The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics [Paperback]

Norman Kelley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Nation Books | Publication Date: May 20, 2004

Al Sharpton's entrance into the 2004 Democratic presidential race is evidence of a decaying black political culture where ego trumps politics. It is the last gasp of a tradition that has been transformed over a generation from bold, effective and results-oriented politics to rhetoric and symbolism, argues crime writer and social commentator Norman Kelley. As Kelley shows, what Sharpton covets is the sobriquet—The Head Negro in Charge (HNIC), a symbolic political mobilization that replaces effective politics and organizing. "The HNIC syndrome has seen the rise of symbolic leaders—Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Sharpton and now Russell Simmons—who may be charismatic," Kelley writes, "but are politically unaccountable to the very people they claim to represent, namely African Americans. The transformation has been underway since the 1970s, but most African Americans have yet to confront it." HNIC syndrome is both a symptom and response to the failings of black political and cultural orthodoxy, of a sclerotic black elite represented by the NAACP and the Black Congressional Caucus, who have embedded themselves into the machinery of the Democratic Party and the conservative movement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kelley does not spare anyone or any segment of U.S. culture and politics in his books."

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (May 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255846
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255840
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,194,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where Does America Go From Here?, July 6, 2004

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Paperback)

This an awesomely clear and well written book. I give it six stars.

In his effort to shed some light on a difficult problem, the so-called "black problem," Mr. Kelley has used his well-honed craft as a journalist, deftly. He deserves credit for shinning the spotlight in many of the dark places in black culture (and on some of its most sacred of "sacred cows") where it is sorely needed-especially on the moribund black church, lack of an overall cultural strategy, and by picking holes in all of the past half-baked tactics. He correctly demonstrates that even when blacks win, they eventually lose.

However, importantly, he fails to give us the answer to the most perplexing question of all, why this is always the case?

By exposing the nakedness of the HNIC, the last Emperor of an otherwise dying black culture, he all but puts the last nail in a coffin that surely appears to need being shut forever. Instead of nearing the finish line of the last mile of freedom, Kelly demonstrates (whether he intended to or not) that black cultural chaos and self-destruction is all that there is as far out into the future as the eye can see.

There is a minor problem however with Mr. Kelly's astutely crafted analysis. How is it that while walking very slowly down the path to their last mile of freedom, the great minds of black intellectual culture have all made the same wrong turn in the fork in the road? Why have they all turned down the well-lighted path of collective cultural self-destruction?

Mr. Kelly's analysis does not ask or answer this question.

How easy it is to beat a dead (black) horse, which is also what Mr. Kelly, accuses the "Black Conservatives" of doing. How easy it is to fall back into one's own comfort zone of orthodoxy (and become a part of HNIC royalty oneself)-which is what he accuses the black liberals of doing. How easy it is to see all of the flaws when cultural sausage is being made without a recipe...

It seems that Mr. Kelly's analysis itself has committed the same error that he has accused the other great minds of having committed: He has failed to recognize when a paradigm shift is needed.

The paradigm shift that is needed has to do with the inadvertent missing link in Mr. Kelly's analysis. It turns out to be the only controlling variable that remains unaccounted for: It is called white racism. Yes, I know one has to be careful in using this variable. Black orthodoxy dictates that overuse makes one either an irrelevant cultural nationalist rebel or an impotent excuse-maker or rationalizer. Under-use, on the other hand, makes one either a "soft," or a "hard" Uncle Tom, an appeaser, a compromiser with evil.

But correct use makes for sound analysis.

In the face of all evidence to the contrary, Mr. Kelly would have us believe that by treating only one half of America's race problem (the black half), the "elusive effective most efficacious black strategy" does in fact exist and will in fact be found. His candidate is the old familiar composite-better organizational and programmatic planning, more strategic thinking--and by all means and without further delay more black forays into economic independence and internal self-development.

Mr. Kelly's book proves simply that at times even great minds can become fuzzy when they refuse to look at the simple truths facing them head on. Following Mr. Kelly's well-worn paradigm to black success, one would think that with Oprah, professional basketball, the Johnson publishing and Jackson music and BET broadcasting empires, the black economy would be well on its way to democratic and racial acceptance and thus to victory. That is, that the last mile of freedom should already have been accomplished. QED, amen.

