Because I would like to get around to what Aaron Kay called the "real
issues at hand" re the the BPPSD, I must say that I'm losing patience
with the rhetoric of personal attack that's characterizing many of the
thread's posts. modr8r put it quite well in saying, "i trust that
list members and future researchers will be discerning enough to come
to their own conclusions as to the relative merits of any one's
particular opinion on an issue or on commentary engendered by the
discussion taking place here."
Not knowing either McGee or Horowitz, I'm interested in what both of
them have to say about the Panthers, since their comments (as I'm
reading them, anyway) represent the poles from which the Panthers
have always been viewed. But I also see that some of what each man
says is opinion and interpretation of what the other man has said.
Consequently, I, for what it's worth, have no problem with modr8r's
attempts to disembroil the discussion by reminding us of the list's
protocol. Other than some religious lists I've been on, I can't think
of one that needs such safeguards more than a list devoted to
discussion of the sixties. So would it be out of order for me to
publicly ask the primary combatants to take it off-list so that we
might salvage the discussion?
Toward that end (salvaging): As I recall, this thread began with a
discussion of The Shadow of the Panther, although I may be wrong in
that recollection. My first point of interest was that the book was
being discussed so long after its publication. I used it in a course
about three years ago because I had to order books hurriedly and
couldn't easily locate any other book-length study of the Panthers
since Gene Marine's. My last personal contact with the Panthers before
reading this book was in '68 through two friends, one a Party
ideologue and the other a foot soldier, both in L.A. Neither of them
would have wanted for the Party or would have followed, I believe, the
pure gangsterism described in Shadow. Similarly, neither of those men
gave me a sense of being in the company of gangsters (sexists, yes;
gansters, no).
What they _did_ give me is something that I carry into the classroom
every time I have occasion to teach or answer a question about the
Panthers: A sense of pride in what the Panthers set out to do,
regardless of what they actually did or didn't do. First of all, they
tried to bring new depth and breadth (the quality of which, I think,
is one of the issues at hand Aaron alluded to) to the public discourse
among black people about their position in America. Not unique to the
Panthers, of course, but not, before the Panthers, widely championed,
either. Second, as William Mandel put it in a recent post, they said
no to power; and in saying no in the way they initially did, they made
an awful lot of black people feel good about themselves, me included.
No, I never became a Panther; I had other responsibilities, as I've
noted in previous posts. But I was a Panther afficionada, nonetheless,
and what I'd like now is an updated discussion of how we're perceiving
the Panthers' legacy. I came away from The Shadow of the Panther with
a feeling of betrayal, sorrow, and loss. Now I'm still trying to
figure out how to feel.
But mostly I tend to feel that, errors and flaws notwithstanding, I
have to hand it to both the Panthers and the Nation of Islam because
they did something that our collective revolution often talked about
but seldom did, and certainly never did on the scale the Panthers and
the Nation were able to do: They politicized "the masses"--remember
that bunch of nameless nobodies that was supposed to carry out the
revolution for us? Some will contend that it was that same bunch of
nobodies that followed the revolutionary vanguard into the streets
against everything from ending the war in Vietnam to wheelchair access
to public buildings. And in that following, they did demonstrate "the
power of the people." But who of the vanguard is still walking and
talking with the people who made up those crowds? The implications, I
think, are clear. And that's something I don't want us to lose sight
of when we assess the Panthers and their place in history.
My TCW,
S. Flowers
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