Beyond Black and White: From Civil Rights to Barack Obama

by Manning Marable

Highly acclaimed dissection of the “new racism,” from one of the greatest radical black intellectuals of our time

Many in the United States, including Barack Obama, have called for a “post-racial” politics; yet race still divides the country politically, economically, and socially. In this highly acclaimed work, Manning Marable rejects both liberal inclusionist strategies and the separatist politics of the likes of Louis Farrakhan. Looking back at African-American politics and the fight against racism of the recent past, he argues powerfully for a “transformationist” strategy that retains a distinctive black cultural identity but draws together all the poor and exploited in a united struggle against oppression.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction, Politics, Social Justice, American, African American

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. He founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He authored several texts and was active in progressive political causes. At the time of his death, he had completed a biography of human rights activist Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.

Reviews

[Liam89 · Rating 5 out of 5]

An erudite and passionate call for a politics of democracy and economics that transcends the social construction of race, and asks Americans to instead recognise that it is an odious and predatory system of economic exploitation that must be fought. Professor Marable demonstrates that throughout the last Century a central feature of conservative politics in the US has been to pursue policies that pit Americans of different backgrounds against each other, the natural consequence of which has been the establishment of a system of exploitation and subjugation of Black Americans by White Americans. Marable by no means dismisses racism as irrelavent; instead he argues that we must look beynod the prism of 'black and white', and encourage people to recognise that they have more in common as victims of capitalism than they do with the individuals who exploit us, who happen to have the same skin colour as we do.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel inadequate to really review this work, but it struck me deeply all the same. Its encyclopedic coverage of the history and development of African American political activity, the growth of academic study of the African Diaspora, and analysis of blackness in American politics is fascinating, but I feel that this edition, which stops at the election of Barack Obama, is sadly outdated.

The final essay ends with a look at how an Obama presidency could be a starting point for greater social change, and multicultural unity to help counter the Neoliberal capitalistic word order, but we see now that the potential there was never realized.

It's almost sad to end there, where some hope was seen, when we know now how much worse things were going to get. But perhaps the author's passing in 2011 was a kind of blessing, since he was spared the sight of the racist backlash that lead to our current administration.

I see this as an invaluable resource in understanding the history of American politics and its impact on the lives of black Americans, especially as an examination from a Marxist understanding of class struggle.

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was born in 1993 so the essays discuss politics just as I was born and it’s good to get this insight. He’s a little optimistic. But does portray well where the conservative movement is / was headed in America.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A consistently excellent collection of 25 (!!) essays that span a remarkable three decades of race, politics, and black radicalism.

[David Hollingsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manning Marable was a professor of history and African-American studies who tragically died at 60 years old in 2011. His scholarly career was spent trying to analyze race, class, and other issues in a way that was of use to building popular movements. He was a scholar-activist who cared deeply about creating a better world, while also looking at things in scholarly and realistic way. This book, primarily composed during the 90s, is a collection of essays about current events at the time of their writing. It is a book worthy of the author.

The essays deal with a variety of topics, but all of them are related in some way to blackness and most of them further related to some combination of class struggle, the struggle of other communities of color, building popular movements, and the role of academia. I'm heavily biased in evaluating this material because I share Marable's general worldview- what could be called multiracial/intersectional democratic socialism- but the scholarly merit and clear-eyed way of conceptualizing things really stood out to me here. There are other writers whom I agree with, but none have struck me the way Marable has.

The essays in this collection clearly weren't made with the thought of being put into a collection. Not because they don't gel well together, they do, but because a few times things can get a bit repetitive. It's the closest thing I have to a complaint about this book, but the content is good enough that a little repetition isn't a bad thing. There's only one or two things I felt got a little overstated, and in the end it wasn't a big deal.

If you care about issues of race, but want something that takes into account other factors (primarily class, though he also gets into gender and sexuality), or you want something that gives you a constructive path forward, check this book out. It's a shame he isn't still around, because I'd do anything to hear his take on current events. As a historian, Marable may be one of my favorite thinkers of all time, and I don't say that lightly.

