See, for example, pp. 26, 98, 131.

In regard to this last feature of contemporary “Black societal decay” , I grew up during 1930s-1940s in a small Black community in an Eastern Pennsylvania factory town where there was what I call a “Black-folks uplift proletarian culture” that revolved around several Black churches, one of which was an African Methodist Church pastored by my father (Rev. Martin Luther Kilson Sr.). And in the larger Black community in the papermill city of Chester, Pennsylvania – Scott Paper Co. was a major industry – there also was a “Black-folks uplift proletarian culture” that revolved around Black churches, one of which was an African Methodist Church pastored by my uncle Rev. Delbert Kilson.

Above all, what I call the “Black-folks uplift proletarian culture” in cities and factory towns during the first-half of the 20th century, gave special attention to cultivating the working-class Black family and cultivating the Black-communitarian leadership role of Black women, as the writings of the African-American historian Professor Darlene Hine have revealed. I recently wrote reflections on growing-up in two small Black communities in a Pennsylvania factory town 80 years ago – communities that provided a “Black-folks uplift proletarian culture” for their Black citizens. I had my reflections self-published in a booklet titled – Growing Up In Black Communities Of Ambler-Penllyn, PA, 1930s-1940s. I can send a few copies to people if they contact me and provide me their mailing address. Click here to contact Dr. Kilson.

Of course, there’s no doubt whatever that at the root of what I dub the Black working-class’ “three-pronged crisis -of-systemic-decay” stands the overall oligarchic corporatist national-level crisis of deindustrialization of American cities, which is reinforced by so-called “economic globalization” which I view as “neo-imperialism”. Be that as it may, I can say this to Professor Horace Campbell and other radical-progressive analysts. That, from the vantage point of a pragmatic-progressive orientation like mine, I see very few contemporary progressive lessons in what Campbell dubs “the history of the Black Panther Party and of revolutionaries such as Malcolm X”, that are transferable in a productive way to the “crises-of-systemic-decay” now plaguing the 21st century Black weak working-class and poor sector. “The Abandoned”, as the journalist Eugene Robinson has dubbed this sector of today’s African-Americans in his recent book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010) which I’ll discuss below. So I suspect that Professor Campbell and I will continue to disagree on this issue.

Now there is also a second curious aspect of Campbell’s concluding analysis in his last two chapters that I must mention. In Campbell’s Chapters 8 & 9, there is the absence of a serious discussion of the overall massive and devastating post-industrial social crises and cultural-development crises plaguing a large segment of African-American society today. There isn’t space in this review essay to relate the depth-and-range of these post-industrial social system crises and cultural-development crises, but I discussed aspects of them in an article in Black Commentator (September 27, 2007) Issue 246. In that article I observed that “the social crises plaguing lower-class African-Americans are systemically and culturally tenacious crises. Among them are the following”:

–Joblessness crisis

–Family breakdown crisis

–School dropout crisis

–Unwed motherhood/fatherhood crisis (some 70% of Black children are born to single parents!)

–Macho-male violence/homicide crisis

–Hip Hop influenced macho-male ‘gansta-culture’ crisis

–And last but not least, the high incarceration rate crisis

Furthermore, when we focus mainly on the social crises and cultural-development crises affecting African-American males, the rawness of the post-industrial American system’s downward mobility impact vis-à-vis African-Americans in general is horrendous. The progressive African-American columnist for The New York Times, Bob Herbert, addressed this situation in a recent article titled “The Raging Fire”, The New York Times (November 16, 2010). As Herbert tells us in candid terms: “We know by now…that the situation is grave. We know that more than a third of black children live in poverty [37% in fact].; that more than 70% are born to unwed mothers; that by the time they reach their mid-30s, a majority of black men without a high school diploma has spent time in prison. We know all this, but no one seems to know how to turn things around. No one has been able to stop this steady plunge of young black Americans into a socio-economic abyss. …The terrible economic downturn has made it more difficult than ever to douse this raging fire that is consuming the life prospects of so many young blacks, and the growing [political] sentiment in Washington is to do even less to help any Americans in need.”

Thus I consider it an analytical deficiency that in Horace Campbell’s Barack Obama and Twenty-First Century Politics, there was not in his concluding sections an attempt to address the most devastating set of social and cultural crises plaguing our weak working-class and poor-sector African-Americans Instead, Campbell limits himself in his concluding sections to friendly generalized commentary on several dimensions of “black revolutionary forces [traditions]”. From my pragmatic-progressive analyst vantage point however, this is not a satisfactory analytical and intellectual response by progressive African-American analysts like Horace Campbell to the devastating social-and-cultural crises plaguing our African-American weak working-class and poor sector.

Above all, I believe that the liberal segment among African-American intellectuals and professional persons are morally obligated to start designing hands-on type of “Black-communitarian problem-solving strategies” – let’s call them. What I call “Black-communitarian problem-solving strategies” can also be called “Black-people helping-hand strategies”, whereby some 5 million middle-class and professional class African-Americans who now exist today fashion ways to reach-out to some of the social crises and cultural crises plaguing our weak working-class and poor African-American brothers and sisters. The ultimate goal of such “Black-communitarian problem-solving strategies” should be a kind of full-fledged “Black Civil Society Revitalization”, let’s call it.

A marvelous example of a Black professional person initiating an “helping-hand response to Black social crises”, was reported by an Associated Press reporter – Jesse Washington – and published in the Boston Sunday Globe (November 7, 2010). It was titled – “Doctor Tries to Steer Blacks From Unwed Parenthood.” As Jesse Washington reported this important “Black helping-hand development”: