Mark Statman | Edward J. Hill

On Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice

Edward J. Hill

Cleaver very consciously seduced the white allegiance he commanded. The Peace and Freedom Party, whose banner he carried in the 1968 presidential elec­tion, represented a coalition of the Black Panther Party and overwhelmingly white groups, including the Students for a Dem­ocratic Society. In shaping this coalition, Cleaver practiced what he preached in the essay “The White Race and its Heroes,” arguably the single chapter in Soul On Icethat has survived as something more than either a historical curiosity or a frank explication of Cleaver’s tortured sexuality. It is also an essay that is perhaps relevant to the 2008 presidential election.

In this piece, Cleaver demonstrates his fidelity to Malcom X’s last intellec­tual phase, in which he renounced the extreme racism of Elijah Mohammed and encouraged brotherhood (however lim­ited) among black and white Americans. Cleaver understood the political strength and powerful sexual tension of interracial political coalition. In “The White Race and its Heroes,” Cleaver bid come hither to white radicals as follows:

 

At times of fundamental social change, such as the era in which we live, it is easy to be deceived by the onrush of events, beguiled by the craving for social stability into mistaking transitory phenomena for enduring reality. The strength and permanence of “white backlash” in America is just such an illusion. However much this rear-guard ac­tion might seem to grow in strength, the initiative, and the future, rest with those whites and blacks who have liberated themselves from the master/slave syndrome

 

Both in its inspiration and appeal, this interracial liberation was, for Cleaver, as sexual as it was political. Which brings us to 2008.

On a quick search, Eldridge Cleaver and Barack Obama seem to share little beyond skin tone, attendance at Harvard Law School, and high placement on the New York Times best seller list. Going deeper, however, it is hard to miss the status of each man as a reflection of the political ethos in which each matured and mustered near reverent loyalty among the presump­tive white, liberal elite. Even the come-on is similar. In his epochal “A More Perfect Union” speech delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, Obama declared:

 

The profound mistake of Rever­end Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen— is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

 

Nothing in Obama’s carriage, persona, or rhetorical delivery overtly recalls the clumsy sexual militancy of Soul On Ice. Still, the senator’s sleek groove has been the stuff of persistent media preoccupa­tion. And when has the United States seen another candidate inspire the likes of “Obama Girl?” Cleaver wrote of rape and sold millions of books. In a very different time and context, America seems to have a crush on Obama. Maybe Cleaver did understand something about the Ameri­can public better than he has been given credit for.