during the 1960s, “a time of fundamental social
change” (66). “The new generation of whites,”
Cleaver writes, “are rejecting the panoply of white
heroes, whose heroism consisted in erecting the
inglorious edifice of colonialism and imperialism;
heroes whose careers rested on a system of foreign
and domestic exploitation, rooted in the myth of
white supremacy and the manifest destiny of the
white race” (68). Similarly, in “The Black Man’s
Stake in Vietnam,” Cleaver warns, “What the black
man in America must keep in mind is that the doc-
trine of white supremacy... lets the black man in
for the greatest portion of the suffering and hate
which white supremacy has dished out to the non-
white people of the world for hundreds of years”
(122). He writes with passion on his response to the
news that Malcolm X had been assassinated: “I ex-
isted in a dazed state, wandering in a trance around
Folsom, drifting through the working hours in the
prison bakery” (53). In “Lazarus, Come Forth,” he
attacks MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., for his “inflated
image [after receiving the Nobel Prize] to that of
an international hero,” concluding “the only Negro
Americans allowed to attain national or interna-
tional fame have been the puppets and lackeys of
the white power structure—and entertainers and
athletes” (87). In “Notes on a Native Son,” he takes
James Baldwin to task for the “quirk” in his “vision
which corresponds to his relationship to black peo-
ple and to masculinity” (105).
Cleaver wears on his sleeves his concern with
issues of manhood and masculinity, which he
makes a recurring theme in the entire collection.
It remains the central theme of what many critics
consider the key essay in the collection, “On Be-
coming,” in which Cleaver confesses that in order
to retaliate against his white male oppressors—to
trample “upon the white man’s law, upon his sys-
tem” (14)—he committed the ultimate “insurrec-
tionary act”: He “crossed the tracks and sought
out white prey” (14). He began raping white
women. Before doing so, however, he empowered
himself and boosted his sense of masculinity by
“practicing on black girls in the ghetto” (14). This
statement led BELL HOOKS to write that by prais-
ing violence Cleaver had told the world “that he
had consciously chosen to become the brutal
black beast of white racist imagination” (52). For
hooks, a feminist critic, Cleaver’s work is sexist,
misogynist, and homophobic; while calling his
claimed “revolutionary act” “reactionary,” Sidonie
Smith notes that rape, for Cleaver is really “false
freedom, another more self-destructive form of
oppression that catapults him back to literal im-
prisonment” (107).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. New York: Dell Pub-
lishers, 1968.
hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.
New York: Routledge, 2004.
Smith, Sidone. Where I Am Bound: Patterns of Slav-
ery and Freedom in Black American Autobiography.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974.
Wilfred D. SamuelsSouls of Black Folk, The
W. E. B. DuBois (1903)
W. E. B. DUBOIS published his now-classic collec-
tion of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, more than a
century ago. Made up of 14 essays, some of which
had been previously published, Souls articulates
several key concepts that have continued to shape
discussions of African-American experience. It in-
cludes, in addition to historical and sociological
pieces, personal essays, biography, short fiction,
music criticism, polemic, and moral inquiry. The
first essay, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” connects
two of these ideas, but in a totally new way. It opens
with a restatement of what was at the time com-
monly referred as “the Negro problem.” Distanc-
ing himself from others commenting on this issue,
DuBois claims that whites cannot understand
blacks in terms other than race, that they can-
not understand them in straightforward human
terms. He attempts to portray the true source of
the “Negro problem” as residing in white attitudes
and behaviors.
He argues that the ability of whites, who stra-
tegically have shut blacks out from their world474 Souls of Black Folk, The