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Oliver Cromwell Cox : Toward a Pan-Africanist Epistemology for Community Action

Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr. Journal of Black Studies 2001 31: 325 DOI: 10.1177/002193470103100306 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/31/3/325

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JOURNAL Lemelle / TOWARD OF BLACK A PAN-AFRICANIST STUDIES / JANUARY EPISTEMOLOGY 2001

OLIVER CROMWELL COX Toward A Pan-Africanist Epistemology for Community Action

ANTHONY J. LEMELLE, JR.
Purdue University

In many ways, Oliver Cromwell Coxs academic career was similar to those of other Black sociologists; however, his experiences, given his perspectives and their time and place, were unique. Like any other major Black sociologist, similar to Charles S. Johnson or E. Franklin Frazier, Cox endured the stigma of skin color produced by White supremacy. Yet Coxs approach differs markedly from the conciliatory sociological approach of Johnsons (1941) work or the more liberal/integrationist approach of the work of Frazier (Metzger, 1971; van den Berghe, 1981). Charles U. Smith and Lewis Killian suggested in their essay on Black sociologists and social protest that
Oliver C. Cox could, like DuBois, be described as a forgotten sociologist. Appearing four years after the publication of Myrdals An American Dilemma, his Caste, Class and Race . . . was itself a challenge to, a protest against, the prevailing sociological perspective on race relations. . . . Cox argued that assimilation could come only as a result of revolutionary action by united Black and White proletarians. (Smith & Killian, 1974, p. 202)

AUTHORS NOTE: An earlier version of this article was read at the 14th Annual Pan-African Studies Conference, Indiana State University, April 11, 1997. Another version of this article was read at the special session on The Life and Work of Oliver C. Cox, American Sociological Association Meeting, Toronto, August 12, 1997. I appreciate comments from Ganesh Chand, Rutledge Dennis, Herbert M. Hunter, Christopher McCauley, and Richard Williams.
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What Smith and Killian (1972) point out in their analysis of Coxs (1948) Caste, Class and Race is that in the end it was assimilationist in its thrust (Smith & Killian, 1972, p. 202). Recognizing Coxs underlying assimilationist bias is important precisely because of the failures of racial accommodation and the post-Cox developments in the subdiscipline of race relations. Cox appears, much as W.E.B. DuBois, to have been unable to navigate his twoness, as DuBois so eloquently put it in 1903:
One ever feels his twonessan American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. . . . The history of the American Negro is the history of this strifethis longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. (DuBois, 1961, p. 17)

As a Black sociologist, Cox was relegated by the structures of White supremacy to the margins of the ideal sociological tradition. Even progressive scholars such as John Bracey, August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick (1973) in their well-known The Black Sociologists: The First Half Century, mention Coxs name only once in passing. Simultaneously, Cox represents the progressive spirit of African American history vis--vis the slave trade, organized plantation slavery, Black codes, Jim Crow, and modern forms of oppression and domination. The spirit of these historical forms of domination is often retold by the logic of White supremacy, resulting in moments of self-hate and Black group-hate in the body of progressive thought. Cox was certainly not immune to such social selfeffacement. Black group-hate deriving from the structure of White thought and Black resistance to the positioning of Blacks as an element of social subordination is an important context for reading Coxs potential contribution to a Pan-Africanist knowledge base. The data will show that the function of imperial White scholarship is to erase Blackness, both ontologically and epistemologically, and to advance the axiological agenda of Whiteness. In this article, I will focus on Coxs progressive contribution to U.S. race relations and

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on his struggle with mainline White supremacist sociological traditions (most notably Park, 1919). Through comparing and contrasting selections of Coxs (1948, 1967) work with Eugene Genoveses (1965, 1976, 1990, 1995), I will suggest the significance of his commentaries for current social theorizing that reconceptualizes concepts such as race, racism, and ethnicity, normally treating their referent as binary tropes with semantic designations of Whiteness as supremely good and Blackness as disgusting. Borrowing and expanding the concept of the decolonization of social research from Robert Blauner and David Wellman (1973), I will tease out features of Coxs position on race relations that warrant reconsideration of their contribution to a Pan-Africanist epistemology. I take the polemical position that it is important to reclaim elements of works by Black scholars that promote an Afrocentric approach to Black studies. As Molefi Kete Asante (1987) has written, A truly Afrocentric rhetoric must oppose the negation in Western culture; it is combative, antagonistic, and wholly committed to the propagation of a more humanistic vision of the world. . . . It is neither imperialistic nor oppressive.

