The Black Nation

In its September 22 issue NR carried a brief review by J. D. Kirwan of Theodore Draper’s The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism. The reviewer finds in the author confirmation of his own estimate of black nationalism: “hatesodden irrationalities”; “a fuzzy abstraction [which] lends itself to all manner of slogan chanting and heavy emotional hoopla”; “inherent contradictions stick out like guns on a campus”; “basic false premise of racial collectivism”; “lost in a web of esoteric confusion. . . .”

If black nationalism is analyzed as a theoretical concept, the Draper-Kirwan finding of “irrationality-confusion-contradiction” is no doubt valid, but we should not suppose that black nationalism as an historical force can be laid to rest with this formal conclusion. If only rational, clear, consistent concepts were operative in history, nothing much would have happened.

JB

About the Author

James Burnham

Featured Tags

In its September 22 issue NR carried a brief review by J. D. Kirwan of Theodore Draper’s The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism. The reviewer finds in the author confirmation of his own estimate of black nationalism: “hatesodden irrationalities”; “a fuzzy abstraction [which] lends itself to all manner of slogan chanting and heavy emotional hoopla”; “inherent contradictions stick out like guns on a campus”; “basic false premise of racial collectivism”; “lost in a web of esoteric confusion. . . .”

If black nationalism is analyzed as a theoretical concept, the Draper-Kirwan finding of “irrationality-confusion-contradiction” is no doubt valid, but we should not suppose that black nationalism as an historical force can be laid to rest with this formal conclusion. If only rational, clear, consistent concepts were operative in history, nothing much would have happened.