Anticommunism narrowed acceptable black politics to loyalty-based civil rights

Evidence

This was the black liberal compact that set the terms for a new black liberal agenda on civil rights, an agenda in which anti-discrimination policy would free the American Idea to guide the world. In some ways, White and many other black leaders saw the writing on the wall: the Cold War had changed the terrain, and the black radical politics of the 1930s and 1940s was among its many casualties. Criticisms of American foreign policy were increasingly unacceptable, and black politics that rejected the American Idea were off-limits as legitimate forms of dissent. This would define the parameters of black liberalism: anti-communist civil rights, a compact that would limit black politics to domestic issues based in an abiding faith in America as the leader of the free world. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 451

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘black liberal compact’ is the historical anchor for Glaude’s later argument that Democratic loyalty is a trap; defines the antecedent to the hostage relationship.