Harold Cruse

Harold Wright Cruse (March 8, 1916 – March 25, 2005) 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.

Quotes

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967)

• America, which idealizes the rights of the individual above everything else, is in reality, a nation dominated by the social power of groups, classes, in-groups and cliques—both ethnic and religious. The individual in America has few rights that are not backed up by the political, economic and social power of one group or another. Hence, the individual Negro has, proportionately, very few rights indeed because his ethnic group (whether or not he actually identifies with it) has very little political, economic or social power (beyond moral grounds) to wield. Thus it can be seen that those Negroes, and there are very many of them, who have accepted the full essence of the Great American Ideal of individualism are in serious trouble trying to function in America.
  • p. 8