Here is a mind game that Mr. Kelly evidently did not think to play. It is the same mind game that Howard Griffin played in his famous book "Black Like Me." Supposed Bill Gates, and Andrew Carnegie were black (or pick your own rich white tycoons, young or old, dead or live)? What difference would it have on the black masses?

Almost none is the correct, but not the exact answer. The exact answer is not only would it have little or no no effect on black culture as a whole, but the lives of these men would themselves be unalterably changed.

That is the exact answer.

The effects of white racism are global, systemic. There is no way to hide from it--no safe haven from it; it cannot be finessed or seduced-either analytically or existentially. Attempts to do so, just makes the analyst a part of the problem-that is a part of white collective denial about the collection of closed white superiority myths.

We cannot solve the problem of black culture without including America's own existential crisis with the issue of race in the analysis. Race is not an exogenous variable it is an endogenous one--an American problem. White racism is an American problem that blacks must help solve just as black self-development is a black problem that whites must help solve. We must stop running from the obvious and began to work within our American family and help our white brothers help themselves and in turn they will help us. There is no other solution, analytically or existentially.

Surely the author does not supposed for a moment that a well-educated, economically vibrant, culturally coherent black race is going to be welcomed with open arms into the larger economically competitive racist American family, does he? Anyone who thinks that has missed the real lessons of Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa and American Southern Reconstruction. These are the blacks who will be the most threatening to a weak white self-concept. As in Nazi Germany, the successful ones will be the ones most detested. We cannot forget, that white fantasy no matter how powerful and dominant is still not reality.

Just as there was no "Jewish problem" in Nazi Germany there is no "black problem" in America. There is only a white problem. Once that problem is solved, we will all be free.

The snake in America's bosom-white racism--must be confronted and slain, otherwise nothing that is not blonde and blue-eyed is safe. White racism is the gravity that holds a flawed white identity together; it is the glue that holds together a dying and corrupt system; it cannot be appeased by either good or bad black strategies because it remains unaffected by them. It must be confronted, and then confronted some more. Amen.

This book deserves six stars! It is awesome.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bold, accurate, and necessary critique, June 19, 2004

By 

Andre M. "brnn64" (Mt. Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Paperback)

While not as conservative as Jesse Peterson, Star Parker, or Kin Hamblin (but closer to that of John McWhorter), this is a necessary and accurate critique of current Black "leadership" that avoids conservative dogma and sticks to the facts.

Having met and experienced some of the "Black leadership" of which Mr. Kelley discusses, I can vouch for what he says about Modern "leadership" amounting to a charasmatic road show of sound and fury signifying nothing, but fear of white supremacist backlash keeps the Black masses (especially those of the Jim Crow generation)afraid to openly dismiss some of these people for the frauds that some of them are.

Mr. Kelley will be criticized for this, but since he does not appear to be a supporter of ultraconservative reactionaries as is the case of Star Parker, Jesse Peterson, Ward Connerly, or Ken Hamblin, that might blunt the sting of any criticism he may receive.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Who's in charge and why?, April 9, 2005

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Paperback)

Norman Kelley has taken on black leadership in America and attempted to expose its delicate underbelly. He accuses them of missing the point when it comes to what the black populace needs in order to succeed in this country. Kelley feels especially hostile toward those he labels the "niggerati" (a term coined by Zora Neal Hurston) who are the black intellectuals. Cornell West, Michael Eric Dyson, bell hooks, and Henry Lewis Gates all take something of a beating at his capable hands. He states that they are able to "dazzle the white world with their mixture of "street" analysis and postmodern argot." I get the distinct impression he thinks that dealing with the hip hop generation is merely a way for them to keep their names in the news while not really saying or doing anything helpful.

While many of his comments are on the mark, he doesn't explain just what black leadership should do to effectively help the common people. He doesn't discuss the issues that the black leaders themselves face in that they are not welcome at the American table - either as politicians or as leaders of a people the white American leadership would prefer to ignore. I feel that he omitted the many roadblocks that have faced black leaders from DuBois to Sharpton. It's almost as if he's suggesting that if black leaders did x, y, or z differently, then the problems would be solved, while totally leaving out the racism that caused them in the first place. (RAW Rating: 3.5)

Reviewed by alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers