Whether or not nationalism is good policy is another question. According to Epps, who served this summer as special assistant to Thomas Atkins, executive secretary of the Boston branch of NAACP, nationalism is "a luxury" Negroes cannot afford. He stressed the importance of strategy, of using what volunteers one had, regardless of their motives.

"I flirted with nationalism last year," he said, "with the founding of AAAAS, but I've become disenchanted, because nationalists--like King and other Christian leaders who direct the attention of Negroes to heaven--direct the energy and attention of Negroes to Africa, separate states, and exclusively Negro organizations, which by their very nature cannot come to grips with the society in which they exist. Malcolm, like Muhammed, is likely to attract followers who, like the Black Muslims, will remain in their temples while other Negroes face police dogs and jail cells. . . . You cannot work institutional change while being a nationalist."

Numerous Inconsistencies

There are numerous inconsistencies in the thinking of Harvard's black nationalists. If Negroes here really do think in terms of power, and not in terms of good and bad, as they claim the white liberals do, why do the motives of the whites in the movement matter? A true Machiavellian would use his flatterers. And if these young Negroes are as independent as they sometime suggest, why are they so bothered by "paternalism?"

The answer is, of course, that they do not really think in terms of power--though they are learning to. And they are not so independent as they would have whites believe, though they are becoming more so. One student explained that he had spent the first 18 years of his life trying to be such a "good Negro" that whites would accept him. This pattern is hard to break, and the dream of entering the "mainstream" is hard to give up--particularly when one is at Harvard and the dream seems at times attainable.

It is easy to criticize Harvard's black nationalists--to find an element of self-pity in their talk of being "hung up," to suggest that they are really racists, or to say that for all their claims of "realism" they are still hunting for emotional solutions to socio-economic problems. But many are faced with quite genuine "intellectual despair." Basically many have little reason to trust whites. And perhaps most significantly, they know full well what roles they are playing. As one active member of AAAAS pointed out, "There are very few Negroes at Harvard who have half the answers the liberals do.