Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

tudes, and values-a way of thinking
about man and society ." Other
students of social movements
emphasize another essential feature
. Applied to this discourse,
they imply a fundamental relationship
between the two functions of
a school. In the words of Daniel
Bell (The End of Ideology, pp .
320-371), "Ideology is the conversion
of ideas into social levers
. . . .
In essence, the ideology running
through a society does much to determine
how the people perceive
themselves, the perspective from
which they evaluate all issues, even
the very alternatives they imagine .
Clearly, the course of human
events is determined largely by just
such factors .
I submit that the creation or development
of a new ideology permeating
the lives of black people
is one of the most important if not
the most important issue facing us
today . If such a black ideology
already existed, we would not see
hundreds of agencies and organizations
operating in our communities
with all of them getting essentially
nowhere . If such an ideology already
existed, it would no longer
be necessary to keep in stock a
thousand and one powerful black
orators to stir the black masses to
action . If such an ideology already
existed, it would not be necessary
to create crises to solicit black support
that soon peters out .
We are not the first group of
people to experience the need for
a new ideology . The very group we
NEGRO DIGEST March 1970
recognize as our nemesis, the white
Americans, have experienced such
a crisis . In fact, the resolution of
their crisis has had much to do with
the creation of ours . Winthrop
Jordan (White Over Black) chronicles
the identity or ideological
conflicts felt by the white American
people during and shortly
after the Revolutionary War. The
American ideology that evolved
from that period had at its core the
notion that a true American was
essentially a slightly modified
Anglo-Saxon . The definition of
"American" consciously excluded
non-English European influences .
The incorporation of blackness
into the recognized concept of
Americanism was so absurd that
the idea was never seriously considered
.
Reality and the official ideology
of Americanism could not and
cannot be reconciled . Consequently,
white America has had to maintain
two ideologies . The official
ideology incorporates all the ideals
expressed in the country's official
documents . The "real" ideology
provides the foundations for racial
oppression . Since a society's ideology
serves as a basis for the attitudinal
and belief systems of its
people, the duality and inconsistency
of the American ideology implied
a corresponding duality and
inconsistency in the model American
white personality . All the
various notions of cognitive balance
can be applied toward understanding
the probable result . That
result has most often been denial
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