Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Revisited – Worrill’s World

This year, 2008 marks the forty-first 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 thirty-nine year period and have organized study groups from time to time that have aided in understanding the ideas that Cruse presents in his book.

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 that 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.