Personal Responsibility : Myth or Strategy in Black Politics?

The WPSA conference theme invites the consideration of the extent to which the current economic crisis creates or reduces space for other than economic expressions of the political. My paper begins by acknowledging that black politics presents a dichotny: it either embraces or rejects an economic understanding of black progress. In its most stark terms, this dichotomy embraces or rejects the notion of personal responsibility. I will examine the trajectory of black political discourse from Adolph Reed's rejection of self-help in his work from the late 1990s, Stirrings in the Jug, to President Obama's highlighting of the importance of self-help in his speech on race and his exhortations to personal responsibility. I address the following question: When have appeals to personal responsibility been most prevalent in black political discourse? When have they been most persuasive, and why? After a brief account of the background of 19th and 20th century African-American thought on this issue, the paper addresses the contemporary period in order to better understand both the shifting and enduring meaning of personal responsibility in African-American thought