Neoconservatives, Black Conservatives, and the Retreat from Social Justice

Abstract

In The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), Harold Cruse described the dualism in challenges confronting black intellectuals. Cruse noted that black intellectuals were expected to be acutely attuned to the white power structure, its cultural kv stitutions, and larger dynamics of economics, politics, and social class in order to control or affect them. At the same time, these black intellectuals were challenged to define and negotiate a role that would combine cultural and political criticism and kv elude programs and demands.1 Cruse recognized that the institutional resources supportive of black intellectuals existed outside the black community and that these resources constrained black intellectuals to play a narrower role. Cruse’s critique of black intellectuals focused on their uncritical embracing of liberalism and integration.