THE LEGACY OF WHITE SUPREMACY: THOUGHT AND MATERIAL

Coxs body of work is necessary for a precise understanding of what became penned a world system (Wallerstein, 1979) where, to borrow and modify the phrase societies structured in dominance that was eventually suggested by Stuart Hall (1979, 1992), the world is structured in racial dominance (Hunter, 1985). This recognition by Cox is a major theoretical advance in the history of Black consciousness and certainly assisted scholars such as Wallerstein (1979) and Hall (1979, 1992) in their work. It challenged the imperial White narratives or, rather, meta-narratives that employ a vulgar empiricism of compartmentalized knowledges that simultaneously mask their instrumental function: the ideological basis of bourgeois social organization. As Herbert M. Hunter (1985) suggested,

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Cox . . . believed that capitalism represented a form of social organization quite different from the Indian caste system. . . . It was not only a unique economic system, but a sociocultural system displaying its own distinct values, behavioral attributes, social relationships, and institutional patterns. Unique to capitalismand this is where fresh ground is brokenwas the formation of a worldwide system including both capitalist and noncapitalist societies. This system is hierarchically arranged in a territorial division of labor of dominance, dependency, and exploitation. (p. 45)

The issues of dominance, dependency, and exploitation are exactly the content of both the economic and ideological arrangement of White supremacy. These terms have been critical for the West and for Western sociology. In fact, the ideological message of White supremacy is precisely that a White person or group must instruct the darker and backward races of the world in the proper values, norms, and roles associated with civilization. We can really capture the importance of this message in the father of the subdiscipline of race relations Robert Parks (1919) essay, The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures With Special Reference to the Negro. In it, Park stated,
Everywhere and always the Negro has been interested rather in expression than in action; interested in life itself rather than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist like the Jew, nor a brooding introspective like the East Indian, nor a pioneer and frontiersman like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His mtier is expression rather than action. The Negro is, so to speak, the lady of the races. (pp. 129-130)

In many courses on race relations, Parks (1919) race cycle theory is introduced to American college students. This theory argues that after diverse groups come into contact with some competition that would later be diminished by accommodation. For Park, accommodation means that the subordinate group will accept its position under the leadership of the dominant group, which is generally White (Lemelle, 1996, pp. 175-182). Most scholars appear to be unoffended by such thought, preferring the revisionist strategy

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of casting Park as a friend of Black people (see e.g., Lyman, 1992). Perhaps we should be less willing to accept Parks framework and examine it with a more critical eye in the future. In contrast to Park, the ideological message of sociology was for Cox the message of White supremacy, that is, White rule, domination, paternalism, and social rewards. Park, on the other hand, helped to establish an ideologically liberal sociological theory that has resulted in a virtual White theoretical community where scholarship that fails to promote the White canonical lines is excluded, much as Coxs work has been. The material and ideological manifestation of White supremacy was essential to the intellectual climate Cox inherited. Even the progressive works from the left shared a commitment to the creed of White supremacy. We find it in the leader Karl Marx himself.
The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new worldon the one hand the universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that inter-course; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. When the great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch . . . subjected them [market and production powers] to the common control of the most advanced peoples. (Marx, 1853/1978, p. 664)

The purpose of this long quote is not to suggest that Marx failed to appreciate the profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization but rather to highlight logic of mastery and hierarchy in classical Marxism. The master narrative asserting the advanced peoples and the privileging of the rational and scientific is in fact a request, if not a claim of natural right, to permit Whites to rule the people of color throughout the world. Of course, it is not necessary that the advanced peoples be White; yet in real history, they are White. This Whiteness is inextricable from advanced status in capitalist social organization, and it is precisely the problem that Ralph Ellison (1973) pointed to in his review of Myrdals An American Dilemma.

