Black race-uplift historiography rested on fragile capitalist indulgence, not mass strength

Evidence

According to W. J. Moses, it was Crummell who initiated the synthesis of his class’s interests into a coherent ideology. But it was others, I would suggest, like George W. Williams and Carter G. Woodson who codified it into a historiographic expression negating the national legend. Still, what they achieved was but a fragile construction, its integrity subject to challenge whenever capitalist indulgence, the foundation upon which it rested, might dissipate or be withdrawn. Mercifully, perhaps, it was also true that the possibility of this occurring was beyond the comprehension of most of them. Neither Social Darwinism nor their comfortable gospels suggested anything but the most temporary diversions as possible. When the crisis did come and Black people mobilized to struggle against it, the Black petit bourgeoisie was again largely unprepared to abandon their illusory partnership with power. Du Bois, like his predecessors and contemporaries, William Brown, Carter Woodson, Bishop Henry Turner, George Williams, and the West Indian-born Edward Wilmot Blyden, had been deeply implicated in the “race uplift” historiographic tradition. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 895

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s research goal of tracing the Black radical tradition’s failure — here the petit-bourgeois strand’s dependency on capitalism. — connects to: Black social reform rested on poor people’s pooled efforts, not wealthy philanthropy — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 802; Claims of rising black antiracist mobilization in Colombia rest on flimsy evidence; Black petit bourgeois leadership during early Reconstruction proved ideologically empty and merely mediatory — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 963 (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Names the ‘race uplift’ historiographic tradition and its key authors, connecting to the book’s central distinction between petit-bourgeois and radical traditions.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Black social reform rested on poor people’s pooled efforts, not wealthy philanthropy — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 802; Claims of rising black antiracist mobilization in Colombia rest on flimsy evidence; Black petit bourgeois leadership during early Reconstruction proved ideologically empty and merely mediatory — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 963 (+5 more)