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Boundaries of Blackness

The latest presidential elections once again highlighted the importance of how different racial minorities. The different political candidates and parties spent much time studying and wooing the various racial votes. Much discussion was also devoted to the status of the 'black vote.'

This paper reviews how the book the Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics by Cathy J. Cohen informs the debate regarding the absence of a strong African-American vote. The first part of this paper examines Cohen's central argument, that the absence of African-Americans as a political force can be traced to fragmentation within the community itself. This fragmentation is particularly illustrated in the way black elite business and church leaders have handled the AIDS crisis in the African-American community. The next part of the paper looks at the strengths of Cohen's argument, especially regarding her research. Additionally, this part also looks at the implications of Cohen's arguments in the current scholarship regarding the politicization of marginalized groups.

In the conclusion, this paper analyzes Cohen's arguments regarding secondary marginalization and the transformation of the "black political agenda." It also makes suggestions regarding future research in this direction, especially regarding comparisons between the response of white and African-American elites to the impending AIDS crisis on their communities.

Cathy J. Cohen's the Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics has much to contribute to the debate regarding the so-called "black vote." In this book, Cohen calls attention to the different shared political agenda commonly thought to provide the basis for political mobilization among the African-American community. More specifically, Cohen challenges the notion of a monolithic black vote, of a racial group that is supposedly linked by a shared history of oppression and disenfranchisement.

Cohen begins by dispelling the notion of a politically-cohesive African-American community, one wherein race supposedly overrides differences spawned by class, gender or even ethnicity. Instead, she maintains that this cohesion is "being challenged and sometimes replaced by cross-cutting issues and crises rooted in or built on the often hidden differences, cleavages, or fault lines of marginal communities" (9). There is thus no strong "black vote," because the African-American community is highly fragmented and factionalized.

One often overlooked reason for this factionalization, according to Cohen, is the AIDS crisis. This book makes a convincing argument, given how AIDS has disproportionately affected African-Americans, compared to the rest of the population.

In studying the impact of AIDS in New York City since 1990, Cohen finds that the disease has affected more African-Americans than members of other racial groups. However, in doing a content analysis of black newspaper and media outlets, Cohen finds that black leaders chose to remain silent on this growing crisis. This silence was also echoed by other influential black community members, such as business, civic and church leaders. This silence continued, despite recent statistics showing how African-American women and children are at growing risk of AIDS. This silence is further highlighted when the silence in the black media is compared with the coverage of more mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times.

Despite the growing threat of AIDS, however, Cohen argues that African-American leadership failed to galvanize the population around this issue, one that affected African-Americans as a group, despite categorical differences. The black political response regarding the AIDS crisis came largely from the marginalized gay and lesbian community. By failing to rally as a community around this significant issue, African-Americans lost a valuable opportunity to heal the growing ruptures in black politics.

Cohen realizes the contentiousness of her thesis, and therefore documents her research meticulously. Sources for the book include careful readings of black publications as well as interviews with members of the Urban League, the NAACP, black congressional caucuses and other black political organizations. Based on this, Cohen places much blame on the failure of African-American leadership - and on black elites, in particular -- to capitalize on issues that could unite the fragmented African-American community.

Though Cohen focuses on the African-American community, her study has actually much to contribute to politics among marginalized groups. Like many minorities, African-Americans have little control over their own lives, and have little access to important political and social institutions. They are thus forced to depend on "indigenous resources" within the community to bring about political resistance. However, like many marginalized groups, the African-American community is itself being torn apart by infighting. This lack of unity, in addition to factors like racism and lack of access to political and educational opportunities, further exacerbates the problems of the African-American community.

Many other studies have been done challenging the notion of a monolithic African-American community. Much of these studies have focused on how class or gender divisions do matter. However, Cohen's contribution to these studies is her analysis of the working of the internal stratification, with focus on African-American elites. Cohen illustrates how black elite leaders often focused their energies on imbibing the values of white America. Black elites, according to Cohen, were in a much better position economically and had better chances of articulating the "black" agenda, such as AIDS concerns. However, Cohen finds that black elites themselves suppressed the AIDS agenda, fearful that the black gay and lesbian population might somehow taint their status as elites.

In Cohen's analysis, black elites were therefore guilty of espousing a racial identity that, like their white counterparts, privileges the needs of "middle-class, heterosexual males." The exclusionary practices thus served to designate segments of the population who were deemed expendable. The mixture of homophobia, sexism and classism thus served to further stigmatize and disempower an already marginalized segment of the African-American population.

This undermining of the needs of a segment of the African-American population all but negates the notion of a "shared" history of oppression forming a link among all members of the African-American community. For black elites, at least, a shared history of oppression was not enough to make them articulate the needs of black people suffering from AIDS. The fact that African-American elite leaders never took AIDS as a political issue illustrates the need to "transform fundamental thinking in black communities about this crisis" (118).

For Cohen, this refusal to re-evaluate the "linked-fate" strategy is the real issue, one that has great significance to the marginalization of the black community. If addressed properly, the AIDS issue could have been a uniting factor in black politics, an issue that the vast majority of African-Americans could rally around. Instead, black leaders feared that their entry to mainstream American elite would be compromised by their perceived support of a "homosexual" agenda, one which the white community clearly disapproved.

African-American gays and lesbians therefore faced a double marginalization, both from Caucasian majority as well as from members of their own racial groups.

Cohen convincingly argues how the "shared link" argument is wielded by an elite to pursue its own case.

This shared link is only valid, however, so long as it does not compromise the interests of a black elite trying to gain legitimacy in mainstream America. By ignoring the effects AIDS crisis in the black community, African-American leaders and elites let an opportunity to galvanize their community members slip through their fingers.

One of the clear strengths of this book is Cohen's careful research. The author makes careful use of primary sources, from first-person interviews, television broadcasts and historic newspaper accounts.

The content analysis method and resulting conclusions speak volumes in support of Cohen's contention, regarding the silence in the black media regarding the AIDS crisis.

Cohen's argument that traditional black leaders remained silent due to personal interest is much more provocative. However, the tone of the book is far from indicting. Instead, Cohen carefully frames her arguments as a method of provoking discussion regarding African-American politics. She also discusses with compassion the stigmatization of African-American homosexuals, a group who suffers a form of double or secondary marginalization.

Cohen, a Yale University professor, has a tendency to espouse academic jargon, terms like "secondary marginalization."

However, such academic terms do not detract from her fresh sociological insight. Instead, these terms contribute further to the author's argument, that a political agenda based on a shared history of racial oppression is not inclusive enough. In fact, this orientation is now ironically excluding the marginalized members of its own group.

Cohen's argument gives new sociological insight regarding the causes of factionalization and lack of political clout among the African-American community. However, Cohen's account also raises questions regarding the concept of "secondary marginalization." First, Cohen argues throughout the book regarding how the African-American elite failed or refused to address the AIDS crisis. For Cohen, this failure is best illustrated in the absence of what she terms a "transformative leadership" among African-American leaders.

Cohen herself acknowledges, however, that the 1990s did see changes in the political agenda of black community leaders. In this decade, black leaders did begin to express concern about AIDS, especially with its growing effect on heterosexual African-American women and children. However, she never clearly addresses why this "transformation" in the attitude of black elites is not enough to negate her argument regarding the "silence." It is thus unclear how Cohen exactly deems when these silences or transformations occur.