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Both the left and the New Deal. . . . The most striking example of this failure [lack of restraint against Blacks] is to be seen in the New Deal Administrations perpetuation of a Jim Crow Army, and the shamefaced support of it given by the Communists. It would be easy . . . to question the sincerity of these two groups. Or in the case of the New Deal, attribute its failure to its desire to hold power in a concrete political situation; while the failure of the Communists could be laid to Red perfidy. But this would be silly. Sincerity is not a quality that one expects of political parties, not even revolutionary ones. . . . [It] makes room for the old idea of paternalism, and the corny notion that these groups have an obligation to do something for the Negro. (Ellison, 1973, p. 8)

Here is the essence of Coxs problem for making a contribution to the liberation of the oppressed of the world. Frankly, we might sum it up by reciting the proclamation of the renowned feminist Audre Lorde (1984): The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house (pp. 110-113). For Cox, the concepts of equality, individualism, hierarchy, and caste were central to his task of understanding race relations or, rather, what he referred to as the situations of race relations. By what right do the advance peoples rule? What is the most salient rationale provided for their supremacy? Cox recognized the instrumental functions of racism.
Racism, at this stage, explains and justifies racial exploitation and prejudice; it shows why white dominance over peoples of color is proper and inevitable. At any given time, we should expect it to be identified particularly among the leading imperialist nations. . . . Racism, too, provides Europeans with a moral rationale for their subjugation and exploitation of inferior peoples. (Cox, 1967, p. 26)

The right of the superior civilization to rule is an essential assumption that was not just reasoned in American sociology particularly the Chicago School, where authors such as Park, Ernest Burgess, William F. Ogburn, and W. I. Thomas promoted such thinking. The ideology of White supremacy was, and remains, essential to Western sociology. It is grounded in the idea of the human individual. Under the rules of the Western canon, the value of the individual takes precedence above other competing values such as equality and liberty. So society is thought to be a collection

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of autonomous individuals who join together voluntarily with a definite aim. Simultaneously, the individual is constructed by the society. This is the case, because under Western logic, the individual acts on the basis of categories inscribed on individual consciousness by the society. This is precisely the logic that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim had in mind with his concepts collective representations and collective consciousness. Many bourgeois thinkers are disturbed by such a sociological perspective, preferring to claim that individuals make themselves. But the idea of society producing the consciousness of the individual is far more deeply embedded in the Western tradition. After all, both Plato and Aristotle, in spite of their differences on the subject, recognized that there was no moral life outside of the Republic and that moral life was, in fact, a life of hierarchical order. And, of course, the West imagined in their narrative of political and moral order that the backward peoples were fortunate to have White leadership. Hierarchy is a necessity for the better part of Western sociology. Its culmination is seen in the works of Talcott Parsons (1953) and Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset (1953). Simply stated, humans think as well as act. Therefore, individuals have ideas and values. To affirm a value is to produce a hierarchy of ideas and a consensus of values, all of which individuals find vital for their social life. This hierarchy should be understood as independent of natural inequalities or the distribution of power. According to this thinking, although power may be associated with hierarchy, it is not necessary for hierarchy. The claim of equality itself is a hierarchical claim because it requires a choice (Dumont, 1970, p. 20). Western sociology views competing claims of values as inferior to its position of supreme values, and it derives its conclusions through apperception. According to my reading of the Western sociological tradition, all of the talk about value-neutral methodologies is ultimately a ruse for White supremacy. The White supremacist reasons that hierarchy is both neutral and a necessity. Assuming such an outlook suggests that hierarchy does not have anything to do with power but is associated with equality. Under such an insidious logic, there could never be a Black sociology,

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only the reproduction of a White theoretical community. This is when and where Coxs sociology enters.

COXS POLITICAL CLASS STRUGGLE

Coxs contributions to sociology generally and, specifically, to a Black sociology were summed up clearly by Michael Banton (1977):
The tradition . . . assumed that the future of Black Americans lay in their right to full American nationality and citizenship. Oliver Coxs book Caste, Class and Race was the first major challenge to this tradition. . . . He outlined a mode of analysis that subordinated both race and nation to class. (p. 11)

