Fear and respect often walk hand in hand. In his discussion of the Negro’s new solidarity and pride of race, Lincoln is not unappreciative of Malcolm’s contribution to the revolution. For all of his sharp critique of racism, the author, like Louis Lomax, James Baldwin, Lerone Bennett and other contemporary Negro intellectuals, welcomes what he calls the new “mood ebony” of which the Black Muslims are the principal exponents.

Ironically, the success of the integration movement in the ghetto is in part due to a new sense of worth and power in blackness. The problem Lincoln skirts in My Face Is Black is how one walks the tightrope between an acceptance of being black and a more separatist disposition. “It [the “mood ebony”] expresses itself as a rejection of integration. It does not imply a hatred for the white man, but it does imply a negation of the symbols of his culture, his power, and his status.” Well and good. But is this willingness to separate from a culture to which the Negro himself has made a powerful contribution as inevitable result of discovering one’s identity—of being able, as one Negro business man expressed it, to “enjoy ham hocks and turnip greens . . . without caring whether or not the white man is watching, and giving a damn if he is’?

Lincoln, a Methodist minister now teaching at Clark College in Atlanta, is equally influenced by the Christian integrationist viewpoint—his first chapter is titled “American Tragedy: Christian Dilemma.” His criticism of the Negro church, while not as extreme as Joseph Washington’s almost angry attack in Black Religion, follows the same general line. Hence he makes such statements as “The Negro’s religion is too often superficial, too ego-centered, too pragmatic and too reflective of the exigencies of the social milieu,” and “Too many Negroes have prematurely reached the conclusion that the church has already become . . . a fraternal order with designated chapters for whites and others restricted to Negroes.”

A considerable portion of the book is devoted to what appears to be a hastily pulled together “Negro history” which reiterates the we-did-not-like-slavery theme of Bennett and others and is, on the whole, unimpressive. The most significant sections deal with the area of Lincoln’s greatest competence—the Black Muslims and Malcolm X. Lincoln declares that Malcolm’s new image is only a deception; he does not believe that his racism was abated by his sentimental journey to the Middle East.

While in this book Lincoln announces almost arrogantly “My face is black,” he squarely opposes Malcolm’s antiwhite bias and in the need acknowledges that “the Negro needs the white man. He needs him to make his freedom complete and meaningful.” It may be possible to have it both ways. We shall see.

Source: The Christian Century (January 20, 1965)

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updated 19 May 2008