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Copyright by Justin Dean Hatch 2020 The Dissertation Committee for Justin Dean Hatch Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation: Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation Committee: Patricia Roberts-Miller, Supervisor Mark Longaker Donnie Sackey Keith Gilyard Peniel Joseph Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation by Justin Dean Hatch Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2020 Dedication To my beautiful wife. Acknowledgements “Thank you” is embarrassingly inadequate for the debt this project (and I) owe to so many brilliant and caring humans. But it still needs to be said. Patricia Roberts-Miller has been an invaluable mentor in more ways than can be listed here. Thank you, Trish. Mark Longaker closely read too many truly bad drafts and provided detailed feedback that didn’t include curse words. Conversations with Donnie Sackey provided perspective and confidence at pivotal moments. Peniel Joseph was an incredible guide through scholarship on Black Power, black politics, and black public intellectuals. Finally, Keith Gilyard has been a trusted mentor since my time as an undergraduate. I never would have been at UT without both him and Jack Selzer. I also want to thank Davida Charney who always took the time to read drafts and provide feedback. Jeff Walker helped shape early iterations of the project. Thanks to Diane Davis for always having a kind word. Casey Boyle has been a friend and mentor. Thanks to Clay Spinuzzi and Scott Graham for timely advice on the job market. Thanks to Xiaoye You, Jon Olson, Earl Brooks, Heather Adams, and the Rudewalkers for their guidance down the path to UT. I want to acknowledge the TRM Writing Group: JWells, Stephen Dadugblor, and Kiara Walker as well as past members Rhiannon Goad, Jeremy Smyczek, Connie Steel, Mary Hedengren, and Hannah Harrison. You all didn’t just read crappy drafts, but you each provided sustaining friendship. Thanks also to trusted friends and colleagues Matt Breece, James Garner, Amy Charron, E.R., Sarah Riddick, Jake Cowan, Jeremy Goheen, Ansley Colclough, Camille Hall, Will Burdette, Amy Douglas Stewart, Anna Crane, Holly Schwadron, Patricia Schaub, Alice Batt, Michele Solberg, Vince Lozano, and so many others—too many to list. I’m going to v stop trying. I want to thank Tim Noakes and Leif Erik Anderson at Stanford Special Collections. To the incredible men I served with—those who never made it back, those who did, and those who brought it back with them. Thanks to the Zilker Park congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You will never know what your examples of faith, friendship, and Christ-like charity have meant to me and my family. A special shout out to Bishop Hazen. Thanks to Troop 359. To my loving parents and brothers. To Lou and Nancy and the rest of the Tychonievich clan. Of course, to my incredible wife and three wonderful children. Academia needs to institute an accompanying credential (superior in status) for spouses of those earning PhDs. Finally, I save my greatest thanks for my loving Heavenly Father and for His Son, Jesus Christ. vi Abstract RADICAL DISMISSAL: STOKELY CARMICHAEL AND THE PROBLEM OF INCLUSION IN PUBLIC DELIBERATION Justin Dean Hatch, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2020 Supervisor: Patricia Roberts-Miller “Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation” has two interrelated goals—first, to lay bare the rhetorical mechanisms by which those in power silence dissent, and, second, to view with greater clarity Stokely Carmichael’s rhetorical strategies and legacies. Toward those goals, I examine Carmichael’s words in the year following SNCC’s release of the slogan “Black Power,” and I look closely at the almost universally negative responses to them during the same period. While the terms—angry, hateful, demagogue, racist, etc.—that Carmichael’s critics use to dismiss him vary, they all direct attention away from his institutional critique toward his relationship to subjective norms of discourse. I open the dissertation by introducing Carmichael and relevant context and by developing the dissertation’s overarching theoretical framework. I borrow from scholars writing on “civility” to develop “civility policing” as rhetorical action that preserves unjust harmonies (Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict 154), displaces blame from oppressor to oppressed (Welch 110), and silences dissent (Lozano-Reich and Cloud 223). Chapter One finds that Carmichael’s critics shaped his image and longer legacy by amplifying a distorted version of his message. An vii exploration of