He stands outside a group authority so sharply defined and monolithic that it routinely delivers more than 90 percent of the black vote to whatever Democrat runs for president. White supremacy focused white America s group authority for three centuries before truth could even begin to catch up. All of this is made worse by the fact that black Americans have been a despised minority surrounded by indifference and open hatred. An individual s failure of group love is a far greater infraction among blacks because it virtually allies that individual with the enemy all around. An Uncle Tom is someone whose failure to love his own people makes him an accessory to their oppression.
Love adds the seriousness and risk to nonconformity.
If this gives black America the means to enforce its group authority and its explanation of its fate it also plagues us with a repressive, one-party politics. Because of historic vulnerability and the resulting insistence on conformity around a single strategic explanation of group fate, black America has not yet achieved a two-party politics. This differentiates them from white conservatives, who work out of a two-party group. I have met blacks in all these categories who are not considered conservatives. The liberal-conservative axis is a bit different for blacks than for Americans generally.