In fact, Bantons (1977) synopsis is misleading in its stress on the concept of class instead of race in Cox. Cox avoided conflating categories such as class and race by recognizing that the category the White ruling class is not synonymous with the Black ruling class category. If I am reading Coxs theory carefully, the social role of being a wealthy White is not a political expression for the role of being a wealthy Black. For this reason, Cox consistently pointed to the attempts of White established scholars to grant a specific kind of status to Black intellectuals who pleased their White sensibilities in the profession. It was Herbert Blumer who wrote,
Park had developed a distinct reputation and accordingly was attracting young Negro intellectuals here in the United States, as represented by Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier and a number of others. That was a tradition at Chicago and it represented, as a group, an approach to the study of race relations along the lines of Parks whole scheme of analysis. (cited in Hunter & Abraham, 1987, p. xxxv)

The institutional relationship between the Chicago School and the Black community was, to borrow the language of colonial theorists, internal colonial. Cox relentlessly pointed to this feature of the relationship. As Hunter and Abraham (1987) attest, Coxs 1949

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paper The Leadership of Booker T. Washington, read before the annual meeting of the Association of Social Science Teachersa primarily Black groupin Jefferson City, Missouri, viewed Washington as a class collaborator and dubbed his leadership spurious (p. xxvi). Cox recognized the litmus test for inclusion. For a Black, professional inclusion in sociology means acceptance of the myth of White male supremacy not just as an ideology but as a practice. In the body of sociological literature, all knowledge must be filtered through an agent of White maleness. In this intellectual capacity, the White male role is required to assume an all-knowing posture; the role ascribes to those positioned in it the power to proclaim the hierarchical standards. As philosopher Howard McGary (1994) wrote in his study of alienation and the African American experience, Those who have power and privilege will be able to understand and fairly assess claims made by those who lack power and privilege (p. 134). This is an essential aspect of the White male role, particularly as it is understood by liberalism. Frantz Fanon (1967) spoke of this phenomenon in this manner in Black Skin, White Masks,
When a Negro talks of Marx, the first reaction is always the same: We have brought you up to our level and now you turn against your benefactors, Ingrates! Obviously nothing can be expected of you. And then too there is that bludgeon argument of the plantationowner in Africa: Our enemy is the teacher. (p. 35)

Progressive social theorists often attempt to position themselves outside of a White supremacist narrative, but their efforts appear futile. Frankly, as Cedric J. Robinson (1983) points out in his major study Black Marxism, in the production of capitalism, imperialism and the Black middle classes, nearly always a problem existed between the masses, the important native intellectuals for the Whites, and the White intellectuals (pp. 251-265). In this regard, even Banton (1977) inadvertently falls prey to the logic of White supremacy when he writes that Cox went to the literature on Hindu caste and analyzed it with a perspicacity that won him praise

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from Dumont (p. 130). One wonders if Bantons axiological rhetoric is the role play of the imperial scholar positioning Cox within the homo hierarchicus fantasy of the master. Well, we may be certain that Dumonts praise is a major accomplishment for any Black intellectual. E. Franklin Frazier was the Black darling of the mainstream canon. Cox recognized the relationship between the White associations and its need for Frazier, remarking,
One can discern most clearly the hand of Park on the intellectual life of Frazier. . . . His professional career had to be contrived on the tightrope set up by the associational establishment. He won many prizes and honors, but the exigencies of winning involved his soul and his manhood (cited in Hunter & Abraham, 1987, pp. xxxviixxxviii)

In Coxs treatment, there had been a historical development of a political class that was discernible from a social class. For Cox (1948),
It must be already obvious that political and social classes are distinct phenomena. Social classes form a system of co-operating conceptual status entities; political classes, on the other hand, do not constitute a system at all, for they are antagonistic. The political class is a power group which tends to be organized for conflict; the social class is never organized, for it is a concept only. (p. 154)

By developing the political class category, Cox is able to highlight a major problem for the hegemonic presentations of Marxism. It is best stated by Robinson (1983) as he reflected on the works of Cox, DuBois, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Eric Williams, Richard Wright, and:
It appeared to them that Western Marxist, unconsciously bound by a Eurocentric perspective, could not account for nor correctly assess the revolutionary forces emerging from the Third World. The racial metaphysics of Western consciousnessthe legacy of a civilization shielded their fellow socialists from the recognition of racialisms

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influence on the development and structures of the capitalists system, and conceptually pardoned them from a more acute inquiry into the categories of their own thought. (p. 447)

