We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black
Solidarity. By Tommie Shelby. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2005. 336p. $27.95.
The intellectual and strategic moorings of contemporary black
political solidarity are increasingly unstable. As the political memory of
the race-specific Civil Rights movement fades further into history,
intraracial differences that have always existed, such as gender,
religion, sexuality, multiracial identification, immigration, region,
cultural affiliation, political ideology, and generation, are being
highlighted by race scholars from a variety of fields as reasons for
rethinking race-based political cohesion. Tommie Shelby acknowledges all
of these internal pressures, but sees the widening gap between poor and
more affluent blacks as the intraracial fissure that most threatens
political cohesion among today's African Americans. From this
sociological premise, Shelby sets out to articulate a
“progressive,” philosophically sound basis for black political
organization that appeals both to the class interests of poor and
working-class blacks and to those of middle- and upper-class blacks. By
“progressive,” Shelby means a recognition that basic social
injustices linger, and can and should be corrected through state
intervention and/or collective political action. Remedies for current
racial inequalities cannot be found in a “conservative” return
to a former era of ostensibly better social organization.