PLURAL BUT EQUAL: A CRITICAL STUDY OF BLACKS AND MINORITIES AND AMERICA'S PLURAL SOCIETY

by Harold Cruse

Book by Cruse, Harold

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) is his best-known book.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book’s not always easy to follow or comprehend. However it contains an essence, the spirit of searching sincerely for equality, in pluralist America. Cruse’s sprawling work can be viewed compartmentally. There is in one corner an exhaustive examination of both W.E.B. Du Bois & Booker T. Washington, and in another, a well-matched contest between neoconservative author Thomas Sowell and the author (Cruse) himself. It seeks to position black endeavors toward equality in light of economics. This is an economic book in a sense. In such wise does it discuss, analyse and even correct the aims & schemes of the likes of Martin Luther King Jr..

There is great detail to Cruse’s arguments. The annals of Afro America are referenced in asserting that across the colored spectrum of peoples the blacks have suffered not only a failed Reconstruction, and decades of systemic, legalized oppression, but a dearth of economic insight & initiative, and a host of misguided aims, programs, and popular philosophies. It’s a dense, somewhat weighty book that rightfully rests up there as righteous, but the overall feeling is one of despair. A song of lament, and less an anthem. He decries specific things such as the connection between the Democratic party and ‘the black vote,’ and the misaligning of black civil/economic equality and womens’ rights. The NAACP is thoroughly examined, and both lauded for its combating of anti-Negro legislation, and criticized for its ignorance of economic imperatives. In short, this book touches on all the crucial issues that affect the progress & prosperity of everyone in a given society, for it speaks not only of civil rights but of equality, and plurality, in regards to economic, financial well-being. I’d recommend it for readers who are curious as to what black people have to think of themselves, honestly. Cruse covers the salient points and variety of views, from the popular figure of Jesse Jackson to the anonymous name of Arthur B. Spingarn. But overall, it’s long, has complicated sections, and revolves around a very complex matter.

[Lawrence Grandpre · Rating 5 out of 5]

His critique of the use of equal protection as the basis for civil rights and the NAACP's "noneconomic liberalism", and his explanation of why this framework came about (i.e. the influence fo nonblack leaders in the NAACP projecting their own beliefs) is probably the most important analysis of the civil rights movement. His analysis of Moore v. Dempsy, not Brown v Board, being the key moment of the civil rights movement should be used to reframe historiography of the American civil rights struggle. His defense of noncharismatic pluralistic Black leadership and the irrelevance of the old school civil rights leaders could be seen in many ways as presaging the rise of Black Lives Matter 30 years in advance.