Carmichael’s words especially within a set of letters to Lorna Smith offers a corrective. Chapter Two explores the utility of two definitions of the term “demagogue” for distinguishing anti-racist rhetoric. While critics accuse Carmichael of being a “demagogue,” his words in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America not only contradict the claim, but also return the charge. Chapter Three builds on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “dissociation of concepts” and Janice Fernheimer’s “dissociative disruption” to better understand the adaptive rhetorical strategies Carmichael used in his most famous speech given at Berkeley. I offer the term “subversive dissociation” as a charge to discover the dissociative foundations of dominant racial narratives. viii Table of Contents Introduction: Institutional Critique and Silencing Dissent ..................................................1 Chapter 1: “Black Power” and Policing the Uncivil ..........................................................31 Chapter 2: Demagoguery, Reverse-Racism, and Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America ..................................................................................................76 Chapter 3: Dissociating Power and Racism at Berkeley .................................................128 Conclusion: A (Not So) Radical Response to Institutional Racism ................................175 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................206 ix Introduction: Institutional Critique and Silencing Dissent After hearing Stokely Carmichael speak at Stockholm University in 1967, Swedish journalist, Ingris Dahlberg, traveled to the United States to record footage of Stokely Carmichael and other Black Power activists (Werman). More than three decades later Director Goran Olsson stitched Dahlberg’s footage together into a documentary Black Power Mixtape on the Black Power Movement in America between the years 1967 and 1975 (Werman). Story AB and Louverture Films released the film to critical acclaim in 2011, and as noted by critics at the time, Mixtape is extraordinary in its relatively positive depiction of Black Power. Particularly awing were scenes of Stokely Carmichael spending time with friends, singing and laughing, and interacting with his mother, Mable Carmichael, affectionately known to all as “May Charles” (Olson; Joseph, Stokely 5). In one scene Dahlberg attempts to interview camera shy May Charles and has trouble eliciting answers (Olson). Stokely takes the mic and begins, sweetly, to question his mother about the economic circumstances of his youth (Olson). At ease with her new interviewer, May Charles speaks of the family’s indigence and names racism as its cause. A.O. Scott of the New York Times called this “the most touching and arresting scene in ‘Mixtape,’” and Scott is not alone. This is the scene most often pointed to by critics (see Scott; Jenkins; Kennedy). Why would footage of Stokely Carmichael simply and sweetly interacting with his mother draw so much attention? One answer is that the presence of humanity is shocking only to those who are certain of its absence. Before Stokely Carmichael called for “Black Power” in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1966, he was a veteran activist and organizer who rode on the Freedom Rides, participated in countless sit-ins and marches, who was a central figure during Freedom Summer, and who organized the 1 Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) (see especially Carmichael Ready for Revolution and Joseph, Stokely). Then Carmichael, with the help of fellow SNCC activist Willie Ricks, released the slogan “Black Power” that (as Keith Gilyard and Adam Banks write) forever altered the rhetorical landscape of The Civil Rights Movement (40). “Black Power” circulated with what would at present be called virality, and Stokely Carmichael, seemingly overnight, went from a movement name to a household name, one on the lips (or pens or typewriters) of critics from Jackson to New York to London. As this project demonstrates, responses were swift and largely negative. The Los Angeles Times writes of “Black Power” as “negro supremacy” and a “doctrine of vengeance” (A4). Time Magazine calls it the “New Racism” (11). Even within the movement, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins called “Black Power” “a reverse Mississippi, a reverse Hitler, a reverse Klu Klux Klan” at his organizations national meeting (qtd. in Joseph, Stokely 127). At that same gathering, Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey called “Black Power” “racism,” “the dogma of the oppressor,” and “apartheid” (qtd.