>Apropos the note about the Black Panther Collective, does
>anyone know the book The Shadow of the Panther (obviously
>not about the Collective but about the Oakland-based
>Panthers) and how it is considered?
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 01:24:52 -0500
From: Art McGee <amcgee@igc.org>
Reply-To: errolhen@polisci.ufl.edu
To: brc-news@lists.tao.ca
Subject: [BRC-NEWS] BOOK REVIEW: The Shadow of the Panther
BOOK:
The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price
of Black Power in America (1994), by Hugh Pearson.
REVIEW:
The Lumpenproletariat As Vanguard?
The Black Panther Party, Social Transformation,
and Pearson's Analysis of Huey Newton.
AUTHOR:
Errol A. Henderson <errolhen@polisci.ufl.edu>,
University of Florida
LOCATION:
http://www.nbufront.org/html/FRONTalView/ArticlesPapers/Errol2.html
EXCERPT:
Pearson is correct that the BPP's downfall cannot simply be
attributed to COINTELPRO, though it was a principal agent
of its destruction. For the most part, however, COINTELPRO
was an external manipulation that capitalized on internal
weaknesses and contradictions. We are reminded of one of the
major lessons of Cabral: "That in the general framework of
the daily struggle this battle against ourselves--no matter
what difficulties the enemy may create--remains the most
difficult of all.. I am convinced that any national or
social revolution which is not based on the knowledge of
this reality runs great risk of failure" (cited in Davidson,
1971, p. 74). This is a more eloquent statement of the maxim
that the personal is political. Cabral insisted that culture
played a key role in the resolution of these contradictions.
The BPP did not fully appreciate the necessity for cultural
transformation in the movement. Instead, they promoted a
"revolutionary culture" that was amorphous and self-serving.
It was rooted in a Machiavellian rationalization of
Malcolm's "by any means necessary" dicta whereby members
simply legitimized their lumpen activities by asserting that
these were somehow "revolutionary." This approach was used
especially to sexually exploit women, to character
assassinate rivals, to rationalize the misuse of BPP funds
by the national leadership, to justify internecine violence,
or to excoriate rival organizations (such as with the NOI,
SNCC, RNA [Republic of New Afrika], and Us organization)
within the Black Power movement. This glorified lumpenism
was so expansive that Hilliard (1993, pp. 339-339) reports
that Huey even came to require that BPP members watch The
Godfather, as he began to argue for a "progressive capitalism"
(Newton, 1971). Allegedly, the Panther nightclub, The Lamp
Post, even became, among other things, a front for
prostitution and funding source for Huey's and the Central
Committee's personal indulgences.
Clearly, there is no such thing as a revolutionary culture,
per se. Cultures are only revolutionary in opposition
to some other culture. The fact that people are engaged
in revolution does not suggest that they possess a
revolutionary culture--at least not in any developmental
sense. For example, Pol Pot led a revolution in Kampuchea
and the product was killing fields and millions of deaths
but not the creation of a revolutionary culture. The BPP's
condemnation of cultural nationalism actually reflected
their antipathy toward Us organization (exacerbated by
COINTELPRO and the gang conflict of Los Angeles). But
Pearson did not explore the roots of the Us-Panther
conflict, so issues such as these are not raised. This
is as much a problem of Pearson's failed analysis as of
the popular press forum of Pearson's book that does not
countenance more developed and scholarly exegesis.
The BPP, owning to disjointed Marxist borrowings, the
influence of White leftists, and the personal battles
with Karenga and Us, ignored the challenge of cultural
transformation in the movement. This owed, in part, to its
conflating of popular culture with national culture and
their consideration of the latter in a very superficial
way. Though the BPP maintained a Minister of Culture (Emory
Douglas), leaders attacked cultural nationalism as an
ideology and an approach to revolutionary struggle. The
negation of the transformative power of cultural practice,
especially in the area of ethics and social conduct, allowed
for the BPP's vulnerability to outside manipulation and
control as warned by Cabral. Ironically, they did not
appreciate that the transformation they were intending from
their survival programs was a cultural transformation rooted
less in Marx and more in Malcolm. This misunderstanding
allowed Newton to evoke Papa Doc Duvalier as a prime example
of the vacuity and inappropriateness of cultural or "pork
shop" nationalism (cited in Foner, 1970, p. 50). The Oakland
BPP, unlike the New York chapters--who Hilliard (1993, p.
168) labeled cultural nationalists--also misunderstood the
basic pan-African (and American) nature of Black culture
(Henderson, 1995) and were ultimately unable to successfully
channel it for the party's own ends. This lack of cultural
grounding, especially on the West Coast, led the BPP to
become distant from their own Black communities. This was
particularly destabilizing to the larger BPP program.
Without the support of the larger Black community, they
came to rely more on White leftist support that became
increasingly ambivalent as the Vietnam war wound down.
Moreover, none of the successful revolutions that the BPP
evoked were explicable unless one appreciated the role by
which leaders utilized their indigenous culture as a means
of mobilization and transformation. Such revolutionaries did
not await a "revolutionary" culture, instead they grounded
themselves in their national heritage and evoked the best of
it, and the best of it was in opposition to the status quo
of their (neo)colonial oppressors--especially in the areas
of values, views, ethics, the latticework for the struggle
that Cabral argues. The wars of national liberation that
the BPP celebrated (i.e., Vietnam, China, Algeria, Cuba)
maintained a nationalistic base from which even Marxist-
Leninist revolutionaries directed their efforts and
derived their commitment. In these cases, revolutionary
leaders seemed to appreciate that insofar as an important
aspect of struggle is to capture the hearts and minds of
their people, then a revolution that attacked the cultural
hegemony of their oppressors formed the basis of the larger
political-military struggle for national self-determination.
