A new framework for analyzing the role of blacks in the U.S.
economy
The book is a heroic attempt to organize the relevant facts
about black economic involvement in the U.S. economy. Its major
objective is the construction of a theoretical framework for
explaining the mechanisms by which the black population of the
United States reproduces itself as a black population. Who they
are today and what survival strategies keep breath in their bodies
are consequences of a set of historical forces which have generated
them out of some primordial earth matter about three million
years ago, propelled them through many and varied social-economic
formations, and finally solidified their present defining characteristics
as well as their physical location within the bowels of the most
powerful capitalist nation that the world has ever known.
Previous economic-theoretic works in this field have concentrated
on a set of isolated data, mainly centering around black-white
differences in various measures of economic performance or rewards.
This book, on the other hand, develops a systematic framework
for understanding black people as a distinct population in historical
transition from primordial beginnings in Africa, through slave
labor in North America, thence undergoing a sharecropping existence,
and finally being transformed into a full-fledged wage-working
population.
The method exploits the rich and changing history of blacks
as a people. At the same time, it emphasizes their survival activities
which are peculiar to each historical epoch in their development.
A major conclusion of the book is that black people have been
locked in an historical embrace over the centuries, reproducing
among themselves to the exclusion of all other people, undergoing
a set of transformations which brought them from slavery through
sharecropping and thence into the American wage-working class.
This perspective makes for a deeper understanding of the racial
oppression which they have experienced. At the same time it provides
insights into the progressive elimination of the racist malaise
over time.
The book ends with some interesting speculations about the
future of blacks in the U.S.
"There is no single source available which attempts to
establish fundamental theoretical principles for approaching
the new discipline of black political economy with the same skill
and methodology presented here," said Manning Marable, author
of How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (South End Press,
1983) "I think that the book is a tremendous advance over
the entire body of literature currently availble on the subject."
Lloyd Hogan studied economics at The University of Chicago.
He has taught economics and statistics at a number of black colleges
in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. He has also
served as visiting faculty at Harvard University, Cornell University,
Amherst College, and Gettysburg College. He is a retired Associate
Professor of Economics at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He is editor of Black Community Revitalization (Transactions
Books, 1980) and Government Subsidies for Low Income People (Transactions
Books, 1981). He also served as editor of The Review of Black
Political Economy (vols. 8-12, 1974-1982). He is currently completing
research for a book on human population dynamics.