Given limitations of space, let me forego praising all that is praiseworthy and get down to stating my differences with Rivers, in the interest of advancing the discussion. I do not think Rev. Rivers carries his radical critique far enough. The antisemitic, anti-White mutterings of Farrakhan or Frances Cress Welsing are a sideshow. The celebrity intellectuals, with their fan clubs and detractors in the left-wing press, are not affecting what happens on the ground in Black America. But if we are to analyze what has gone wrong, these matters should not long detain us.
Larger forces are at work.
The fact is that it is White elites who determine the cultural assumptions which influence law and policy in America. The federal courts have had more to say about the role of integration in the struggle for Black social and economic development than have any dozen Black intellectuals. All of these influences have been of ambiguous benefit to Black communities. Too often have we been objects, but not subjects in the political and intellectual dramas that shape the consciousness of our children. Rivers wants to see the reconstruction of civil society in Black communities.