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livres

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. : The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon

Extrait du livre d’Adolph L. Reed, Jr., The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986, p. 41-60


4
Mythology of the Church in Contemporary Afro-American Politics

Exceptionalist approaches to black politics typically are fed by the mystique of black churchliness and religiosity, which postulates a peculiarly racial basis of participation and representation. According to this view, which assumes the organic leadership model, the church is the elemental unit of political mobilization in the black community. Because its structures are decentralized and operate at the « grass roots, » the black church can be construed as an authentically popular institution. Moreover, because this view also assumes a pandemic black religiosity, the church can be understood to be prior and superior to electoral or otherwise procedural institutions as a source of popular legitimations.

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livres presse

Adolph Reed Jr. : Tokens of the White Left

Article d’Adolph Reed Jr. paru dans The Progressive, Vol. 57, Issue 12, December 1993 et reproduit dans Class Notes. Posing As Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene, New York, The New Press, 2001, p. 71-76


For more than twenty years I refused on principle to use the phrase « the white left. » I did not want to give any credence to the view, commonly expressed among black activists in the late 1960s and after, that the leftist critique of American society was somehow white people’s property.