Post-1960s Black radicalism is even farther from Marxism than white radicalism

Evidence

It was common among the Black intellectuals who came of age in the inter-war years to have some sort of sympathetic awareness of the Communist Party, while many, of course, started their careers in its publications. By contrast, the Black intelligentsia that came to prominence from the 1960s onwards was marked by its general lack of intellectual moorings in any kind of Marxism or in a politics marked by the communist movement. Figures like Angela Davis stand out in this regard precisely because they are the exceptions in a milieu where Black radicalism, as a distinct social category within American radicalism at large, is even farther removed from Marxism than are several quite distinct groupings in its white component. Feminism was the only progressive ideology which made any substantial new inroads into the Black academic community during this latter phase, as was true in the case of white intellectuals and students as well. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 141

Related

• The Black radical movement outweighed Marxism’s influence even on its most Westernized intellectuals (similarity 0.84)
• Black radicalism and Marxism may be incommensurable historical programs. (similarity 0.83)
• Black intellectuals’ nurture as Blacks outweighed Marxism in forging radical consciousness. (similarity 0.83)
• The Black radical tradition challenges Western radicalism’s claims about capitalism and the vanguard intelligentsia. (similarity 0.82)
• Black radical theory was nurtured in the diaspora, not in Africa itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Black radicals emerged by turning to their own historical tradition (similarity 0.81)
• The spectacle of interwar revolutions made observers locate Black radicalism’s origins there. (similarity 0.80)
• Black American intellectuals underwent parallel embourgeoisement after 1960s radicalization (similarity 0.80)
• The Black radical tradition has persistent phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysical boundaries of its own. (similarity 0.80)
• Radical Black activists turned to Pan-Africanism while keeping Marxist critiques of capitalism (similarity 0.80)
• Black radicals rejected Marxism for its Eurocentric blindness to racialism’s role in capitalism (similarity 0.80)
• Marxism’s explanatory power made it irresistible to Black radical intellectuals (similarity 0.79)
• Black radicalism evolved without conscious self-awareness as a tradition (similarity 0.79)
• Black revolutionary theory emerged independently from European radical movements (similarity 0.79)
• Marxism proved a gateway that three thinkers passed through to Black radicalism (similarity 0.79)