I want to suggest that this is exactly why Cox is so despised by the profession of sociology. Coxs application of the political class concept challenges the liberal narrative of a color-blind social organization distributing social rewards based on merit. In contrast to the liberal view, Cox (1948) asserted,
Our hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice, developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of the world-wide ramifications of capitalism, all racial antagonisms can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the White people of Europe and North America. (p. 322)

Hunter and Abraham (1987) made Coxs strategy clear: On the basis of economic interests . . . the White ruling class developed a corresponding ideology to justify and rationalize existing relations of production. The resulting political-class struggle is inextricably connected to racial antagonism and constitutes its central dynamic core (p. xli). Coxs theoretical strategy explains the importance of White supremacy for the system and the globalization of White supremacy. Yet, unlike Marx, the exploitation of people of color is not merely exploitation at the moment of production but also exploitation in relations of foreign trade. Exploitation in exchange relations was a major argument that set Cox apart from Marx. For Cox, capitalism has always expanded and developed on the basis of foreign trade (Hunter & Abraham 1987, p. xli). As such, Cox
criticized Marxs theory of class, which he argued failed to offer a precise enough definition of classes themselves . . . he repudiated Marxs labor theory of value, arguing that surplus value was derived not simply from the exploitation of labor in the sphere of the factory (within the nation-state), but also in trade among nations in the larger world economy. (Hunter & Abraham 1987, p. xl)

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The argument regarding foreign trade relations was the kind of independent thinking that contributed to Coxs becoming such a controversial figure. This is not to suggest that the accusations of his Marxist leanings at a historical period when Marxists were shunned in the United States did not also contribute to the intolerance of his work. Yet, it is clear that Cox was a significant victim of White supremacy that resulted in his dismissal rather than in the theoretical engagement of his work. The exploitation inherent in foreign trade relations was part and parcel of capitalist logic, and the category was often conflated in the metaphor workers of the world. Hidden in the workers category was the additional burden of racial antagonism and exploitation placed on people of color around the world. In short, surplus value was realized either through increasing the work of labor, lower wages, or improving the techniques of production. But these conditions were not to be seen as unconnected to foreign commerce, which significantly augmented domestic industries (Hunter, 1997, p. 281). So the later conception of Third World Americans within the context of foreign trade and internal colonialism is grateful to Cox for suggesting the relationship that results in discriminatory wage racial structures. Discriminatory wage structures operated in the colonial areas as well as within the domestic economies of the colonizers. As such, historical patterns of segmented labor forces continue to be a prominent feature of Western European and North American labor markets. Not only is there racial segmentation associated with positions within firms, but also wages paid for doing the same kind of work with compatible seniority and experience are generally racialized (Barrera, 1979; Bonacich, 1972). For Cox, labor exploitation is political and part of the work of a political class. Theoretically speaking, Cox connected labor exploitation to his concepts of race relations and race prejudice. As for race relations, Cox (1948) wrote,
We may think of race relations, therefore, as that behavior which develops among peoples who are aware of each others actual or imputed physical differences. Moreover, by race relations we do not mean all social contacts between persons of different races, but

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only those contacts the social characteristics of which are determined by a consciousness of racial difference. (p. 320)

According to Cox, race relations implies consciousness, but race prejudice does not.
In our description of the uses of race prejudice in this essay we are likely to give the impression that race prejudice was always manufactured in full awareness by individuals or groups of entrepreneurs. This however, is not quite the case. Race prejudice, from its inception, became part of the social heritage, and as such both exploiters and exploited for the most part are born heirs to it. It is possible that most of those who propagate and defend race prejudice are not conscious of its fundamental motivation. To paraphrase Adam Smith: They who teach and finance race prejudice are by no means such fools as the majority of those who believe and practice it. (Cox, 1948, p. 333n)

Coxs (1948) analysis assists us in recognizing how the political formula governing power relations in a nation-state changes in agreement with changes in the social structure. For example, as the social mobility of African Americans accelerated since 1960, the political strategies of the White-dominated electorate responded by a mean-spirited retrenchment on social and economic programs designed to assist racial minorities and women. Simultaneously, the White citizenry launched a vicious cultural attack against people of color from systematically denigrating their family organizations to implementing legislation that resulted in a 168% change in state and federal prison populations between 1980 and 1992. The changes initiated by the White citizenry were ideological and practical, just as Coxs theory had predicted. Following in the tradition of Cox, Robert Blauner (1972) wrote in his classic analysis of Racial Oppression in America,
Racist social relations have different cultural consequences from class relations and therefore . . . cannot be forced into the procrustean bed of lower-class culture. . . . Racism excludes a category of people from participation in society in a different way than does class hegemony and exploitation. The thrust of racism is to dehu-