[Alek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of essays on contemporary black (/american) political situation; interesting stuff about 93 election, clarence thomas, katrina, even an article about Adolph Reed being too mean. Hits all the bases basically. Originally got into Marable from his amazing Malcolm X bio. Anyways this is a good survey of the post-civil rights period from a "transformationalist" perspective that seeks to get beyond accommodationist and separatism as black political traditions.

[Roger Mckenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a classic exploration of civil rights and black power both historically and contemporary.

[Vishal Misra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to the second edition of this book, published in 2008, after the first election of Barack Obama. This was an important book when it was first published in 1995, and it remains an incredibly important book.

Manning Marable starts off with a discussion of Black leadership within the US just as slavery collapsed as an institution. Charting the rise of leaders such as Booker T Washington, to other, more radical thinkers. This book charts why the Civil Rights struggle did not deliver up to its potential, and the crisis of Black leadership. However, in its second edition also contains a set of chapters on Hurricane Katrina and Barack Obama. Irrespective, this collection of articles remains timely, contemporary, relevant and deeply though-provoking.

Perhaps the major underpinning of this collection of articles can be summed up with the questions: 1) what is race; and 2) how does it function. We all know that scientifically speaking, race is not a thing. Therefore, what it is a socioeconomic construction. It functions by hijacking identities and allowing others to define us.

This book powerfully analyses the responses to Black leadership movements, the traditional unwillingness of white voters to vote for black political candidates and the continued belief amongst many polled white people that black people in the US "ask for too much." However, Marable places Black demands firmly back in the context they arise from. They arise from slavery, a practice that the US continues to deny was a crime against humanity. They arise from terroristic violence in the reconstruction south. They arise from coded attacks on the community by the stripping away of welfare and the bloated prison-industrial complex. Looking at these issues, we are drawn through articles that show how the war on drugs operates to criminalise the groups that use drugs the least. We are shown, with clarity, how the US government wilfuly and criminally responded slowly to Hurricane Katrina. We are shown how reportage of that incident was skewed: white people were taking things from stores; black people were "looting". This sort of reportage shows how the Black image remains linked to bestial savagery. A racial hierarchy which consistently privileges European white identity as superior to Black-African identity.

However, Marable does not advocate parochialism. He links the struggles of Black America to the wider Third-World, and shows how e.g. the fight against Apartheid was won by grassroots Black activism, even as Reagan tried his best to prop the regime up with his best-buddy Thatcher. It is this element of the collection that urges us to look beyond Black and White. Indeed, the analysis of race operates in the US (and globally) should make radicals of us all.

That is not to say that Marable is Afrocentric. He identifies 3 strands within Black liberation movements. Integrationists - who are allied to the liberal capitalist project. These folk want symbolic representation. Separatists who demand a separate Black nation; and transformationalists who seek a radical overhaul of the global economic order. Marable himself is in the third category, and his criticisms of all these movements are extremely illuminating.

The sad truth is that as integrationists have won the day, more and more black people must suppress their racial identity. They are political candidates who "happen to be black". The petty bourgeois who became a managerial and executive class amongst Black communities have fled, causing atomisation. Therefore, Black representatives often have no inkling of how Black men in Harlem have a lower life expectancy than males in Bangladesh. Those that do, are loath to tackle the structures that produce this fact. This atomisation is roundly criticised by Marable.

Overall, this book is terribly important for anyone who is interested in race relations, and is willing to approach the subject with an open mind. Anyone who questions why criminal justice programmes target people of colour so acutely, anyone who questions why Black Lives Matter has found such a strong voice, and anyone who questions the hard limits of what can be achieved through liberal democratic electoral politics. The final chapter of the book reminds us all: change must come from the bottom up, and this is achieved through solidarity and taking to the streets to demand change. Without this, those in power have a mandate to oppress those who have been oppressed for centuries.