Without it, the masses, suffering under the cultural hegemony
of their colonizers would be unconvinced of their own capacity
to realize the objective of liberation.
In its wholesale rejection of the revolutionary role of
cultural transformation, the BPP was not only distancing
itself from revolutionary practice, but it was distancing
itself from the core of the Black nationalist movement
itself. In fact, once we focus clearly, we find that though
"pigeonholed as one of the more esoteric, even aberrant
expressions of the Black liberation ethic, cultural
nationalism actually provided much of its thrust and
dynamic" (Van DeBurg, 1992, p. 176). It was notable
in the writings of the father of what became known as
"revolutionary Black nationalism," Malcolm X (1964/1971,
pp. 419-420). In his 1964 "Statement of the Basic Aims and
Objectives of the Organization of Afro-American Unity,"
he stated that "We must launch a cultural revolution to
unbrainwash an entire people." Further, Malcolm insists
that "Armed with the knowledge of the past, we can with
confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an
indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take
hold of it and forge the future with the past." Although
seemingly aware of these precepts, too often the BPP
operated as if they were oblivious to them. Nonetheless, the
heavy rhetoric of the times made a meaningful discussion of
these issues problematic at best and "counterrevolutionary"
at worst. A misreading of Maoism and the influence of the
White Left (many of whom would later become some of the most
trenchant critics of the BPP) led the formerly nationalist
BPP to embrace a "cultureless leftism" that even lead them
to reject the teaching of Black Studies (Foner, 1970).
The transformative power of the BPP was not in taking up
the gun--Blacks had a long history of armed resistance up
to that time. The transformative power, on the individual
level, was to be found in the provision of the community
with patrols and development (survival) programs in a
context of political education and activism. It was the
Oakland leadership, the security elements, exiles, and many
members of the underground, largely out of touch with the
day-to-day grounding and operation of these programs, who
lacked the opportunity to be transformed by this reorienting
of values in the community. It was the service to the
community that transform folk. In fact, they further
legitimized the unprincipled lumpen activities of the
BPP and reduced its capacity to substantively transform
themselves and their community.
The survival programs taught through practice the ethics of
love, caring, diligence, reciprocity, community, creativity,
responsibility, and struggle--all of these representative of
the best aspects of a truly African American culture. These
"poor people's programs" provided a cultural reorientation
for participants allowing for the political transformation
envisioned by the BPP. The cultural reorientation was
toward the best in African American culture. Because
of the opposition between this national culture and the
dominant White supremacist culture, the result was a very
revolutionary process, as opposed to the revolutionary act
of organizationally picking up the gun for a political
objective. This cultural (largely ethical) transformation
provided the resin for subsequent political activity.
One is reminded that the BPP's attempt to organize
the most disorganized group in the United States, the
lumpenproletatiat, on a program that drew from Mao, Fanon,
and Guevera is impressive, although it was sure to flounder
as it grew from a myriad of sources from outside the United
States when the people required an example consistent with
their experiences within America. Huey seemed to understand
this as early as his "The Correct Handling of a Revolution"
(May 18, 1967) and attempted to expand his analysis based
of Panther experiences in his "intercommunalism." But most
Panthers, and academics, did not understand Huey's later
formulations and dismissed them. This was due in part to
Newton's not being a good public speaker but also to the
rejection of his thesis by the White Left who could accept,
and even glamorize, Huey's thuggery but not his theory.
Hilliard (1993, p. 319) points out that the Left "like us
picking up guns and shooting it out with the pigs. But they
don't want us as theoretical leaders." They did not want
theorizing but only thuggery. In similar fashion, Pearson
(pp. 234-235) reduces Huey's paradigm, ultimately a Ph.D.
dissertation, to a paragraph.
The foreign nature of the neo-Marxist models and their
inapplicability to the condition of African Americans was
exacerbated by party members' lack of familiarity with Black
history and political science. Former Panther, BLA member,
and revolutionary exile Assata Shakur (1987) concurs that:
"The basic problem stemmed from the fact that the BPP had
no systematic approach to political education. They were
reading the Red Book but didn't know who Harriet Tubman,
Marcus Garvey, and Nat Turner were. They talked about
intercommunalism but still really believed that the Civil
War was fought to free the slaves. A whole lot of them
barely understood any kind of history, Black, African or
otherwise.. That was the main reason many Party members,
in by opinion, underestimated the need to unite with other
Black organizations and to struggle around various community
issues." (p. 221)
This failure to unite with progressive elements in the
Black community was underscored by the BPP's alliances with
groups outside of the Black community--primary the antiwar
movement. However, the antiwar movement had no coherent
ideology or much stomach for revolution. The White Left
seemed less intent on revolt and more on keeping its
followers out of Vietnam. Not surprisingly, BPP alliances
with these leftist dried up as the war wound down.
Further, the antagonistic language of Marxism-Leninism,
vanguardism, and the cult of personality allowed for purges
and the excommunication of peoples and families in a manner
unforeseen in the Black community. The Panther use of the
bullwhip for punishment, and the introduction of some of
the most esoteric and confusing precepts--including the
wholesale attack on spirituality--was so foreign and far
removed from Black culture that it was sure to engender
disenchantment with the Panthers in the community. These
were holdovers from the White Left and their moribund
ideology. Pearson does not examine these influences fully,
and without such an undertaking, the BPP story hovers
outside of history.
-30-
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