Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

346 // WALDO E. MARTIN, JR.
both the term's fundamental ambiguity and, even more importantly, the profound
challenge it posed to white supremacy. Black Power was nothing if not open to
multiple and shifting interpretations. It was seen as everything from the most
conservative Black capitalism to the most radical Black demands for territorial
and financial reparations. Not surprisingly, the Black Power phase of the Black
freedom struggle alienated innumerable white supporters, among them many
Jewish supporters. The left, liberal, labor, and interracial coalition so vital to the
functioning of the national civil rights agenda began to unravel in the context of
the awesome white backlash to the Black Power movement. 11
For sure, the excesses of Black Power contributed significantly to the perception
among whites of Black Power as anti-white and racist. Excesses aside, however,
Black Power was essentially a demand for Black nationalist renewal. As with
Ghanaian nationalism, Irish nationalism, or Zionism, African American national-
ism is principally about the creation and institutionalization of a group-based
identity and politics. Even among radical Black separatists, the angle of vision is
American as well as Black. As a result, the alluring call for a revitalized Black
nationalism operated for Blacks in ways comparable to nationalist appeals rooted
in racial/ethnic ties among other American racial/ethnic groups, such as Jewish
Americans and Italian Americans.
The critical distinction between African American nationalism and other eth-
nic/racial-based nationalisms within and outside the United States has been the
African American's lack of direct, emotive ties to a specific homeland because of
the disruptive impact of slavery. Consequently, the establishment of direct Black
ties to African provenance—even the literal invention of such ties—is all the
more powerful. Ultimately, therefore, while historically important in its own
right, Black nationalism has served most effectively to negotiate the relationship
of African Americans to the United States.
Most fundamentally, then, for African Americans Black Power called upon
Blacks to adopt more thoroughly and adeptly the traditional American pluralist
approach to advancement, even if that advancement required countenancing varying
degrees of Black separatism. Indeed separatism has been historically ciriven by
enduring patterns of anti-Black discrimination among whites as much as the
enduring Black quest for self-determination and group autonomy. A minority of
radical Black separatist voices and organizations urged Blacks to reject the
American way in favor of African and often socialist-inspired alternatives. The
Nation of Islam under the Honorable Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, his
most influential spokesman, preached an intriguing amalgam of a separate Black
capitalist economy, a very conservative moral ethos, a Black supremacist cosmology,
and a politics of withdrawal and nonengagement with the American
system. 12
The clarion call of Ricks and Carmichacl for Black Power reverberated wide-
ly and deeply among Blacks. It graphically captured a shifting mood—from hope
and optimism to rage and despair—among many Blacks. This was especially the