Taken from P6.
Here’s the video:
[youtube]FfX1rgrkh2Y[/youtube]
Now Gordon doesn’t get it exactly right. When he talks about what black people have a tendency to do, he appears to talk about that tendency as if it were natural, or perhaps cultural.
It isn’t.
The tendency he refers to is one, to the extent that it exists, is the product of black American political development, or rather the lack of it. And that lack stems from the corroding effect of Jim Crow politics on black American life, and the treatment of black needs as “special interests.”
Certainly jim Crow had some influence, but I continue to maintain that the influence of the organizing principles and maintenance of power of the black church has embedded the power of personality into black social response.
Les,
Thank you for this post. Its ironic how Bruce Gordon borrows examples from the strengths of bourgeois organization which can be useful to us in struggle for revolutionary organization. I couldn’t agree with him more, regardless of my differences with his politics and NAACP’s liberal reformism in general.
It is definitely not common knowledge that Rosa Parks’ occupying of her seat on the bus was planned far in advance. I believe that they (was it SCLC?) initially had selected another woman, but eventually decided to install Rosa.
I think, however, it is important to not forget the spontaneous organizing power of people together. There was a lot of planned action behind the civil rights movement, no doubt, as far as the boycotts and such, but the alternative transportation system formed by black folks in response to these boycotts were literally formed overnight. I think C.L.R. James account of it is on point.
So it isn’t to say that when it came to the organization of this transportation system that people didn’t make some plans to carry out some actions, but that it wasn’t one grandiose plan organized by a central body and that the feet were the black folks of montgomery. It was more of a spontaneous and autonomous plan of common folks.
But great video man. I had the State of the Black Union playing all day yesterday and we watched it off and on. I would have to say that black official politics are as bankrupt as official politics in general. I think Robin D.G. Kelley said it best, the most important forms of black working class resistance existed outside of the established institutions and organizations.
Peace.
Thanks for spreading that clip. It’s the one I feel like everyone needs to pay attention to. I think the reason it must be learned is secondary to the fact. If it is acted on, the correct politics will shake out of it all because it will succeed when the others fail.
Gordon demonstrates, as he persuades his audience, why he is wrong to separate effective personalities from effective processes. He juxtaposes personality-based movements with process-based movements. He uses an argument from analogy and a McDonald’s example (business school case study) in order to persuade his audience that process-based movements can reliably endure without any particular leader while the personality-based movements tend to fade away soon after the personality dies.
However, I don’t think his McDonald’s analogy shows superior organizational processes led to or are responsible for the McDonald’s successes. I think it shows a successful institution—a corporate culture, a strategy, set of beliefs, set of rules, and a set of conventions, and a set of processes—led to and is responsible for McDonald’s success. The McDonald’s institution is no mere process, it is more similar to a religious institution.
And institutions, especially those that heavily promote abstract social, political, or ethical ideas, do need their personalities. Their personalities attempt to use rhetorical devices, similar to the rhetorical devices Gordon uses in his plea, in order to continually increase or regenerate support from their supporters and would-be supporters.
Gordon, as a personality, is replaceable. There has lived no irreplaceable leaders of good institutions. However, few good institutions randomly select from any one of their process-savvy supporters to lead them after one leader’s tenure is done. So even though no particular leader or personality may be critical to an institution’s success, there are certainly certain attributes that need be possessed by every good institution’s leader in order for it to compete well against other institutions.
Institutions select new leaders—new personalities—who have the track records or good reputations or attractive charisma that would impress supporters and would-be supporters; who are rhetorically skilled in ways that would enable them to motivate and persuade supporters the institutions target; and who have personalities that would best suit the institutions’ short-term-goals-focused tactics.
If the NAACP did not have a personality as good as Gordon’s at its helm, then its supporters might decrease in numbers, whether its processes were inefficient or efficient. Indeed, more of its supporters and would-be supporters would be recruited by or would join other institutions offering other sets of ideas and other personalities.
And, if the NAACP had a personality better or better for the current political economic times than Gordon’s, its numbers might even grow faster, along with its influence. Personality really does matter much more than Gordon attempted to lead his audience to believe.
Thanks for all of your thoughtful comments, and thanks Earl for putting the clip up in the first place. You know I’ve tripped on Tavis ever since Vision Circle, but I think he’s on to something here.
In order:
Mike, “the black church” doesn’t become “the black church” without Jim Crow…which robbed black people of the chance to DIRECTLY participate in formal politics.
Kris, the major problem with the new politics of the sixties (i’d say the older anarchist work as well but i don’t know this literature AT ALL), is its failure to clearly articulate what a “new institution” would look like. This is why Gordon’s comments are so powerful….even though he is creating a much starker contrast between process oriented organizations and personality oriented organizations than actually exist. (thanks e.)
I think I need to chime back in for just a second on the points being discussed as it is a basic fundamental view of the The C.L.R. James Group and the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project that it is, in fact, movements which create leaders and organizations and not leaders that create movements.
I believe Gordon’s point about the degeneration of organizations due to cult of personality is on point, but organizations also grow in proportion to the size and breadth of a particular movement. Thus, we also would argue that organizations take their cues from the tasks that the mass movements set before them.
His advice is truly only applicable as it concerns organization (whether revolutionary or reformist) and not as it concerns mass movements. I think that line of distinction needs to be drawn.
Martin Luther King nor the SCLC created the civil rights movement, but were rather sent up by that movement as representative of the most advanced ideas that that particular movement offered. Personalities (and organizations) will always be a part of any movement of working people, but we’re wasting our time if we think we’re going to teach any possible movement “a lesson”. The lesson is for organization and that organizations can more effectively respond to mass movements by structure than by the whims of some arbitrary personality.
I hope that is clear. If not, I can expound. Definitely enjoying this exchange.