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manize, to violate dignity and degrade personalities in a much more pervasive and all-inclusive way than class exploitation . . . racial and class oppression . . . have diverse consequences for group formation, for the salience of identities based upon them. (pp. 145-146)

Yet, as John Rex and David Mason (1986) have demonstrated in their edited collection of influential theories of race relations in the United States and England, Coxs methodology is rationalized as epistemologically flawed, requiring little additional attention (Banton, 1986) or proclaimed no longer useful because of White theoretical progress. On the latter position, John Solomos (1986) wrote,
Moreover, as Eugene Genovese (1971) has pointed out, Coxs work was very much the product of his time, in that he was familiar with a Marxism that had not yet been influenced by the work of Gramsci and other Western Marxists or by the experience of racial conflict that took place during the 1960s. (p. 87)

HEGEMONY AND POLITICAL CLASS STRUGGLE

What is the significance of Genoveses (1971) assessment of Coxs work for the reproduction of White supremacy? For the remainder of this article, I will focus on differences between Genoveses variety of hegemony theory and Coxs political class theory and their relations to race relations; the substantive areas of family and crime are the narratives that I primarily find interesting. One of the critical problems facing any discussion of race relations is the general inability of Western sociology to even recognize, much less interrogate, racial narratives. Increasingly, we are asked to render faith in rational choice and color-blind perspectives of race relations. The subtext of such narratives includes the myth of progress that reasons that race and racism are no longer major social problems. But as legal scholar Crenshaw (1997) recently indicated, Talking honestly about crime, unwed motherhood, and morality essentially means talking about race (p. 109). Crenshaw continued,

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This re-racing of inequality implicitly challenges a key plank of the liberal paradigm that presumed the essential similarity between races, while assumptions and beliefs about racial difference had previously figured within color-blind paradigms as racial prejudice. In the new frank talk about a host of issues, Blackness reemerges as a repository for a range of pathologies. (p. 109)

Given the White political class instrumentality of pathological narratives and their disciplinary rhetorics, I want to argue that it was fortunate that Cox did not pursue the research strategies of Frazier and Johnson. The latter rhetorics eventually assisted in the production of perspectives such as those of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Genovese. In the case of Genovese, much of what passes for the science of history is merely anti-Black rhetoric functioning to pathologize Black Americans. As historian Clarence E. Walker (1991) wrote, Genovese has taken U.B. Phillipss analysis of the paternalistic slave system and given it Marxian clothing (p. 57). How does Genoveses rhetoric assist African Americans as a political class group, and why should African Americans buy into his reading of Gramscis hegemony as opposed to reading White cultural domination and authority as related to what Cox (1948) called an attitudinal justification necessary for an easy exploitation of some race (p. 476)? Much as Cox viewed Ruth Benedicts conception of racism as a form of ethnocentrism, we may view Genoveses rhetoric as such:
But the ethnocentrism is immediately a function of its solidarity rather than of its racial antagonism. Indeed, the essential fact of ethnocentrism is not so much antagonism as it is a propensity in members of a cultural group to judge and estimate, in terms of their own culture, the cultural traits of persons in other cultures. (Cox, 1948, p. 478)

As an authority on the history of organized plantation slavery and the political economy of slavery, Genovese (1965, 1976) promoted the thesis of the planters power as pervasive, he must deny that the slaves had a world view that was independent of their masters outlook (Walker, 1991, p. 72). There is a White politi-

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cal-class function in Genoveses narration of African American passivity. As Walker (1991) indicated,
Genovese employs paternalism as an umbrella under which all master-slave relations are subsumed. . . . For paternalism, as Genovese defines it, emphasizes the mutual or reciprocal nature of master-slave relations. The same kind of relations exist between sadist and masochist and executioners and their victims. . . . The major problem with this definition, though, is that it downplays the coercive nature of slavery. (p. 63).

