In the Magazines

Orlando Patterson, “On the Fate of Blacks in the Americas,” Public Interest, Spring 1972.

Simple slogans of black separatism and black power have faded with incredible speed since the riot-torn 1960s. Black activism is now more political and sophisticated than it was just a short time ago. Yet the assumption of “an underlying unity in the New World black experience” still lies at the heart of much discussion of strategies for black emergence. In his powerful article Orlando Patterson, a black writer and professor of sociology at Harvard University, surveys the historical experiences of blacks in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and concludes that the differences greatly outweigh...