Genoveses usage of the concept hegemony permits him to mask an explanation of open class conflict. Hiding behind a bourgeois family narrative, the idea of hegemony becomes a part of a larger Marxist apology for why major revolutions did not happen as they should have. This bourgeois family narrative is an effacement of slave history, at least the history we know from the slave narratives. As Angela Davis (1983) pointed out, Despite the testimony of slaves about the high incidence of rape and sexual coercion, the issue of sexual abuse has been all but glossed over in the traditional literature on slavery (p. 25). Davis quoted slave testimonies at length. For example, Henry Bibbs master forced one slave girl to be his sons concubine; M.F. Jamisons overseer raped a pretty slave girl; and Solomon Northrups owner forced one slave, Patsy, to be his sexual partner (Davis, 1983, p. 25). Underplaying the race violence in the slave accounts is a disturbing sleight of hand and highlights the practical importance of Coxs political class concept for the interrogation of racial narratives. Today, we may unequivocally conclude,
The fact that planters included slaves in their family circles should not, as Genovese suggests, lead one to believe that slavery was paternalistic. . . . A great deal of the systems injustice occurred in the familial context. . . . This denial of humanity was reinforced when planters called their favorites aunties, uncle, and boy. Rather than connoting familial affection these terms only emphasized the slaves powerlessness. (Walker, 1991, p. 64)

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We may wonder if Genoveses inherited tradition of paternalism in his recent honest talk about crime, unwed motherhood, and morality has become less violent, given the alleged declining significance of race. Of course, Genoveses values are not above suspicion for one applying Coxs political class concept. In 1990, Genovese wrote an article that he published in Commentary:
As is, the rot deepens: we are being overwhelmed by drugs; mass homelessness; the poisoning of our children with pornography, perversion, and impossible aspirations; the transformation of our cities into Third World metropolises for the ostentatiously rich and miserably poor; and the steady decline of the national productivity, work ethic, and production of basic goods that undergird the whole. (p. 49)

Genovese went on to ask how a nation with our level of political culture could be overawed by a gangster empire. He suggested that possible solutions include the following:
Undoubtedly, action would require curtailment or redefinition of civil liberties, not to mention the high cost of incarceration and some judiciously selected executions . . . for racism, for poverty, for crime, for homelessness, for pornography, for all other conditions and practices incompatible with civilized life. (p. 50)

Genoveses (1990) discourse clearly proclaims the sinfulness of the masses, and he occupies a very comfortable position from which to make his observations. As Walker (1991) suggested,
[Genovese] tailors the evidence to fit the model. Hegemony provides him with a social model into which events and people can be fitted in such a way as to make all of their actions comprehensible. It enables Genovese to argue that a complex social system was integrated by shared values. (p. 57)

Yet, one would think that Genovese, even as a progressive scholar would not hide his analysis of White supremacy behind the loin-

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cloth of racism while proposing some universal value system. As Troy Duster (1976) warned us some time ago, What then best explains why and how one dominates the other? In contemporary argument about universalism/meritocracy versus affirmative action, this is a critical question (p. 73). Duster continues with his phenomenological perspective, suggesting that it is important for us to realize that our universal (1) varies in time, (2) is socially defined, and (3) is intrinsically interconnected with the social structure of privilege and its maintenance (p. 73). Failing to seriously interrogate the racial logic of Genoveses work is to efface the White supremacy of the racial narrative. The semiotics of Genoveses logic is a pornotroping of African American culture and African American consciousness. I want to suggest that much like the traditional values employed by the White political class to exclude and marginalize Coxs work, a similar technology is employed to erase the work on Black families and Black culture by intellectuals such as Genovese. We can see this in Genoveses (1995) pathologizing rhetoric on Black sex and families. In a recent issue of The American Enterprise, Genovese reveals his disdain for Black family scholars when he writes
[Daniel Patrick Moynihan] performed an inestimable service in calling for measures to support the two-parent Black household. Indeed, the steady disappearance of the fathera condition he identifiedhas reached catastrophic proportions and engendered a near-total collapse of the Black family. (Genovese, 1995, p. 37)

Of course, Genoveses (1995) claims are foolish. We know that fathers have not disappeared from Black households; neither have uncles, sons, cousins, nephews, and male friends (Nobles & Goddard 1984; Stack 1974; Staples 1994; also see Logan 1996). Although Black families have not collapsed into what Genoveses (1995) colonial fantasy imagines, Black families are different from White families. But Genovese prefers to rely on a Black preacher, Reverend Eugene Rivers, pastor of Azusa Christian Community in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to authorize his claim:

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As entry into the labor markets is increasingly dependent on education and high skills, we will see, perhaps, for the first time in the history of the United States, a generation of economically obsolete Americans. . . . Unlike many of our ancestors, who came out of slavery and entered this century with strong backs, discipline, a thirst for literacy, deep religious faith, and hope in the face of monumental adversity, we have produced a generation who [do] not know the ways of the Lorda new jack generation, ill-equipped to secure gainful employment even as productive slaves. (Genovese, 1995, p. 37)

The Reverand Rivers is important for Genoveses purpose of establishing Black life and culture as deviant. He will protect any claims against his project with a subtextual rhetoric employing name calling and ridicule: Moynihans fellow liberals have mounted a ferocious assault on the two-parent family, the social norm of heterosexuality, parental authority over children, and anything that smacks of serious religious commitment (Genovese, 1995, p. 37). If we are to buy such logic, we must accept the universal and color-blind ideologies as an act of faith. The power relationship of the message runs like this: Slavery was good for Blacks because it taught them how to work in a disciplined way and showed them the best values for all humans; these values are nuclear families, heterosexuality, Christian religion, the written word, and White supremacy. Frankly, to be normal under such logic, one must be a White male. This is why Cox reminded us that Frazier had to relinquish his manhood to be accepted by the White political class controlling the field of American sociology. The literary critic Ann DuCille (1997) helps us to read the disciplining rhetoric of Genoveses White supremacist narration:
I think that here a Marxist analysis of domestic economy under patriarchy might be more useful than a racial analysis of what has been figured as specifically or uniquely Black male behavior. . . . Within this patriarchal, capitalist framework, heterosexual coupling functions as a domain of male power in which labor or material culture (figured as male) has ultimate dominion over leisure or high culture (figured as female). (p. 301)

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This insidious logic is the act of the ultimate domination of a people: the erasing of the father symbol of the Black cultural entity and replacing that image with the image of a White male. Here is the narrative that predominates from our study of Cox: All great sociologists are White; there have been a few Black men who have done some interesting things in the science of history, but they were taught by White men and never excelled beyond their teachers; finally, Black sociology is inferior, and for that reason, Black sociologists can be ignored. For this very reason, literary critic Hortense J. Spillers (1987) has written, Daniel Patrick Moynihans celebrated Report of the late sixties, the Negro Family has no Father to speak ofhis Name, his Law, his Symbolic function mark the impressive missing agencies in essential life of the Black community (p. 66).

CONCLUSION

There are many features of Coxs work that have not been explored in this article. For example, it may be argued that it is important to read Cox in terms of his life course. As such, some of his positions will have changed as he grew older. It might also be argued that Cox became more conservative and developed a more scathing criticism of American Blacks as he gained age. We might look at the ways that Cox fell into the I want Whites to accept me position at different points in his life. Finally, many will be interested in the specific ways that White supremacy affected Coxs life. These points must be explored at length in future research. In this article, however, I presented a polemical argument asserting the importance of Coxs concept of political class for developing a strong Pan-African position when confronted with White political class interest and action. Cox was certainly able to penetrate the political class interest inherent in the race cycle logic developed by Park (1919) and the ethnicity theorists. Cox challenged the Marxian perspective for its failure to accurately account for the experiences of Africans as well as other people of color under White international domination.

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Despite the general agreement that Cox was a man of his time and not of much use for a millenarian social science, his political class concept has significance for reading current writers on Africans and the African diaspora. Although it is tempting to go Eurocentric as we attempt to dialogue about the kinds of actions that should be embraced by the Pan-African community, Cox contributes a significant tool for our understanding of the rhetoric of Whiteness and its dominating consequences.

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Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr. teaches sociology at Purdue University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is author of Black Male Deviance and coeditor of Readings in the Sociology of AIDS. He is Membership Chair of the Association of Black Sociologists and Vice President of the North Central Sociological Association.

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